On the Foundation of Xunzi’s Ethics in the Dao-mind and the human mind
Author：Chen Shihchen (陳士誠)
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Xunzi’s emotional nature of human beings can be interpreted as their subjective motive for causing evil, while rituals form the objective criteria for humans to judge good and evil. However, neither can determine how people act, because people may reject or accept them. Such agreement or disagreement with the emotional nature or ritual are expressed by Xunzi’s concept of mind as an ability for decision. Therefore, what he names “the human mind (renxin)” is nothing but a subject to make a decision by oneself. However, there what one might label a “privative” (or “negation as unbiased,” xuyi) meaning of xin, a mode of the mind that is not blinded by one perspective towards another perspective. In such a state the mind does not conceive the options for action as primordially opposed but as co-existing side by side; this allows us to conceive the possibility of moral deliberation. This is worthy of a name of Dao mind. The Dao mind means the perfection of human mind, not biased towards one thing, and emotions and rational principles do not hurt each other. In this way, the ability of the human mind to choose (specifically to choose justice) can be explained, and the possibility of judging someone good or evil also explicated.