[1] Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, James B. Palais (2006). East Asia : A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company; p. 169.

 

The first Neoconfucians were, in fact, very concerned with cosmology. All of them maintained that in the universe as a whole, the dào (道) regulates the coming-into-being and going-out-of-being of everything. Much of their cosmology was presented as an interpretation of the Classic of Changes (易經, yijīng) – which was originally just a guide to telling fortunes, but which was widely believed to have been edited by Confucius, who had added commentaries in the appendixes revealing truths of the nature of the universe. In particular, they were inspired by a passage in Appendix III (‘The Great Treatise’, dazhuan, 大篆) that stated: “In the Yi there is the Supreme Ultimate (太极, tàijí) which produces the Two Forms.” The Supreme Ultimate seems always to be taken as the originating undifferentiated principle of things; and the multitude of things in the world are produced from it by a process in which two principles embodying the dual natures of things, the yin (陰, yīn) and the yang (陽, yáng,) oscillate in effectiveness. The increase of one and the decrease of the other continue until a limit is reached, which causes the process to reverse … and so it goes. We are familiar with the correlation of yang with lightness, maleness, dryness, etc. and of yin with darkness, femaleness, wetness, etc. In the Neoconfucian system(s) they produce by their interaction the 5 elements of the world: earth, fire, water, metal, and wood, and thus all the things of the world come into being. It is a characteristic doctrine of the daoxue that from a single principle – to be identified with the taiji in one way or another – all the variety of the world could be produced; and so the school was associated with the phrase ‘One Principle, Many Manifestations’ (理一分属, liyi fenshu.)

 

Significantly, the same generative story holds true of Man and the Five Constant Virtues proper to him (love (仁, rén,) righteousness (義, yì,) propriety (礼, lǐ,) wisdom (知, zhi,) and faithfulness (xin, 信,)) so that these cosmologies had direct consequences for the way that humans were supposed to behave. And that, of course, is the whole point of the philosophy. The Neoconfucians did not abandon the fundamental ethical concerns of the Confucians of previous times; rather they approached these concerns through a much more complete philosophy of the world.

 

The various early cosmologists chose to expand this common story in different ways. We shall consider three of the most important, each of whom contributed to the later and more sophisticated metaphysical and ethical teachings of the daoxue.

 

Zhou Dunyi: Diagramming the Supreme Ultimate

 

The first of our cosmologists is Zhou Dunyi (周敦頤, Zhōu Dūnyí, 1017-1073.) Taking his inspiration from a model that probably originated amongst the Daoists, Zhou diagrammed his cosmology in the taijitu, ‘The Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate.’ To this he appended his ‘Explanation,’ (太極圖說, taijitushuo) in which he states[1]:

 

The Ultimateless (wuji)! And yet the Supreme Ultimate (taiji)! The Supreme Ultimate  through Movement produces the yang. This Movement having reached its limit, is followed by Quiescence, and by this Quiescence, it produces the yin. When Quiescence has reached its limit, there is a return to Movement. Thus Movement and Quiescence, in alternation, become each the source of the other.

 

The wuji (无极) with which he identified taiji can be understood as a kind of reification of potentiality, as the taiji is of actuality. In combination they are the source of all things either real or possible; but, as the quote indicates, they do not act directly. Zhou goes on to describes how the yang and yin produce the 5 elements, and result in change and transformation without cease. And then he talks of Man:

 

… who receives these in their highest excellence and hence is the most intelligent. His bodily form thereupon is produced and his spirit develops intelligence and consciousness. The five principles of his nature [the five constant virtues] react, so that the distinction between good and evil emerges and the myriad phenomena of conduct appear. The sage regulates himself by means of the mean, correctness, human-heartedness, and righteousness, and takes Quiescence as the essential.

