Zhou Dunyi (周敦頤)
1017-1073 · Neo-Confucianism · Prominent
Zhou Dunyi took a diagram of the Supreme Polarity and wrote a few hundred words explaining it, and Neo-Confucianism grew out of that page. Movement and rest alternate, giving yin and yang, the two forms of vital force, then the five phases, then everything else. Human beings receive the finest portion of it, and the sage orders the world through stillness, humaneness and holding to the center.
Signature
The position Dunyi is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity
- Beginning of Things
- Emanation
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (20 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Dunyi refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Highest Good
- Virtue
What is the highest good? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality?