galia patt-shamir

MORAL WORLD, ETHICAL TERMINOLOGY: THE

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF METAPHYSICAL
TERMS IN ZHOU DUNYI AND ZHU XI

Onto-Cosmology as Onto-Morality

This article is about morality and its foundation.1 In particular, I will

attempt to show that moral life is its own foundation. Confucianism
is a good example for an attitude of this type; Neo-Confucianism is
a renewal of it in new terminology. We are used to appreciating
the Neo-Confucian project as endowing Confucian morality with
its “missing link” in the form of a metaphysical foundation. In this
article I claim that the so-called “metaphysical” language in Neo-
Confucianism is first and foremost an affirmation of Confucian moral-
ity, in new terms receptive to the challenge of the time. These terms
are metaphysical in nature, and yet very true to Confucian original
spirit, as they do not endow Confucianism with an external founda-
tion, but rather with an internal ethical one. I address the question of
the significance of metaphysical terms by showing the inner bond of
the Great Ultimate (taiji) and humanity (ren), suggesting that moral
beings are “organs” in the one ultimate body, which is fundamentally
moral. I first deal with humanity depicted as origination (yuan, as
related to benti); secondly, in terms of substance (ti) and function
(yong); third, as the highest good or the Great Ultimate itself. I con-
clude with a general remark regarding the power of foundations of
this nature in a contemporary context.
Generally speaking, in Confucianism, from the cosmological per-
spective, in the process of creation, both human and “divine” are oper-
ative. The relation between the ultimate and the myriad of things can
roughly be put such that “things” exist in one organic whole; this
whole is the Great Ultimate, and anything included in it is an essen-
tial characteristic or aspect of this whole. Accordingly, morality is
related to the Great Ultimate as an essential characteristic of the

GALIA PATT-SHAMIR, lecturer, Tel-Aviv University, and current visiting scholar,

Harvard University. Specialties: Chinese philosophy, comparative philosophy, compara-
tive religion. E-mail: [email protected]
Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31:3 (September 2004) 349–362
© 2004 Journal of Chinese Philosophy
350 galia patt-shamir

whole. This relatedness gains more power when viewed from the
human perspective, the only perspective we have. In other words,
humanity has the ontological status of reality itself, and as such serves
as the justification for human moral action and reasoning, for both
explanatory purposes (via an onto-epistemological perspective) and
practical purposes (via an onto-cosmological perspective). This article
focuses on the onto-cosmological perspective. I focus on Zhou Dunyi
(1017–1073) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200) as key figures in the revival of
Song Confucianism.
The proposed suggestion sheds light on well-known concepts and
on the work of commentators whose philosophy is basically a philos-
ophy of setting terms for ideas rooted in early Confucianism. Neo-
Confucianism is presented in this article as having the sophistication
of tools and ideas for revisiting Confucian views in a way that
strengthens them. The great significance of this feature of Neo-
Confucianism is, however, moral. Before moving on, I would like to
quote Lionel Trilling, who expresses a similar sentiment regarding the
place of “new elements” in a moral system:
Now and then it is possible to observe the moral life in process of
revising itself, perhaps by reducing the emphasis it formerly placed
upon one or another of its elements, perhaps by inventing and adding
itself a new element, some mode of conduct or of feeling which hith-
erto it had not regarded as essential to virtue.2

Humanity is Origination

Zhu Xi in the Treatise on Ren (Renshuo) introduces humanity as a

universal creative power by presenting the relation between human-
ity and “the mind of Heaven and earth.” This mind is “to produce
things” and is characterized by four qualities: origination, flourish,
advantage, and firmness (yuan, heng, li1, zhen).3 Origination en-
compasses all four. Human beings, as the “products” of Heaven and
earth, inherit its mind, and accordingly, man’s mind is characterized
by four virtues: humanity, rightness, propriety, and knowledge (ren, yi,
li, zhi). Humanity encompasses the four.4 Through Zhu’s parallelism,
we can see that in human beings, humanity is origination, and origi-
nation in humans is first and foremost the origination of morality, the
distinctively human trait. Zhu Xi claims that humanity is a particular
virtue and yet also embraces all virtues as an expression of the idea
that the One and its manifestations are not contradictory. Zhou
Dunyi implies that humanity is origination earlier in the spirit of the
philosophy of change of the Xici of the Yizhuan, when he says, in
Tongshu:
 moral world, ethical terminology 351

