Correcting the Unenlightened (Zhengmeng)

The last and most systematic work of the Song-dynasty philosopher Zhang Zai, a series of terse statements later arranged by a disciple into 17 chapters. Its title borrows from the Book of Changes and refers to correcting youthful ignorance. Against Buddhists who called the world empty and Daoists who rooted it in nothing, Zhang Zai argues that everything is made of qi, a vital stuff. The Great Void is qi in its dispersed, invisible state; when qi condenses things appear, and when it disperses they return, so nothing is ever annihilated. The opening chapter calls this ceaseless interplay the Great Harmony. Zhang Zai distinguishes the nature we share with heaven and earth from the temperament given by our particular endowment of qi, and knowledge gained through seeing and hearing from moral knowledge. The final chapter opens with the Western Inscription, which calls heaven father and earth mother and all people one's brothers and sisters.

It lays the metaphysical ground of Neo-Confucianism, joining a single world of qi to a duty of care for all people, and offers a this-worldly answer to Buddhist and Daoist talk of emptiness.