Zhu Xi completes the Neo-Confucian synthesis and the Four Books
- Date
- c. 1175-1190
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- East Asia
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
During the Southern Song dynasty, the scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) forged the definitive synthesis of Neo-Confucianism (lixue, the "School of Principle"), integrating the metaphysics of earlier Northern Song masters such as Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, and the brothers Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi into a coherent system built on li (principle) and qi (vital force).
His public debate with the rival idealist Lu Jiuyuan at the Goose Lake (Ehu) Temple in 1175 crystallised the central tensions of the movement. Zhu Xi elevated four texts, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects, and the Mencius, into a unified canon called the Four Books (Sishu), to which he attached authoritative commentaries collected as the Sishu zhangju jizhu, printed in 1190. From 1313 his commentaries became the prescribed basis of China's imperial civil service examinations, a status they held until the system was abolished in 1905. Zhu Xi's orthodoxy subsequently became the official state ideology and educational curriculum across Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, shaping East Asian intellectual life into the nineteenth century.
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Empires active in c. 1175-1190
- Jurchen Jin Dynasty1115 CE – 1234 CE
- Song Dynasty960 CE – 1279 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Kingdom of Chimor (Chimú)900 CE – 1470 CE
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- Ibn Rushd writes his commentaries on Aristotle1170s–1190s CE
- Birth of Gothic architecture at Saint-Denisc. 1140–1144 (Saint-Denis choir)
- The Toledo School and the Latin translation of Greek-Arabic learning12th century (Gerard of Cremona d. 1187)
- Building of Angkor Wat by Suryavarman IIc. 1122–1150 CE
- Construction of the Rapa Nui moai begins on Easter Islandc. 1250 CE
Further reading
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