There are only three or five thinkers in China who have far-reaching influence on society. Zhu is one of them, and his Notes on Four Books and Chapters plays a decisive role.
-Ren Yuji, a famous scholar
Zhu is the most famous Neo-Confucianism in the Southern Song Dynasty and the greatest educator in ancient China after Confucius. He read widely all his life and paid attention to classics, and made different contributions to Confucian classics, history, literature, education, music and even natural science. His philosophical thoughts and educational thoughts had a far-reaching impact on the political culture in the late feudal society of China. Philosophically, Zhu inherited Cheng's theory about the relationship between reason and qi, and developed into a complete objective idealistic neo-Confucianism system, known as the school. His Neo-Confucianism is regarded as the authentic position of Confucianism in Ming and Qing Dynasties. His style of study of exposition and accurate analysis also had a great influence on later scholars. In the Tokugawa era, "Zhuzi Studies" was also quite popular in Japan. Zhu pays attention to the close combination of academic research and lectures, and teachers and students share research works; His teaching experience greatly promoted the development of later academies, the improvement of free lecture atmosphere and the strong academic research atmosphere.
Notes on Four Books and Sentences is one of Zhu's most representative works. This book is also referred to as Notes to Four Books for short, that is, Zhu's Notes to Daxue, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius and Mencius. In his later years, Zhu devoted a lot of effort to writing and revising the Notes on Four Books. After more than 40 years of research and exploration, the day before his death at the age of 70, he was still revising the notes of the sincere article of University.
Zhu's significance lies in that, first of all, these four works are combined to form a classic system supporting Neo-Confucianism; Secondly, these four classics are regarded as the texts of their "Tao" pedigree, which makes the history from Confucius Classics to Mencius supported by works; Thirdly, the four books are briefly annotated and expounded, and the ideas of Neo-Confucianism are integrated into the annotations of the four books. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, The Notes on Reading Four Books and Sentences became the standard of official textbooks and previous imperial examinations. Under the background of examination power and career interests, the original pure thought has become a universal concept in the field of life, and has further become a popular ideological trend and academic in the intellectual world, thus changing the mainstream and tone of culture and constructing the main landscape of China's knowledge, thought and belief world in the next few hundred years.