Zhu Xi’s treatment of the Great Learning rewove its threads into the very fabric of East Asian thought. Rather than leaving it as a brief prose sketch, the 12th-century scholar reorganized the text, isolating sixteen passages from the Book of Rites and adding a robust, line-by-line commentary. This editorial makeover transformed the Great Learning into one of the Four Books that dominated civil-service exams for centuries.

Key shifts in interpretation:
• From outline to roadmap: Zhu Xi distilled the text’s lofty ideals into a clear sequence—“sincerity of the will,” “rectification of the mind,” “cultivation of the person,” and so on—making moral self-cultivation feel as systematic as a scientific method.
• Inner work meets outer order: Emphasis moved toward the root in the individual heart, rippling outward to family, state and world. Society’s harmony now depended on personal integrity, like a pebble creating expanding ripples across a still pond.
• Moral epistemology: Investigation of things (gewu) became more than philosophical musing; it was the starting point for rigorous self-examination, much as today’s ethical AI debates insist on transparent data audits.

These reinterpretations didn’t just collect dust on Confucian academies’ shelves. When civil-service exams were abolished in 1905, the Four Books’ grip on officialdom loosened—but their moral framework endured. In modern China, references to harmonious society and “core socialist values” echo Zhu Xi’s insistence that individual virtue underpins national well-being. Even smartphone apps now gamify Four Books study, proving that a thousand-year-old commentary still strikes a chord in today’s digital age.

Zhu Xi’s legacy isn’t frozen in time. It weaves through contemporary conversations about leadership ethics in business, public service, and technology. By turning a concise ritual text into a comprehensive guide for personal and political life, his commentary ensured the Great Learning remained a living dialogue—one that continues to inspire fresh takes on how inner growth fuels outer change.