Heterogeneity DA: The perm entrenches a heterogeneous interpretation of the Way, killing alt solvency—the Way must be embodied purely and in its entirety.

In Xunzi’s search of the Dao, as T.C. Kline III has indicated, the ritual provides a shelter under a sacred canopy of social order from the encroaching fear and chaos of the situation: “(1) The ritual reconstitutes and maintains the social order because of its religiously significant ability to provide shelter from the anomic events of life that threaten to disrupt the social order; (2) The Confucian sages created the ritual, the Dao, for the purpose of providing this shelter and bringing human culture into existence; (3) The sage, in turn, exemplifies the person who embodies the Dao, who lives life completely under the shelter of the sacred canopy” (Kline 2014, pp. 173–74). In the social respect, an implicit objective of Xunzi’s quest for the Dao is inherently meant to defend the Confucian Way against heterogeneous thought, considering the intellectual milieu of the Warring States era mentioned in the foregoing discussion, wherein diversified schools of thought competed against and even attacked each other. According to Mark Berkson, Xunzi’s new Confucian interpretation was intended to defend the Confucian tradition from various intellectual challenges: “(1) Xunzi took up the task of defending Confucian ritual from philosophical attacks by the Mohists and the Daoists who tried to undermine the bases of participation in Confucian ritual; (2) Xunzi was disturbed by the beliefs in ghosts and spirits that motivated many individuals’ participation in ritual with a supernaturalist understanding; (3) Xunzi rejects Mencius who argued that the Con- fucian Way is grounded in human nature with its ultimate source in Heaven” (Berkson 2016, pp. 230–31; cf. Berkson 2014, pp. 107–8). For instance, “The work of Confucius was opposed by Mozi (墨翟 ca. 450–390 B.C.E.?). Mozi rejected the primacy of the family, and the spontaneous but biased affections that come with it, as a model for social organization … Rituals such as lavish funeral services and musical ceremonies, which Confucians saw as important expressions of family sentiment and methods for harmonious social consolidation, were seen by Mozi as a useless waste of resources” (Ziporyn 2020, p. xxiii). Similarly, Lee H. Yearly has extended the intellectual challenges of up to six different positions that Xunzi deemed as flawed: “three attacks on ritual and three defenses of it” (Yearly 2014, p. 91). In view of these challenges, as Mark Berkson remarks, Xunzi’s reinterpretation of ritual is a hermeneutic defense of the Confucian Way (Berkson 2014, pp. 107–32). The defense of the Confucian Way is mainly reflected in the “Against the Twelve Masters” (‘Feishierzi’; Hutton 2014, pp. 40–46) where Xunzi castigates six philosophical positions and twelve representative figures including Mencius, because “they confuse the world with false notions of right and wrong and of what produces order and what anarchy” (Knoblock 1988, p. 212). In contrast, Xunzi lauds Confucius and Zigong (子弓) because “Xunzi thought Zigong transmitted the true doctrines of the master” (Knoblock 1988, p. 220). Notably, Xunzi draws clear lines of demarcation between the Confucian Way and heterodoxy by claiming that “Now what does the person of ren strive for? At his greatest, he models himself on the controlling order of Shun and Yu, and at the least, he models himself on the yi of Confucius and Zigong, and he thereby strives to extinguish the teachings of the twelve masters. If one manages to do this, then the harm to the world will be eliminated, the work of the person of ren will be completed, and the accomplishments of the sage king will be made manifest [今夫仁人也，將何務哉？上則法舜禹之制，下則法仲尼、子弓之義，以務息十二子之說。如 是則天下之害除，仁仁之事畢，聖王之跡著矣]” (Hutton 2014, p. 42). In light of the above analysis, a conclusion can be properly drawn that Xunzi’s quest for the Dao carries an implicit goal: to defend the Confucian Way against heterogeneous thought.