Q0169

“To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth; to secure the destiny…” — Zhang Zai (Hengqu Yulu (Song–Ming text: /; popular…)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: Hengqu Yulu (Song–Ming text: /; popular polished form: / ). Theme: responsibility.

English

To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth; to secure the destiny of the people; to continue the interrupted learning of the past sages; to open peace for all ages.
Thinker Zhang Zai
School Neo-Confucianism
Source Hengqu Yulu (Song–Ming text: /; popular polished form: / )
Theme Responsibility
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to Hengqu Yulu (Song–Ming text: /; popular polished form: / ) and files it under Neo-Confucianism. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Zhang Zai

Zhang Zai (1020–1077) was a Northern Song Neo-Confucian cosmologist and moral thinker associated with the “gas” (qi) metaphysics of the period. Teaching in Guanzhong, he influenced later Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy even where they revised him.

How to read this passage

Philosophical debates cover free will, blame, collective responsibility, and duties to distant others. Technology and AI revive the question of who is accountable when systems act. This passage enters that discussion through responsibility.

Concepts in this quote

Responsibility
Responsibility asks what we answer for—our choices, omissions, institutions, and the futures we help create.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Zhang Zai. (n.d.). To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth; to secure the destiny of the people; to continue the interrupted learning of the past sages; to open peace for all ages. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0169

MLA: Zhang Zai. “To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth;….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0169.

Chicago: Zhang Zai. “To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth;….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0169.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth;…”?

The passage is attributed to Zhang Zai, Hengqu Yulu (Song–Ming text: /; popular polished form: / ). The archive attributes this English wording to Hengqu Yulu (Song–Ming text: /; popular polished form: / ) and files it under Neo-Confucianism. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Zhang Zai mean by responsibility?

Philosophical debates cover free will, blame, collective responsibility, and duties to distant others. Technology and AI revive the question of who is accountable when systems act. This passage enters that discussion through responsibility.

Same thinker

More from Zhang Zai

  1. The people are my siblings; things are my companions.
  2. Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst.
  3. The Great Void has no physical form; it is the original substance of qi. Its gathering and dispersing are but the passing forms of change.

All quotations by Zhang Zai

Same theme

More on responsibility

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the responsibility theme