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Chapter two Contexts for Interpretation F I argued in chapter 1 that if one’s goal is to engage culturally distant thinkers precisely as thinkers, as theorists who have developed religious conceptions worthy of careful study, then the best comparative strategy is to interpret them with sensitivity, alert to the various contexts and traditions in which they moved and worked.This is not particularly controversial, but neither is it obvious what this implies. Proper contextualization of interpretations does not require a lengthy account of “the context” that would duplicate or mimic specialist histories; it is rather a matter of perceptive interpretation of particular points in each thinker, leading to insight into broader themes in their visions of life.Thus to charge that a historical account has been “decontextualized” must be a reasonable critique of specific aspects of the account in question, not some sort of blanket complaint about the amount of generalized discussion of the historical background presumed by the account. Moreover, readers often generate conflicting interpretations of profound and broad-ranging thinkers such as Augustine and Xunzi. Choices of organization and emphasis must be made in any study; evidence and counterevidence must be weighed. In important respects, the investigator constitutes the objects of her study by choosing the approach and themes that guide it, as well as the evidence to be given greatest prominence. It behooves all interpreters to remember that even the most articulate objects of study do not determine some proper form that interpretations of their words must take;Augustine and Xunzi tell many stories, not just one, and it is up to us as readers to be clear about how we approach them and why. Accordingly, in this chapter, I first offer very brief introductions to the life and historical context of Xunzi and Augustine, designed only to orient readers who may be unfamiliar with either. I then discuss in more detail ◆ 27 ◆ 28 CONTExTS FOR iNTERPRETATiON the “bridge concepts” to be used as organizing themes in this study: human nature, personhood, spiritual exercises, and the will. xunzi anD auguStine Obviously Xunzi lived in a profoundly different culture from the modern United States, used a language unrelated to English, and was responding to a distinctive (and in certain ways quite alien) intellectual scene. With Augustine, we may be misled by the thought that he isWestern, and hence “ours.” Peter Brown rightly insists that “the Christianity of the . . . Middle Ages––to say nothing of the Christianity of our own times––is separated from the Christianity of the Roman world by a chasm almost as vast as that which still appears to separate us from the moral horizons of a Mediterranean Islamic country.”1We must be alert to the distance between contemporary ideas that descend from Augustine and his own conceptions expressed in similar or even apparently identical terms, as well as to a cultural world almost as foreign as ancient China. In many ways, the problems generated by historical and cultural distance are quite parallel, and similar skills are necessary to navigate both. I thus provide brief introductions to the life, context, and thought of each of our subjects.2 Xunzi was born in the state of Zhao around 310 bce, during theWarring States period of Chinese history, and he probably lived just past the unification of China by Qin Shihuang in 221 bce.This era was marked by continuing strife between several states seeking to conquer the others and succeed the clearly moribund Zhou Dynasty. In this environment, violence and social disruption were common, and ongoing debates over the proper ordering of self and society took on a new intensity as a “hundred schools of thought” contended for influence with rulers seeking the properWay of human existence. Xunzi seems to have been precocious: He left home at fifteen to go to perhaps the preeminent center of learning of his day, the Jixia “Academy” in the capital of the state of Qi, where scholars of every philosophical and religious persuasion debated each other and enjoyed the king’s largesse.In such an environment,Xunzi was exposed to all the major intellectual currents of his day, and he distinguished himself sufficiently among the attending thinkers that he was honored three times as head libationer at the official ancestral sacrifices. He also traveled fairly widely. In between extended stays at Jixia in Qi, he spent a number of years at the court of the southern state of Chu after King Min of Qi overreached militarily and was hunted down...

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