Zhu Xi
1130-1200 · Neo-Confucianism · Prominent
Zhu Xi was a Song-dynasty philosopher who pulled Neo-Confucian thought into one system. Every thing has its li, the pattern making it what it should be, and its qi, the stuff it is made of. He told students to cultivate themselves by investigating things one at a time, until the pattern out there and the pattern in you line up. His commentaries on the Four Books became state orthodoxy and set the exams in China, Korea and Vietnam for six centuries.
Signature
The position Zhu Xi is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- leans Vertical
- Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (17 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- 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)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Zhu Xi refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Epistocracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Virtue
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Receptive Intellect / Coherence
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue / Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Authority
- Natural Law
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ancestral Presence / Multiple Souls
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Innate Good / Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Family / Ancestors
What is your primary bond and loyalty?