In this volume Donald Munro, author of important studies on
early and contemporary China, provides a critical analysis of the
doctrines of the Sung Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi
(1130-1200). For nearly six centuries Confucian orthodoxy was based
on Chu Hsi's commentaries on Confucian classics. These commentaries
were the core of the curriculum studied by candidates for the civil
service in China until 1905 and provided guidelines both for
personal behavior and for official policy. Munro finds the key to
the complexities of Chu Hsi's thought in his mode of discourse: the
structural images of family, stream of water, mirror, body, plant,
and ruler. Furthermore, he discloses the basic framework of Chu
Hsi's ethics and the theory of human nature that is provided by
these illustrative images.
As revealed by Munro, Chu Hsi's thought is polarized between
family duty and a broader altruism and between obedience to
external authority and self-discovery of moral truth. To understand
these tensions moves us toward clarifying the meaning of each idea
in the sets. The interplay of these ideas, selectively emphasized
over time by later Confucians, is a background for explaining
modern Chinese thought. In it, among other things, Confucianism and
Marxism-Leninism co-exist.
Originally published in 1988.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905.
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