Abstract
Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) has long been widely recognized as one of, if not the most, influential philosophers of Neo-Confucianism; some even regarded him as one of the most significant philosophers throughout the history of Chinese philosophy. As acclaimed modern Chinese historian Qian Mu observes, “In the history of China, there were Confucius in the early ancient times and Zhu Xi in the near ancient times. Both of them shined out for their greatest brilliance and impact on the Chinese intellectual and cultural history. It seems that no other is comparable to them throughout Chinese history” (Qian 2011: 1–2). Chan Wing-tsit also held that “No one has exercised greater influence on Chinese thought than Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi] (Chu Yüan-hui, 1130–1200), except Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu [Laozi], and Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi]. He gave Confucianism new meaning and for centuries dominated not only Chinese thought but the thought of Korea and Japan as well” (Chan 1969: 588).
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Notes
- 1.
The emergence of noteworthy monographic studies has never ceased in the Anglophone academia over the past decades. For examples, there were Chan Wing-tsit’s Chu Hsi: Life and Thought (1987), Daniel K. Gardner’s Learning to Be a Sage: Selection from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically (1990), Hoyt Cleveland Tillman’s Confucian Discourse and ChuHsi’s Ascendancy (1992), John H. Berthrong’s Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of ChuHsi, Whitehead, and Neville (1998), Julia Ching’s The Religious Thought of ChuHsi (2000), and Yung Sik Kim’s The Natural Philosophy of ChuHsi (2000). In this century, new studies have come out one after another, such as Kin Ming Au, Paul Tillich and ChuHsi: A Comparison of Their Views of Human (2002), Joseph Adler, Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: ZhuXi’s Appropriation of ZhouDunyi (2014), Catherine Hudak Klancer, Embracing Our Complexity: Thomas Aquinas and ZhuXi on Power and the Common Good (2015), David Jones and Jinli He (eds), Returning to ZhuXi: Emerging Patterns within the Supreme Polarity (2015), Shuhong Zheng, ZhuXi and Meister Eckhart: Two Intellectual Profiles (2016), and John Makeham (ed), The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi’s Philosophical Thought (2018).
- 2.
The proposition “xin tong xing qing 心統性情” is first introduced by Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077), who only mentions it once but without any explanation. Zhu Xi, on the other hand, takes it as an “unbreakable” truth-disclosing proposition and formulates his own view of moral psychology with it.
- 3.
These translations, despite slightly different from each other, all stress the two sides of the united faculty, xin: “mind” denotes the “rational side” and “heart” denotes the “emotional side.”
References
Chan, Wing-tsit. 1969. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (A celebrated classic anthology of Chinese philosophical texts with the editor’s influential translations.)
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Qian, Mu 錢穆. 2011. New Scholarly Record of ZhuXi 朱子新學案, 5 vols. Beijing 北京: Jiuzhou chubanshe 九州出版社. (An irreplaceable classic of Zhu Xi study classifying the philosopher’s significant sayings and writings into a number of categories.)
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——— 朱熹. 2010, revised ed. ZhuXi’s Collected Papers 晦庵先生朱文公文集. In ZhuXi’s Complete Works 朱子全書, edited by Zhu Jieren 朱傑人, Yan Zuozhi 嚴佐之, and Liu Yongxiang 劉永翔, vols. 20–25. Shanghai 上海: Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社; Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe 安徽教育出版社.
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Ng, Kc. (2020). Introduction. In: Ng, Kc., Huang, Y. (eds) Dao Companion to ZHUXi’s Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29175-4_1
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