Abstract
This paper aims to reconstruct a twelfth century neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi’s ethics of reading to see if it can provide us with a new possibility of recovering the old practice of reading as a self-(trans)formative event, yet in such a way as to accommodate the post-metaphysical culture of contemporary liberal education. With a comparative perspective, this attempt is intended to contribute to enriching vocabularies that can describe the educationally intrinsic value of the humanities education, which Peter Brooks aspires to with his idea of ethical reading in his recent edited book called, The Humanities and Public life (2014). In this reconstruction, I will start with Zhu Xi’s new ideas of (humanistic) learning since his ethics of reading is conceived as the actual way of realizing his ethics of learning. My underlying concern in this paper is to see whether Zhu Xi’s ethics of reading can be newly interpreted as the practice of self-reading, which may allow us to formulate his old idea of self-cultivation in quest for the Way (tao) in new terms: self-cultivation as self-dispossession in favor of the text, or as self-dialogue with the mediating practice of textuality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Four Books are: the Great learning(大學), the Analects(論語), the Mencius(孟子), the Doctrine of the Mean(中庸). These are collections of sages’ and worthies’ words from the past, especially the ancient period of China.
- 2.
The Five Classics are: the Book of Poetry(詩經), the Book of History(書經), the Book of Rites(禮記), the Book of Changes(周易), the Spring and Autumn Annals(春秋).
- 3.
A national civil service examination system had been implemented in China since the Han dynasty (206 BC ~ 220 AD) by the emperors for the reason of employment of the talented for the government. It was a system through which people could move up to the class of literati, which was respected as both a social and intellectual class, regardless of their birth class. The examination-obsessed culture common to contemporary East Asian societies is often explained by many scholars as having to do with this historically deep-rooted origin of the Confucian convention.
- 4.
This tendency was blamed on a very influential Confucian scholar-official Wang An-shih’s new policy (1021–1086 AD), or his ethics of learning that emphasized the idea of ‘learning for affairs of government’ (de Bary 1989; Bol 1989). We will discuss Wang’s idea of learning in detail a little later in this section.
- 5.
The fact that a high number of populations then were so eager to take the examination had the consequence of leaving a lot of them without public offices. According to de Bary and Chaffee (1989, p. 6–10), it created a situation where Zhu Xi’s idea of learning for the sake of oneself was received favorably by those who failed to pass the exam and to take public posts. From this time on, the idea of learning for the sake of oneself started to take a moral high ground since it was not directed to utilitarian careerism but pursued for pure moral reasons. It prompted the emergence of new kind of literati who did not take up public offices, yet still were viewed as leading the people as cultural and moral leaders outside the government.
- 6.
Ch’eng I (1033–1107 AD) was one of the outstanding neo-Confucian scholars whom Zhu Xi highly admired and followed as one of his neo-Confucian predecessors.
- 7.
Zhu Xi places the Four Books as texts more basic to the texts of the Five Classics because the “ease, immediacy and brevity” of these texts gave the reader an accessibility that other texts in the canon lacked. So only after fully mastering these four texts, are students supposed to turn to the previously authoritative Five Classics (Gardner 1990, p. 39).
- 8.
Zhu Xi, as a teacher and educator concerned with the institutionalization of his true learning in his society, attempts to give the educational process for moral self-transformation a clear direction, a coherent method, and substantial content with graded priority of learning (de Bary 1989, pp. 186–187). He also devotes most of his later life to working on various educational projects, i.e., editing, abridging and commenting on the Classics by focusing on the concrete examples and concise formula to make teaching and learning memorable, and by proposing a schedule of readings graded according to the age of students with a division of elementary and advanced education (p. 212).
- 9.
I also referred to another version of the same text in Korean (2012) by Lee, but it was a translation from a Japanese version of the same text by Kunio. I also referred to other Korean materials on Zhu Xi’s method of reading, such as those by Hwang (2010, 2014) to get a general grasp of the original text.
- 10.
For Zhu Xi, the discovery of principle is the same as the discovery of tao (the Way), the principle as personal morality innate within oneself as something real and substantial in the self. Thus, this discovery can be said to be the same as a shift in one’s values, that is, self-transformation.
- 11.
‘Preserving mind’ is a translation of a Chinese word ching (敬), a virtue of mind, which Ch’eng I first discussed and Zhu Xi after him further developed.
References
Ames, R. T., & Rosemont H. (Trans.). (1998). The Analects of Confucius: A philosophical translation. New York: The Random House Publishing Group.
Bol, P. (1989). Zhu Xi’s redefinitions of literati learning. In W. T. de Bary & J. W. Chafffee (Eds.), Neo-Confucian education; The formative stage. Berkeley: University of California.
Brooks, P., & Jewett, H. (Eds.). (2014). The humanities and public life. New York: Fordham University Press.
De Bary, W. T. (1989). Zhu Xi’s aims as an educator. In W. T. de Bary & J. W. Chafffee (Eds.), Neo-Confucian education; The formative stage. Berkeley: University of California.
De Bary, W. T., & Chaffee, J. W. (1989). Neo-Confucian education: The formative stage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
De Bary, W. M. T. (1996). Confucian education in pre-modern East Asia. In W.-M. Tu (Ed.), Confucian traditions in east Asian modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gardner, D. K. (Trans.). (1990). Chu His: Learning to be a Sage, Selections from Conversations of master Chu, Arranged Topically. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Herman, J. R. (2000). To know the Sages better than They knew themselves: Zhu Xi’s Romantic Hermeneutics. In T. Ching-I (Ed.), Classics and interpretations: The hermeneutic traditions in Chinese culture. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Hwang, K. J. (2010). ‘Reading’ as ‘Gewuzhizhigongfu’ in Zhu Xi’s philosophy of Gongfu. The Korean Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47, 249–280.
Hwang, K. J. (2014). What is learning? Seoul: Geulhangari.
Kwak, D. J. (2013). Education for self-transformation: Essay form as an educational practice. Dordrecht: Springer.
Lee, S. Y. (Trans.). (2012). Selections from Classified conversations of master Chu from Japanese version by Konio Miruna (2008). Seoul: Iyemoonseowon.
Miller, J. H. (1987). The ethics of reading. New York: Columbia University Press.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in Liberal education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Park, J.-B. (2005). The establishment of the four books centered Confucian curriculum and its educational significance. Koran Journal of History of Education, 27(2), 23–50.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kwak, DJ. (2020). Zhu Xi’s Ethics of Reading: For the Recovery of Humanistic Pedagogies of Learning. In: Reichenbach, R., Kwak, DJ. (eds) Confucian Perspectives on Learning and Self-Transformation. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40078-1_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40078-1_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-40077-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-40078-1
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)