Heaven uses yang to produce the myriad things and uses yin to
complete the myriad things. To produce is humanity, to complete is
rightness.5
Natural order uses yang for production and yin for completion; in
human beings, accordingly, production is humanity, and completion is
rightness. When Zhu Xi comments on these words, he chooses to
guide the reader to Zhou’s first philosophical treatise, Taijitu shuo, in
which the focus is the idea of the Great Ultimate and its productiv-
ity in the human world. Through a brief and yet concise reference to
major cosmological terms as aspects of one enduring cosmological
process, Zhou provides us with a Confucian picture that illuminates
the significance of the Great Ultimate in the human realm. Zhou
opens the treatise by maintaining that it is the Great Ultimate\ Non-
ultimate (Taiji er wuji), which generates the world by yin-yang’s tran-
quility (jing) and motion (dong). This movement brings about the five
phases (wu xing): water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. These five, being
ultimately the one vital energy (qi), generate harmony and natural
order. In their integration, Qian (Heaven) and Kun (Earth) consti-
tute male and female, whose interaction produces the myriad of
things.
As one can easily see, the subject matter in Taijitu shuo is the
continuity of evolution from the Great Ultimate to all things, and
in particular to human beings. The five cardinal human virtues
(wuchang)—humanity, rightness, propriety, knowledge, and trust
(xin)—are thus explained in this context as one of the aspects of the
five phases, and hence, as a natural product of the Great Ultimate.
The Great Ultimate and the five phases are manifest in us in a way
such that among the myriad things, human beings receive the five
phases in their most complete form as moral virtues. The sage is the
ultimate human model for the attainment of the phases as virtues and
is in perfect harmony with the natural order.
The sense of humanity as origination of a creative process is intrin-
sically related to the central role of benti in Confucianism. Cheng
Chung-ying devoted much time in a comprehensive study, explaining
and illuminating the “most fundamental, most creative term in
Chinese metaphysics, namely the concept of benti (origin-substance,
source substance, originating body, originating substance, fundamen-
tal/original/ultimate reality).”6 Cheng sees the notion of benti, rather
than the notion of Being as the ontological, and as such the ontologi-
cal unifies the base, foundation, and substance (ti), together with
origin and ultimate source (ben). In this way the cosmological in
Chinese philosophy is “ontologicalized.” With this understanding, the
cosmological cannot be put aside as an aspect of the world separate
from other aspects; specifically, it is not separate from the ontologi-
352 galia patt-shamir

cal. Hence, in Chinese philosophy we have to refer to onto-

cosmology; “the ontological is revealed in the functioning of the
cosmological, and the cosmological is embodied in the framework of
the ontological.”7 Cheng refers to the essential characteristics of benti
as dynamic creativity, which gives rise to life and is the source of
everything. As such it is the source of human mind (xinti) and the
essence of human nature (xingti). Hence, among other attributes of
benti, we may refer to “value benti” (jiazhi benti). Cheng completes
the onto-cosmological circle in the unity of Heaven and human
beings, summarized as follows:
The term benti signifies a profound understanding of the boundless
and ceaseless creative source and the creative transformative power
and process of reality; it is what gives place to everything, including
the human person. The idea of benti is not confined to things or the
universe at large, but rather includes the ideas of the ultimate iden-
tity, unity and reality, or actuality of the human person.8

Implementing this view gives rise to an understanding that in

Confucianism onto-cosmology is also onto-morality. Our world and
our lives are one whole of which moral beings, moral choices, and
moral acts are aspects. Therefore, as Zhou explains, it is said:
Yin and yang are established as the way of Heaven, the weak and
the strong as the way of Earth, and humanity and rightness as the
way of Man.9

