Philosopher · Medieval
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi)
1130–1200 · Neo-Confucianism; School of Principle (Cheng–Zhu)
The architect of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy; the Jesuits' debate over whether his philosophy was theist or materialist shaped the Chinese Rites Controversy, settled by Rome's 1939 permission of the civil rites.
Zhu Xi gathered the Northern Song masters, the Cheng brothers, Zhou Dunyi and Zhang Zai, into the synthesis that became orthodox Confucianism for seven centuries and the basis of the civil service examinations from 1313. Everything is composed of principle (li), the pattern that makes a thing what it should be, and material force (qi), the stuff in which it is realized; the Supreme Ultimate (taiji) is the sum of all principle, present whole in each thing as the moon in every river; human nature is principle and therefore good, while the varying purity of one's qi explains evil and the need for cultivation. The way to sagehood is “the investigation of things” to extend knowledge, reverence (jing) and quiet sitting, and “preserving Heaven's principle and eliminating selfish desires”; he fixed the Four Books as the core curriculum, wrote the commentaries on them that every candidate memorized, compiled the Family Rituals, and in Reflections on Things at Hand made an anthology for beginners.
Why he matters: He is the philosopher the Jesuits met in China: Ricci argued in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven that the Supreme Ultimate is not God, Longobardo concluded that the literati were materialists, and the Rites Controversy turned partly on whether Zhu Xi's reading of Heaven and the ancestral rites was religious or civil. His metaphysics of principle and material force is the closest Chinese analogue to the form and matter the Jesuits brought with Aristotle, and Julia Ching's The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi reads him with Thomist categories.
Where to be careful
Principle is impersonal and the Supreme Ultimate neither creates nor knows nor loves, so that for all the resemblance to the eternal law there is no Creator distinct from the world (Lateran IV), no soul that survives the dispersal of its qi, and no grace, only self-cultivation; his rigor on widow chastity has also drawn criticism. His realism about natures, his conviction that the moral order is written into things and knowable, and his program of reverent study are common ground with scholastic philosophy, and the Church's 1939 permission of the Confucian rites answered Longobardo's fear.
Reading
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Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian AnthologyZhu Xi and Lü Zuqian (trans. Wing-tsit Chan) · His own anthology of the Song masters, the primer of the School of Principle.
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Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged TopicallyZhu Xi (trans. Daniel K. Gardner) · His recorded conversations on how to read, sit and investigate things.
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The Religious Thought of Chu HsiJulia Ching · A Catholic sinologist asks whether principle and the Supreme Ultimate are God, with the Jesuit debate in view.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.