理気二元論と知識主義・行動主義の分離Ri and Ki: The Dualism Behind Intellectualism and Activism

A world overrun by those who believe intellectual mastery is synonymous with comprehension. Yet, on the other flank, those who finally step into the light of action are often driven by nothing more than reactive, puerile movements born of societal grievance, lack, or perceived injustice. In such a climate, one might tinker with reality through knowledge or movement, yet reality itself remains immobile. The situation deteriorates year by year, serving as the nutrient for a modern fiction: a world frozen in its own logic—a zombified world-fiction that persists only to sustain its own stagnant existence. We shall call this intellectualism "dead understanding." It is a comprehension devoid of life. Yet, it is precisely this lifelessness that has gone global, polluting the collective mind and allowing the fictional system of the world to sustain itself. The result is a profound stasis; the very reason for our deepening delusion remains ignored.

To possess a "dictionary-like brain"—to be celebrated for encyclopedic knowledge or an immediate command of various disciplines—is nothing but a symbol of a world in its death throes. As we move into 2026, the decay only feels more pervasive. Now, more than ever, we must revisit a problem that once rose as a great swell in the history of East Asia: the problem of ri and ki (理気).

ri and ki constitute a pivotal philosophical inquiry into the formation of the cosmos—the relationship between ri (理), the fundamental principle of the universe, and ki (気), the material force that composes all matter. The figure who stood at the vanguard of this thought, shaping the intellectual bedrock of the ages to follow, was Zhu Xi (1130–1200) of the Song dynasty. It was Zhu Xi who proposed that "ri governs ki," establishing a new and dominant Confucian philosophy. Here, a profound misalignment began.

I call it a "misalignment" because his assertion that "ri governs ki" is rooted in a fundamental dualism. Within his thinking, Zhu Xi separated ri from ki, creating a conceptual structure where the former subjugates the latter. Through this prism, every element of existence was recast into a landscape of separation and opposition, arranged in hierarchies of superior and inferior, good and evil. Under Zhu Xi, the world began to be constructed as a "severed world." This was a departure, a mutation entirely distinct from the original Confucian dimensions of Confucius or Mencius.

This current, which surged in 12th-century China, eventually reached 17th-century Japan. The interpretation of Zhu Xi’s philosophy remains a vital perspective in both nations, yet I do not view this as a narrow, regional concern. Rather, the world we have constructed is, in truth, nothing other than this Zhu Xi-esque dualism of ri and ki. The misalignment born in the 12th century now encompasses the globe as a singular, monolithic system of fiction. The modern global apparatus is built upon the bones of Neo-Confucianism. It matters little who the specific proponents are today; the modern world collectively suffers from this crisis of dualistic separation.

As noted, the obsession with encyclopedic knowledge and the fixation on specialization are typical stagnations within this dualism. The gravity of the problem lies in the fact that those who inhabit this dualistic framework believe that ri can govern the self and, by extension, that ri can govern the world. They believe that all things can be mastered through the Principle.

By positioning ki as subordinate to ri, Zhu Xi enabled the establishment of a structural system with ri at its apex. While his shift was revolutionary in its claim that ri exists within ki, it allowed for a fatal transition in thought: the idea that ri and ki were not born of a single source, but were severed from the very beginning. Confucius and Mencius never adopted such a philosophical stance. Any attempt to equate Confucianism solely with Confucius inevitably collapses because this 12th-century reconstruction is fundamentally different at its root.

The source that propagated this alien code was the school of Neo-Confucianism. Though alien to the original source, it was exquisitely rational, arrogantly assuming that the entirety of the cosmos was explainable. Gradually, the words of the founder, Confucius, were marginalized as "unclear," and the non-rational presence of faith was denied. While Zhu Xi himself may not have reached the extremes of this divergence, his followers escalated it to a fatal level over the centuries. Their hallmark was the refinement of the understanding of ri into an absolute, intellectual objectivity. For them, ri was the very law that presided over the ten thousand things of heaven and earth. In this desire to grasp these laws and thereby control the world, we see the early flowering of an arrogant, "scientific" attitude.

I am preoccupied with this problem because of the existence of nuclear power. The 2011 explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is often treated as an "unforeseen" accident linked to a natural disaster. In truth, it was a man-made catastrophe—nothing less than the worst possible fruit of intellectual hubris. At that moment, the fiction of modern science collapsed entirely. Yet, because admitting this would render the global system unsustainable, the essence of the problem has been subjected to a collective concealment, both in Japan and abroad. The responsibility was pushed onto the Japanese government alone.

Yet this issue must not be confined to Japan. The root cause—the modern, arrogant attitude that by clarifying ri, one can master the laws of heaven and earth and thereby control the world—has never been questioned. The fundamental inquiry humanity should have faced since 2011 was concentrated there. Instead, the world chose to ignore it.

In Japan, the roots of this intellectual hubris went unexamined. Through a "shock doctrine," the bureaucratic apparatus was revived, and the Neo-Confucian system extending from the Edo period was reinforced and rebuilt with even greater rigidity.

Now, fifteen years after the disaster, there is a mounting movement to restart nuclear plants that have been dormant since 2011. Because the fundamental cause—the intellectualism of the modern attitude—was never addressed, those involved prioritize the maintenance of the system above all else. They resort to the repeated falsification and fabrication of data. Just last week, it was revealed that the Hamaoka plant, which Chubu Electric Power sought to restart, was a hotbed of data fabrication. Why do we fall into such a world? The reason lies hidden within Zhu Xi’s logic.

