Mencius, Xunzi, and the Third Stage of Confucianism

Abstract

Abstract According to Karl Jaspers’s theory of the Axial age, many important cultures in the world experienced a “transcendental breakthrough” between 800 and 200 BCE; no more transformations occurred until Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, which eventually ushered in the modern era. The implication of this theory is that only the West had a second cultural breakthrough, thus rendering moot the discussion of a third Confucian epoch. But, in reality, Confucianism had a second breakthrough during the Song—Ming period (tenth to seventeenth centuries) and spread from China to East Asia; this new form of Confucianism is called “neo-Confucianism” by Western scholars. The third Confucian epoch is a forward-looking concept that uses the lexicon of Western science and democracy to trace Confucianism’s philosophical transformation from a Chinese tradition into a part of world culture, and the integration of Mencian and Xunzian thought has to be treated in this light. Faced with Western cultural challenges, modern Confucianism has broken new ground in many ways. Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 is Mencian (as represented by Lu Xiangshan 陸象山, Wang Yangming 王陽明, and Liu Jishan 劉蕺山) in spirit and Xunzian (as represented by Zhu Xi 朱熹) in practice. Li Zehou 李澤厚, by contrast, exhorts us to talk the Mencian talk but walk the Xunzian walk; this contradictory stratagem, which he thinks will lead to a brighter and healthier future, only accentuates the power of Mencius 孟子 as a philosopher of the mind. Mencius and Xunzi 荀子 are very important in a modern deconstruction of Confucianism and the integration of their thought may very well become the impetus for another transcendental breakthrough. Is integration possible? How should they be integrated? We await the results of Confucian scholars’ open-minded explorations.