 

This Quiescence he recommends also using the term wuyu (无欲,) meaning ‘having no desires,’ in which the desires that he speaks of are really just the ‘selfish’ desires. The implication is clearly that Man’s default state, the state that is the result of embracing Quiescence, is one in which our impulses are for the morally good. In this respect Zhou Dunyi follows the teaching of Mencius, who claimed that human nature was innately good, and in his championing of passivity and inaction he is apparently influenced by the Daoists. For Zhou, then, the way of the sage had to involve the renunciation of worldly ambitions – even scholarly ambitions, finding contentment in less, and achieving harmony with nature. As the Yijīng says, ‘[the sage’s] course is in harmony with the four seasons.’

 

The same book also says that

 

Sincerity is the foundation of the sage. It is the foundation of the Five Constant Virtues, and the source of all activities

 

and indeed, Zhou was well known to take Sincerity (诚, cheng) as the touchstone for the sage’s character. It is ‘honesty, earnestness, being true to oneself, being true to the nature of all things in the universe;’ and it is the original and default character of Man. It is only through Man’s inability to maintain sincerity, caused by the influence of external things on us, that gives rise to evil. Again, the influence of Mencius is clear.

 

Shao Yong: Interpreting the Hexagrams

 

Shao Yong (邵雍, Shào Yōng, 1011-1073) was inspired by the hexagrams of the Yijing, and in his ‘Book of Supreme World Ordering Principles’ (皇極經世, Huangji Jingshi) used them to illustrate a theory of the processes that continually create the world. These hexagrams are combinations of 6 lines, each of which is either broken (- -) and represents yin, or solid (– ) and represents yang. He begins with an interpretation of the statement from the Yijing that in the Yi there is the Supreme Ultimate, which produces the Two Forms, which produce the Four Emblems, which produce the eight trigrams (八卦, bā guà.) He then expands this idea to the hexagrams.

 

Shao Yong’s interpretation of the statement was a bit different from Zhou Dunyi’s. For Zhou the Two Forms just mentioned would have been yin and yang, but for Shao Yong, they are Movement and Quiescence, represented by solid or broken lines at the bottom of the trigram. Each additional line of the hexagram may be either broken or solid, and Shao describes how these represent in that position the actualization of a particular binary possibility – hard or soft, greater or lesser, and so on. Taken as a whole, each of the 64 hexagrams represents some aspect of the universe. In his ‘Primeval Diagram’ Shao Yong arranged these figures in a circle with the all-yang hexagram (乾, qián, ‘force’) at the top and the all-yin one (坤, kūn, ‘field’) at the bottom. The arrangement was supposed to be very significant, representing the life cycle of things in the universe as they are born, grow, reach maturity, decline, and die, but the details of this are not important to us. What is important is the mechanism by which this process is driven. In this system, since yin and yang are dynamic, each of the binary possibilities that each line represents will tend to move from one state to the other, and the thing that the hexagram represents will change correspondingly. This is how the universe is seen to be constantly in flux.

 

Zhang Zai: Breathing Qi

 

In his book the ‘The Correct Discipline for Beginners’ (正蒙, cheng meng) Zhang Zai (張載, Zhāng Zǎi, 1020-1077) made qi (氣, qì) the central concept of his system. Originally meaning no more than ‘breath’ or ‘air,’ qi came to mean Vital Spirit or Material Force. When Zhang Zai read that “In the Yi there is the Supreme Ultimate which produces the Two Forms” he interpreted this quite differently again from either Zhou Dunyi or Shao Yong. For Zhang Zai, the Supreme Ultimate was to be identified with qi – by which he meant the material substance of the universe – and the Two Forms it produces are, as for Zhou, the principles of yin and yang. The yin and the yang in turn affect the qi: when influenced by the yang principle, the qi takes on its properties of rising, floating, Movement, etc. When affected by the yin principle, qi has the properties of sinking or Quiescence. Moreover, as the qi is constantly in flux, it is constantly condensing and dissipating; and when it condenses, that is the coming into being of some part of the world; and when it dissipates, that is the going out of being of some part. In the state of complete dissipation Zhang refers to qi as the Great Vacuity or the Great Harmony; but even in that state it is not nothing – it is, in fact, ultimate potentiality.

