The work known as the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong, 中庸) arose within the early Confucian tradition during a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in ancient China, commonly referred to as the Warring States period. It is traditionally attributed to Zisi (子思), the grandson of Confucius and an important transmitter of Confucian thought, though later scholarship has questioned the certainty of this attribution. The text first appeared not as an independent treatise, but as a chapter within the Book of Rites (Liji, 禮記), a composite ritual classic that preserved ethical and philosophical reflections from the late Zhou world. This setting already hints at its purpose: to respond to the breakdown of the Zhou ritual order and to offer guidance for restoring harmony in a time when competing schools—Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Legalist, and others—were vying to define the way of proper governance and moral life.

Within this historical context, the Doctrine of the Mean can be read as a Confucian attempt to articulate a path of balance that links personal cultivation with cosmic order. Its central notions of “centrality” or “equilibrium” (zhong, 中) and the “constant” or “ever-practiced” (yong, 庸) express an ideal of virtue that avoids both excess and deficiency, seeking a steady alignment of human emotions and actions with the patterns of Heaven (Tian, 天). The text emphasizes that such harmony is not achieved by external regulation alone, but through the cultivation of sincerity (cheng, 誠), understood as a deep authenticity that allows human nature to unfold in accordance with its inherent goodness. In this way, it stands in continuity with early Confucian views that moral potential is present within all and can be realized through disciplined self-cultivation and rightly ordered relationships.

Over time, the historical significance of the Doctrine of the Mean expanded far beyond its initial setting. As Confucianism became closely associated with state ideology, its themes of moderation, ritual propriety, and inner harmony resonated with the needs of imperial governance and social order. During the Neo-Confucian revival of the Song dynasty, Zhu Xi (朱熹) extracted the text from the Book of Rites and elevated it to the status of one of the Four Books, alongside the Analects, Mencius, and the Great Learning. From that point, it served as a foundational text for education and the civil service examinations, shaping the ethical imagination and spiritual aspirations of the educated classes across East Asia, and offering a vision in which personal balance, social harmony, and the rhythms of Heaven and Earth are woven into a single, continuous path of cultivation.