L’Atelier du Centre derecherches historiques
16 (2016)
Histoire intellectuelle des émotions, de l’Antiquité à nos jours................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Curie Virág

The intelligence of emotions? Debatesover the structure of moral life in earlyChina................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

Curie Virág

The intelligence of emotions? Debatesover the structure of moral life in early
China
Introduction
The recent scholarly enthusiasm for restoring the emotions to its presumably rightful status has
1found common cause with proponents of a certain narrative of traditional Chinese thought.
According to this narrative, early Chinese thinkers, in contrast to their rationalist counterparts inthe West, did not clearly distinguish between reason and emotion. Instead, they believed that2
cognitive and emotional processes were integrated, and flowed out of a single, unitary process.
This view of China as essentially “holistic” in intellectual and spiritual orientation is a seductive
myth with a long history. And it continues to captivate scholars who seek to find, in some idealized
Other, an alternative to the rational philosophical discourse that developed in the West. More3
recently, a number of scholars have countered the narrative of Chinese holism in its various guises.
Edward Slingerland, for instance, has contended that Chinese thinkers, from around the fourth
century onwards, became increasingly aware of the “higher” cognitive capacities of the human4
mind (xin心), as distinct from its more emotional processes, and that we can discern in early
Chinese thought a “weak dualism” in which mind and body remained “functionally and qualitatively

1

For an overview and critique of this scholarly trend, see Thomas DIXON, From Passions to Emotions. The
Creation of a Secular Psychological Category, Cambridge, Engl. and New York, Cambridge University Press,
2003.

2

Recent examples include Roger AMES, “On Body as Ritual Practice”. In Self as Body in Asian Theory andPractice, ed. T. KASULIS, R. AMES, and W. DISSANAYAKE, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press,
p. 149‐156; Francois JULIAN, Vital Nourishment: Departing from Happiness, trans. A. GOLDHAMMER, New York,NY, Zone Books, 2007; Ning YU, “Heart and Cognition in Ancient Chinese Philosophy”, Journal of Cognition
and Culture, 7, 2007, p. 27‐47; ZHANG Zailin, Traditional Chinese Philosophy as the Philosophy of the Body
(作爲身體哲學的中國古代哲學), Beijing, Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 2008.
3

Miranda Brown reviews this scholarship in “Neither ‘Primitives’ Nor ‘Others,’ but Somehow Not Quite Like
‘Us’: The Fortunes of Psychic Unity and Essentialism in Chinese Studies”, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 49.2, 2006, p. 219‐252.
4

Xin is a notoriously difficult term to translate. There exist numerous standard translations of this term,
including not only “heart” and “mind” but also awkward hybrid versions such as “heart‐mind”, “heart‐and‐mind”, “heart/mind” and so on. Here I will adhere to the Chinese and leave it untranslated to allow its
shifting meanings to emerge in the context of its varying uses.

1

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

distinct”. Such a level of dualism, Slingerland concludes, is “likely to be a human cognitive
5
universal”.
The recognition that early Chinese thinkers appreciated the cognitive capacities of the mind
represents an important advancement over previous approaches, which did not much acknowledge
the profound concern among early philosophers with knowledge and intelligent perception as vitalfeatures of the sagely ideal. However, the proposition that Chinese and Western thinking can becharacterized as having either an integrated or bifurcated view of cognition and feeling, reason andemotion, only takes us so far. It cannot take into account, for instance, the tremendous diversity ofviews in both traditions or the fact of change over time. Moreover, in replacing a unitary vision witha dualistic one, it introduces deep oppositions into the reading of early Chinese thought –oppositions that are not necessarily applicable, and that may obscure the ways in which cognition
and feeling were linked together by early Chinese philosophers. Between holism and dualism, oreven between holism and “weak dualism”, there is much room for refinement.
My goal in this paper is to flesh out some of the distinctive features of the discourse of emotions
and cognition in three major philosophical texts from the fourth and third centuries B.C.: theMencius, the Daodejing, and the Xunzi. A basic premise of my study is that a sound understandingof the emotions and their ethical significance in these texts requires an approach that recognizes
the multiple ontological layers at which emotions operate. Thus, while these layers are linked
insofar as they relate to a certain basic repertoire of feelings that are recognized as more or lessuniversal among human beings – joy (xi 喜), anger (nu 怒), sadness (ai 哀), and delight/pleasure (le樂), desire (yu 欲) – these can refer to quite a range of experiences, from immediate, physiologicalreactions to stimuli, to judgments and evaluations, to the patterned workings of nature withinhuman beings.
Much of what has been understood as “emotions” in the existing Sinological literature has
recognized only a part of this broad spectrum, either collapsing them into the realm of thecognitive or rational, or else opposing it to this realm. Without erasing the meaningfulness of thecategories of the emotive and the cognitive, I propose that we might productively discuss how thetwo might be connected insofar as both are of fundamental importance in the ethical enterprise of
apprehending, and properly engaging with, the world. In advocating that we go beyond thedichotomy of “holism” and “dualism”, my basic aim is to highlight the role of emotions within ageneral move in the Warring States period (475‐221 B.C.) towards a naturalistic understanding of

5

Edward SLINGERLAND, “Mind and Body in Early China: An Integrated Humanities‐Science Approach”, Journalof the American Academy of Religion, 81.1, March 2013, p. 1‐50, at 20. Slingerland’s approach continues theline developed by David NIVISON. See the essays in D. NIVISON, The Ways of Confucianism. Investigations in
Chinese Philosophy. Ed. With an introduction by Bryan W. VAN NORDEN, Chicago and La Salle, Ill., Open Court,
1996.

2

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

the world, and towards a conception of human beings as capable of achieving true knowledge
6
about this world.
I specifically seek to counter the idea, closely linked to the widespread characterization of Chinese
ethical thought as “emotional” or “practical” in orientation, that Chinese thinkers were notconcerned with knowledge as such, or with justifying knowledge on the basis of non‐subjective
7
criteria. In exploring a broader array of functions that early Chinese thinkers attributed to theemotions – including the cognitive – I would like to link the discourse of emotions in early China
with an emergent concern with understanding the world and recognizing its underlying patterns. In
speaking of emotions, then, we are not necessarily dealing with a domain that is subjective,
individual, or counter to reason: as the philosopher Li Zehou has stressed in the context of early
Chinese music theory, we are concerned, rather, with the endeavor to link up to what we might call8
the “law, order, and logic of the cosmos”.
A brief note about my sources and method. I have chosen to focus on canonical writings that
represent the mainstream philosophical tradition in China, rather than bring to light more obscureand little‐known texts. My reason for doing so is that I am interested in understanding thecharacter of the mainstream line of ethical thought that came to win out over other possibilities.
The question of why this line became the dominant tradition is itself a question of profound9
historical significance. Moreover, if we consider the broad range of possible definitions andinterpretations of the emotions, this mainstream tradition offers a way of thinking about emotions
that contrasts markedly with a widespread modern conception of emotions as mere physiological
10
feelings of attraction and repulsion to external stimuli. In its recognition of the way in which
6

On the emergent naturalistic thinking of the Warring States period, see Donald HARPER, “Warring States
Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought”, in Michael LOEWE and Edward L. SHAUGHNESSY eds., The Cambridge
History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., Cambridge, Engl. and New York,
Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 812‐884.

