Abstract

This dissertation compares the thought and practice of Xunzi, a 4th--3rd century BCE Confucian, with that of Augustine of Hippo, a 4th--5th century CE Christian. Specifically, it compares their versions of the view that human nature is significantly bad or evil, and their prescriptions for the cultivation of ethically and religiously preferable modes of life, through the practice of what Pierre Hadot has called "spiritual exercises." ;Xunzi and Augustine deploy conceptual apparatuses structured by distinctive terms of art, responding to debates within their own contexts. Their articulations of human personhood deeply shape their proposals and hopes for personal cultivation. This thesis examines their different anthropologies, with special attention to Augustine's concept of natura and Xunzi's idea of xing, both traditionally rendered in English as "human nature." It then discusses their positive proposals for ethico-religious education and personal cultivation, focusing on the specific practices they recommend and their accounts of how and why these practices are effective in the production of flourishing human beings. It explores Xunzi's opposition of "nature" and "artifice," his analysis of emotion, desire, and action, and his accounts of study, ritual practice, and music as spiritual exercises. It investigates Augustine's views of original sin and the mind imaging God, his account of disciplina "teaching" and "discipline," and his understandings of the liberal arts, learning from scripture, fasting, the Eucharist, and different types of prayer. ;Comparison of Xunzi and Augustine makes three contributions. First, it refines our analytical categories as students of religious thought and practice, especially in this case "human nature" and "spiritual exercises." Second, it illuminates both thinkers' views more fully, in particular deepening our understanding of Xunzi's moral psychology and Augustine's theories of Christian formation after "conversion" and baptism. Third, it contributes to contemporary debates in religious ethics: first, about moral personhood, proposing a new model of "chastened intellectualism" but underscoring the limitations of universalistic accounts; and second, about spiritual exercises, retrieving elements of Xunzi's account of ritual and Augustine's techniques for affecting one's inner discourse of interpretation and judgment