biography
| name: |
Zhu Xi
|
| |
also spelled Chu-hsi
|
pronunciation:
[joo shee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1130–1200)
|
| biography:
| Philosopher, classical commentator, scientific thinker, and historian, born in Yu-hsi, Fukien Province, China. He was leader of the rationalist wing of the neo-Confucian school developing in China from the 10th-c. His Collected Works systematized previous Confucian thought and, allied to Buddhist and Taoist elements, established a creed for the perfection of state and society. His classical commentaries became prescribed orthodoxy in the civil service examinations from 1313, and his conservative authoritarianism increasingly dominated Chinese, Japanese, and Korean political, social, and cultural perceptions until the 20th-c (though a more individualistic neo-Confucianism developed in parallel from the 15th-c). He also wrote on musical notation, understood fossilization three centuries before Leonardo, realized that mountains had once been under the sea, saw the Earth's origins in condensation from cosmic matter, and perceived the universe as evolving and spinning from elemental force. |
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