7

Such a conception has been prevalent not only among Western scholars of China, but also among Chinese
scholars reflecting on the Chinese tradition. XU Fuguan (1903‐1982), for instance, argued that intellectual
curiosity about the world was not an important priority among early Chinese thinkers, in contrast to theancient Greeks, who envisioned humans as rational beings and pursued knowledge as a goal in itself. In
Zhongguo renxinglun shi 中國人性論史(The History of the Theory of Human Nature in China), Beijing, Hongshifandaxue chubanshe, 2005.
8

In Maija Bell SAMEI trans., The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, Honolulu, University of Hawai Press, 2010, p. 28.

9This historical problem is central to my forthcoming book, The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy, Oxford
and New York, Oxford University Press.

10

Among early Chinese writings, the excavated texts from the Guodian tombs, such as the “Xing zi ming chu”,
contain accounts of emotions that are much closer to the reactive, physiological accounts given by modern
psychologists like William James. For an analysis of the “Xing zi ming chu”, see Michael PUETT, “The Ethics of3

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

emotions could represent patterned forms of responsiveness to the world, and are therefore
cognitive in orientation, the mainstream Chinese tradition has more in common with premodern
Western thinking about emotions, as well as with important lines of 20th century reflections on the11issue among thinkers like Heidegger and Sartre.
Understandably, it is this mainstream tradition that has been the topic of major scholarly
controversies involving early Chinese philosophical texts, since these disputes ultimately have to dowith the legacy of the early ethical tradition, and how it shaped thought and values in subsequentcenturies. The task of envisioning the full range of ideas proposed by early Chinese thinkers would
necessitate exploring a more diverse range of texts, including those that have not been muchstudied. While this is certainly a worthwhile project, it is not the goal of the present essay. The
priority here, rather, is to take up the issue of how the early Chinese philosophical tradition has
been approached by major interpreters of this tradition, focusing on one of its most importantbones of contention, namely the issue of how early Chinese thinkers envisioned the relationshipbetween what we might call cognition and feeling. Although this is an issue that has particularlyinterested recent Anglo‐American Sinologists, the approaches they challenge are of direct
relevance to most Sinological scholarship on early philosophy, from China to Europe and beyond.
The primary goal of this study, then, is not empirical but interpretive: it is not to fill in missing
pieces of a bigger picture whose contours are familiar, but to interrogate the picture itself – toconfront those persistent assumptions with which scholars have approached the emotions andunderstood their ethical significance in the early Chinese tradition. It thus calls attention to the factthat deep‐seated presuppositions about reason and feeling – and correspondingly, about humanagency – have been at work in the interpretation of early Chinese thought. I will argue that theways in which these categories have been deployed in Western Sinological scholarship have led tothe imposition of dichotomies and distinctions that are not necessarily apt in the early Chinese, andthat what is needed is an interpretive strategy that can overcome some of their limits without
abandoning their relevance altogether. My discussion will focus on one concept of crucial
significance: that of xin – the mind or heart. As has been widely observed, the mainstream
philosophical tradition in China conceived of the xin is a site of both cognition and feelings. In thesewritings, we find a tension between these two functions, but also a recognition that the highest
level of ethical attainment involves their harmonization. This bespeaks not so much a readyacceptance of the integration of emotion and cognition, so much as an argument that the gap
between the two ought to be overcome. Moreover, any “higher” resolution of the tension posed byemotive and cognitive sources of moral direction is not to be achieved theoretically, but throughResponding Properly: The Notion of Qing in Early Chinese Thought”, in Halvor EIFRING ed., Love and Emotionsin Traditional Chinese Literature, Leiden, Brill, 2004, p. 37‐68.
11

On emotions as sites of knowledge in the philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre, see David WEBERMAN,“Heidegger and the Disclosive Character of the Emotions”, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34.3, Fall 1996,
p. 379 – 410; and Anthony HATZIMOYSIS, “Emotions in Heidegger and Sartre”, in The Oxford Handbook of
Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, p. 215‐236.

4

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

the awareness and practical action of the fully realized individual – the sage or the junzi 君子(„superior person”) – which involved, as it were, a technê, suggesting an ideal and a method of
integrating oneself with the workings of the reality as such.

Developing a taste for virtue in Mencius
Mencius (Mengzi 孟子, 372 B.C.E‐289 B.C.E) was the most influential latter‐day disciple ofConfucius. Like many of his contemporaries, Mencius assumed that what defined human beings
were certain biologically‐rooted preferences and inclinations, such as their desire for food, drink
and sex. Mencius argued, moreover, that the basic moral virtues – humaneness (ren 仁), rightness(yi 義), ritual propriety (li 禮) and wisdom (zhi 智) – could be traced back to a set of emotive“sprouts” (duan 端) that all human beings shared, namely, “pity and compassion”, “shame andaversion”, “courtesy and modesty”, and a sense of “right and wrong”. These sprouts were theorigins of virtue. To be sure, the sprouts of virtue in themselves did not bring about goodness inhuman beings; they had to be properly “extended” (tui 推) if they were to develop into full‐fledged
virtue. But this process of extension in the endeavor to realize our moral potential was
accompanied by a certain inherent satisfaction of our desires, and thus led to pleasure andemotional fulfillment. Emphasizing this latter point, a number of scholars, including Bryan Van
Norden, Craig Ihara and James Behuniak, have stressed that emotive and cognitive sources ofmotivation cannot be so clearly distinguished in Mencius’ thought, but must be seen as
fundamentally integrated.12
If we examine Mencius’ conception of xin, we notice some complications with such an approach.
For Mencius, xin is the locus of spontaneous moral feelings and also the faculty of intelligence andmoral judgment. But on a number of occasions, he clearly describes this xin as fundamentally
distinct from the other bodily senses because of its capacity to think (si 思):
The organs of hearing and sight are unable to think and can be misled by external things.
When one thing acts on another, all it does is to attract it. The organ of the xin can think.

12

Bryan W. VAN NORDEN, “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency”, in T.C. KLINE III and Philip J.
IVANHOE, eds., Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett, 2000,
p. 103‐134; Craig K. IHARA, “David Wong on Emotions in Mencius”, Philosophy East and West, 41.1, Special
issue “Emotion East and West”, Jan 1991, p. 45‐53; James BEHUNIAK Jr., Mencius on Becoming Human. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2005. TANG Junyi, writing before all of these scholars, forwarded an evenstronger position denying the relevance of cognitive considerations in Mencius’ account of moral action.
According to Tang, the workings of the mind were fundamentally affective and had no room for any cognitive
considerations. In “Mencius’ theory of the dispositional mind and the Mohists’ theory of the knowing mind”,(孟子之性情心與墨家之知識心), Introduction to Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學原論. 導論篇), Taipei,
Xuesheng shuju, 1986, p. 90‐119.

