From Self-Cultivation to World Peace

The Great Learning (Daxue) is a brief but immensely influential Confucian text, originally a single chapter of the ancient ritual compendium the Book of Rites (Liji), which the Neo-Confucians extracted and elevated to the status of a classic in its own right. Though short, it lays out a comprehensive programme connecting inner moral cultivation to the right ordering of society. Its celebrated core is a chain of eight steps linking the individual to the world: the investigation of things (gewu), the extension of knowledge, making the intentions sincere, rectifying the mind, cultivating the self, regulating the family, ordering the state, and finally bringing peace to all under Heaven.

The logic is that the great work of governing well begins in the interior life of the person: only one who has cultivated himself can order his household, and only well-ordered households make a well-ordered state. "From the Son of Heaven down to the common people," the text declares, "all must regard the cultivation of the self as the root." It also names the "three guiding principles," including the manifesting of bright virtue and the renewal of the people.