Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073 AD) has been generally regarded as the pioneer of neo‐Confucianism, even though some scholars argue that what he teaches is not pure Confucianism. Zhou himself absorbed teachings of Daoism and Buddhism to some extent, and he, unlike other neo‐Confucianists, did not severely criticize those two schools’ doctrines. Some of his philosophical notions can be traced back to either a Daoist or a Buddhist origin. However, the strongest philosophical heritage in Zhou’s work is that of the Book of Changes (the Yijing) and the “Doctrine of the Mean,” both constitutive of core Confucianism. Furthermore, the cosmological explanation that Zhou offered would later become the dominant thesis of the Cheng–Zhu school (see Chapter 3). The Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi) studied under him for about one year in their teens. Even though the mentorship was short, it left an ineradicable impact on the two brothers’ minds that they decided to pursue scholarship instead of politics. Zhu Xi, as the philosophical descendent of the Cheng brothers, would later become the most fervent defender of Zhou Dunyi’s philosophy. He argued that Zhou’s thought was truly representative of Confucianism. One might say that it was largely through Zhu Xi’s exposition and elaboration that Zhou Dunyi’s philosophy acquired the status that it had in neo‐Confucianism.
There are only two short philosophical texts by Zhou Dunyi:
The Exposition of the Taiji Diagram 太極圖
1 and
Penetrating the Book (of
Changes) 通書.
2 In the former, Zhou explicates the cosmic origin, the cosmic order and the cosmic constitution. He calls the cosmic origin
wuji (無極) (the controversy surrounding this term will be explained later). The cosmic order is given as a generation process from
Taiji (the Supreme Ultimate)
3 to the cosmic energy
yin and
yang, to the five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth), and finally to the formation of the myriad creatures of the world. The cosmic constitution can be reduced to two principles: the principle of male and the principle of female, represented by the cosmic energy of
yang and the cosmic energy of
yin, respectively. Zhou Dunyi only offered this brief cosmological narrative in his entire work, but it became a core thesis in neo‐Confucianism. Since this cosmological narrative was given in terse phrases without much explanation, it has stirred up widely different interpretations. The key term here is
wuji, which did not appear in any ancient Confucian text. It was first seen in the
Daodejing: “He will never deviate from eternal virtue, but returns to the state of the Ultimate of Non‐being (
Wuji)” (Chapter 28; Chan 1963, 154). Many scholars of Chinese intellectual history have worked as historical Sherlock Holmes in their investigation of the speculated origin of Zhou’s
Taiji diagram. The focus was on whether Zhou Dunyi got the
Taiji diagram from a Daoist’s inspiration. Many philosophers have also debated on the connotations of the notion of
wuji—on whether it is related to Laozi’s notion of
wu 無 (nothingness). Neo‐Confucians had a strong distaste for the Daoist’s discourse on
wu. The fundamental tenet of neo‐Confucianism is realism: the world as we know it is real and it exists independently of our conceptions and perceptions. The unease neo‐Confucians had was on whether Zhou Dunyi’s discourse on
wuji would lead to the Daoist rejection of the robust independent reality of the phenomenal world.
The controversy over the meaning of this notion is even preserved among contemporary English translations of the text. Wuji has been translated as “the Ultimateless” (Feng 1983; Derk Bodde’s translation), “the Ultimate of Nonbeing” (Chan 1963; Neville 1980), “Non‐polar” (Joseph A. Adler’s translation, in de Bary et al. 1999), and “ultimate void” (R. Wang 2005). All these various translations reflect the difficulty in deciphering Zhou’s idea of wuji. Without understanding what the term means, however, we cannot possibly understand Zhou Dunyi’s cosmology. The first section of this chapter will explain the historical controversies on the interpretation of this concept. The second section will introduce the philosophical debate on being (you) and nothingness (wu) prior to Zhou’s times, to see whether his wuji notion is related to the notion of wu. The final section will give a different interpretation of Zhou’s notion of wuji, and further develops his cosmological view. To serve as the entry to neo‐Confucianism, this chapter will trace the historical lineage of the founding ideas of Zhou Dunyi.