As human perfection amounts to accordance with nature, it can

never be understood as some spontaneous “natural order” (ziran) in
the sense in which spontaneity is detached from the human world.
Rather, human virtues that demand awareness and effort play a major
role in this harmony. The world in which human beings live is a human
world, and humanity is the only applicable category for a human
being to describe and understand this world. One should note that
what is is what we are, not in a solipsistic manner; but to the contrary,
in an inclusive humanistic perspective—that is, as human beings we
are creators (of morality). We embody inherent moral categories; thus,
we necessarily meet our fellow human beings through these cate-
gories, and moral judgments are internal in human creation. There-
fore, from the perspective of origin-substance, every act in this world
must be understood in moral terms; every existing thing in our world
has in this sense an inherent moral value.
The way to understand the relatedness of Heaven and human
beings is not merely that the Great Ultimate is the cause, explana-
tion, and justification of human life, but rather that the Great Ulti-
mate is a part of human life and a disposition of man. Regarding this,
Mou Zongsan suggests that there is a dual process of “immanentiza-
 moral world, ethical terminology 353

tion,” that is, the descending of Heaven’s Mandate as nature, together

with transcendentalization, in which the human heart-mind (xin1)
forms a triad with Heaven and nature.10 According to Mou, together
with humanity and with the heart-mind, sincerity (cheng) plays a
major role in “the principle of subjectivity”; it departs from oneself
before becoming fully developed. Lin Tonngqi comments that, like
Confucius, Mou Zongsan underlines the presence of an objective
Heaven due to an emphasis on one’s subjectivity. The only way to
know Heaven, according to the Confucian view, is by means of a sub-
jective practice of humanity.11 Mou Zongsan claims that
In the course of practicing ren . . . Confucius manages to know
Heaven . . . it means that man’s deep wedging into, and his pious rev-
erence for the transcendent and objective Heaven . . . are intensified
and made more intimate and real.12

Rather than a view in which Heaven is the ultimate source of

human activity, we learn that Heaven is the “ultimate” in a different
sense. It is “objective” in the sense in which it can be known to human
beings, insofar as it offers standards that prevent the relativism that
could be the outcome of a theory that centers on human beings and
their powers. By knowing Heaven, we can improve human practice
in such a way that Heaven becomes human, rather than that humans
become ”heavenly.” Tang Zhunyi says, in a similar spirit, that in Con-
fucianism, man is one of “three powers” (Heaven, Earth, and Man)
which communicate with each other. The individual is encouraged to
employ his mind to the utmost and thereby to know his own nature
through the knowledge of Heaven.13 Just in the way that Heaven orig-
inates spiritual beings and Earth originates earthly creatures, human
beings are the originators of humanity.

Humanity is both Substance and Function

Similarly to its being an originator, humanity has the attributes that

we usually relate to ultimate being, when considered from the per-
spectives of substance and function. In the Treatise on Ren, Zhu Xi
takes the stand that “humanity is man’s mind, as both substance and
function.” What role does the distinction between substance and func-
tion—which has major significance in Zhu Xi’s thought—play here?14
Generally speaking, Zhu Xi takes substance as that which has no spe-
cific shape in itself, yet gives a form to all its specific instances. As in
the Aristotelian view, it is the subject of predication, that which cannot
be predicated of anything else, and as in the Leibnizian view it is, most
importantly, the ultimate unity of reality. However, as Cheng Chung-
354 galia patt-shamir

