Tōng shū 通書
The Pervasive Book
by 周敦頤 (Zhōu Dūnyí); annotated and assembled (集說) by 朱熹 (Zhū Xī)
The companion text to Zhōu Dūnyí’s Tài jí tú shuō (KR5i0079) — a 40-chapter discursive exposition of the Sòng-school doctrine of chéng (sincerity, integrity), the centrepiece of Zhōu’s metaphysics. The chapters are titled topically: Chéng shàng (Chéng I), Chéng zhōng (Chéng II), Chéng xià (Chéng III), Shèng (Sageliness), Shèng wáng (Sage-Kings), Lǐxìngmìng (Principle-Nature-Mandate), etc. The work is presented here with Zhū Xī’s chapter-by-chapter notes and the jí shuō (assembled-explanations) collecting commentaries from Zhū Xī’s followers (Chén Chún 陳淳, etc.).
Prefaces
The text opens directly with the Chéng shàng dìyī chapter and Zhū Xī’s zhù: “Chéng zhě, zhì shí ér wú wàng zhī wèi — chéng means utterly real and without fancy. It is what Heaven gives and what creatures receive of the upright principle. Every man has it, but the sage’s being a sage is no other thing than that he alone can wholly preserve it. This book and the Tài jí tú are mutual outside-and-inside. Chéng is what is called Tài jí.”
Abstract
The discursive complement to the Tàijí tú shuō. Where the Tàijí tú presents Zhōu Dūnyí’s metaphysics in graphic-and-aphoristic form, the Tōng shū unpacks the same doctrine across 40 short essay-chapters, with explicit citations of the Yì jīng and the Zhōng yōng as authority-texts. Zhū Xī’s commentary canonises the work and integrates the jí shuō tradition. The pairing with the Tàijí tú shuō in DZJY treats the two as a single compendium of the Sòng-school metaphysical heritage. Terminus a quo c. 1050; terminus ad quem c. 1175 (Zhū Xī’s annotations).
For the broader Sòng-school metaphysics see 周敦頤 and 朱熹.
Translations and research
- Adler, Joseph A. Reconstructing the Confucian Dao (SUNY 2014). — full English translation of the Tōng shū with Zhū Xī’s commentary.
- Wing-tsit Chan, Reflections on Things at Hand (Columbia 1967). — partial translation.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0080
- Author: 周敦頤; commentator: 朱熹.