China & East Asia · 1032–1085
Cheng Hao
Elder Cheng brother, teacher of humaneness as oneness
The humane person forms one body with heaven, earth and the myriad things; principle is realised by quietly recognising this unity rather than by piling up book learning.
Life and thought
Cheng Hao, called Mingdao (“Clarifier of the Way”), passed the highest examination in 1057 and served as a local official, known for gentle and effective government. He opposed Wang Anshi’s sweeping New Policies, and from the 1070s he and his younger brother Cheng Yi taught in and around Luoyang. Students remembered his warmth: sitting with him, one said, was like sitting in a spring breeze. He died in 1085.
His key idea is that the humane person forms one body with heaven, earth and all things. He drew on medical language: Chinese doctors call numbness in the limbs “not humane” (buren), because the patient no longer feels his own hand as part of himself. Selfishness is that kind of numbness towards others. So the learner must first “recognise humaneness” in this lived sense and then preserve it with sincerity and reverence, without forcing it or searching outside. His intuitive emphasis on the mind’s unity with the world was later taken up by Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming, while Zhu Xi built more on his brother.
Works
Teachers
1017–1073Zhou DunyiThe Cheng brothers studied briefly with Zhou Dunyi as teenagers.Shaped by
1020–1077Zhang ZaiZhang Zai was the brothers’ biaoshu, an uncle through a cousin’s line, and their frequent conversation partner.Shaped
1139–1193Lu Jiuyuan (Lu Xiangshan)Song scholar who taught that the mind is principleMeanwhile, in other traditions
980–1037Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)Persian physician-philosopher, the most influential Islamic philosopher1033–1109Anselm of CanterburyBenedictine monk and Archbishop of Canterburyc. 1058–1111Al-GhazālīAshʿarite theologian who left his Baghdad chair for Sufismc. 1077–1157 (traditionally 1017–1137)RāmānujaVaiṣṇava theologian and founder of Viśiṣṭādvaita1079–1142Peter AbelardParis logician famed for his dialectic and his love for HéloïseOn the record
Cheng Hao’s “On Understanding Humaneness” is dated 1080.
The piece is preserved in the Surviving Works of the Two Chengs (book 2A) as Cheng Hao’s answer to Lü Dalin, who came east to study with the brothers after Zhang Zai’s death; Lü’s record of that visit is dated 1079. The year is therefore better given as c. 1079.
Sources: 曾亦、郭晓东：《程明道：本体即功夫，功夫即本体》（儒家网） · 曹树明，《哲学动态》2018年第7期（搜狐转载）
Zhang Zai is called the Cheng brothers’ “uncle by family ties”.
Zhang Zai was the brothers’ biaoshu (表叔), an uncle through a cousin’s line, one generation above them: they were his biaozhi, and the three are remembered as kinsmen of one mind.
Sources: Wikipedia (Chinese), “張載 (北宋)”