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Zhu Xi
Zhu Xi's
views on human nature
Zhu Xi (reads Chu Hsi
in the Wade-Giles system, 1130-1200) was a late Song scholar who
synthesized the earlier Song scholars of Zhou Dunyi, Cheng Hao, Cheng
Yi, and Zhang Zai, and edited the Four Books. It was he who gave
what was later accepted as the standard interpretation of Confucian
learning in the imperial examinations, completing a second wave of
canonizing Confucian learning after the Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu
succeeded in having the emperor Han Wudi accept Confucian learning as
the state ethic in the Han Dynasty. The Cheng-Zhu school of
Confucian learning (named after the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi) absorbed
many elements from Daoist and Buddhist teachings but combated the other
worldly tendencies of both teachings. It became Confucian
orthodoxy for 500-600 hundred years before challenged by Confucian
scholars who wanted to go back to the Confucian classics before they
were abridged into the Four Books. In the 20th century,
Neo-Confucian learning saw its revival in East Asia and what one could
call the Chinese diaspora: areas where large Chinese communities reside,
including southeast Asia and Chinese communities in America.
In Zhu Xi's struggles with Daoism and
Buddhism, like his predecessors, he integrates elements of both into his
writings. In what follows I will examine first the Daoist
influence on him, then the Buddhist influence, and how he reinterpreted
Confucian learning in light of both.
1. Influence of
Daoism:
Linking primordial chaos
with civilization through seeing nature as constant movement, generating
the myriad things on its own: Like Zhou Dunyi (see notes
or early part of chap.20 of de Bary), Zhu Xi attempted to bridge Daoism
and Confucian this-worldliness. Seeing the primordial state of
nature that the Daoists longed to return to not as a quiet pristine
scene, but a site of constant movement generated from within itself, Zhu
Xi borrowed from Zhou Dunyi the idea of the Supreme Ultimate Polarity to
describe this constant self-generated movement and the moments when it
stops: when the movement goes on, it has a force called yang, and when
it momentarily stops, the stillness is called yin. The different
combinations of the yin and yang lead to the myriad things in this
world. (de Bary, 699-700)
The Confucian Way and the
workings of the Supreme Ultimate: Having argued that the
primordial chaos of the Daoists and the Confucian civilized world were
in a continuum, the former naturally generating the latter, Zhu Xi built
a greater linkage between the Confucian and the Daoist worlds by arguing
that the Confucian principles (li) were directly embedded in the
primordial chaos: it was they that generated the force called yang,
leading to the changes which led to civilization and the myriad things.
(701-702) In another place, Zhu Xi more specifically describes how
the myriad things were created, emphasizing that it was the material
force [directed by the Confucian principles which caused the ying-yang
movements] that created the universe. (702-703)
2. Influence of
Buddhism
Differentiation between the
material and spiritual worlds on the basis of
purity/impurity: As we know, the Buddhist belief that human
perceptions are false is based on their belief in the impurity of the
world (meaning the world is made up of composites). Only purity is
permanent and the impure composites disintegrate over time. In his
attempt to fight against the other-worldly tendencies of Buddhism, Zhu
Xi emphasized the authenticity of the material world. While he did
not want to separate ideas from the material world for fear that would
destroy the Confucian belief in human innate rationality, he wanted to
distinguish between ideas/principles and the material world. so he
chose to use the binary of pure/impure to describe the difference: on
the one hand, principles were inherent in the material world [just as
moral ideas were inherent in the human mind, as Confucians argued], on
the other hand, principles were pure, while the material world was
impure. (699-700) This way, Zhu Xi managed to state the slight
superiority of principles over the material world while not separating
them into two different worlds. Zhu Xi hastened to add that
however, principles would not work without material force. Here
the material force referred to the five phases or elements, and
principles the Confucian ones including humaneness, rightness, ritual
decorum, and wisdom. (700)
Principle and material force
were inseparable: As a good Confucian who focused on practical
results, Zhu Xi pointed out that the principles could not function
without material force, thus with death and disintegration the spirit
within the human being was gone because the spirit could not function
without the body. (701) It was a rebuttal to the Buddhist argument
of the transmigration of souls, showing that rationality or spirituality
do not exist aside from individual humans, emphasizing rationality as an
instrument for this worldly activities. Zhu follows a similar
logic in his piece "Spiritual Beings," although he leaves room for
ancestral worship: the worship of the spirit of the ancestors because
their material bodies decayed gradually, helping the spirit to linger on
for a while after death.(703-704)
Because of the
centrality of the issue of human innate rationality, Zhu Xi argued for
the integration of principles and material force in many places.