ying remarks, unlike in Greek philosophy, “ti is recognized or experi-

enced as holistic changing—and yet full of life and possibilities of
value.”15 A substantial form is in itself imperceptible, yet it necessar-
ily has perceptible manifestations or “functions” as “attributes” or
“modes” through which we come to know it. More accurately the
function is “a use,” or “an application.” Therefore, “humanity” as sub-
stance is also, according to Zhu Xi, its concrete instances. For
example, helping a fellow human in need, feeling compassion for
someone in pain, or loving a daughter or son, are all considered
human as functions of their substance. In this way, as Cheng elabo-
rates importantly, yong, as an action of a person is based on free
choice.16 In other words, when we follow Cheng’s suggestive under-
standing, we have to realize that a certain yong (out of various pos-
sible “yongs”) as a concrete expression of ti, is the determinant of the
moral act, which in itself is the ti for it.
The distinction between substance and function is traditionally
considered a metaphysical distinction, and the main debates of the
schools concerning the issue were over the ontological status of
substance and function as either two different kinds, or two aspects
of one reality.17 According to Cheng, without mediation, the sub-
stance–function on the onto-cosmological level is basic, and as medi-
ated by human choice, knowledge, and direction, it is derivative. Thus,
the outlook receives an important ethical perspective. The distinction
between substance and function is in neither Lixue nor Xinxue
thought dichotomous: the recognition of substance entails function,
since there is an essential unity (tiyong heyi). This inseparability is
implicit in the notion of reality and can be applied in human practice.
This unity has at least two different ontological implications: the first
is cosmological; the other, moral. In this way, from the spiritual (or
religious) perspective of Confucianism the cosmology of substance-
function unity amounts to the unity of Heaven and the human person;
from the practical moral perspective, this is the unity of knowledge
and action, theory and practice.18
In the present context, therefore, it seems that Zhu Xi makes the
distinction between substance and function primarily for explanatory
purposes, namely for explaining Confucian morality in updated ter-
minology. Turning back to the assertion that “humanity is man’s
mind” as both substance and function, we have to understand that in
other words, humanity, as substance, is the ground for our world as
well as our thinking and reasoning about it, and yet it is our specific
acts as function. Humanity is the cause for action and its concrete
implementation. Hence, the justification for moral actions is as human
as morality itself: by means of unifying substance and function, it turns
out that in humanity, the “highest” standard is the human. For
 moral world, ethical terminology 355

example, the justification for one’s giving money to the poor (as a spe-
cific function) is that a moral judgment is inherent in our being, we
are creatures for whom “being in need” and “giving” are innate and
constitutive. In the same way that everything has a shape and a size,
so it has a moral value. Exactly in the way that when I see a chair I
know it as having a certain color, a certain shape legs, and a surface
to sit on, I also know it as something that can be offered to an elderly
person when necessary. The moral quality is innate not just in us but
in objects in the world, in the same way that other object properties
are innate (this also touches an epistemological aspect).19 In this sense
“the substance” of humanity has to be understood, and can only be
understood as enfolding moral-practical significance. It cannot have
reference otherwise.

REN and TAIJI

So far we have seen that humanity is origination, as well as substance

and its own functions. The ultimate substance has the function of
inclusive creation, and every created being or deed is its function. No
substance can be defined and referred to, except through its functions,
and every function is ultimately referred to the Great Ultimate (taiji).
We are now ready to move on to some instances in which the Great
Ultimate is expressed in purely human terms. Zhu Xi, in the discus-
sion on the Great Ultimate in Yulei, explicitly applies ren language to
the Great Ultimate:
What Master Zhou calls the Great Ultimate is a name to express all
the virtues and the highest good in Heaven and Earth, man and
things.20

According to Zhu Xi, the Great Ultimate as expressed in Zhou

Dunyi’s treatise is human virtues and the moral world. In simple
“Western” language it is equivalent to saying that “God” is human
morality, human life, and human world. In this sense humanity (as
taiji) signifies that the ontological foundation for moral acts is moral-
ity itself. An implication of this idea may be that the answer for what
is right and what is wrong, as well as for why be moral, is that we are
human; namely, we perceive and feel, we think and reflect. Using our
human senses and categories of perception, we see that for human
beings there is no other way to act other than in a human way. The
strongest example for the moral-human understanding of the Great
Ultimate by both Zhou and Zhu is to be observed where qualities of
the Great Ultimate can even be attributed to a single human being.
Zhou writes:
356 galia patt-shamir

As for the virtuous way being high and deep, enlightening people
through education without end, and being truly equal with Heaven
and Earth and the four seasons—who else is like that except for
Confucius?21

