Zhu Xi
(1130–1200), Chinese synthesizer of neoConfucianism. Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) was born in Youzi in Fukien province; he is perhaps the greatest neo-Confucian philosopher. He developed and clarified the metaphysics of two earlier philosophers, Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and his brother Cheng Hao (1032–1085). According to their view, everything in the universe has two aspects, li (principle) and qi. Li is a structuring principle that accounts for both the way a thing is and the way it ought to be. Although the li is present in each and every thing, things are distinguished by having different endowments of qi. Qi is a sort of self-moving ethereal substance, which has varying degrees of turbidity or clarity. Inanimate objects have the most turbid qi, with plants, animals, and humans having increasingly clearer qi.
Since the li is one, everything is part of a potentially harmonious whole. Consequently, a good person has concern for everything that exists. Because the qi differentiates things, people have greater obligations to those tied to them by particular bonds such as the five relations. The clearer one's endowment of qi, the easier it is to appreciate one's obligations.
Relying on one's own moral sense without education is dangerous, because selfish desires obscure the li within people. Instead, people should study the classic texts under a wise teacher, because the texts provide partial abstractions of the li from its particular embodiments in qi.
Prior to Zhu Xi, Confucian education emphasized the Five Classics: the Odes, the Documents, the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Record of Rites, and the Yi Jing. These works had been central to Confucian education since the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Zhu Xi proposed a new curriculum, based on what came to be known as the Four Books. His Collected Commentaries on the Four Books, which gives a synthetic interpretation of these texts in the light of neo-Confucian metaphysics, became the basis of the Chinese civil service examinations in 1315 and was committed to memory by generations of scholars until the examinations were abolished in 1905. In the early twenty-first century, the views of the majority of Confucians in East Asian communities, including the "New Confucian" philosophers, are deeply influenced by Zhu Xi's interpretations.
Bryan W. Van Norden
Further Reading
Chan, Wing-tsit, ed. (1986) Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Gardner, Daniel K. (1990) Chu Hsi: Learning to Be a Sage. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Graham, Angus C. (1992) Two Chinese Philosophers. 2d ed. Chicago: Open Court.
This complete Zhu Xi contains 410 words. This
article contains 570 words (approx. 2 pages at 300
words per page).
