Freedom, Agency and the Primacy of Li in Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism (Seongnihak )

Zhu Xi (1130-1200 CE), the progenitor of the Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian school of “nature and principle,” postulates a mind that is uncoerced and undetermined by antecedent psychological and physical conditions, and ‘uncaused’ by external factors, meaning having a will that is not related in a uniform way to the agent’s character, motives and circumstances, in the pre-intentional and universal realm (weifa 未發) before actual feelings are aroused. In this sense his view on the freedom of the mind that is undetermined by antecedent causal factors resembles that of the advocates of the compatibility of free will and determinism, and perhaps even that of those arguing for libertarian free will. The theory of psycho-physical endowment or qizhi in Neo-Confucian literature is often misunderstood as a crude form of determinism, and is forwarded as sufficient evidence for denying the possibility of free agency in Neo-Confucian philosophy. However, if we follow Zhu Xi’s own arguments closely, we discover that the crux of his argument lies in the belief that human beings are able to act in accordance with the inherent moral principles that are present within (xing) however severe the impediments due to qizhi. KCI Citation Count: 1