We read earlier that the Great Ultimate is not only humanity but
also human. In this passage, however, Zhou makes certain that it is
not merely a unidirectional relationship. Zhu Xi completes the iden-
tification in commenting on Zhou’s passage that a single person is the
Great Ultimate:
One whose way is as high as Heaven is yang. One whose virtue is
as profound as Earth is yin. One whose teaching is without end
like the four seasons is the five phases. Confucius must be the Great
Ultimate.22

The Great Ultimate as “morality” has an ontological status, yet it

is also moral in itself; even a moral exemplar is the Great Ultimate.
There is no essential categorical distinction between the Great Ulti-
mate and human beings. Hence, the strict dichotomy between the
human and non-human spheres is neither impossible from the prac-
ticable perspective, nor it is necessary for the explanatory require-
ment. In this way the foundation for humanity is human thought, act,
and discourse; it is human life. The latter are inherently moral.
Humanity is its own foundation, for it cannot and does not need to
be found externally.
When John Berthrong deals with Zhu Xi, he refers to him as “an
ethicist first and foremost” and suggests that:
Perhaps the reason for the undue neglect of Zhu’s ethical theories
can be ascribed to the often heard comments that his ethics were
unoriginal, derivative, stereotyped, in a word, rather dull when com-
pared to his theories of li3 and chi. On that reading what is interest-
ing in Zhu Xi is not what he considered important. Rather Zhu
is interesting for his metaphysics, not for his development of the
Confucian ethical notions of ren and cheng.23

Berthrong has reasons for rejecting the interpretive stand that is

based on the above reasoning. Berthrong’s stance is in my eyes true
to the spirit and hinge of Confucianism.24 Repetition of old ideas
is not necessarily dull, and restating the obvious can be indispensable.
The Confucian doctrine is first and foremost ethics. The Neo-
Confucian renewal is in the adaptation of old theories to modern lan-
guage and terminology. In the Neo-Confucian context, showing the
significance of notions like ren and cheng by means of metaphysical
terms serves the old doctrine and justifies it. Without the use of terms
such as order—li, benti, ti-yong, and ultimately taiji—one could not
show how the old system was still viable. Berthrong emphasizes the
 moral world, ethical terminology 357

importance of the nuance of terms in discussions of this kind, yet

before doing that he emphasizes the value of sincerity as the process
by which humanity is created and realized.25

Regarding Application

Generally speaking, ontology is the search for the foundation of

being. Neo-Confucianism assumes Taiji as the unity of things in the
world. However, one should note that in Confucianism, humanity is
a “thing” in the sense of being a part of the world without which
human beings and human actions cannot subsist. In this way human-
ity is directly related to the Great Ultimate. What is the point in Taiji
being human?
In order to summarize the main points in this article, let me refer
to an example that goes back to problems that Neo-Confucianism as
presented here avoids, and the kind of responses it proposes. The
explanatory power of the Confucian attitude has practical signifi-
cance, as it may help in resolving moral dilemmas. Let us recall the
climax scene from The Fall by Albert Camus. In the story, on a
November night of fine rain, Jean Baptiste Clamence, a self-described
“judge penitent,” was on his way home from a mistress he just left.
On his way he saw a woman on the Pont Royale, leaning over the
railing and seeming to stare at the river. He was impressed by the
beauty of the woman’s neck and by her fragility. Seeing the scene, he
also had “a moment of hesitation,” and yet he went on walking. Imme-
diately after witnessing, not the actual jump, but the woman standing
on the bridge and then the sound of a body hitting water, he heard a
cry, repeated several times, which was going downstream; then it sud-
denly ceased. The cry, he concluded, mocked his pretense of compas-
sion for the suffering and the needy. But did he act? Did he try to
help? He did not. He tells his companion,
I have forgotten what I thought then. “Too late, too far . . .” or some-
thing of the sort. I was still listening, as I stood motionless. Then,
slowly under the rain, I went away. I informed no one.26

From this point on, from the fall of this woman and his undoing,
Clemence is going through his own fall. In the end of the story he
begs:
O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may
a second time have the chance of saving both of us.

