Person1130 – 1200

Zhu Xi

Also called: Zhuzi, Chu Hsi

Southern Song Confucian scholar who synthesised Neo-Confucianism on the theory of principle and material force and wrote the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books; honoured as Master Zhu

Born at Youxi in Fujian, he passed the jinshi in 1148 and, studying under Li Tong, carried on the learning of the Cheng brothers. His official career was brief, but as prefect of Nankang he revived the White Deer Grotto Academy (1179), and as prefect of Zhangzhou he published the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books in 1190. His debate with Lu Jiuyuan over method at the Goose Lake Temple in 1175 is famous. Late in life the powerful minister Han Tuozhou banned his teaching as “false learning” (the Qingyuan ban), and he died in 1200. The Classified Conversations, Reflections on Things at Hand and the Family Rituals carry his name.

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1190Zhu Xi’s Synthesis of Neo-Confucianismcreator
Zhu Xi of the Southern Song drew together the work of Northern Song thinkers into Neo-Confucianism (the Zhu Xi school), built on the theory of principle and material force and the doctrine that human nature is principle, and published the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books. It became the examination standard under the Yuan and Ming and, reaching Korea in late Goryeo, the ruling ideology of Joseon.

Themes this person appears in

Song, Ming and Samurai JapanAD 960 – 1500
The age when the civil-minded Song bought peace from Liao, Western Xia and Jin while the lower Yangtze boomed and Neo-Confucianism took shape, and the Ming, having driven out the Yuan, rebuilt the East Asian order through imperial autocracy, the sea ban and tribute — as Japan passed through the Kamakura and Muromachi warrior governments into the Warring States era, and Korea from Goryeo to Joseon