secure lord survived through following ordinary measures of govern-
ance and attracting ordinary talents. It goes without saying that
the superiority of the sage-king lies primarily in serving as a model
of self-cultivation and building enculturation institutions.
Historical significance of Xunzi
There has been considerable discussion on the practical significance
of Xunzi’s work in his own time and in modern times (Cua, 1992 ;
Knoblock, 1998 , vol. I). Some scholars regard Xunzi as a typical
Confucian theorist but overlook some striking differences between
him, Confucius, and Mencius (Dubs, 1927 ), while some amplify their
differences by viewing Xunzi as the originator of the Legalist theory
and overlooking the Confucian aspects of his philosophy (Lu, 2003 ).
We seek to examine Xunzi’s leadership philosophy according to how it
was proposed to answer social issues raised at the time. As was dis-
cussed at the beginning of this chapter, one of the primary topics of
Xunzi’s time was how to provide a theoretical basis and an operational
method for a dynasty to reconstruct order following the disintegration
of moral and ritual orders. Xunzi did it in the following two ways.
Inheriting Confucianism and creating a unique
school of thought
Confucianism, with a mission to serve government and politics, has a
tradition of active participation in the reconstruction of social order.
As the last master of Confucianism of pre-Qin times, Xunzi inherited
some key thoughts of his predecessors. Even though he replaces
Mencius’ thesis of the ‘‘goodness of human nature’’ with a thesis of
the ‘‘evilness of human nature,’’ Xunzi nevertheless endorses the
Confucian virtues of benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety,
and wisdom and shares the same vision of a virtuous society. Liang
Qi-chao ( 1925 ), a Chinese scholar during the period of the late Qing
dynasty and the early Republic of China, comments that Xunzi and
Mencius were both Confucian masters; their political theories lead
to the same result in spite of the minor difference at the beginning.
For example, Xunzi embraced the Confucian proposition that the way
to be a sage-king is to be sage person, what is known as ‘‘being a sage
within so as to be an emperor without.’’ In this fundamental aspect,
72 Yan-qin Peng, Chao-chuan Chen, and Xin-hui Yang