China & East Asia · 1020–1077
Zhang Zai
Neo-Confucian who saw all things as condensations of qi
Everything is qi condensing and dispersing in the Great Void; because all share one qi, “Heaven is my father and Earth my mother… all people are my siblings.”
Life and thought
Zhang Zai grew up in Hengqu in the northwest and as a young man dreamed of military glory; the statesman Fan Zhongyan, the story goes, told him to read the Doctrine of the Mean instead. He searched through Buddhist and Daoist books before returning to the Confucian classics, held modest offices, and taught at Hengqu, where his school was known as the Learning of Guanzhong. The Cheng brothers, a generation younger, were his relatives and constant discussion partners. He completed Correcting the Unenlightened in 1076 and died the following year.
Against Buddhist emptiness and Daoist non-being he argued that there is no void: what looks empty is qi, the vital stuff of the world, in its dispersed state, and all things are qi condensed. Because everything shares this one qi, his Western Inscription draws an ethic of kinship: “Heaven is my father and Earth my mother… all people are my siblings, all things my companions”, while each still has a particular place and duty. Zhu Xi treasured the Western Inscription; six centuries later Wang Fuzhi revived his philosophy of qi.
Works
Shaped
1032–1085Cheng HaoZhang Zai was the brothers’ biaoshu, an uncle through a cousin’s line, and their frequent conversation partner.1033–1107Cheng YiYounger Cheng brother who made “principle” central1130–1200Zhu XiGreat synthesiser of Song Neo-ConfucianismMeanwhile, 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 SufismOn the record
The Western Inscription is dated c. 1070, and Correcting the Unenlightened 1076.
Zhang Zai completed Correcting the Unenlightened (Zhengmeng) in 1076. The Western Inscription, first called “Correcting Obstinacy” (Ding wan) and hung on the western wall of his study, has no exact date; it was written in his last years and later placed in the Zhengmeng, so “c. 1070” is an approximation.
Sources: Wikipedia (Chinese), “張載 (北宋)”
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)”