Zhu Xi's Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi

344 Pages·2014·5.25 MB·English

Reconstructing the Confucian Dao
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
Roger T. Ames, editor
Reconstructing the
CONFUCIAN DAO
Zhu Xi’s Appropriation
of Zhou Dunyi
JOSEPH A. ADLER
State University of New York Press
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Production and book design, Laurie Searl
Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adler, Joseph Alan.
Reconstructing the Confucian Dao : Zhu Xi’s appropriation of Zhou Dunyi /
Joseph A. Adler.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5157-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Zhou, Dunyi, 1017–1073.
2. Neo-Confucianism. 3. Zhu, Xi, 1130–1200. I. Title.
B128.C44A63 2014
181'.112—dc23 2013025545
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Ruth and Anna

Contents
ix Acknowledgments
PART I
3 Introduction
15 Chapter 1: Zhu Xi, Zhou Dunyi, and the Confucian dao
37 Chapter 2: Zhou Dunyi’s Role in the daotong
77 Chapter 3: The Interpenetration of Activity and Stillness
111 Chapter 4: Taiji as “Supreme Polarity”
137 Conclusions
PART II: Translations of Zhou Dunyi’s Major Works
and Zhu Xi’s Commentaries, with Further Discussions
by Zhu Xi and His Students
147 Introduction
151 Chapter 5: The Supreme Polarity Diagram
(Taijitu 太極圖)
viii Contents
167 Chapter 6: Discussion of the Supreme Polarity
Diagram (Taijitu shuo 太極圖說)
203 Chapter 7: Penetrating the Scripture of Change
(Tongshu 通書)
299 Chapter 8: Zhu Xi’s Postfaces and Notes
309 Bibliography
323 Index
Acknowledgments
I remember the precise moment when I began to look into Zhu Xi’s
appropriation of Zhou Dunyi. It was in Taipei, in February 1990, and I was
sitting in a bare office at National Taiwan University with my hands poised
over the keyboard of an old (even at the time) “IBM-compatible” PC. I had
not yet decided which of two options to pursue under my Language and
Research fellowship at the Inter-University Program in Chinese Language
Studies: to revise my dissertation for publication, or to look further into
Zhu Xi’s use of Zhou Dunyi’s texts, a topic that I had touched on in
the dissertation. Finding the latter more intriguing, I began translating Zhu’s
commentary on Zhou’s Tongshu. The work continued sporadically over the
intervening two decades, as other writing projects pushed it to the back
burner. I am extremely grateful to the Inter-University Program and the
Academia Sinica Committee on Scientific and Scholarly Cooperation with
the U.S.A. for providing that fellowship. In 1994 I received a grant from
the Pacific Cultural Foundation to continue work on the translation (Part
II of this book), and in 2008 I received a Scholar Grant from the Chiang
Ching-kuo Foundation to support the writing of Part I. For both, and for
my 2008–09 sabbatical leave from Kenyon College, I am extremely grateful.
I also wish to express my heartfelt thanks to those who provided
feedback at various stages of this project: the late Professor Yang Youwei of
Taipei, who helped me with the earliest stages of the translation; Kidder Smith
Jr. and the participants in the New England Symposium on Chinese Thought
at Bowdoin College for their comments in 1992 on my first attempt to make
sense of Zhu Xi’s appropriation of Zhou Dunyi (ultimately a dead end); Philip
J. Ivanhoe, for his detailed written comments in 1999 on the paper I read at
the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting in Washington, D.C. (the first
ix