 

In a famous part of the Cheng Meng called the ‘Western Inscription’ (ximing) he notes that as people are part of the world, they are also composed of qi. In fact, “That which fills the Universe I regard as my body.” Thus we should respect Heaven and Earth as we do our own parents, showing them the same filial loyalty; and we should consider all men to be on a level with ourselves as children of Heaven and Earth, and as our brothers. Loving them appropriately in this way serves society and serves humanity. This is a great expansion of the idea of proper brotherly love over that of the classic Confucians. It is rather closer to the ideas of the Mohists, and is probably an attempt to claim an admirable Buddhist ethic for daoxue.

 

But Zhang’s idea of human nature included more than just the essentially variable qi nature of our physical stuff; he also believed that there was an unvarying ‘original’ nature derived somehow from the originating Great Harmony that constitutes our real moral nature – and it is a good nature. Unfortunately the working of the original nature is blocked by the working of the physical nature – especially the desires that it generates – which prevents us being normally good all the time. Although we cannot choose our initial corrupting physical nature – it is essentially a matter of chance – it is possible to work on it to bring it closer to the ‘original’ nature, or at least to make it less of a hindrance to the expression of that original nature. Of course, accepting his idea that we are all parts of one body (in qi) would assist in our suppressing selfish desires.

 

Of more direct use, however, was education – especially in ritual and the classics. Ritual, the Confucians believed, was set up by the sages as a perfect model for human action. It was, concluded Zhang Zai, a reflection of the original nature of human beings. The study of ritual, if pursued with sincerity, would be a guide to the uncovering of original nature, and could make one a sage, which, of course, is the only goal worth pursuing.

 

Cheng Hao (程顥, Chéng Hao, 1032-1085) and Cheng Yi (程頤, Chéng Yí,1033–1107) were brothers[1] who took very different attitudes on some of the fundamental problems that concerned the daoxue philosophers; and, in fact, each brother is taken to be the starting point of one of the two branches into which daoxue came to be divided. The younger brother, Yi, began the teaching that was properly systematized by Zhu Xi, and was called the Study of Principles (理學, lǐxué,) or the Cheng-Zhu School; while the older brother began the teaching that would be taken up again by Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Shouren, and was known as the Study of Mind (心学, xinxué) or the Lu-Wang School. Their works are collected in ‘The Complete Works of the Two Chengs’ (程全书, Er Cheng quan shu)

  

Cheng Yi’s Theory

 

Cheng Yi’s contribution can be seen as the response to a problem in the philosophies of Shao Yong and Zhang Zai. The problem is that to say no more than that things come into being through the movement of qi is not a sufficient explanation for the coming into being of the infinitely various things of the universe. Why does the condensation of qi in one case produce leaves and in another case produce flowers? A solution to problem is, however, suggested by some features of those systems. In the case of Shao Yong’s system, for example, it is clear that there is a law or principle concerning the transformation of things – a principle that is prior to the things themselves and that is not produced by yin and yang. This suggests that other principles of the same sort are possible. Such principles could then be used to explain that a leaf results from the condensation of qi when it occurs according to the principle of leaves, and a flower when it occurs according to the principle of flowers. Such is Cheng Yi’s theory of principles or li (理). Every thing in the world is the result of material (qi) being informed by a principle. These principles are eternal and unvarying and independent of our knowledge of them.

 

Zhu Xi’s Theory

 

Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130-1200) accepted this solution to the problem, but he expanded it in order to fill gaps which are apparent. He clarified, for example, the role of the Supreme Ultimate, the taiji. The li of a thing, as its principle, is also its standard, ji (极), of ultimate perfection. Considering the universe as a whole, it too must have a ji. Thus he says

 

Everything has an ultimate, which is the ultimate li. That which unites and embraces the li of heaven, earth, and all things is the Supreme Ultimate.[1]

 

Since the li of everything is the principle of everything, it will be necessary for each and every thing to be organized by the Supreme Ultimate. In terms that Cheng Yi could appreciate: we can imagine a flower being simultaneously organized by the principle of a flower, and the principle of plants, and the principle of living things, and the principle of things in general, and many other principles that we can think of. These intermediate levels of organization did not appear to impress Zhu Xi, but the idea of a principle applying to a particular thing being subordinated to a universal principle in the organizion of qi he took to be of wide application. From this perspective, any thing in the world is explicable in terms of: (1) the proper principle for a thing, (2) its material power (qi), and (3) its norm, tianming (天命, tiānmìng), or ‘mandate of heaven,’ which is also yet another term for the Supreme Ultimate.

