Class #32 Xunzi on Tian
Reading: Xunzi, "Treatise on Tian"
This chapter is celebrated for its anti-spiritualism and its attack on cosmological naturalism. Be sure to attend to these, but there are other important themes as well. For example, the chapter offers us an alternative portrait of the mind (or heart-mind), which differs in some respects from the portrait encountered in "Removing Blinders," a difference chiefly in emphasis. A range of relevant issues is discussed in notes inserted in the text, the reason once again why I have assigned this online version in preference to Watson's translation.