5

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China
But it will find the answer only if it does think; otherwise, it will not find the answer. This
is what Heaven has given me.13

While the senses were vulnerable to the push and pull of external things (wu 物), the xin’s capacity
for thought allowed it to resist the onslaught of things and pursue something other than what it
might be immediately attracted to at a given moment. It was thus desirable to cultivate an
14«unmoved xin» (budongxin 不動心) or to possess a “fixed xin (heng xin 恆心)” that could remain
constant in the midst of changing circumstances. Xin, then, was the site of both the biologically‐
rooted “moral feelings” as well as of judgment that could transcend the attractions of the bodily
senses. Mencius continued to adhere to the idea that spontaneous feelings aroused by the senses
were a necessary feature of moral inclination. But through his reassessment of xin as anindependent locus of cognition and moral awareness, he also insisted on its ability to rise above
these feelings.
What do we make of this two‐fold account? It is clear that Mencius makes a distinction between
thinking vs. feeling, if by feeling we refer to unreflective attraction and responsiveness to external
stimuli. But there is also feeling involved in the beginning of morally inclined sentiments leading tovirtues such as humaneness. Benjamin Schwartz has concluded from this that that there exists in
Mencius’ thinking a dichotomy between thinking and feeling. Less charitably, Edward Slingerland
points to an internal contradiction between two competing metaphors: the “purely inclinational
ideal” of wuwei 無為 that is “characterized by a feeling of spontaneous ease and graceful15

effortlessness”, and the “externalist” ideal involving the use of force outside the self. Slingerland
explains the coexistence of these incompatible metaphors as a kind of ad hoc measure deployed by
16
Mencius to address the limits of a moral theory based purely upon inclination.
Part of the problem is terminological: both Schwartz and Slingerland work from within aconventional modern language that makes a categorical distinction between feeling and thinking.
But if Mencius holds that moral motivation is not constituted by emotions and desires, neither does
he simply bifurcate the two and explain proper motivation as independent of such feelings anddesires. One way of breaking it down is to consider the relationship as part of a process of self‐
cultivation that involves not only “making the desires few” (gua yu 寡欲), but also “nurturing the

13

Mencius 6A15. Passage citations follow the format of D.C. LAU, Ho Che WAH and Chen Fong CHING eds., A
Concordance to the Mengzi (Mengzi zhou zi suo yin 孟子逐字索引), Hong Kong, Commercial Press, 1995
(Hereafter ICS Mengzi), 11.15/60/27‐11.15/61/1. Translation adapted from D.C. LAU, Mencius, London,
England, Penguin Books, 1970, p. 168.
14

Mencius 2A2. ICS Mengzi 3.2/15/1.

15SLINGERLAND, 2003, p. 8.

16

SLINGERLAND, 2003, p. 172.

6

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China
17xin” (yang xin 養心) by cultivating desire for the right things. As David Nivison, David Wong, andKwong‐loi Shun have stressed, such an endeavor ultimately relies upon cognitive and “rational”
considerations that are independent of feelings [,] but that, to varying degrees, act to nurture and18
develop those feelings. At some level, however, this is more than a matter of deploying reason to
encourage right desire. For one thing, the xin – like the other sense organs – is defined by its
preferences, but in this case, it is a preference for “order” (li 理) and “rightness (yi 義)”. Moreover,like the other senses, the xin is said to derive pleasure and satisfaction in realizing its desires:
Therefore I say mouths find savor in the same flavors; ears find satisfaction in the same
sounds; eyes find pleasure in the same beauty. When it comes to our minds, could theyalone have nothing in common? And what is it that our minds have in common? It is
order (li 理) and rightness (yi 義). The sage is just the first to apprehend what our minds
have in common. Thus order and rightness please our minds (yue wo xin 悅我心) in thesame way that meat pleases our mouths.19

Mencius uses, then, a common vocabulary to describe the physical senses and the workings of thexin, suggesting that, despite its special claim to autonomy, its orientation towards goodness andrightness, and its potentiality for thought and detached judgment, xin desires and experiences
pleasure like the ordinary sense faculties. As part of our natural, physical endowment, it seeks out,
and experiences pleasure in, the objects of its preference, just as the mouth, ear and eyes desire
and experience pleasure in things they crave, such as delicious food and beautiful objects. In theend, it is only when feelings are cultivated in the right way, through the exercise of one’s capacity
to think and reflect, that they become part of an intelligent structure of responsiveness.
Although Mencius has little to say about the actual technique of cultivating one’s responsiveness –in significant contrast to Xunzi, for whom the issue was quite central – his appeal to the workingsof nature is crucial. As Irene Bloom has emphasized, when Mencius speaks of xing or “human
20
nature”, he is in fact speaking of a nature in a biological sense. I would argue, however, that the“natural” goes even further to encompass the broader natural world beyond the borders of the17

Mencius 7B35. ICS Mengzi 14.35/17/13.

18

David S. NIVISON, “Mencius and Motivation”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 47, 1980, p. 417‐
432; D. NIVISON, “Motivation and Moral Action in Mencius”, in NIVISON and VAN NORDEN eds., The Ways ofConfucianism. Investigations in Chinese Philosophy, Chicago, Open Court, 1996, p. 91‐120; Kwong‐loi SHUN,“Moral Reasons in Confucian Ethics”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 16, 1989, p. 317‐343; David B. WONG, “Isthere a Distinction between Reason and Emotion in Mencius?”, Philosophy East and West, 41.1, Jan 1991,
p. 31‐44; Benjamin SCHWARTZ, The World of Thought in Ancient China, Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 1985.
19

Mencius 6A7. ICS Mengzi 11.7/59/8. Translation from Irene BLOOM, Mencius, New York, Columbia
University Press, 2009, p. 125‐126.

20

Irene BLOOM, “Human Nature and Biological Nature in Mencius”, Philosophy East and West, 47.1, 1997,
p. 21‐32.

7

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

human person, and that, if Mencius does not theorize much about the cosmos as such, hisrecurring references to plants, animals and the dynamics of water suggest a concern with theworkings of the natural world more generally. It is more than a matter of using imagery for
explanatory purposes. This is of central relevance to our discussion of emotions. For what it meansis that, for Mencius, the feelings and desires are part of a patterned mechanism of human
responsiveness and are thus potentially a source by which the world – and, by extension, theproper course of human action – could be known.
We are not, then, necessarily confronted with the irreconciliable options of spontaneous feelings,
on the one hand, and higher cognition and judgment, on the other. The various functions that
Mencius attributes to the xin – the heart as well as mind – do not necessarily conflict, nor are they
to be conflated. Like a number of his contemporaries, Mencius recognized that human emotions,being deeply intertwined with bodily processes, were vulnerable to the push and pull of externalthings (wu 物) and easily shaped by their environment. He thus highlighted the distinction between
the passive operations of the senses and the xin’s capacity to think and reflect. But his insistence
upon the rootedness of moral potential in natural and emotional inclinations, as captured in his
theory of the «goodness» of human nature, is critical to his moral theory. The gap between the twocalled for a way to reconcile them through a process of growth and development that could only be
fulfilled by those who undertook to examine themselves and nurture their morally‐disposed
21
feelings by developing a «taste» for virtue. This would ensure that morality would be in harmony
with the spontaneous workings of our emotions, without becoming an artificial construct thatneeded to be imposed upon our “natural” feelings and desires.

