The pursuit of desire is the root cause of violence and poverty—only frameworks of ritual propriety that contain and nourish desire in a productive way can prevent chaos.

By this, however, Xunzi does not mean that humans have innate desire to actively harm others or engage in malicious behavior, but only that they are not born with natural moral sentiments that predispose them toward goodness. According to Xunzi (4.9): All people share one thing in common: when hungry they desire to eat, when cold they desire warmth, when tired they desire rest, they like what is beneficial and hate what is harmful. This is something people have from birth; it is not something one awaits to become so. That is, humans are born with natural desires and there is radical equality among them in possessing the same desires that are virtually limitless. Xunzi (19.1a) describes how people’s pursuit of satisfying their desires leads them to a mutual struggle and state of poverty: Humans are born having desires. When they have desires but do not get the objects of their desire, then they cannot but seek some means of satisfaction. If there is no measure or limit to their seeking, then they cannot help but struggle with each other. If they struggle with each other then there will be chaos, and if there is chaos then they will be impoverished. The former kings hated such chaos, and so they established rituals and yi in order to divide things among people, to nurture their desires, and to satisfy their seeking. They caused desires never to exhaust material goods, and material goods never to be depleted by desires, so that the two support each other and prosper. This is how ritual arose. From this statement, we can derive four important points. First, Xunzi builds his political theory of civil government on the idea of the state of nature, which has spawned many studies comparing him with Thomas Hobbes (Tan 2017; Kim 2011). Second, unlike Hobbes, however, Xunzi describes the state of nature not only as a state of political disorder, but, more saliently, as a state of poverty. The Hobbesian state of nature is created by men’s irrationality, their boisterous passion for recognition and supremacy in a world of religious and moral pluralism. As pointed out by many commentators, in Hobbes’s account of the state of nature, economic struggle is hardly the driving force of a life-and-death struggle (Strauss 1952; Boyd 2001). In contrast, the Xunzian state of nature is basically an economic arena where people are perpetually mired in the social conflict caused by their uncoordinated pursuit to satisfy their limitless desire for material goods. As humans are born with a fondness for profit and the fondness for profit or self-interest causes people’s interests to be mutually incompatible and exclusive, argues Xunzi (23.1a), following self-interest inevitably gives rise to social contention and chaos. Thus Xunzi (10.1) says: Various grades of people live together. They share the same pursuits but have different ways. They share the same desires but have different understandings. This is simply the way they are born. … People all desire the same things and all hate the same things. But while their desires are many, the things to satisfy them are few, and since they are few, people are sure to struggle over them. This leads to the third point. As Xunzi sees it, the central task for the ancient sage-kings who allegedly created civil government was to attain a balance between human desires and material goods, not by restraining the former to match the scarcity of the latter but by “nurturing desires” so that sufficient material goods can be created to continually and without exhaustion satisfy the people’s desire. Xunzi (22.5a) vehemently criticizes those who see no constructive social and economic value of desire and regard it as the single greatest cause of disorder: All those who say that good order must await the elimination of desires are people who lack the means to guide desire and cannot handle the mere having of desires. All those who say good order must await the lessening of desires are people who lack the means to restrain desire and cannot handle abundance of desires. Having desires and lacking desires fall under two different kinds, namely being alive and being dead, not order and disorder. Having many desires and having few desires also fall under different kinds, namely the numbers of people’s dispositions, not order and disorder. Apparently, Xunzi has Mencius (7B35) in mind, who stresses the importance of lessening desires in the course of moral self-cultivation. In Xunzi’s view, having (many) desires in itself does not cause disorder; instead, what causes disorder is people’s failure to fulfill them in accordance with the heart’s (xin 心) moral approval. Put differently, desires, which all humans have, are malleable and thus subject to moral purposes and when properly “nurtured” in light of moral purposes, they can undergird political order and social harmony.10 By “nurturing desires (yang yu 養欲),” however, Xunzi seems to have more in mind than development of moral agency, the ability to use one’s heart to harness desires in the service of material productivity and the public good (Yi and Kwŏn 2011). In a more profound sense, it should translate into a public policy that can bring about a productive economy that benefits all. Precisely from this standpoint, Xunzi (10.8) criticizes Mozi, who espouses frugality and moderate expenditure. In his teachings, Mozi worries very conspicuously about insufficiency for the whole world. However, insufficiency is not the common disaster facing the world. That is only Mozi’s individual worry and erroneous reckoning. … Now the way this soil gives birth to the five grains is such that if people tend it well, a single mu of land will yield several bushels, and within a single year one can have two harvests. … If at his greatest Mozi had possession of the whole world, or if at the least he had possession of a single state, he would have people uncomfortably wearing coarse clothes and eating bad food, and though they might be sad, he would deny them music. If it were like this, then the state would be starved. If the state were starved, then it could not provide satisfaction for people’s desires, and if it could not provide satisfaction for people’s desires, then rewards could not work. … Then, even if Mozi were to try to do something about it by wearing crude garments, using a rope for a belt, eating only bean soup, and drinking only water, how could he make things sufficient? He would have already hacked away at the root of things and dried up their source, so that the whole world was scorched. Xunzi’s argument takes the following steps. First, material insufficiency is a man-made disaster, not a natural condition. Second, material sufficiency can be achieved if humans “tend well” to nature. Third, Mozi’s method of frugality, when implemented as a governmental policy, would lead to an unproductive economy, which would create and perpetuate a condition of material insufficiency. Fourth, material insufficiency inevitably causes poverty and starvation, and, under the condition of deprivation, people’s desire for material goods cannot be satisfied. Lastly, when people’s desire for material goods is unsatisfied, social disorder arises. In Xunzi’s view, therefore, the problem with Mozi’s claim lies in forcing human desire to adapt to material insufficiency, which Mozi mistakenly considered to be a natural condition. In reality, material insufficiency is the outcome of bad public policy: the human failure to tend well to nature, so to speak.