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<p>Calls for ‘critical thinking’ are routine in higher education, but in multicultural classrooms the central difficulty is not producing quick, forceful arguments. It is loosening our grip on a single, comfortable way of seeing. This article turns to the Confucian thinker Xunzi and his essay <i>Jiebi 解蔽</i> (<i>Undoing Fixation</i>) to reconceive critical thinking as ethical and epistemic self-cultivation rather than a neutral reasoning toolkit. We reconstruct <i>jiebi</i> as an account of bias on which <i>bi</i> 蔽 is value-driven one-sidedness, a distortion of care shaped by absolutised aims. On this reading, the cultivated states of <i>xu</i> 虛 (emptiness), <i>yi</i> 壹 (unity), and <i>jing</i> 靜 (stillness) form an integrated profile of ‘critical character’ that links epistemic humility, integrative judgement, and affective discipline. Putting this framework in conversation with contemporary discussions of critical thinking and bias, we argue that it shifts attention from discrete skills to character, and from informational error to value‑laden patterns of attention and concern. On this basis, we sketch three <i>jiebi</i>-inspired design principles for multicultural university classrooms and illustrate them through a stylised campus free‑speech controversy, treating critical thinking as a shared practice of moving toward comparatively less blind judgements under conditions of deep diversity.</p>

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Undoing Fixation: Xunzi’s Jiebi(解蔽) as a Framework for Critical Thinking in Multicultural Classrooms

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年1月7日

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  • Yanrong Shi,
  • Miae Son

摘要

Calls for ‘critical thinking’ are routine in higher education, but in multicultural classrooms the central difficulty is not producing quick, forceful arguments. It is loosening our grip on a single, comfortable way of seeing. This article turns to the Confucian thinker Xunzi and his essay Jiebi 解蔽 (Undoing Fixation) to reconceive critical thinking as ethical and epistemic self-cultivation rather than a neutral reasoning toolkit. We reconstruct jiebi as an account of bias on which bi 蔽 is value-driven one-sidedness, a distortion of care shaped by absolutised aims. On this reading, the cultivated states of xu 虛 (emptiness), yi 壹 (unity), and jing 靜 (stillness) form an integrated profile of ‘critical character’ that links epistemic humility, integrative judgement, and affective discipline. Putting this framework in conversation with contemporary discussions of critical thinking and bias, we argue that it shifts attention from discrete skills to character, and from informational error to value‑laden patterns of attention and concern. On this basis, we sketch three jiebi-inspired design principles for multicultural university classrooms and illustrate them through a stylised campus free‑speech controversy, treating critical thinking as a shared practice of moving toward comparatively less blind judgements under conditions of deep diversity.