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Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130–1200)

thinker

In the Collected Commentaries on the Four Books (四書章句集注) Zhu Xi gives 仁 a metaphysical definition: it is "the principle of love and the virtue of the mind" (愛之理，心之德). Love (愛) is the feeling; 仁 is the pattern (理) that makes love possible and right. Because every mind receives this pattern from Heaven at birth, 仁 is innate and universal, and self-cultivation is the work of clearing away the selfish desire that obscures it. This reading — 仁 as an inner moral nature grounded in cosmic principle — became the orthodox interpretation across the Chinese examination system and, through Toegye and the Four–Seven Debate, in Korea.

Ogyū Sorai (荻生徂徠, 1666–1728)

thinker

The Japanese Ancient Learning scholar Sorai attacked the Song reading as an anachronistic imposition of Buddhist-flavoured metaphysics. Read against the actual usage of the early Zhou, he argued, 仁 is not an inner disposition at all but a concrete competence: the ability of a ruler to bring peace and security to the people (安民). It is the virtue of the person in authority, measured by results, not by the state of the heart. On this account Zhu Xi's "principle of love and virtue of the mind" is a category error — turning a political accomplishment into a private psychology.