The Great Learning
Zengzi c. 400 BCE
A short Confucian work on how good government grows from the inside out: from a sincere mind to a cultivated self, then an ordered family, state and world. It draws its examples from old poems and the announcements of ancient kings.
11 pages 13 min reading time
- One of the Four Books, the core of Confucian education in China for centuries.
- Lays out the steps that link personal virtue to peace in the world, from understanding things to setting the whole kingdom in order.
- Makes self-cultivation the root of leadership: no one can teach others who cannot teach his own family.
- Its short, structured argument made it the usual starting point for studying Confucianism.
Once a chapter
It began as one chapter of the Book of Rites before scholars lifted it out as a book of its own.
Read it first
The philosopher Zhu Xi told students to start with it, as the outline for the rest of the Four Books.
Rearranged and filled in
Zhu Xi also reordered its passages and wrote a missing section himself. This edition keeps the older order.
Author unknown
Tradition credits Confucius's student Zengzi, but no one knows who wrote it.
Translated by James Legge 1861
From the 1893 Clarendon Press edition