Xun Can
| Xun Can | |
|---|---|
| Scholar and philosopher of Cao Wei | |
| Born | c. 209 |
| Died | c. 237 (aged 28) |
| Names | |
| Traditional Chinese | 荀粲 |
| Simplified Chinese | 荀粲 |
| Pinyin | Xún Càn |
| Wade–Giles | Hsün Tsan |
| Courtesy name | Fengqian (Chinese: 奉倩; pinyin: Fèngqiàn; Wade–Giles: Feng-chien) |
Xun Can (c. 209–237),courtesy name Fengqian, was a scholar and xuanxue philosopher of the state of Cao Wei in the Three Kingdoms period of China. He was a son of Xun Yu.
Xun Can's ancestral home was in Yingchuan Commandery (穎川郡; around present-day Xuchang, Henan). He was born in the influential Xun family as a son of Xun Yu, a prominent statesman of the late Eastern Han dynasty and an adviser to the warlord Cao Cao. His exact birth order among his siblings is not clear; it is only known that he was younger than Xun Yu's sixth son, Xun Yi.
Xun Can was markedly different from the rest of his brothers; he enjoyed studying and discussing Taoism as opposed to his brothers' preference for Confucianism. He believed that when Zigong talked about how sages came to understand human nature and divine order, he was referring to a particular higher state of mind that these sages had attained, and that state of mind cannot be expressed in any way. In his opinion, even though the past sages had written books such as the six Confucian classics, these books are actually the "leftovers" from the sages' journeys towards that higher state of mind rather than an expression of that state of mind itself. Xun Yu (荀俁), one of Xun Can's elder brothers, rebutted him, "The Yi Zhuan (易傳) says the sages created images to make sense of reality. They used words to express and describe their understanding of reality. How can you say that human understanding cannot be expressed in any way?"
Xun Can replied,
"The intricacies of human understanding are too complex to be expressed in the forms of images and words. You can use images to make sense of reality, but you can't use them to make sense of the deeper meanings beyond reality. You can use words to express your understanding of reality, but you can't use them to express what is beyond reality. We thus see that the intricacies of human understanding include not only what is expressed through images and words, but also what is beyond such things. Even though you may fully express in images and words what you understand about reality, you can't use them to express what is beyond reality. This means that the intricacies of human understanding not only cannot be fully expressed through images and words, but also cannot be easily understood."
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