Abstract

What is an appropriate response to insults? The question is not only relevant to contemporary discourse but also once piqued the curiosity of thinkers in classical Chinese philosophy. This paper brings Songzi (~382 BCE–~305 BCE), a much-neglected thinker who maintains one should remain indifferent to insults, into the dialogue and discusses how Songzi prompted the Confucian Xunzi to address a long-standing ambiguity within Confucian doctrine. Specifically, the Confucius and Mencius believe that an individual’s internal virtues can shield them from hostile external stimuli, but they also believed that the external environment can and should affect one’s moral life in meaningful ways. In response to Songzi, Xunzi reaffirms the importance of cultivating one’s moral self, including the ability to experience shame in response to one’s own moral lapses, but he also acknowledges that purely external factors can induce negative emotions like shame even in the virtuous.