Zhu Xi · Philosophy

The Four Books and the Curriculum

Zhu Xi’s reshaping of the Confucian canon: he elevated four texts - the Great Learning, Analects, Mencius, and Doctrine of the Mean - into a single graded curriculum with his own commentaries, which became the standard of the civil-service examinations for six centuries and shaped East Asian civilization.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Zhu Xi grouped the Great Learning , Analects , Mencius , and Doctrine of the Mean into the ‘Four Books,’ gave them a graded reading order and authoritative commentaries, and that these became the examination standard from 1313 to 1905, shaping China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Explain what…

Leads to The Great Learning (Daxue).

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