In "The Mind-and-Heart," he compared them to candle flames (spirit),
which could not burn without the candle (material force). He
argued that the mind could access the whole universe, since they shared
the same principles, and controlled the universe instead of being
controlled by it. (708-709) This was a rebuttal to the Buddhist
argument that human perceptions are illusions and truth was separate
from human experience in this world. The thing is, by creating
this all powerful mind that could access the whole universe, Zhu Xi
himself was perilously close to the argument that thinking could be
separate from human experience, something he desperately tried to
combat.
Human nature: Just as in the
Consciousness-Only Buddhist schools of thought, where human knowledge is
divided into pure or true knowledge stored in the alaya, and
contaminated knowledge as transmitted through the six senses, so Zhu Xi
used this binary of purity versus contamination to describe what he
termed the original human nature of perfection and its operation, during
which evil arises. He describes this original human nature not yet
put in practice as identical with the Confucian principles, the same
principles that led to the ying-yang forces to create the myriad things
in the universe. (704-705)
Even though
human thinking and the material world shared the same principles, Zhu Xi
tried to differentiate between the human and material world, not
qualitatively, but only through degrees. Thus like his
contemporaries, he equated the universe with the moral universe:
Thus
consciousness and movement proceed from material force, while
humaneness, rightness, decorum, and wisdom proceed from
principle. Both human beings and things are capable of
consciousness and movement, but though things possess humaneness,
rightness, decorum, and wisdom, they cannot have them completely....(706)Avoiding
vagueness in defining human nature: Perhaps
more than any earlier Confucian, Zhu Xi was extremely conscious of the
difference between principle and practice. When Confucius was
asked to define humaneness, as recorded in the Analects, he only
pointed out which aspects of humaneness his individual students were
lacking in. When Zhu Xi tried to define humaneness, he pondered
about whether to define it as a principle or a practice. His
concern was it should not be too vague or too specific, and yet it
should have enough substance to serve as a guideline for action.
Defining it as a principle, "to talk about ren in general
terms of the unity of things and the self will lead people to be vague,
confused, neglected, and make no effort to be alert." (712) Therefore
Zhu Xi confined the definition of humaneness to a function, or a
sub-principle to a larger principle called impartiality, which he
said should be in place before humaneness could be developed. (712)
After limiting humaneness to the framework of impartiality, which
basically means other-regarding, in contrast to partiality, which in
this context means concerned primarily of one's self-interests, Zhu Xi
further defined humaneness as a principle of which empathy and love
are functions. (712-713) Love, what made humaneness specific and
practicable, on the other hand, could not be specifically defined
because to "talk about love in specific terms of consciousness will
lead people to be nervous, irascible, and devoid of any quality of
depth;" (713) in general it would just be too restricting to people
and deprive them of the freer exercise of their (moral) nature. In
his definition of humaneness, therefore, one can see that Zhu Xi wanted
to achieve both the effect of universal principles clearly defined and
to adhere to the traditional Confucian goal of making all principles
practicable. Both the universality and the practicability of
humaneness thus defined were to combat the vagueness of Buddhist
teachings about this world and the Buddhist views of the universe (as
empty or illusive).
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