Poetry, Literature, Textual Study, and Hermeneutics

Abstract

This chapter introduces Zhu’s views on hermeneutics, literature, and poesy. His hermeneutics is dedicated to gaining an understanding of pattern-principle and the Way. Zhu elevated the Four Books as scriptural texts with canonical authority, regarding them as encasing all the most important cosmological truths. According to Zhu, the proper goal of reading is to fathom and penetrate the mind of the classics’ authors (the sages) and thereby achieve an apprehension of the Way. Zhu identifies the reader with the author in the sense that they share the same heart-mind, such that understanding can be attained outside of the remit of words and texts. Textual investigation, in the end, is merely a means to apprehend the highest truths. In other words, reading is the realization of the Way, and the Six Classics are works that demonstrate the workings of pattern-principle in the midst of the Way.