Philosophy
1020 to 1077, Hengqu (Shaanxi), China
All that exists is one qi condensing and dispersing, all people are my kin, and the scholar’s calling is to establish the mind for Heaven and Earth.
Start learning Zhang →Zhang Zai’s Western Inscription (Ximing) - a few dozen lines chalked on a study wall that became the ethical charter of Neo-Confucianism: because all things are woven from one cosmic stuff, Heaven and Earth are ou…
Zhang Zai’s cosmology: everything that exists is qi, condensing into things and dispersing back again. The Supreme Void (taixu) is not nothingness but qi at its most tenuous; nothing is created from nothing and no…
Zhang Zai’s critique of Buddhism and Daoism: their teachings of emptiness (sunyata) and non-being misread the Supreme Void, treating the world as illusion or as sprung from nothing. Against them he argues that the…
Zhang Zai’s solution to the ancient problem of evil in human nature: a distinction between the pure, good “nature of Heaven and Earth” shared by all, and the mixed “physical nature” (qizhi zhi xing) given by one&r…
Zhang Zai’s four-line credo - to establish the mind for Heaven and Earth, to secure life for the people, to continue the interrupted learning of past sages, and to open peace for ten thousand generations - which r…
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