“There is no human who does not tend toward goodness”: Incorporating the Mencius-Xunzi Dialogue on Human Nature in a Neo-Aristotelian Character Education Program

This paper will discuss the incorporation of the famous philosophical dialogue between Mengzi and Xunzi on human nature into the curriculum of the required ethics course, “Ethics and the Cultivation of Character,” in the department of leadership education, at Culver Academies, which takes an explicitly neo-Aristotelian approach to ethics and character education. (Dutmer 2022; Kristjánsson 2015) The Culver Academies are a residential boarding high school in the US. This course takes place in a required leadership education sequence for all students organized around the inculcation of virtues for transformational leadership using evidence-based tools and research-based strategies. Here I argue that the Mengzi-Xunzi dialogue not only proves its efficacy as a discussion topic for an explicit, taught character education course through the content of its philosophical exchange, but that it serves as one clear example where virtue ethics in the ancient Confucian tradition can be incorporated into an existing neo-Aristotelian ethics and character course.