Zhu Xi

Surviving portrait of Chu Weng KungState Duke of Hui of the Song Dynasty by an unknown artist, circa. 1330

“State Duke” was the posthumous title in Zhu Xi’s honor and Hui was the prefecture where his ancestors had lived for centuries. The area is now in Kiangsi Province. Zhu Xi’s father moved from there to Fujian to serve as an official, and Zhu Xi was born there.

Born in 1130 and dying in 1200, Zhu Xi (also spelled as Chi Hsi) served many roles in ancient China as a philosopher, classical commentator, scientific thinker and historian.

Born in Yuxi, Fujian Province, China during the Song dynasty (1127-1279), Zhu Xi was a leader in the rationalist wing of the neo-Confucian school developing in China from the 10th Century. His extensive commentaries on earlier Confucian thought, published 1190 as the Si-Zi, established the Four Books (the Great Learning, the Analects, the Book of Mencius, and the Doctrine of the Mean) was the basic text in school education for almost 600 years. The civil service examination system, for which his commentaries on the Confucian Classics were officially declared as the orthodox interpretation in 1313, prevailed until 1907. His conservative authoritarianism increasingly dominated Chinese, Japanese, and Korean political, social, and cultural perceptions until the 20th Century; the family rituals he formulated are still the models of many Asian social customs.

While borrowing heavily from Buddhism, Zhu Xi made use of the traditional philosophical vocabulary classical Confucianism but augmented it with complex theoretical discussions of li (the patterned regularity of existence) and qi (the psychosomatic stuff of existence), giving precedence to the former.

This abstract distinction of 'li' and 'qi' had moral significance. They could be appealed to qualitatively in explanations of both the goodness of humanity and how to realize it. In his writings, he felt that the normative principle of human nature is pure and good. Expressed in concrete form human nature is less than perfect, but it can be refined through self-cultivation based on study of the classics. Although Zhu Xi did not rule out introspection as a means to illumination, he emphasized more on scholarly learning.

Zhu Xi also wrote on musical notation, understood fossilization three centuries before Leonardo da Vinci, realized that mountains had once been under the sea, saw the Earth's origins in condensation from cosmic matter, and perceived the universe as evolving and spinning from elemental force.

1		12		23
	Zhu Xi		Zhu Lanyu		Zhu Chaoxian
2		13		24
	Zhu		Zhu Yuanming		Zhu Shida
3		14		25
	Zhu Quan		Zhu Zhongren		Zhu Gongmao
4		15		26
	Zhu Xun		Zhu Lexuan		Zhu Cheungrui
5		16		27
	Zhu Lin		Zhu Bichi		Zhu Guochang
6		17		28
	Zhu Bing		Zhu Xianbao		Zhu Cangrui
7		18		29
	Zhu Jixian		Zhu Fongrong		Zhu Zhong
8		19		30
	Zhu Daozong		Zhu Guanlu		Zhu Dexu
9		20		31
	Zhu Menglun		Zhu Yuanfa		Zhu Junbo
10		21		32
	Zhu Yuanyuan		Zhu Yunsheng		Zhu Jinhao
11		22		33
	Zhu Jianjin		Zhu Zhouwen		Zhu Jingxiong