荀子对《孟子》的袭用与批判

On Xunzi’s Heritage and Criticism of Mencius

从《荀子》书中可以发现,荀子对《孟子》的思想、主张、观点、比喻乃至用语都有许多明显的继承、接受甚至抄袭,尽管荀子并未说明这些内容是源于《孟子》,但不难看出孟子思想和文章对荀子的深刻影响。另一方面,荀子在其书中又对孟子进行了指名道姓的批判和抨击,甚至称其有“罪”。荀子对孟子和思孟一派的批判,在很大程度上借鉴了道家特别是庄子的思想资源;而批判的目的,则可能是为了挽救在战国末年学术思潮中趋于颓势的儒家思想。

From the book of Xunzi,we can find that lots of Xunzi’s thoughts,propositions,viewpoints,metaphors and even expressions are obviously inherited,accepted and even copied from Mencius.Although Xunzi does not indicate that these contents come from Mencius,it is not difficult to see the profound influence of Mencius on Xunzi.On the other hand,Xunzi criticized and attacked Mencius by name in his book,and even called him guilty.To a large extent,Xunzi’s criticism of Mencius and the school of Si-Meng draws on some of the thought resources of Taoism,especially that from the Zhuangzi.The purpose of Xunzi’s criticism to Si-Meng,may be to save Confucianism which was declining in the academic trend of thought in the late Warring States period.