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Eight Steps of the Great Learning

🤔 Philosophy & Ethics By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated
Quick answer: the eight steps of the Great Learning run from investigating things to bringing peace to the world. At the center is cultivating oneself.
Contents
  1. 1. Three principles
  2. 2. The eight steps
  3. 3. Interpreting gewu
  4. 4. References

Three principles

The Great Learning states its aims as manifesting bright virtue, renewing (or loving) the people and resting in the highest good.

The eight steps

  1. Investigating things (gewu)
  2. Extending knowledge (zhizhi)
  3. Making the intention sincere
  4. Rectifying the mind
  5. Cultivating the self
  6. Regulating the family
  7. Governing the state
  8. Bringing peace to the world

The first four concern inner cultivation and the last three social practice, with self-cultivation as the root. The text says everyone from the Son of Heaven to commoners takes self-cultivation as the basis.

Interpreting gewu

  • Zhu Xi: going to things and exhausting their principle, adding a supplementary chapter.
  • Wang Yangming: correcting what is not right in the mind, linked to his unity of knowledge and action.

References

  1. Gardner, D. K. (1986). Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon. Harvard University Press.
  2. Legge, J. (Trans.). (1893). The Great Learning. In The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1. Clarendon Press.
  3. Chan, W.-T. (1963). A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press.
  4. Wang Yangming. (1963). Instructions for Practical Living (W.-T. Chan, Trans.). Columbia University Press.

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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.