Desire and the multiple levels of knowing in the Daodejing
The Daodejing is often read as an ascetic text that rejects both the emotional and cognitive
processes of the mind as obstacles to the supreme goal of attaining oneness with the Dao,conceived here as the natural and spontaneous workings of the cosmos itself. For instance, unlikein the Mencius, where the xin’s capacity to think and reflect serves as a counterbalance to the force
of sensual appetite, the Daodejing has little regard for what the intelligent workings of the xin canoffer to humankind. Indeed, as the interface between the «natural» human being and the world,
the xin is opposed to the natural and spontaneous workings of things themselves: “When the xin
22

directs the physical force (qi 氣), it is called ‘forcing’ (qiang 強)”. If Mencius relies on the xin tocontrol and direct the physical force, the Daodejing insists that the xin’s activity of directing the qi is
a form of violence. The aspiring sage should thus try to cultivate stillness and emptiness in the xin –21

Eric HUTTON explores the metaphor of taste and connoisseurship in Mencius’ moral theory in «Moralconnoisseurship in Mengzi», in Xiusheng LIU and Philip J. IVANHOE eds., Essays on the Moral Philosophy ofMengzi, Indianapolis, IN., Hackett, 2002, p. 163‐186.
22

Daodejing Ch. 55. Translations from the Daodejing are adapted, with occasional modifications, from D.C.
LAU trans., Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, Harmondsworth, Engl., Penguin Books, 1963.

8

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

both in his own and in those of the people. The sage is to “have no constant xin of his own” (wuchang xin 無常心),23 and in ruling the people, he “empties their xin (xu qi xin 虛其心)”, “fills
their bellies”, and brings it about that they are “without knowledge and without desire” so thatthey do not dare to act.24
The text similarly disapproves of emotions, desires and sense perceptions as self‐destructive
obstacles that hinder one’s proper goal of intuiting the Dao and living in accordance with it. While itdenounces certain specific emotions, such as anger (nu 怒) and courage (yong 勇), the focus ofconcern is the problem of desire (yu 欲). Chapter 19 states that one who seeks to emulate the Daoshould strive to «have little thought of self and as few desires as possible» (shao si gua yu

少私寡欲). Elsewhere we find these lines:
There is no crime greater than having too many desires (ke yu 可欲);There is no disaster greater than not being content;
There is no misfortune greater than being covetous (yu de 欲得).25

In this text, yu refers specifically to a kind of grasping desire that is particular to human beings andthat is aroused by the attractions of the senses. A number of passages warn against the dangers of
the senses of sight, hearing, and taste, which can easily fall prey to an indulgence that canundermine their proper workings:
The five colors make man’s eyes blind;
The five notes make his ears deaf;
The five tastes injure his palate. (Ch. 12)

The basic problem here seems to reside in the human body’s susceptibility to invite sources of its
own distress. “The reason I have great trouble”, we learn in Chapter 13, “is that I have a body (shen身). When I no longer have a body, what trouble do I have?” But this is not a rejection of the bodyand the material world per se. Some biologically‐driven desires, such as those for food, drink,
comfort and sex, are capable of being “satisfied” (zu 足) and should be satisfied. So should theaspiration of rulers for political success, provided that it be directed towards the moderate goals ofachieving a stable and viable state in which the people are left in peace to pursue their livelihood.
In contrast to these are the “unnatural” desires caused by sensual attraction: created (zuo 作) by
the “sharp” tools and ingenuity of civilized life, they are directed towards things that exceed thebasic requirements of life. And because they represent an incessant yearning for new sources ofpleasure and delight, such desires simply perpetuate themselves and “can never be satisfied (bu zhi
zu 不知足)”.

23

Daodejing Ch. 49.

24

Daodejing Ch. 2.

25

Daodejing Ch. 46.

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The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

The Daodejing’s ethical standpoint vis‐à‐vis desire is further complicated by its role in a multi‐
layered vision of perception and knowing. While the text clearly dismisses sensually indulgent
desires and narrow forms of knowing, it seems to embrace what it regards as higher versions ofthese processes. It neither calls for a wholesale rejection of the realm of desires as an obstacle tounity with the Dao, nor does it despair of the possibility of knowledge and understanding. Instead,
it points to more optimal realizations of both. At the highest level of sagely perception, there exist
multiple levels of knowledge – one achieved through desirelessness, the other through thepossession of desire. Desire can become a vehicle for knowledge and is bound up with theachievement of power and efficacy (de 德) in the world. The consumate awareness of the sage isrooted in his ability to transcend his human desires and yet remain connected to them, which
enhances his potency and his ability to achieve his ends. This, then, is the paradox of wisdom in the
Daodejing – a paradox that takes as its starting point the tension between emotions and desires, on
the one hand, and higher perception and proper action, on the other. It is this very paradox that ispresented in the opening passage of the text:
The Dao that can be spoken of is not the constant Dao

道可道, 非常道,

The name that can be named is not the constant name.

名可名, 非常名.

The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;

無名天地之始;The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.

有名萬物之母Hence always be without desire in order to observe its secrets (miao 妙);

故常無欲, 以觀其妙But always allow yourself to have desires (chang you yu 常有欲)

常有欲, 以觀其徼.

So as to observe its manifestation (jiao 徼)
These two are the same but diverge in name as they issue forth.

此兩者, 同出而異
名,Being the same they are called mysteries

同謂之玄.

Mystery upon mystery –玄之又玄The gateway of the manifold secrets. (Ch. 1)

衆妙之門

The injunction to be “constantly without desire (chang wu yu 常無欲)” and yet “constantly possess
desire (chang you yu 常有欲)” has baffled many a translator. Many older translations haverejected the possibility that desire plays a role in apprehending the Dao, and have thus translated
the passage to mean that desire amounts to approaching the Dao through a perceptual veil which

10The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

allows one to see merely its jiao – its “outer fringe”, “mere shell”, or “Outcomes” (Waley 1934).26
This approach is usually based on a dualism of corrupt matter/transcendent truth, apparently
inspired either by a Platonic/Christian perspective or by Buddhism. Others have avoided the issue
altogether by simply ignoring the passage.27
Alternatively, one might accept the injunction to possess desire as part of a two‐fold path ofknowing, in which both the conditions of having and not having desire are necessary for perceiving
different dimensions of the Dao – its jiao (“manifestation”) as well as its miao (“mystery”). The
1884 translation of Frederick Balfour underscores the necessity of both these aspects:
It is therefore in habitual passionlessness [the Quiescent phase of DAO] that its mystery
may be scanned;
And in habitual desire [the Active phase of DAO] that its developments may beperceived.28

The injunction to constantly have desire but also constantly be without it could then mean thatboth are necessary, at different levels and at different times. If it is only by way of rising above ourhuman desires that we can achieve deep insight into the Dao, it is nevertheless through thefunctioning of these very desires that we can fathom its actual workings in the real world. Rather
than ignoring the role of desire, we might explain it as part of a more complex, multi‐layered
conception of knowledge and understanding – one that takes into account the understanding that
accompanies the experience of desire.

