For eight hundred years, scholars have regarded the Daxue and the Zhongyong as essential critical studies on Confucian doctrine. In their original forms, however, these texts were part of a larger foundational work, the Li Ji ( Classic of Rites), a forty-chapter opus promoted by the Song Neo-Confucian scholar, Zhu Xi. Translated by Ian Johnston and Wang Ping, this volume contains two versions and translations of the Daxue and Zhongyong, one in their original Li Ji context, annotated by Zheng Xuan and Kong Yingda, and one as the reorganized and reinterpreted stand-alone works disseminated by Zhu Xi.
