The educational vision of the Philosopher Xun: a commented translation of Xun Zi’s First Chapter

Abstract

In this article we investigate an important author,  Xunzi 荀子, who participated in the School of Scholars of Scholars, also known as Confucianism. The works were written by the homonymous author, which is also called “master Xun” or “philosopher Xun” (310-211 BCE), in English. Here, We seek the role of  “Learning” in Xúnzi’s works. That is: what is his educational vision? This is relevant not only because of its importance in the Confucian tradition – that influenced a large part of humanity, especially in Asia –, but also because it contributes to the understanding of much of the ancient Chinese thought in general, providing ideas about education that can be relevant to everyone, who is interested in this topic. Our study object is the first chapter of Master Xun’s work, called “An Exhortation to Learning” (Quan Xue 勸學). The aim is to show this author’s educational vision on his own terms, highlighted by our comments. For this, our translation method of the original text was based on the principles of fidelity by the principles of fidelity (xin 信), intelligibility (da 達) and the elegance (ya 雅) of writing, each passage followed by our comments. In the latter, we used not only a traditional point of view (Confucian explanation of each paragraph), but also recent academic works on the subject. In conclusion, we showed that “Learning” for master Xun is the foundation of all human achievement in terms of self-recognition, moral sense, and social emotions within the Confucian pursuit of becoming a Wise person.