ABSTRACT
For the study of ritual, few sources are as rich as the writings of Confucian philosophers. From the beginning of the tradition, Kongzi (Confucius) describes the good human life in terms of ritual practice. He focuses on the ways in which ritual participation enables us to become fully human. From Kongzi onward, the Confucian tradition continued to emphasize and discuss the importance of ritual participation. These discussions of ritual and its significance to the good human life first become fully developed by Xunzi in the fourth century BCE.1 Xunzi’s conception of ritual practice and its connection to moral cultivation prove worthy of examination for several reasons. First, as I have argued elsewhere, Xunzi’s conception of ritual and ritual practice is the most sophisticated and compelling defense of ritual practice within the Confucian tradition.2 The complexity and sophistication of his defense of ritual owes much to the historical moment in which it took shape. Xunzi was the last of the great Confucian philosophers in early China, the period of Chinese history before the unification of the empire under the first emperor of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE. His writings reveal a thorough grasp of the other philosophical schools of the time-among them Mohists and Daoists-as well as the competing views within his own tradition. Moreover, Xunzi deftly adopts and adapts many of the positions and objections of his intellectual rivals in order to develop and defend his own position. Because of its inherent richness and power, his understanding of ritual participation and its role in moral cultivation had an enduring, profound, and pervasive influence on later Confucian teachings.
