by Raegan Densmore
It is September and school has arrived once again. When I was picking out my courses, I told myself I would pick a wide range of courses in order to firmly decide my area of interest to pursue. However I have found myself with most of my courses surrounding philosophy. The amount of Plato I will have to read this year is quite hefty. Nevertheless, I have found myself intrigued already. Taking what seems like a simple concept and seeking deeper within the lines only to realize that it stretches endlessly, and exploring the different views of these concepts is fascinating. I wanted to take this time to explore some of the views of the great philosophers, Xunzi, and Zeno.
Xunzi was an early Confucian and Chinese philosopher. His core work is titled Xunzi, which includes a collection of his writings dating between 79-8 BCE. The first reading I completed was “Human Nature is Bad”. In this text, Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. Now what does he mean by bad? What makes something bad? There are different types of goods and bads. If someone said “ice cream is bad”, for example; they are using ‘bad’ in the form of an opinion, also known as an aesthetic bad. By saying “human nature is bad” Xunzi describes human nature as an instrumental bad. Socially, we agree that a flat tire on a bike is bad. A flat tire leads to the bike being unusable. In the case of human nature, it is the source of our passive, basic, and innate desires, which will lead us into chaos, as Xunzi states. “If people follow along with their inborn dispositions, and obey their nature, they are sure to come to struggle and contention, turn to disrupting social divisions and order, and end up becoming violent” (Xunzi, 2014, p. 23.11). Xunzi then explains that with “deliberate effort” people can become good (Xunzi, 2014. 23.1). This can mean allowing yourself to learn from others, including teachers, models, and friends. Xunzi explains that we must “await the transforming and influence of teachers and models and the guidance of ritual and yi and only then will [we] come to yielding and deference, turn to proper order, and end up becoming controlled” (23.14-17). There are moral structures put in place in society and without the proper teaching from others, we will not meet these moral structures and become “morally bad”. Xunzi was a Confucian philosopher, and often wrote about ritual (li) and yi. The Confucian belief system focused on morals, ethics, and proper order of society. Rituals or li could be any sort of ceremony, human connection or ‘rite’ where proper order or learning from others could be put in place. Yi is a concept of righteousness, proper order, and morality. It is interesting learning about the concept of human nature through a confucius lens, more specifically, through Xunzi’s lens, as he was described as a critic of earlier confucians as well.
When it comes to taking a concept and creating endless possibilities and views, Greek philosopher, Zeno and his paradoxes does an amazing job. What is infinite, or finite? Does motion exist at all? In his paradoxes, Zeno, a follower of Parmenides of Elea, attempts to defend his views about the nature of the world, facing us with questions regarding existence, time, space, motion and plurality. Parmenides and Zeno argue that nature is one continuous, unchangeable thing, and that the experiences of change and multiplicity are illusions (Berkovitz, 2024, p. 25). In the paradox ‘Achilles and the Tortoise’, Zeno claims that if the tortoise gets a head start in a race between it and Achilles, then Achilles will never overtake it. To explain this, Zeno states that Achilles must run from his starting point ‘A’ to the tortoise’s starting point ‘T0’. While he is reaching that point, the tortoise is moving forward to point ‘T1’. Zeno argues that because they are both constantly moving forward, Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. His second paradox, the Dichotomy has 2 forms. The first states that Achilles cannot finish the race at all. He explains that in order to cover the distance of the track, a runner must run the first half, and the first half of that, and so on. The number of halves to cover are infinite. Because of this, Zeno states that Achilles cannot finish the race. The second form states that Achilles cannot even start the race. Because there are infinite amounts of halves to run, Zeno concludes that the runner must have already completed an infinite amount of runs, and since there is no start to this sequence of numbers, the runner cannot start the race, therefore motion is impossible (Huggett, 1999, p. 23-24). His arrow paradox is fascinating as well. He argues that an arrow in flight is always at rest. “At any given instant, the arrow is where it is, occupying a portion of space equal to itself” (Salmon, p. 10). During that instant, Zeno claims that the arrow cannot move because that would require the instant to have parts, and an instant, by definition, is “a minimal and indivisible element of time” (Salmon. p. 10). In order for the arrow to move, it would have to be in place at one part of an instant, and in a different place at another part of the instant. For the arrow to move, it would have to occupy a space larger than itself, otherwise it would have no space to move during that instant. Zeno comes to the conclusion that the arrow doesn’t move at all, and that yet again, motion is impossible.
The interesting thing about philosophy is that there are constant claims, but also constant critics and information proven or disproven. Both of these philosophers have had people criticize their claims. As extreme as they may be, they are thought provoking, and that is what is so intriguing. This makes me excited to continue to learn about them and others.
Works Cited
Berkovitz, J. 2024. (ed.). Zeno’s Paradoxes (University of Toronto)
Huggett, N. 1999. Space from Zeno to Einstein (MIT Press)
Salmon, W. C. 2001. (ed.). Zeno’s Paradoxes (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill),
Xunzi. (2014). Chapter 23: Human Nature is Bad. In E. L. Hutton & E. L. Hutton (Eds.), Xunzi:
The Complete Text (Course Book, pp. 248–257). Princeton University Press,. https://doi.
org/10.1515/9781400852550
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