Zhu Xi

Zhu Xi a Chinese philosopher, educator and commentator of the Song dynasty (1130-1200) who became the most influential thinker of the Neo-Confucian tradition. His synthesis of earlier Confucian thought and his commentaries on the classics became the basis of the imperial examination system and the moral teaching of East Asia for more than six centuries.

Life and Education

Zhu Xi was born in 1130 in Youxi, in Fujian province, the son of a scholar-official who had opposed the peace party and been reduced to provincial office. His father died when he was young, and the boy was raised under the guidance of his father's friends, who recognised his extraordinary intelligence and directed his education in the Confucian classics.

He passed the imperial examination at the age of eighteen, but his real intellectual formation came later, through his study with the followers of the Cheng brothers and through years of independent reading and reflection. He was particularly influenced by the thought of Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao, whose doctrines he set out to systematise.

He held a series of official posts, including provincial appointments and a term as a memorialist at court, but his career was repeatedly interrupted by political hostility. In the last decade of his life his teaching was condemned by the court as false learning, and his followers were persecuted, though the prohibition was lifted after his death.

Philosophical System

Zhu Xi built a comprehensive philosophical system on a foundation of two central concepts, li and qi. Li, usually translated as principle or pattern, is the rational structure that underlies all things and defines their nature; qi, usually translated as material force or vital energy, is the stuff of which things are made. Every thing is a combination of principle and material force.

He held that human nature is originally good because it partakes of a heavenly principle, but that it is obscured by the impurity of the material endowment each person receives. The task of moral self-cultivation is to remove that obscuring impurity through study, reflection and the disciplined practice of reverence, so that the original goodness may shine forth.

Zhu Xi also developed a metaphysics of the ultimate, identifying the supreme principle with the Great Ultimate and relating it to the alternation of yin and yang and the generation of the five phases. His cosmology integrated the classical texts with the speculations of the Song philosophers, and it gave Confucian thought a systematic metaphysical foundation.

Commentaries and the Four Books

Zhu Xi's greatest literary achievement was his series of commentaries on the Confucian classics, and especially on the four texts he selected as the core of the curriculum: the Analects, the Mencius, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. His edition and interpretation of the Four Books became the standard introduction to Confucianism.

He also commented on the classic of changes and on the poetry classic, and he compiled anthologies and study guides for students. His commentaries combined philological care with a clear exposition of moral and metaphysical doctrine, and their influence on the reading of the classics was immense.

After his death the state adopted his editions and interpretations for the imperial examination system, so that for centuries every candidate for office in China studied the classics through Zhu Xi's eyes. This gave his thought an authority matched by few philosophers in any tradition, and it shaped the intellectual life of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.

Education and Social Thought

Zhu Xi was a dedicated teacher and an organiser of education. He founded and restored academies, wrote precepts for students, and worked out a curriculum that joined the study of the classics to the cultivation of moral character. The academy became a central institution of Neo-Confucian learning through his efforts.

He also wrote on social and familial institutions, emphasising the reform of local customs, the proper conduct of funerals and sacrifices, and the moral obligations of the household. His manual of family rituals was used widely and influenced the practices of the gentry for centuries.

His social vision combined a conservative respect for hierarchy and ritual with a genuine concern for education and the moral improvement of ordinary people. He believed that the ordering of the family and the community, guided by principle, was the foundation of the ordering of the state, and he worked to make that teaching available to a broad public.

Influence and Legacy

Zhu Xi's synthesis, usually called Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism after him and the two Cheng brothers, became the orthodox philosophy of imperial China. His commentaries were the foundation of the examination system from the fourteenth century until its abolition in the twentieth, and his system defined the intellectual culture of late imperial East Asia.

His thought was transmitted to Korea, Japan and Vietnam, where it provided the framework of education, government and moral philosophy for centuries. In Korea in particular the Zhu Xi tradition became the dominant scholarly orthodoxy, and in Japan it shaped the Confucian learning of the Tokugawa period.

He died in 1200, and within a generation his doctrines were officially canonised. Modern scholarship has debated the balance between his metaphysical and his practical concerns, but his place as the most influential Confucian thinker after Mencius is undisputed, and his writings remain the foundation of East Asian Confucian thought.

See also

• Confucianism
• Cheng Yi
• Cheng Hao
• Four Books