- Lived:
- c. 310–c. 235 BCE · born in Zhao, taught in Qi, died in Lanling in the southern state of Chu
- Tradition:
- Classical Confucianism — its third great master, and its house realist
- The Big Idea:
- Human nature is bad: left to our inborn cravings we collide and tear each other apart — so goodness has to be deliberately built, through ritual, teachers, and years of effort, the way crooked wood is pressed straight.
- In their words:
- "Human nature is bad. What is good in people is artifice."
- If you remember one thing:
- The most clear-eyed Confucian who ever lived taught that we can construct our own goodness — and then watched two of his own students build the machine that buried Confucianism.