 

a.             Principle and the Person

 

The most significant application of this theory, however, was to the concept of a person. It was taken to provide a solution to a difficulty in the understanding of human nature that had divided the Confucians of the classical period. The difficulty was to understand the relationship that exists amongst the mind-heart (心, xin), the emotions (情, qing), and the natural human tendencies and dispositions (性, xing) (what was often meant by ‘human nature.’) These are all aspects of a human being that seem to be independent, possibly non-physical, and often in conflict. Zhu Xi’s solution was to analogize the xin to the Supreme Ultimate as the overall organizing principle that ‘unifies’ the dispositions and the emotions.[2] Dispositions, which may be considered as rules or principles of behaviour, form a principle (li), and that principle together with the material power (qi) organizes the emerging person. The dynamic and physical nature of qi was what created a corruption of the person, taking it away from the norm. One characteristic form of corruption was to encourage emotions and selfish desires. (Zhu Xi referred to this as the contrast between daoxin (Mind of the Way) and renxin (Mind of Humanity.))

 

To continue with the analogy of microcosm and macrocosm for a moment: the mind-heart of a person on this understanding is the basis of individual creativity and manifests the mandate of heaven. It is a replication in the person of the cosmic creativity. The four stages of creativity are correlated with the four cardinal virtues, thus: origination/humanity (ren), growth/propriety (yi), flourishing/ritual conduct (li) and firmness/discernment (zhi). Humanity is thus part of the creative nature of the universe, and as it assists in the creativity of others, it is thus primarily a force for other-directedness.

 

In this way, then, Zhu Xi created a tripartite perspective on the individual in terms of form (li), dynamic (qi), and unity (xin). The result of the unification – i.e. if the person comes to be organized according to the norm for persons – would be harmony and balance. This is a desirable state, and Zhu Xi had something to say about achieving it. He proposed that the trained xin can recognise the li in things – including in itself, and it can make the distinctions between what is and what ought to be that are required for ethical action and for flourishing. Of those, the most important is the distinction between principle as the form of human ethical action [what ought to be done], and the dynamic human emotions tending to selfishness [what is done.] Given this, all that is required now is to recommend the proper ways to train the xin.

 

b.             Investigating Things at Hand

 

Modes of praxis recommended by Zhu Xi included studying the true meaning of the Confucian classics, and a form of meditation known as quiet-sitting. Justified by the belief that inner processes are mirrored in the outer processes, a more characteristic mode was empirical research into the nature of the external world in order to discover its principles. This was called gewu (格物, géwù,) the ‘investigation of things.’ One approached the study with reverence (jing) which helped one always to appreciate the need to act appropriately (yi). Cheng (sincerity) and ren (humanity) provide the methods of cultivation of the various emotional dispositions. Together with the knowledge gained of principles, this should lead to appropriate actions.

 

… the student must, for all the separate things in the world, by means of the li which he already understands, proceed further to gain exhaustive knowledge of those, thus striving to extend to the farthest point. When one has exerted oneself for a long time, finally one morning a complete understanding wil open before one. Thereupon there will be a thorough comprehension of all the multitude of things, external or internal, fine or coarse, and every exercise of the mind will be marked by complete enlightenment.[3]

 

This vision of ‘Sudden Enlightenment’ must remind us of the claims of the Buddhists; but, apart from that, the practice recommended here has been seen as a prefiguring of the scientific attitude.

 

[1] Huang-Siu-chi. (1977) Lu Hsiang-shan: A Twelfth Century Chinese Idealist Philosophy. Westport , CT : Hyperion Press; p. 31.

[2] And the similarity of this claim to Socrates’s claim is also remarkable.