Zhu Xi

Zhu Xi

Zhu Xi ( Chinese  朱熹 , Pinyin Zhū ​​Xī , W.-G. Chu Hsi ) (* 1130 ; † 1200 ) was the most important neoconfucian in China. He taught at the famous Academy of the White Deer Grotto during the Song Dynasty and was a teacher and advisor to the Song Emperor.

Zhu Xi wrote more than 70 works. He also founded more than 50 private higher education institutions in the Wuyi Mountains and elsewhere, and trained several thousand students as a private teacher. Quite a few of his students became famous theorists. In every town where he worked, he founded a school.

Among the works of Zhu Xi, his book The Family Norms of the Zhu Family is an important work on regulating family matters. Shortly before his death, he corrected his comments on the book The Great Learning ( Chinese  大學 , Pinyin dàxué ), which served as the standard for the civil service examination until the 20th century . Zhu Xi combined The Great Learning together with the Conversations of Confucius , the book Middle and Measure and the Book of Mencius into the so-called Four Books .

Life magazine recognized his importance for Chinese intellectual history when it ranked him 45th among the hundred most important personalities of the past millennium.

Translation into Latin

• Philippe Couplet, Prospero Intorcetta, Christian Herdtrich, François Rougemont: Confucius Sinarum philosophus sive scientia Sinensis Latine exposita . Paris 1687. (contains a Latin translation of Zhu Xi's books The Great Learning , Middle and Measure and Conversations of Confucius )

literature

• Chan, Wing-tsit: CHU HSI . In: Herbert Franke (Ed.), Sung Biographies , Wiesbaden 1976 ISBN 3-515-02412-3 , Volume 1, pp. 282-290.
• Kenji Shimada: The Neo-Confucian Philosophy. The school directions Chu Hsis and Wang Yang-mings. 2nd ed. Reimer, Berlin 1987. (= Marburg studies on African and Asian studies, Ser. B; 9.)
• Martin Korenjak : History of the New Latin Literature. CH Beck, Munich 2016, pp. 152–153.

Web links

Commons : Zhu Xi  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Zhu Xi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Zhu Xi at Zeno.org .
• Kirill O. Thompson:  Zhu Xi. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Kirill Thompson:  Zhu Xi. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .