The Heart–Mind as the Medium of Transcendence and Virtue: From Post-Confucian Thought to Mencius and Xunzi from a Religious–Ethical Perspective

This study interprets early Confucian discourse on xin through a religious–ethical lens, where “religious ethics” denotes the linkage between moral cultivation and a transcendent or cosmic order. Drawing on transmitted texts and recently excavated manuscripts, this study argues that Mencius and Xunzi developed two contrasting yet equally systematic frameworks of ethical cultivation: one that grounds moral agency in the innate unity of xin and xing (性, human nature), and another that emphasizes the functional role of xin as a conscious mediator between nature and ritual. Through a comparative and religious–philosophical perspective, the paper reveals how the evolving discourse on xin enabled early Confucians to construct morally responsive selves embedded in a spiritualized ethical universe. This approach not only illuminates the diversity of early Confucian thought but also offers conceptual resources for rethinking moral subjectivity in contemporary virtue ethics and religious moral anthropology.