The Moral Significance of Ritual

Abstract This chapter focuses on how Xunzi and Thomas argue for the centrality of ritual in overcoming evil. Xunzi makes a case for ritual by appealing to the incompleteness of Heaven and Earth. Similarly, sacraments for Thomas are the institution of a realm “beyond nature” to combat the paucity of moral possibility within nature. It argues that their strategies of exhorting to the good in the face of adversity depend on introducing another world to remedy the limited moral possibilities within the present world. Challenging the presumption of the necessary opposition between Chinese and Christian during the Chinese Rites Controversy, this chapter analyzes the resonance between the two from the perspective of a subjunctive theory of ritual.