For achieving his political ideal, Xunzi put forward a wealth of
ideas, concepts, and principles that enable us to develop a theoretical
model of leadership. Xunzi (Book 23: 23.2a) stated:
The sage accumulates thoughts and ideas. He masters through practice the
skills of his acquired nature and the principles involved therein in order to
produce ritual principles and moral duty and to develop laws and standards.
This being the case, ritual principles and moral duty, laws and standards, are
the creation of the acquired nature of the sage and not the product of
anything inherent in his inborn nature...Thus the sage by transforming
his original nature develops his acquired nature. From this developed
acquired nature, he creates ritual principles and moral duty. Having
produced them, he institutes the regulations of laws and standards.
These statements are compacted with much of Xunzi’s philosophi-
cal thought on the evilness and transformability of human nature,
the process of self-cultivation, the requirements of great leaders, and
their role in establishing rituals and righteousness in order to create an
effective system of organization and administration. In the following
we seek to build a framework of leadership by elaborating and
connecting these concepts.
Philosophical foundation: the nature of human beings
As summarized inFigure 2.1, we examine Xunzi’s philosophy of
human nature by depicting four components and their relationships.
First, we analyze what Xunzi means when he proposes that human
nature is evil. We then point out that despite its evilness, Xunzi
believes that human nature is transformable into goodness through
the endowment of the mind and its capacity to reason, reflect, and
consider. Third, we identify the major virtues constituting human good-
ness, emphasizing conduct propriety. Finally, we identify the major
ways in which human nature is transformed through self-cultivation.
The evilness of inborn human nature
One of the philosophical debates at Xunzi’s time was whether human
beings are born good or evil. This debate had urgent practical impli-
cations for the building of social order either through the morality
and conscience of humans or through the external constraint of
Bridging Confucianism and Legalism 55