Proper Essay Example About Warring States

Of the pieces that we have read, I really enjoyed the various excerpts from Zhuangzi, especially chapter 6. Although it is a short piece, it is such a pure example of Confucianism. In his unique manner, Confucius manages to point out Yan Hui’s own arrogance without insulting or deriding him. It is the manner in which Confucius teaches which I find so appealing. He manages to make a person look inward for the answers they know already, versus giving them the answer directly. In this manner, people learn a much deeper lesson then they would have otherwise done.
There are times when I find myself agreeing with Xunzi’s view of human nature, although ultimately I tend to agree with Mencius’ views more. While Xunzi paints human nature as basically evil, Mencius does the opposite and paints it as basically good. With the media’s bent on showing predominantly negative news, and the reality that the media is everywhere now, sometimes it seems that human nature is for the most part evil. Nonetheless, when I actually look at reality, those people who do evil are a minority. There are many more people seeking to do good.
While reading about the different teachings was very informational, it seemed that the further away from Confucius the teachings got the more convoluted they were. For instance, Xunzi went to the extreme of seeing all humans as basically evil. His student, Han Fei became a legalist and leaned toward Daoism. It just seems to me that the further students broke from the teachings of Confucius, the more convoluted their beliefs became. I like the original Confucius teachings, so the further the other readings strayed from them, the less I liked them.