Chu Hi biography

Dromo's Den

Chu Hi Biography

CHU HI, (1130-1200). The modern apostle of Confucianism in its philosophical form, whose writings are the recognized standard of orthodoxy and the creed of educated men in China. He has been officially approved by successive Imperial dynasties and even canonized. His father was a government officer and he was born in Fu-kien. Precocious from childhood, he took his second degree before he was 20 years old. He devoted his leisure time when in office to studying Buddhism and Taoism, but throwing these aside after a few years, he became an enthusiastic student of the writings of the schoolmen of the Sung dynasty (960-1126 A.D.). Confucianism, under the analysis and exposition of the scholars Chou Tun-i and the brothers Cheng, had received a new statement, emerging as something like a philosophical system, instead of the ancient simple ethics and ritual. Chu Hi, expanding and expounding the doctrines thus set forth a century before his day, won fame all over the Empire, and was summoned by the Emperor to the court for consultation in regard to things literary and political. He elucidated the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius, more especially with reference to the nature of man, the origin of good and evil, and the principles of creation. In 1180, as governor of a city in Kiang-si, he applied his principles and greatly improved public morals. His study room was the White Deer Grotto, on the hills near Lake Po-yang. Not content with philosophy, he summoned around him famous scholars, who were his pupils and worked over the great historical annals of Ssï-ma Kuang, and thus furnished the standard history of China; for Chu Hi's work, having been many times since reprinted with commentary and continuation, has been widely read in all Chinese Asia. Nearly all the histories and biographies (apart from annals) written since his time in China, Korea, Japan, etc., have been powerfully influenced by Chu Hi’s model--i.e., on the plan of philosophy and edification, being less consecutive narratives of events than appraisals of men and their actions as righteous and unrighteous, according to Chu Hi's standards.

Chu Hi extended his labors in every direction of metaphysical speculation, and his commentaries on the ancient writings of the sages have held the intellect of learned men of China and surrounding countries almost without challenge or criticism, until about the beginning of the second half of the seventeenth century, when they began to be vigorously assailed in China and later in Korea and Japan. In Japan Chu Hi's system is called Tei-shu, which is the Japanese pronunciation of the names of the Cheng brothers and of Chu- (Hi). It was officially encouraged by Iyeyasu and his successors very much as a state church, and to oppose it openly was at first politically dangerous. Its most famous Japanese expounders were Kyuso, Seiga, and Arai Hakuseki, the opponents of this orthodox school and the critics of Chu Hi being Jinsai, Sorai, Togai, and others. The latter, forming the Kogahu school, was noted for its doubt of the truth of the teachings of Chu Hi. Chu Hi's philosophy in Japan, as well as in China, profoundly influenced the form and spirit of literature, both scholastic and popular; but in Japan the Chinese teachings, becoming amalgamated in a common cause with Shinto, served powerfully to stimulate the national sentiment and feeling which overthrew the Shogun and Yedo government and restored the Mikado to supreme power. Especially in the Province of Mito was this union of Chinese philosophy and Shinto teaching successfully carried out, powerfully influencing the minds of the gentry and scholars in bringing about the great revolution of 1868. Thus one of the strangest phenomena in history was witnessed in that the rule of the Tokugawa family (1604-1868) was first shaken and then overthrown by the very doctrine "which generations of able shoguns and their ministers had earnestly encouraged and protected."

In China Chu Hi's philosophy held its own until near the close of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) , when Chinese scholars began to feel that Chu Hi's system was too narrow to hold all the truth. As a result of the profound thinking stimulated by the Manchu conquest, a school of criticism and opposition arose whose demand was for a study of the ancient texts in their purity. By continuation and expansion of philosophical labor, and especially by coming into contact with Occidental science and speculation, modern reformers have become prominent, but their activity and aims have been much obscured to Western minds by the Boxer uprising (1900) and the necessary foreign invasion.

In brief, the system promulgated by Chu Hi is a body of thought which may be called the result of Chinese reflection during 1500 years, put into logical Chinese form indeed, but in reality an amalgamation of the three systems or religions of China. It is the ethics of Confucius transfused with the mystical elements of Taoism and the speculations of Buddhism, though very little acknowledgment is made to any thought originating outside of the Confucian cycle. It is less rationalistic than pantheistic, for the cultivated Confucians believe in heaven as a bundle of laws and forces, or at least an orderly system of abstract principles and regulated energy, but with no clear expression of personality. Their voluminous discussions of Spirit, Way, Reason, Law, deal with what is formless and invisible. When a term for Creator is used, it is a rare word and found only in the vocabulary of scholars. There is no clear grasp of the idea of a personal Creator. Man is the highest expression of the forces of the universe, and even gods and devils fear his determined mind. The ultimate realities are force and law. Man has no immortal soul; he is highest in the scale of existence, yet he is only one in the endless series. The station, duty, or position in life is greater than the individual, and it determines him. Hence, in Japan, while loyalty (not filial piety, as in China) is the root of the system, the high sense of honor and willingness of self-effacement is the line of duty. Hence, also, in China the determination at all hazards to "save the face" of everything, and the making of form and ritual equal to substance and containing it. In Japan in the twentieth century Chu Hi's system is but a memory, or at most an evanescent shadow; in Korea it is powerful, yet rather as an adjunct to political economy; in China it still holds its own, but precariously, against the assaults of the modern radical reformers, of whom Kang Yu-wei, who in 1899 emerged into notice as adviser to the Emperor, is the most conspicuous example and best known in the Occident.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. V (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 305-306.