The desperate cry for the woman to fall again is in the present
context an example for the horrific absurdity that can be the outcome
358 galia patt-shamir

of an action whose justification is not in it, and for a frame of refer-

ence of which morality is not a part. This cannot happen when a
person has the full responsibility for his own deed and his fellow
beings (just like in the Mencian example). Namely, when there is no
transcendence to “fix” the undoing, one cannot but do. When the
Great Ultimate is Humanity, inherent in the world and in our per-
ception, the above words could never be said, then it is never “too
late”; a moral alternative is always existent.
Human lives and practice deserve to be considered seriously in
philosophical discussions, and this certainly includes philosophical
grounding. It is our human responsibility to stick to the idea that there
are right and wrong moral judgments and better and worse moral
stands. The fact that this is part of our language strengthens the
Confucian perspective. In contemporary “Western” philosophical
methodologies, we find out that positivistic or naturalistic argumen-
tations cannot suffice to explicate the human world. Some philoso-
phers seem to have opened themselves to more “traditional” ways of
philosophizing. Hilary Putnam, for example, had his turning point in
the 1970s, when he gave up his early analytic point of view to achieve
a more powerful new one, influenced by the pragmatism of John
Dewey and opposing Richard Rorty, first called by him “Pragmatic
Realism” then “Realism With a Human Face.” Putnam renews his phi-
losophy, suggesting “to take our lives and our practice seriously in
philosophical discussions.”27 According to Putnam, human lives and
practice not only deserve serious treatment in philosophical discus-
sion, but they should be taken seriously to bring on understanding. In
fact, lives and practice are more “fundamental” than metaphysics as
philosophical argumentation. This point was not obvious for contem-
porary thinkers, yet it was intuitive in Confucianism and fundamen-
tal in Neo-Confucianism as presented by both Zhou Dunyi and Zhu
Xi.
The implication that I do wish to open for further discussion is
twofold. First, that the Great Ultimate is a value, not a “pure” fact (or
that value is a fact).28 Secondly, as far as metaphysics is a study of the
Ultimate, and of first and last things, it exists in Confucianism. Yet
metaphysics is never “beyond” the physical in the full sense of being
beyond human (in line with Mou Zongsan’s idea of “immanent tran-
scendence”). I do not claim here that there are no metaphysical
notions, but that metaphysics is not “the queen of philosophy”;
wisdom is. And wisdom in Confucianism is moral wisdom.29
To conclude we may as well approach our point from a slightly dif-
ferent angle. In Confucianism, Taiji as ultimate origination or benti is
the source of all things, actions, thoughts, and feeling in both onto-
logical and ethical senses. Taiji as ultimate substance-function unity
 moral world, ethical terminology 359

is, cosmologically speaking, the unity of Heaven and human, and,

practically speaking, it is the unity of theory and practice. Cheng
Chung-ying makes the necessary link that “in this sense, the taiji is
the dao, or the way of change”; and brings as reference to the func-
tion of the way that “it manifests benevolence and hides all its func-
tions” (xian zhu ren, zang zhu yong).30 Humanity (or benevolence) is
dao and therefore it is taiji. This brings us back in chronology, from
contemporary relevance through Neo-Confucian terminological ren-
ovation, to our roots and origins. We may now recall the beautiful
aphorism in the Analects (Lunyu), 15:28:
It is not the Way that broadens Man, It is Man who broadens the Way.

Confucian humanism and Confucian spirituality and metaphysics

are about the way, and the way is creativity; it is the human creation
of morality. Our capability to broaden the Great Ultimate (as the
way) is also our responsibility as human beings. Broadening the way
requires first and foremost a broadening of our minds, or perhaps
even better put, we broaden our mind to broaden the way.

TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY
Tel-Aviv, Israel

Endnotes

1. Countless thanks to Prof. Cheng Chung-ying for his invaluable comments on this
article, which helped me in focusing, improving, and reshaping my ideas.
2. Trilling, p. 1.
3. Renshuo, pp. 720–721; see Chan (1963), pp. 593–594.
4. Ibid.
5. Tongshu I.11.1.
6. Cheng Chung-ying (2002), p. 148.
7. Cheng (1989), pp. 174–175.
8. Cheng (2002), p. 152.
9. Zhouzi quanshu, ch. 1–2, pp. 4–32. Chan’s translation; Chan (1963), pp. 463–464.
10. Mou uses the notions “immanence” and “transcendence”. See, Mou, p. 20. For a full
discussion on the dual process, see Lin, pp. 405–416.
11. Lin, p. 419.
12. Mou, p. 21.
13. Tang in Lancashire, p. 49.
14. The Chinese character ti refers initially to “body,” in the verb form “to physically
contain” or “to embody,” and in philosophical discussion it can best be translated as
“substance.” The character ti contains the phonetic li_ “ritual vase,” which etymolog-
ically relates the word with the connotation of “organic form.” For an elaborate expli-
cation of the full sense of ti, see Cheng (2002), pp. 145–147.
15. Cheng (2002), p. 147.
16. Cheng (2002), p. 153.
17. The major gap is between the “dualistic” (or “school of principle,” lixue) and the
“monistic” (“school of the mind,” xinxue) schools. For the various positions toward
substance and function, see Chan (1963), pp. 485–489, 596–597, 696–697.
360 galia patt-shamir

18. See Cheng (2002), pp. 154–156.

19. This stand might be called “realistic.” However, it does not accept a simplistic under-
standing of realism; rather, as shown above, it stresses the humanistic internal aspect.
In other words, a thing is real since we are related to it (in categories of knowledge
and of existence).
20. Yulei 11.118; see Chan (1963), p. 640.
21. Tongshu II.39.
22. Ibid.
23. Berthrong (1987), pp. 161–162.
24. For views that emphasize the metaphysical shift in Neo-Confucian thought, see Chan
(1963), p. 460; Chan (1987), pp. 108–112; Chang, p. 140, pp. 153–158; Graham (1967),
pp. 153–168; de Barry in Nivson and Wright, p. 33; Huang, p. 289.
25. Berthrong (1987), p. 163. An interesting presentation of sincerity in accordance with
Zhongyong is to be found in chapters 1–3 of Tongshu, where Zhou takes his reader
through the nuances of the distinction between “sincerity being the foundation of the
sage” (ch. 1) to its being sagehood itself (in chapter 3). Joseph Adler discusses the
various and sometimes contradictory expressions.
26. Camus, p. 70.
27. Putnam, p. 135.
28. It is interesting to compare the present view, on the one hand, with A. C. Graham’s
view in Disputers of the Tao about the absence of the fact/value dichotomy in classi-
cal Chinese thought, and, on the other hand, with his ideas regarding correlative think-
ing. Graham initially believed that the absence of a fact/value dichotomy reflects a
lacuna in Chinese thought, and that the Western tradition is, in this sense, superior to
it (p. 323); later, however, he changed his view, seeing this “monism” as an advantage
of Chinese thought.
29. For this stress, I believe even Mou Zong-san’s notion of “moral metaphysics” as a
replacement of “metaphysics of morals” is not necessary.
30. Cheng (2002), p. 154. Reference to Xici, section 5 of the Yizhuan. Cheng elaborates
extensively on the perspective of dao as creativity; see, for example, Cheng (1989).

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Chinese Glossary

ben Mengzi
benti Mou Zhongsan
bianhua qi
Cheng Qian
dao ren
dong Renshuo
heng Song
Jiazhi benti Taiji
jing Taiji er wuji
Kongzi Taijitu shuo
Kun ti
li Tongshu
li1 tiyong heyi
2
li wuchang
3
li wuxing
Lixue Xianzhu ren, zangzhu yong
Lunyu
362 galia patt-shamir

Xici yong
xin yuan
1
xin Yulei
xingti zhen
xinti zhi
Xinxue Zhongyong
yi Zhou Dunyi
1
yi Zhouzi quanshu
yinyang Zhu Xi
yiyin yiyang ziran
Yizhuan