The Great Learning (Dà Xué, 大學) stands at the crossroads of early Confucian teaching and later institutional Confucianism. Traditionally, its ideas are traced back to Confucius, while its composition and transmission are associated with his disciple Zengzi (Zeng Shen, 曾子), reflecting the moral concerns of the late Spring and Autumn period. Historically, the text first appeared not as an independent classic but as a chapter within the Book of Rites (Lǐjì, 禮記), itself one of the Five Classics that took shape in the early imperial era and were canonized under the Han. In that setting, the Great Learning functioned as a concise statement on how personal cultivation, family regulation, and political order interrelate, harmonizing well with Han notions of ritual, governance, and moral education.

Over time, this relatively brief chapter came to bear a weight far beyond its original size. During the Song dynasty, in the ferment of what later came to be called Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi (朱熹) extracted the Great Learning from the Book of Rites and treated it as a standalone work. He reorganized its sentences, distinguished a main text from commentary, and read it as a systematic roadmap of moral practice: from “investigating things” and “making the will sincere” to “rectifying the mind,” “cultivating the person,” and ultimately “bringing peace to the world.” By grouping it with the Analects, Mencius, and the Doctrine of the Mean as the Four Books (Sìshū, 四書), Zhu Xi effectively repositioned the Great Learning as an entryway into the entire Confucian tradition.

This reconfiguration had profound institutional consequences. From the Yuan period onward, the Four Books—understood largely through Zhu Xi’s commentaries—became the core curriculum of the civil service examinations. The Great Learning thus moved from being a single chapter in a ritual classic to a central text shaping the education of scholar-officials and the moral vocabulary of governance. For generations, it served as both primer and touchstone, articulating the conviction that the ordering of the state and the pacification of the realm must be rooted in the quiet, demanding work of self-cultivation.