Listen to this article荀子（约公元前313－前238）名况，字卿，因避西汉宣帝刘询讳，因”荀”与”孙”二字古音相通，故又称孙卿。汉族，周朝战国末期赵国猗氏（今山西安泽）人。著名思想家、文学家、政治家，儒家代表人物之一，时人尊称”荀卿”。曾三次出齐国稷下学宫的祭酒，后为楚兰陵（今山东兰陵）令。荀子对儒家思想有所发展，提倡性恶论，常被与孟子的性善论比较，对重整儒家典籍也有相当的贡献。
Xun Zi (around 313BC – 238BC), Han nationality, native of Yishi, the State of Zhao (now Anze, Shanxi province), was a prominent thinker, writer, statesman and Confucian representative during the late Warring-States Period of the Zhou Dynasty. Xun Zi was born with the name Xun Kuang, courtesy named Qing, revered as Xun Qing by his contemporaries. Some texts recorded his surname as Sun instead of Xun, either because the two surnames were homophones in antiquity or because Xun was a naming taboo at some point in history. His name was changed to Sun during the reign of Emperor Xuan of Han because Xun was the personal name of the Emperor himself. He went to the State of Qi to be Jijiu (head of the academy) at the Jixia Academy (the first institution of higher learning run by government) for three terms, later serving as Magistrate of Lanling , the State of Chu (now Lanling, Shandong province). Xun Zi believed that man’s inborn tendencies need to be curbed through education and ritual, counter to Mencius’s view that man is innately good. Xun Zi made a great contribution to the development of Confucianism as well as to the reformation of Confucian books and records.
代表作品：《荀子》
Representative work: Xun Zi