26

James LEGGE, The Sacred Books of China. The Texts of Taoism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1891; 891; Daisetz T.
SUZUKI and Paul CARUS Trans., The Canon of Reason and Virtue (Lao‐tze’s Tao the king), La Salle, Ill., OpenCourt, 1974, c. 1927; Arthur WALEY, The Way and its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and its Place inChinese Thought. London, George Allen & Unwin, 1936. The “negative” understanding of desire as
obstructing true perception persists in more recent translations as well. See, for example, Robert HENRICKStrans., Lao‐tzu: Te‐tao Ching. A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma‐wang‐tui Texts, New
York, Ballantine Books, 1989; Michael LAFARGUE, The Tao of the Tao Te Ching. A Translation and Commentary,
Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1992; Kwok Kui WONG revives the Platonic/Christian reading
through the lens of Hegel’s notion of the Absolute in “Hegel’s Criticism of Laozi and its Implications”,
Philosophy East and West, 61.1, Jan 2011, p. 56‐79.
27

See, e.g., Richard WILHELM trans., Tao Te Ching: The Book of Meaning and Life. Translated into English by
H.G. OSTWALD, London, Engl., Penguin, 1990, c. 1985; John CHALMERS, The Speculation on Metaphysics, Polity
and Morality of The Old Philosopher, London, Engl., Trubner, 1868.

28

Frederic Henry BALFOUR compiled and trans., Taoist Texts: Ethical, Political, and Speculative, London,
Trubner, 1884. Other influential translations that adhere to the importance of possessing desire include: D.C.
LAU, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching; Richard John LYNN, The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the
Tao‐Te‐Ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi, New York, Columbia University Press, 1999; Philip J. IVANHOE,
The Daodejing of Laozi. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2002; and AMES and HALL, Daodejing. “Making
this Life Significant”. A Philosophical Translation, New York, Ballantine Books, 2003.

11

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

One way to think about how desire and desirelessness can work in tandem would be to consider it
as self‐consciousness in the form of awareness of one’s own desires. It is possible to have desires
and, at the same time, step out of oneself and the immediacy of one’s desires so that one sees theworkings of desire in oneself. One is self‐aware of one’s own desiring and non‐desiring. Here, as in
the Mencius, moral self‐realization depends on a recognition of one’s emotions and desires as partof the natural workings within oneself. The importance of this higher psychological perspective, as
it were, shows how desire can be both a vehicle and a precondition for knowledge and insightabout oneself and the world. It also points to an ethical vision in which living in accordance with theDao depends on being in tune with one’s inner promptings and desires.
If we consider how the Daodejing evokes multiple levels of knowing through the power of negationand contradiction, one of its most puzzling passages becomes more readily explicable as astatement about the complex nature of reality and about how one can come to abide by it.
Working through the inherently problematic medium of language, which it constantly seeks toundermine, the Daodejing deploys paradox – rooted in the very tension between knowledge anddesire – to appeal to the desiring minds of individuals. In the spaces within this paradox is a Daothat reveals itself by activating desire as well as the intellect. The ultimate “teachings” of this text
are thus not transmitted so much as evoked, and its message is to be found beyond the surface ofthe text and beyond the categorizing mind, in the realm of the deep knowing of the human subject.

Xunzi: Two models of the mind
In the infamous chapter titled “Human nature is bad” (xing’e 性惡), Xunzi 荀子 (c. 310‐c. 230 B.C.)
challenged Mencius’ claim that the beginnings of virtue lay in human nature (xing 性) – in certain
spontaneous inclinations and tendencies that all human beings possessed innately. He emphasized,
instead, that human nature worked at cross purposes with virtue, since it was inclined to pursue
selfish desires rather than what was good and proper. What made goodness possible was ourcapacity to override our physical desires and yearnings, and to choose the right course of action, as
when we suppressed our own hunger to offer our food to a person in need. This capacity, which
Xunzi referred to as wei 偽 or “conscious exertion”, was due to the workings of human intelligence.
Xunzi’s basic distinction between xing vs. wei, the inborn nature vs. conscious exertion, comprised
the basis of a moral dichotomy between the spontaneous, “unthinking” realm of feelings, desires,and physical impulses, on the one hand, and the reasoned process of thinking (lu 慮) and reflection(si 思), on the other:
The sage accumulates reflections and thoughts (ji si lü 積思慮), and practices conscious
effort and reasoned activities (xi wei gu 習偽故) so as to produce ritual and rightness,and establish proper models and measures. Thus, ritual and rightness, proper models
and measures, are produced from the deliberate efforts of the sage; they are notproduced from people’s nature.29
29

Xunzi Yinde (A Concordance to Xunzi). Harvard‐Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement no.
22, 23/114/8‐13. Translations of longer passages from the Xunzi are mostly modified from two main sources:

12

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

While the natural human disposition, which preferred pleasurable sights, sounds, flavors, andpersonal benefit, responded spontaneously when “stimulated (gan 感)” and did not “await being
worked at” (bu dai shi 不待事), the thought that produced ritual and rightness involved reasoned
consideration and effort. Through wei, people’s originally amoral or immoral tendencies could bereformed and made “good”.
It would appear, then, that for Xunzi, virtue was strictly a matter of overcoming deviant emotions
and desires through reason. A number of scholars have, accordingly, differentiated the moral
approaches of Mencius and Xunzi in terms of a distinction between emotion‐based and reason‐based sources of moral direction, with reason constituting an “external” force of goodness andemotions comprising the “internal” force of badness. Schwartz notes that, whereas with Mencius“we have a natural, dynamic tendency to growth”, with Xunzi “we have bare intellectual capacity”
and a model of sagehood in which certain extraordinary individuals managed to overcome their
brutish nature and internalize ritual propriety and rightness by means of “their enormous
30
intellectual exertions and insights”. Edward Slingerland and Torbjörn Lodén have also focused on
the “rationalist” approach to morality in Xunzi – the latter describing Xunzi’s account of self‐
cultivation explicitly as a movement away from feeling towards reason:
Xunzi emphasizes the opposition between original evil and acquired goodness, and this
opposition seems to involve feelings and reason. Original human nature gravitates
toward the realm of feeling and emotion, whereas the personality of the noble personor the sage, and his acquired goodness, gravitates toward the realm of reason.31

While Xunzi does envision a basic contrast between the emotions and dispositions of humannature, and the reasoned activities of conscious exertion, we cannot conclude from this adichotomy of reason vs. emotions. Xunzi’s ethical vision is far more complex than what such adichotomy would suggest, and involves a significant positive role for emotions. For one thing, at a
certain level, emotions are simply human givens. In Ch. 17, Xunzi describes the feelings of love,
hate, delight, anger, sorrow, and joy as “the emotions given by Heaven/Nature” (tian qing 天情)and the sense faculties of the eyes, ear, nose, mouth, and body as “the faculties given by
Heaven/Nature” (tian guan 天官). The sage is one who “nurtures his Heavenly/Natural emotions”
and “follows his desires”32 while enabling the people to do the same: he “nurtures people’s
desires” (yang ren zhi yu 養人之欲) and “satisfies their seeking” (gei ren zhi qiu 給人之求).

