Chinese · -310–-235
Xun Kuang came from Zhao and spent his best years at the Jixia Academy in Qi, the closest thing the Warring States had to a research institute, where he was three times its senior figure. He ended his career as magistrate of Lanling in Chu and stayed there after he lost the post. He is the Confucian who said human nature is bad and that goodness is deliberate work, produced by ritual, teaching and the accumulated craft of the sages the way a warped plank is straightened by a press. He stripped Heaven of any moral will, arguing that it rains whether or not you pray and that ritual works on the people who perform it rather than on the sky. His chapters on learning, on music and on correcting names are the most sustained arguments in early Chinese prose. Two of his students, Han Fei and Li Si, built the Qin state.