Cheng Yi

Cheng Yi a Chinese philosopher of the Northern Song dynasty (1033-1107) whose rationalist interpretation of Confucianism became, along with the work of his elder brother Cheng Hao, the foundation of the school that Zhu Xi later systematised. His emphasis on principle as the structure of the universe and on reverence as the core of moral practice gave Neo-Confucianism its distinctive shape.

Life and Family

Cheng Yi was born in 1033 in Luoyang, in Henan province, the younger of the two sons of a family of scholar-officials. He and his elder brother Cheng Hao studied together under the guidance of Zhou Dunyi, the philosopher of the Great Ultimate, and the two brothers remained closely associated in their work and in the tradition that bears their name.

He passed the imperial examination and held a number of official posts, including a position as a teacher of the classics at the court, but he was never suited to the compromises of high political life. His rigid moral earnestness and his refusal to bend principle to expediency made him difficult colleagues and repeated targets of dismissal.

His career was interrupted by the factional conflicts of the reform era and by the hostility of the party in power. In his later years he was banished and his writings were condemned, and he died in 1107 in exile, in the same year that his teachings were officially proscribed, a prohibition that was later reversed.

Philosophy of Principle

Cheng Yi is chiefly remembered for his doctrine of principle, or li. He held that all things in the world are governed by an objective and intelligible pattern, and that this pattern is one and the same in the heavens above and in the human heart. To understand principle is to understand the order of nature and the moral law.

This doctrine had profound consequences for ethics and for epistemology. If the same principle underlies both the cosmos and the mind, then the investigation of things is at the same time a moral discipline, and the study of the world and the perfection of character are not two activities but one. The idea became central to the Cheng-Zhu school.

Cheng Yi also emphasised the unity of knowledge and action. To know the good without acting upon it is not genuine knowledge, he argued, and the moral life requires the constant application of what one has understood. This insistence on the integration of theory and practice became a defining feature of the tradition.

Reverence and Moral Cultivation

Cheng Yi gave a central place to the practice he called reverence, a state of concentrated attentiveness and seriousness of mind. He argued that reverence should be maintained at all times and in all activities, so that the mind remains collected and alert and the impulses of selfishness are held in check.

He contrasted reverence with the quietist meditation of the Buddhist and Daoist traditions, insisting that the Confucian cultivation of the mind must be active and engaged with the world rather than withdrawn. The disciplined mind, he held, does not empty itself of thought but orders its thoughts according to principle.

He developed a detailed account of self-cultivation and of the examination of the mind, and his teachings on the subject were elaborated by his followers and by Zhu Xi. His insistence that the moral life rests on a continuous and unspectacular discipline, rather than on sudden enlightenment, shaped the practical spirituality of Neo-Confucianism.

Views on Human Nature and Society

Cheng Yi drew a distinction between the original nature of a human being, which is good because it partakes of principle, and the physical nature that arises from the material endowment, which may be good or bad. This distinction allowed him to explain the presence of evil in a world founded on a good principle without abandoning the classical doctrine of the goodness of human nature.

He applied his philosophy to the reform of society, arguing that the ordering of the family and of the state must follow the pattern of principle and the prescriptions of ritual. He was a strict defender of traditional roles and hierarchy, and his views on the subordination of women and on the duties of the young influenced Chinese social practice for centuries.

He wrote commentaries on the classics, especially the classic of changes, and he developed the metaphysical system that linked the Great Ultimate, the two forces and the five phases to the moral order. His work gave the philosophical movement of the Song its technical vocabulary and much of its systematic structure.

Influence and Legacy

Cheng Yi and his brother Cheng Hao are jointly honoured as the founders of the School of Principle, and Cheng Yi's rationalist version of the doctrine exercised the greater influence on later orthodoxy. Zhu Xi built his synthesis upon their foundations, and the resulting system became the official philosophy of imperial China.

His teachings were transmitted through his disciples and through the writings of Zhu Xi, and they entered the examination curriculum that governed the education of officials for centuries. His conception of principle, of the investigation of things and of reverence became the common possession of East Asian Confucian thought.

He died in 1107, and the proscription of his teachings was quickly reversed. He is remembered as one of the great systematists of Chinese philosophy, a thinker whose austere rationalism gave the Confucian tradition a metaphysical depth it had previously lacked and set the direction of its later development.

See also

• Cheng Hao
• Zhu Xi
• Zhou Dunyi
• Neo-Confucianism