荀子人性论辨证

A Dialectic of Master Xun's Theory of Human Nature

在儒家人性论史上，荀子是性恶论的代表，“人之性恶”（《性恶》）是荀子本自然性以论人性的结论，也代表了他对人性自身的价值判断。但是，打开《荀子》一书，依据荀子关于性的定义去查找，会发现其中关于性的内涵要广泛得多，而被置于性恶论的价值判断之下的只是其广义人性内涵的一个组成部分而已。辨析荀子论性的诸般内涵，以及它们与性恶论之关系，不但有助于理解荀子人性论面向的复杂性，也有助于清理和揭示其性恶论的历史脉络和深层意蕴。

Master Xun's theory of human nature has always been understood as the theory of the evil of human nature.In fact,the theory of the evil of human nature reflects the opinion of the value of human nature by Master Xun,but it does not sufficiently represent all substance of the theory of human nature of Master Xun.According to Xun's definition of human nature,his theory contains three aspects,which are emotion、lust、cognitive ability,and the profound research on lust and cognitive ability is his unique contribution to thoughts of human nature of Confucianism.However,Master Xun has a value judgment of human nature that human nature is evil,and uses the evil of human nature as the starting point of social political philosophy,but emotion and cognitive ability cannot be correspondent to this value judgment,so he finally excludes emotion and cognitive ability out of the connotation of the theory of human nature.So we find a non-correspondence between the connotation and value judgment of human nature in Master Xun's theory of human nature,and the contradiction of the thoughts of Master Xun's theory of human nature,which scholars often say,is the result of this non-correspondence.