“One who corrects me and is right is my teacher.” The sentence comes from Xunzi’s “Self-Cultivation”. Here, “corrects me” means pointing out where I am wrong, while “is right” means that the judgement accords with sound reason. The text continues: someone who agrees with me rightly is a friend, while someone who flatters me is harmful. Xunzi’s distinction is not simply between disagreement and agreement; it is between judgements that are sound and those that are not.
Today, the sentence need not make every criticism medicinal. Calling the critic a “teacher” still depends on the condition “is right”: are the facts reliable, do the reasons hold, and can the criticism help correct action? Unpleasant words are not automatically sincere, just as agreeable words are not automatically flattery. The difficult part is to pause the defensive response and then test the content.
https://ctext.org/xunzi/xiu-shen/zh
Discover more from Geoffrey Chen
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.