Mengzi, Xunzi, Augustine, and John Chrysostom on Childhood Moral Cultivation

In interreligious dialogues between Christianity and Confucianism, one area has been rarely touched upon—the moral cultivation of children. It is the aim of this chapter to start filling this lacuna by comparing the views on childhood moral cultivation of two early Confucian thinkers— Mengzi (372–289 BCE) and Xunzi (ca. 310–ca. 235 BCE)—with two early Christian thinkers, Augustine (354–430) and John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407). Mengzi and Xunzi were two major Confucian thinkers who lived after Kongzi. On the basis of Kongzi’s teaching, they each developed theories of human nature and moral cultivation. Generally speaking, Mengzi