Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College to teach Ruism, global philosophies and religions.

The Ru tradition experienced a major reboot in its second millennium after being adopted as the state ideology in Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). And there are two major historical backgrounds of this reboot. Firstly, the immigration of Buddhism and the establishment of Daoist religions stimulated Ru thinkers to create a new version of Ruism able to orient individuals’ life more comprehensively. Since seeking the genuine Dao, the Way, so as to provide guidance to all major aspects of human life is always a goal of Ru self-cultivation, these Ru thinkers referred to this historical reboot of Ruism as a Daoxue movement, and Daoxue (道學) means the learning of Dao. In English scholarship, we also call it Neo-Confucianism. Secondly, since the 8th century, the Chinese imperial system had endured a series of severe domestic and foreign threats. Ru literati therefore sought to overcome the threats and recover the ancient ideal of humane governance while creatively reinterpreting Ru classics. To such a reacting and synthesizing Daoxue movement, Zhu Xi (1130-1200)’s philosophy played the role of an intellectual reservoir into which his predecessors’ thoughts confluence and out of which later Ru thinkers derive and diverge. To evidence such a role, Zhu Xi condensed the originally expansive Ru classics into a new canon comprising four books, viz., the Great Learning, the Analects, the Mengzi and the Centrality and Commonality, and his 四书章句集注 (Commentaries of the Four Books) was thereafter officialized as a textbook for the systems of civil examination in East Asia.

Zhu Xi’s synthetic Ru philosophy, despite its extraordinary scope and complexity, pivots itself upon one singular concept, Li (理, translated alternatively as principle, pattern-principle, Pattern, or coherence, see Angle & Tiwald 2017:28-34), and aims to parse out the three phases and eight steps of self-cultivation articulated by the Great Learning which furnishes a comprehensive guide to the Ru way of life. According to the Great Learning, the realization of the ideal of peace and harmony among all under heaven rests upon the regulation of one’s state and the alignment of one’s family, which furthermore rest upon the cultivation of one’s genuine self comprising four major steps, viz., rectifying the heartmind, authenticating intentions, attaining the knowledge, and investigating things (格物, gewu). Zhu Xi maintains that the object of the ultimate step of gewu is Li, defined as “the reason why things come to be so and the rule how things ought to be so.” (Zhu 2002 Vol. 6 大学或问 An Inquiry into the Great Learning:512)For instance, the Li of a table is the sum of all the conditions which explain why the table is produced in a certain material with a certain shape so as to fit itself with all surrounding items in a given environment. Because the factual ways to fit oneself with all the others in a given context lead to the ideal state of harmonization in which all beings evolve and thrive together without undermining the essential identity of each, Li is both descriptive and prescriptive. In the natural world, Li refers to the patterns of changing realities which co-exist in the broadest ontological scale of the whole universe, viz., Tian. In the human world, Li designates the moral principles and social conventions which perfect human relationships so as to sustain the development of civilization, and hence, to manifest the cosmic harmony of Tian in the human realm.

With Li construed as such, appropriate intentions of the heartmind towards external things are those in line with Li so that one does not merely intend objectives sincerely, but also authentically. For Zhu Xi, the process of authenticating intentions to rectify the heartmind leads to the recovery of one’s genuine human nature endowed by Tian, a trope continuous with the teaching of the Mengzi and the Centrality and Commonality. And the process is characterized by accumulation, ecstasy and extrapolation. Accumulatively, one needs to broadly engage the world via activities such as reading classics, canvassing histories, studying the nature, having discussions with friends, and dealing with human affairs so as to learn each and every Li. (Zhu 2002 Vol. 6 大学或问:527-528) While one’s practical knowledge of Li continually increases, an ecstatic moment would transpire when one can comprehend the coherence of all Li in the universe, and hence, grasp the interconnection of all dimensions of moral living. (Zhu 2002 Vol. 6 大学章句 An Exegesis of the Great Learning: 20) After the ecstasy, one needs to extrapolate their general knowledge of the Li of the world into minute and novel details, and hence, keep being centered in the everyday moments of mundane life. (Chen 2000: 309-314)  

Among the three aspects of “thoroughly studying Li (穷理),” the ecstatic moment begs more attention since it reveals the overarching structure of Zhu Xi’s thought. The following chart illuminates the structure via illustrating Zhu Xi’s treatise of “On Ren (humaneness) (仁说).” I link my full translation of this treatise here, and I’ll read the most relevant few paragraphs in this treatise, and explain them later.

