Sage and great person in Zhang Zai’s thought

ABSTRACT The idea of the Confucian sage-king can be politically dangerous if the implication is that anyone can become a sage through learning. But Confucians after the Han dynasty generally saw the task of becoming a sage practically impossible, while Neo-Confucians after the Song distinguished between the moral and the political authorities. Zhang Zai of the Northern Song dynasty, however, maintained both that anyone can become a sage through learning and that a sage should necessarily receive Heaven’s mandate. But Zhang had a unique concept of a ‘great person,’ which enabled him to escape the seemingly inevitable conclusion that anyone can become a king. For Zhang, a great person is practically indistinguishable from a sage, meaning that no one can testify to another person’s sagehood. This makes any claim to the political authority based on virtue groundless. Thus, despite preserving the ideal of a sage-king, Zhang Zai could deny virtually all means of replacing the current king.