荀悦 / Xun Yue

Overview

荀悦 / Xun Yue is an Eastern Han historian and political thinker used across the wiki as a state-order critic of private loyalty, a context-sensitive strategist, and, through Shenjian, an advocate of matching reputation to reality and action to results.

Current Profile

Xun Yue’s current profile is built from judgments rather than a full biography. Zhouji 95 part 4 uses his criticism of 虞卿, 平原君, and 信陵君 to mark the public-order risk of placing friend protection and “dead-party” loyalty above ruler, office, parents, and public duty.

Hanji 180 part 2 applies the same boundary to 贯高. Guan Gao may protect 张敖 from false implication with exceptional courage and truthfulness, but private loyalty cannot erase the public crime of plotting to kill 刘邦.

Hanji 159 part 2 supplies Xun Yue’s strategic method through “行、势、情”: broad gains and losses, temporary situation, and the firmness of people’s commitments. The method explains why restoring six kingdoms or fighting with water at one’s back can change meaning when timing, territory, morale, and command conditions change.

Xun Yue’s Shenjian principle “名必有实，事必有功” demands factual substance behind reputation and results behind action. His practical reach remains limited: as an attendant reader to Emperor Xian, he can formulate political principles but cannot overcome a world in which effective command issues from Cao’s camp.

Key Characteristics

• Eastern Han historian and political thinker represented through later judgments and Shenjian.
• Critic of private loyalty when it overrides office, ruler, law, or public duty.
• Separates admirable courage and truthfulness from legal innocence.
• Judges strategy by conduct, situation, and actual commitments rather than copied precedent.
• Insists that names and reputations be matched by reality and that actions be tested by results.
• Embodies the limit of counsel when discursive authority is separated from coercive command.

Evidence

• State-order critique: Zhouji 95 part 4 uses Xun Yue against aristocratic friend protection and factional loyalty above public office.
• Legal-moral boundary: Hanji 180 part 2 cites him to argue that Guan Gao’s loyal exoneration of Zhang Ao does not cancel regicide conspiracy.
• Context-sensitive strategy: Hanji 159 part 2 presents “行、势、情” as a framework for comparing superficially similar strategies under different conditions.
• Name, reality, and results: Hanji 1072 attributes “名必有实，事必有功” to Shenjian and uses Xun Yue’s court position to discuss counsel without military power.

Qualifications

These sources use Xun Yue selectively as a reception and judgment authority; they do not provide a complete biography, bibliography, or independent textual edition. Hanji 1072’s “话语权与军权分离” and “政出曹门” framing is the host’s political interpretation. The exact quotation, Xun Yue’s attendant-reader role, the influence of Shenjian, and the episode’s family relationship claims involving 荀彧 and 荀攸 require textual verification before being generalized.

What Changed

• Migrated the page to synthesis-v1 using its complete prior source set.
• Added Shenjian’s name-reality and result-accountability principle.
• Added the source-scoped limit of counsel under separated discursive and military power.

Relationships

• 死党之义与守职奉上 - value conflict Xun Yue criticizes from a state-order position.
• 政治刺杀伦理 - legal-moral boundary sharpened by his Guan Gao judgment.
• 行势情战略评估 - strategy framework directly attributed to his commentary.
• 历史先例武器化 - adjacent problem his context-sensitive method constrains.
• 虞卿, 平原君, and 信陵君 - Warring States figures whose friend protection his later judgment criticizes.
• 贯高 and 张敖 - private-loyalty case to which his public-crime boundary is applied.
• 荀彧 and 荀攸 - relatives named in Hanji 1072, with exact genealogy kept source-scoped.