Later Confucian thought drew deeply from the Great Learning by taking its sequence of moral cultivation as a kind of spiritual and political roadmap. The progression from investigating things and extending knowledge, through making the will sincere and rectifying the mind, to cultivating the person, regulating the family, ordering the state, and bringing peace to the world became a foundational structure for Neo-Confucian philosophy. This ordered path gave later thinkers a way to see inner work and outer order as two sides of a single process, rather than as separate pursuits. The Great Learning thus offered not merely a list of virtues, but an architecture of transformation that could guide both personal practice and statecraft.

A central legacy of the text lies in its insistence that self-cultivation is the root from which all genuine social and political harmony must grow. By stressing that moral clarity, sincerity of intention, and rectification of the mind precede any attempt to govern others, it shaped the Confucian conviction that legitimate authority rests on inner virtue. This linkage between personal ethics and public responsibility became a touchstone for later discussions of rulership, education of officials, and the moral obligations of those in power. The ideal of the cultivated person as a moral-political agent, whose inner refinement naturally extends outward into family and society, gained much of its classical form from this work.

The phrase “investigating things” (gewu) and the associated “extension of knowledge” became especially fertile ground for later reflection. Neo-Confucian thinkers treated this as a key to understanding how moral knowledge is acquired and enacted, whether through disciplined engagement with the world and texts or through a more inward attention to the mind and heart. In either case, the Great Learning framed knowledge not as abstract speculation but as something ordered toward ethical clarity and right action. This orientation helped shape Confucian approaches to learning as an integrated practice of understanding and becoming.

The historical elevation of the Great Learning to the status of one of the Four Books, particularly through Zhu Xi’s influence, ensured that its vision permeated education and examination systems across the Confucian world. Students were formed by its sequence of cultivation, and its stress on family order as the basis of political stability reinforced long-standing emphases on filial piety, hierarchical roles, and social responsibility. Over time, the text came to function as both a concise summary and a generative source for Confucian moral, social, and political thought, providing a shared framework within which later thinkers could develop rich and sometimes divergent interpretations.