John K. KNOBLOCK, Xunzi. A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1988‐1994, and Eric HUTTON, Xunzi. The Complete Text, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University
Press, 2014. This passage is translated in HUTTON 250.
30

SCHWARTZ, p. 300.

31

Torbjörn LODÉN, “Reason, Feeling, and Ethics in Mencius and Xunzi”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 36.4,
Dec 2009, p. 612.
32

In Chs. 17 and 21, respectively.

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The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

The basic human emotions and desires are, then, vital features of what it means to be human, andwhile they could impel us towards badness, they are also the foundation of our existence and of
our engagement with the world. Thus, even if “badness” in human beings could be traced back tocertain basic instincts and desires, it does not follow that goodness is simply a matter of reason
overcoming emotions, or that one could not – without contradiction – recognize emotions as forms
of understanding or proper responsiveness. However, much of the existing scholarship has tended
to proceed from such assumptions, and to recognize a basic opposition between Xunzi’s reference
to these “Heavenly emotions” and his pessimistic view of emotions and desires in his account of
human nature. A.C. Graham has read the coexistence of these seemingly opposing claims as anindication of conflicting impulses within Xunzi, and speculates that they might represent an
33
evolution in his thinking. Michael Puett explains the tension in terms of an “ambivalence”
towards emotions stemming ultimately from the rhetorical need to make two distinct assertions tojustify the traditional rituals handed down from the ancients. That is, Xunzi was committed to thenecessity of ancient rituals (for controlling qing), but also needed to explain that these rituals were34
objectively proper (thus according with qing).
While it is conceivable that Xunzi changed his mind, and probable that he was faced with multiplecompeting rhetorical exigencies, we might also explain these seemingly contradictory accounts ofemotions by way of certain intrinsic features of his thought. Considered in light of other passages in
Xunzi’s text, this apparent shiftiness can be taken as part of a move towards a more complex
paradigm of self in which the emotions are present in multiple layers of human responsiveness andengagement with the world, from the most immediate level of sensual desire for bodily
satisfaction[,] to righteous indignation at an injustice. For Xunzi, emotions could very well represent
right forms of responding to situations, which are arguably derived from an innate capacity to
distinguish right from wrong, what is acceptable and what is not.35 And as in the Mencius and theDaodejing, the potential normativity of the emotions was based on a recognition that they werepart of the natural dynamics that operated within human beings – and therefore, on theircommonality with the patterns of the natural world more broadly, which were coming into view
36
during the Warring States period. Correspondingly, moral agency came to be understoodincreasingly in terms of a capacity to contend with multiple levels of inclinations, and to navigate
the possible conflicts among them.
33

Angus C. GRAHAM, Disputers of the Tao. Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, Chicago and La Salle, Ill.,
Open Court, 1989, p. 242.
34

PUETT, p. 56-58.

35

See, for instance, Xunzi’s extended criticism of Songzi 宋子 (Song Xing) in Ch. 17 for failing to give due
weight to the reality of human desires. Xunzi Yinde 64/17/52.

36

The naturalism of Xunzi’s ethics has been an important topic of recent Sinological research. For a recent
study and overview of major issues in this discussion, see Sor‐hoon TAN, “Xunzi and Naturalistic Ethics”, inJournal of Value Inquiry, 49, Jan 2015, p. 247‐265.

14

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

For Xunzi, then, the ethical project of human beings was not about overcoming feelings throughreason, or imposing external norms upon raw and inchoate inclinations. Instead, it was about
arriving at the optimal course of action given these contending forces. Xunzi shared with Mencius
the awareness that the moral cultivation of the individual began with the reality of human feelingsand desires, and with the natural human drive to fulfill them. These emotions and desires did notnecessarily conflict with morality, but neither did they spontaneously lead to it. What they required
for their proper realization was that they be developed and appropriately channeled throughdeliberate human effort. This was larger project of ritual (li 禮), the centerpiece of Xunzi’s vision ofself‐cultivation. As Xunzi describes at great length, ritual was primarily about giving proper formand expression to emotions as they arose in particular situations. Within the extended trajectory ofa person’s life, ritual was a vehicle through which one’s emotions and inclinations came to37
recognize, appreciate, and desire goodness and virtue. It was also, crucially, efficacious insofar as
it was designed to properly minister to the emotional workings of human beings.
The locus and crucible of all of this effort was the xin. Xunzi embraces at least two distinct
conceptions of xin, corresponding to two distinct forms of knowledge. He captures this duality andits apparent paradoxes in the “Dispelling Fixations” chapter (Ch. 21, Jiebi), where he compares thexin variously to a pan of clear water as well as to an empty vessel that can accumulate and containthings. Paradoxically, then, this mind embodies seemingly opposing qualities: it can be empty andyet full, still and yet in motion, one and yet two:
How does the xin know the Way? I say that it is by its emptiness (xu 虛), unity (yi 壹),and stillness (jing 靜). The xin never stops storing; nonetheless it possesses what is called
emptiness. The xin never lacks duality; nonetheless it possesses what is called unity. The
xin never stops moving; nonetheless it possesses what is called stillness. Humans frombirth have awareness. Having awareness, there is memory. Memories are what are
stored, yet the xin has the property called emptiness. Not allowing what has previously
been stored to interfere with what is being received in the xin is called emptiness.38

The xin thus possesses multiple functions and identities, embodying both emptiness and fullness,
movement and stillness. Because it can always remain still, empty and impartial, it is capable ofclear and undistorted perception of the world; but because it is empty, it is always receptive tothings and can accumulate experiences.
These two paradigms of xin reflect two distinct accounts of knowledge: on the one hand, theachievement of a balanced, objective, and broad perspective onto things, and, on the other, theaccumulation of experience (ji 積). But they also correspond to two different ways in whichknowledge relates to emotions. The idea of knowledge as clear perception emphasizes
37

On this see Joel KUPPERMAN, “Spontaneity and the Education of the Emotions in the Zhuangzi”, in PaulKJELLBERG and Philip J. IVANHOE, eds., Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, Albany, NY,
State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 184‐195.
38

Xunzi Yinde 80/21/34‐37. KNOBLOCK 21.8.

