“Self-Cultivation as the Root of All”—The Individual in the Recursive Process of “Ensuring Peace for All Under Heaven, Good State Governance and Regulation of Family Affairs, and Self-Cultivation”

Abstract

Abstract Today, “regulation of family affairs, good state governance and ensuring peace to all under heaven” has become a fixed-format narrative through which China remains attached to its traditions. However, most such expressions digress from the original context of The Great Learning and so have become a way of conveying modern and international ideas instead. “Regulation of family affairs, good state governance and ensuring peace to all under heaven” in the context of The Great Learning are the last three of the “eight essential principles (studying things, acquiring knowledge, being sincere in thought, rectifying one’s heart/mind, cultivating oneself, regulating one’s family affairs, governing the state well, and ensuring peace to all under heaven),” and seemingly separate from the other five. However, only by connecting the eight principles together, both progressively and recursively, can one accurately and fully understand the meaning of the last three (“regulation of family affairs, good state governance and ensuring peace to all under heaven”). They are listed in a progressive order but only by going backward to “studying things” can we truly understand the profound meaning of the “complete eight.” In these two-way orders, “self-cultivation” by the individual is the key link. Such an understanding helps to focus on the basic collectivist ideas of Confucian thought, and to highlight its modern significance.