As demonstrated by the chart, several categorical dyads have structured Zhu Xi’s philosophy. Firstly, with Li construed as principle, Qi (气) is the material vital-energy pervading the entire universe, the dynamics of which manifests the normativity of principles. The dyad of principle and vital-energy is thus, albeit with an emphasis on process and change, comparable to the one of form and matter in ancient Greek philosophy. Secondly, the relationship between Li and Qi is further interpreted as the one of Ti (体, substance) and Yong (用, function). The Ti of a thing is what the thing per se consists in in its enduring form, while its Yong is the manifested functions of the thing when it engages with other things. Thirdly, Xing (性, nature) and Qing (情, feeling) characterize the dimensions of human heartmind which correspond to the dyads “Li-Qi” and “Ti-Yong.” For Zhu Xi, human nature is equivalent to the Li or Ti aspect of the heartmind, while the nature is signified by four cardinal virtues of Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety and wisdom. Human feelings are the Yong, viz., the manifested functions of Qi, aspect of the heartmind. Using a contemplative language, Zhu Xi also describes the aspect of principle, substance or nature of the heartmind as underlying one’s experience of inner peace and centrality prior to any concrete feeling aroused by external things. Therefore, another dyad of “non-aroused (未发)” and “being-aroused (已发)” indicates one’s respective experiences of spiritual formation in the different states of heartmind characterized by the aforementioned dyads.  

Understood as such, the system of Zhu Xi’s thought per the chart can be explained as follows: 

According to the Classic of Change, The nature of Tian is creativity. Creativity primarily means initiation. The initiative power of Tian is manifested jointly by the proactive Heaven (Qian, the most Yang hexagram) and the receptive Earth (Kun, the most Yin hexagram). There are four virtues, viz., four generic traits, of the creativity of Heaven and Earth: initiation (which means Tian creates everything from nothing), permeation (which means Tian’s creativity pervades everything), harmonization (which means everything dynamically co-exists within Tian), and integration (which means each created thing is endowed with a nature and all things comprise an interconnected whole within Tian). The virtue of initiation governs them all. These four virtues are manifested in the proceeding of cosmic vital-energy during the course of four seasons. The vital-energy of spring permeates them all.

Those four virtues are the principle and living substance of Tian’s creativity, while the four seasons manifest its vital-energy and function. Therefore, for discussing the creativity of Tian, when the initiative power of Qian (heaven) and the initiative power of Kun (earth) are mentioned,  both the four virtues and their functions are encapsulated.

The lower part of the chart is about human beings. It has a parallel structure to the upper one. Human beings are born from the process of cosmic creativity of Tian, and the endowed human nature is the virtue of Ren embedded in the human heartmind. There are four cardinal virtues for the heartmind, viz., Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety, and wisdom, and the virtue of Ren embraces them all. When the heartmind is aroused and engages with things, the four virtues are manifested as four incipient moral feelings.

There are two alternative ways to name these four feelings. For Zhu Xi, they are the feelings of love, obligation, deference, and judiciousness. For Mengzi, they are the feelings of commiseration, shame and disgust, deference, and distinguishing right and wrong. Zhu Xi’s alternative way to name the feelings derive from Mengzi, but is more succinct. Overall, the feeling of love or commiseration pervades all the other feelings.

The four virtues are the principle, substance, nature or non-aroused status of the human heartmind. The four human feelings for Zhu Xi, which are the four moral incipient sprouts for Mengzi, manifest the vital-energy, function, feeling, or aroused status of the heartmind. Therefore, for discussing the magnificence of the human heartmind, once it is pointed out that Ren is what the heartmind consists in,  then both its four virtues and their functions are summarized.

In a word, Zhu Xi’s treatise of “On Ren” demonstrates the cosmological root of the distinctively good human nature, which is summarized by the cardinal human virtue, humaneness. While urging individuals to rediscover and nurture such a cosmically endowed human nature via cumulatively studying and practicing Li, Zhu Xi’s philosophy can be understood overall as an all-encompassing ethical metaphysics which aims to manifest the supreme harmonization of Tian’s creativity in the human world.