15

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

comprehensive understanding that culminates in knowledge of the “underlying pattern of things”
39(wu zhi li 物之理也). This is to be contrasted with the more limited knowledge of particularthings. The difference between the two is the difference between the knowing of «one who isexpert in regard to things» (精於物者) and “one who is expert in regard to the Way” (精於道者也):
while the former considers only “one thing against another” (yi wu wu 以物物), the latter“measures all things together” (lian wu wu 兼物物).40
The paradigm of knowledge as comprehensive and balanced perception suggests a kind of
objectivity that is achieved through one’s ability to detach oneself sufficiently from theparticularities of one’s situation so as to have mastery over one’s emotions and desires, but notnecessarily to transcend the experience of emotions. This is what Lee Yearley has referred to as
Xunzi’s notion of the xin as a “spectator”. In this conception, the xin “can view with detachment the41
emotions generated by desire” without having to eradicate the desires altogether. This meansthat if emotions and desires can be problematic, they are not necessarily so, since the xin’s capacity
for knowledge enables it to engage with them and arrive at the proper course of action. Amongother things, it is capable of deliberation (lu 慮), which Xunzi explains as “when there is a certain
emotion and the xin chooses on its behalf” (情然而心為之擇謂之慮). Building upon this idea, he
explains wei or conscious effort as “when the xin deliberates and one’s abilities move on its behalf”,
and also “what comes into being through accumulated reflection (lu ze 慮積) and the training of
42

one’s abilities”. In defining deliberation as a matter of the xin making a choice on behalf ofemotions, Xunzi asserts the independence of the cognitive faculty but also assumes its cooperation
with the emotions. He also links “conscious effort” with deliberation, indicating that the efforts thatgive rise to goodness in human life require the involvement of knowledge and judgment. Instead ofa dichotomous theoretical model of xing vs. wei, feeling vs. thought, internality vs. externality, we
have a model of practical self‐realization that shows how the innate nature and conscious effort,
feeling and deliberation, should ultimately work in tandem.
The other paradigm of knowledge as “accumulation (ji 積)” refers to a gradual and cumulative
process based on direct, sensory engagement with the world.
39

43

This type of knowing stresses the

Xunzi Yinde 82/21/79.

40

Xunzi Yinde 80/21/51‐52. HUTTON 230. Cf. the preceding paragraph, where Xunzi refers to the ideal ofknowing whereby “the myriad things can all be known together” (wan wu ke lian zhi ye 萬物可兼知也).
41

Lee YEARLEY, “Hsun Tzu on the Mind: His Attempted Synthesis of Confucianism and Taoism”, The Journal of
Asian Studies, 39.3, May 1980, p. 465‐480, on 473.

42

Xunzi Yinde 83/22/2-4.

43David NIVISON has persuasively shown that, despite the resemblance of the balanced objective knowledgeof the sage to Daoist knowing, Xunzi’s vision does not signify an ideal of detachment. D. NIVISON, “Xunzi andZhuangzi”, in KLINE and IVANHOE, 2000, p. 176‐187.

16

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early Chinarole of practice and repeated effort in the endeavor to cultivate oneself. In Ch. 1, “Exhortation to
Learning (quan xue 勸學)” Xunzi compares the process of learning to accumulating earth to form amountain, which gives rise to wind and rain, and to accumulating water to form a deep pool, which“produces dragons”. Similarly, he speaks of virtue (de 德) in terms of an accumulation of goodness(ji shan 積善) that naturally leads to the achievement of “spiritual intelligence” (shen ming 神明).44
This is a vision of self‐realization that depends upon gradual and cumulative effort: “without
accumulating steps there is no way to travel a thousand li; without accumulating small streams,
there is no way to form a river or sea”. Cultivating oneself to become a sage is, in this sense, nodifferent from training oneself to become a farmer, a craftsman, or a merchant: attainment of any
45
sort is to be understood as a matter of “accumulating” experience.
Conceived in this way, the path to sagehood is one in which emotions and desires are not simply
unruly forces that need to be controlled, directed and mastered: as the very basis of human
motivation and experience, they play an active and determinative role in moral life. Sagehoodrequires, in the first instance, a commitment to achieve it, and this is itself a form of desire. That is,
it is not simply a matter of reason overcoming desire, but of committing to one type of desire overanother. At some level, this signals a reasoned choice of preferences: as Lee Yearley has argued, thechoice ultimately comes down to a preference for “long‐range desires”, which broadly considers
46
one’s needs, over “short‐range and narrowly selfish desires”. It accords with Xunzi’s larger ethicalconcern with fulfilling human potential and of achieving long‐lasting satisfaction. But Xunzi also
remains committed to the idea that the true criterion of virtue is that it be spontaneous andmotivated from within, and not imposed from without.
Xunzi’s cumulative model of knowledge, then, defines virtue and rightness as a matter of having
right feelings. Virtue can never be perfected if one merely follows external patterns of behavior or
passively internalizes forms of knowledge: perfect virtue must be perfectly spontaneous. Xunzi thus
follows Confucius in insisting that the sage is one for whom the distinction between what one
47
ought to do and what one desires to do must ultimately disappear. True learning is a process ofself‐cultivation that inspires a desire for right action, and it is this desire that differentiates the sage
from the “petty person” and that represents the depth of the learning of the fully‐realized
individual. As Xunzi describes it, the learning of the junzi radiates through his entire body: it “entersthrough his ears, fastens through his heart, spreads through his four limbs, and manifests itself in48
his actions”. In contrast, the learning of the petty person likewise enters through the ears but
44

Xunzi Yinde 2/1/18.

45

Xunzi Ch. 8. HYXY 25/8/114‐116.

46

YEARLEY, p. 466.

47

See e.g. Analects 2.4.

48

Xunzi Yinde 2/1/31.

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The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

does not enter his heart and body: it proceeds directly to his mouth, remaining therefore on thesurface and having no transformative effect on his person. A petty person is thus able to speak thelanguage of propriety but does not embody it. He has no genuine feelings to authenticate his
virtue.

Conclusion
The three texts examined here share a common awareness of the moral dangers posed by thebodily impulses, feelings and desires, and of the importance of exercising one’s intelligent mind to
overcome the potential pitfalls they may lead to. They exemplify the growing awareness in the
fourth and third centuries B.C. of xin as a site of cognition and moral direction, capable of steering
the emotions and harmonizing them with normative patterns and principles. I would submit,
however, that the emergent discourse of the intelligent mind does not necessarily signal a growing
bifurcation of mind and body, reason and feeling. In all three texts, there remains an insistence thatself‐cultivation is more than a rational endeavor to control the emotions, and that the highest
moral achievement is to remain perfectly moral and perfectly spontaneous. Rather than being asite of pure intelligence, the xin is a hybrid, composite entity with multilayered functions.
To speak of the hybrid identity of xin, rather than of its holism or dualism, may seem like splitting
hairs. But it signals an approach that differs fundamentally from the discussion of holism anddualism in at least one important respect: it shifts the attention from ethical theory to ethicalpractice. The hybridity of xin emphasizes the motivating power of an ideal of integration between
intelligent awareness and emotional fulfillment. The point is not that there is or isn’t a distinction
between the emotional and cognitive realms, but that the tensions posed by their encounter arewhat define the poles that a life of virtue should navigate. The goal of self‐cultivation is to achieve astate in which the potential conflicts between them ultimately dissolve. Such a moral conception
suggests a psychologically refined understanding of the emotions that recognizes their close
connection to knowledge and cognition, and asserts their vital function as a source of moral
direction.
The notion that self‐cultivation is a matter of navigating the inherent tensions between personal,
subjective experience and a higher awareness of what is right also points to a heightenedawareness of moral agency in the individual. A number of recent scholars have pointed to an
emergent consciousness of individual agency as a distinctive feature of intellectual developments in49
the Warring States period. While a focus on the dualism of these perspectives would suggest thatthe sense of agency derives from a recognition of the mind’s capacity for “higher” understanding, itis necessary to balance out this picture by stressing how this sense of agency is also fundamentallyconnected to the idea that emotions and their proper fulfillment have normative value, and should
49

