The Canon's Pivotal and Problematic Middle Age

With a renaissance spirit, Song Confucians championed the ancient Classics and emphasized insight into the sages’ profound meaning to rectify social-political disorder and to counter the pervasive legacy of Buddhism and Taoism which had dominated China for centuries. Why was the Song an especially transformative period for the Classics? Zhu Xi’s interpretations systematized the Five Classics; moreover, he elevated the “Four Books” to such superior status that these texts along with his commentaries soon became the core curriculum for the civil service examinations. Inquiring into what was the essential and unique Song character of classical scholarship, we will highlight the canonical Ritual Classics because these texts had been crucial for centuries. We show how Zhu updated ritual practices by focusing on the Yili as the crucial Classic for guidelines on etiquette and also rebalanced the relation between rituals and moral “principles.” Emphasizing rituals as manifesting principles reflected his systemization of the Classics by grounding them in a rationalistic philosophy, as when he equated the classical deity in the heavens with the concept of principle.

Although Chinese culture was significantly reoriented during the Song, and Zhu was a major figure in pivoting the Confucian canon in a direction that influenced East Asian orthodoxy into the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals increasingly since the seventeenth century have vented hostility toward Zhu’s philosophical system. For instance, Ling Tingkan complained about Song scholars: “what they called learning was not pursued in the Classics, but merely in moral principles.” How was Zhu’s reconstruction of the canon both so influential and so criticized in later centuries? In an effort to open a window on this paradox, we will explore how Zhu’s systematization evoked doubts even among some of his major thirteenth century followers who respected him as the authoritative reader of the Classics.