The Political and Moral Implications of Zhu Xi’s “Li Yi Fen Shu”

Zhu Xi’s ieda of “li yi fen shu” addresses political and moral significance by positing a universal principle to resolve conflicts between personal interest and public duties. Zhu Xi wants to solve the problem of the private constraints of differentiated rituals, in which people only care about personal and family interests, and do not care about public interests. He used heavenly principle, redefining relationships between Heaven and human nature to transcend blood-based ethics, aiming for harmonizing personal, familial, and public virtues. However, the public principle that will lead to a political structure in which the emperor and the ordinary people are equal challenges hierarchical distinctions of ritual. Therefore, Zhu Xi’s heavenly principle was criticized for not having monarch in the Southern Song Dynasty. But Zhu Xi did not oppose monarchy and hierarchical rituals, so the tension between universal principles and ritual hierarchical distinctions is inconsistent with Zhu Xi’s theory.