See, among others, Erica Fox BRINDLEY, Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought
and Politics, Honolulu, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010; T.C. KLINE III and Philip J. IVANHOE, eds., Virtue,
Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, Indianapolis, IN, Hackett, 2000; Chris FRASER, “Emotion and Agency
in Zhuāngzǐ”, Asian Philosophy, 21.1, Feb 2011, p. 97‐121

18

The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

not simply be subordinated to more strictly reasoned and absolute moral principles. The thinkers
that have come to represent the mainstream of Chinese ethical thinking, exemplified by the threetexts examined here, share the conviction that it is necessary to cultivate ourselves in such a waythat we can, at the same time, follow the dictates of our hearts and do the right thing – thatwithout any affective engagement, a meaningful and orderly life is not possible.

________________________________________________________________________________

Référence électronique
Curie Virág, « The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life inearly China », L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques [En ligne], 16 | 2016, mis en
ligne le 17 mai 2016, consulté le 26 mai 2016. URL : http://acrh.revues.org/6721 ; DOI :10.4000/acrh.6721_______________________________________________________________________________

L'auteurCurie Virág est maître de conférences au département des études d’Asie orientale àl’Université de Toronto. Sa spécialité est l’histoire intellectuelle de la Chine ancienne
et médiévale, et sa recherche a concerné avant tout l’histoire et la philosophie desémotions, de la cognition, de la culture de soi et de l’esthétique dans des textes
philosophiques, religieux et littéraires d’avant 1200 AD.
Ses publications récentes incluent “Early Confucian Perspectives on Emotions” (DaoCompanion to Classical Confucian Philosophy, Springer 2014) et “Self-cultivation as
Praxis in Song Neo-Confucianism” (Modern Chinese Religion. Value Systems inTransformation, Brill 2014). Son ouvrage intitulé The Emotions in Early Chinese
Philosophy, est à paraître chez Oxford University Press.
Curie Virág is an Assistant Professor in the department of East Asian Studies at the
University of Toronto. An intellectual historian of early and medieval China, herresearch has dealt primarily with the history and philosophy of emotions, cognition,
self-cultivation, and aesthetics in pre-1200 philosophical, religious and literary texts.
Recent publications include “Early Confucian Perspectives on Emotions” (DaoCompanion to Classical Confucian Philosophy, Springer 2014) and “Self-cultivationas Praxis in Song Neo-Confucianism” (Modern Chinese Religion. Value Systems inTransformation, Brill 2014). Her book, The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy, isin preparation and will be published by Oxford University Press.
_____________________________________________________________________

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The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

Résumé
Autour du IVe siècle avant J-C, en Chine le terme xin 心 (« cœur », « esprit », « cœuresprit ») commence à acquérir des fonctions cognitives distinctes. Alors que xin était
jusqu’alors identifié avant tout comme le lieu du ressenti, il est dès lors compris
également comme un organe de la pensée et de la réflexion. L’article examine ce
développement dans la trajectoire plus large des transformations des valeurs éthiqueset politiques en Chine ancienne. Il considère la conception éthique des émotions danstrois textes majeurs qui servent à définir généralement la pensée chinoise
traditionnelle : le Mencius, le Tao-tê-king et le Hsiunn-tseu, et cherche à comprendre
comment ces textes concevaient les rôles respectifs du penser et du sentir dans lecontexte d’une vie proprement réalisée.
En étudiant les perspectives de la Chine ancienne, j’évite les deux approches usuelles,à savoir le mythe du holisme (selon lequel les penseurs chinois antiques nedistingueraient pas la cognition et les sentiments/sensations), et la supposition d’undualisme (i.e., que certains penseurs chinois acceptaient une dichotomie stricte de lacognition et du sentir). Plutôt j’essaye de montrer que les auteurs de l’époque avaientune conscience forte de la tension potentielle entre les sources de direction cognitive etémotive, tout en montrant le souci de réconcilier cette tension par divers modèles dusujet moral. C’étaient des modèles hybrides, composites qui reconnaissaient euxmêmes divers canaux de la connaissance, de la perception et de la compréhension etdéployaient des métaphores mixtes et des paradoxes apparents. Ce qui sous-tend ces
solutions diverses, c’est une conscience partagée, chez les auteurs, du fait que touterésolution de la tension doit se faire non pas sur le plan théorique, mais sur le plan del’action pratique de l’individu entièrement réalisé – du sage ou du junzi, personne
supérieure.

Abstract
Around the fourth century B.C. in China, the term xin 心 (“heart”, “mind”, “heartmind”) came to acquire distinct cognitive functions. While xin had previously been
identified primarily as a site of feeling, it now came to be understood as an organ ofthought and reflection as well. My paper examines this development in the larger
trajectory of shifting ethical and political values in early China. It considers the ethicalconception of emotions in three major texts that would come to define the mainstream
in traditional Chinese thought – the Mencius, the Daodejing, and the Xunzi – and seeks
to understand how these texts conceived the respective roles of thinking and feeling in
the context of the properly realized life.
In characterizing early Chinese perspectives, I avoid two common approaches: themyth of holism (i.e., early Chinese thinkers did not distinguish between cognition andfeeling) and the assumption of dualism (i.e., some Chinese thinkers accepted a strict
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The intelligence of emotions? Debates over the structure of moral life in early China

dichotomy of cognition and feeling). I argue, rather, that these early accounts weremarked by a strong consciousness of the potential tension between cognitive andemotive sources of direction, but that they also reveal a concern with reconciling thistension through various distinct models of the moral self – models that recognizedmultiple channels of knowledge, perception and understanding. These were hybrid,composite models that deployed mixed metaphors and apparent paradoxes. Underlying
these varying solutions was a shared awareness that any resolution of the tension was
not to be achieved theoretically, as it were, but at the level of the practical action of the
fully realized individual – the sage or the junzi (superior person).
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Entrées d'index
Mots-clés : émotions, esprit, philosophie chinoise, cognition, connaissance, Daoisme,
Confucianisme, éthique, désir, culture de soi
Keywords : emotions, mind, Chinese philosophy, cognition, knowledge, Daoism,
Confucianism, ethics, desire, self-cultivation

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