In 12th-century China, this new philosophy of separation shocked the Song rulers and was deployed as a state apparatus. As this dualism of ri and ki was implemented into the national fabric, society was inevitably occupied by a hunger for intellectual objectivity. Everything non-scientific—human relationships, empathy, consideration—was purged. As a result, intellectualism spread across the state, and action was neglected. Because Zhu Xi had built the world on a severed foundation, knowledge and action were likewise positioned as separate entities.

When action is neglected in favor of intellectualism, a layer of "non-intellectuals" seeking action inevitably emerges. By "non-intellectuals," I mean those who were excluded from the elite success born of this knowledge-centrism. In our time, this is visible in the conflict between the elite and the non-elite, often manifesting as anti-intellectualism.

Yet, the action taken by the non-intellectual is no solution. This remains misunderstood. As we have seen in recent years, their "action" is fueled by dissatisfaction and lack; it is a reactive demand that no person of sound mind could mistake for a righteous path.

What we are witnessing is the separation of intellectualism and activism born of the dualism of ri and ki. Because no one notices that the ground itself is severed, they arrive at "action" while standing on the same fractured earth. They fall into the folly of declaring one side right and the other wrong, debating superior and inferior, good and evil. Their "action" is merely a physiological reaction—a trite, hollow, emotional response. It is not true action.

Anti-intellectualism arises from this typical error: the failure to realize that one's very ground is severed. This is not a problem unique to our era, though its global expansion makes it a phenomenon unprecedented in human history.

The result is an infantile attitude—acting simply because one is displeased. But because the world holds intellectualism in an absolute position, even this immature behavior is justified as a "resistance" to the elite, an act of independent will. This self-justification spreads like a disease. It is a sign that the lessons of the anti-establishment movements of the 1960s have been entirely forgotten.

The consequence is a confusion where separation breeds further separation, leading to self-propagation of conflict and eventual collision. I call it confusion because the clear, spatial differences of the past have liquefied. The once-distinct categories of "right" and "left" have blurred into an unrecognizable mess.

This confusion is the result of liquefaction. Most people, premised on the absolute separation of the system, mistake an unclear stance for an ambiguous one, bringing their own arbitrary delusions into the fold. Unable to abandon the pride of self-justification, they use violent, forced definitions to clarify their positions. This is a form of linguistic fraud, a fact that is now common knowledge.

No one can say what the future holds, but we can at least identify the core of the problem. To understand this, we must look at how Zhu Xi viewed the heart-mind in his dualism. He believed the heart-mind was a mirror to reflect ri.

For Zhu Xi, the heart-mind was merely an object from which "cloudiness" must be removed—a mirror, nothing more. Here, the heart-mind and ri are severed. By making ri absolute, Zhu Xi relegated the human heart to a subordinate position, a mere tool for knowing the Principle. This contributed immensely to the absolutism of intellectualism.

In this logic, ri exists independently of human existence. ri is the supreme characteristic of the world, and humans were born merely to know, master, and utilize its laws to control all things. At this moment, the significance of human existence was subordinated to ri, overturning the human dignity taught by Confucius. Thus, "Investigating Principle“ [窮理] became the highest virtue of Neo-Confucianism.

In short: through knowledge, one discovers, masters, and utilizes the laws of the world to govern it. At first glance, this seems to describe modern science. But science is merely the fruit; the source is this dualism of separation. Science cannot exist without separation. Even quantum mechanics, often thought to transcend modern science, still stands upon this severed ground. It may harbor doubts about established science, but it can never resolve the fundamental separation of its own foundation. The central role of the "observer" in quantum mechanics speaks clearly to this divergence.

Zhu Xi argued that by mastering ri through knowledge, one could "govern the self, govern others, govern society, and govern the state." He saw this as the only technique for a peaceful world. In the context of global intellectual history, I see this as the symbolic turning point toward modernity.

In Zhu Xi’s clear distinction between ri (Principle) and ki (Material Force/Energy), ri is seen as an invariant moral code, while ki is viewed as a turbid, fluctuating energy. When this became the state philosophy, morality drifted; it began to be established as a coercive force to be followed. Confucianism lost its essence and was transformed into a principle of absolute loyalty to the state.

Zhu Xi turned ri into the master and ki into the subordinate. The impact was immense. ri became an external, intellectual object of observation. Humans came to believe that by learning, they could acquire knowledge and thereby regulate their own ki.

The crucial point is that Zhu Xi placed ri on the outside. All the problems of separation that continue today—self and other, human and object—were already completed as a sophisticated system in Zhu Xi’s time.

Simultaneously, it is self-evident that this leads to the criticism of being "too logical and lacking action." But the emergence of Zhu Xi’s philosophy provided the very soil for this inevitable conflict between intellectualism and activism. Indeed, this relationship—activism opposing intellectualism, and vice versa—is precisely what the Neo-Confucian system requires to sustain itself.

When we understand this, we see that the validity of any critique depends on whether the critic understands the essence of this problem. Does the person speaking truly grasp the depth of this severed ground? Modernity constantly brings new "darlings of the era" to the stage, but their true caliber is revealed the moment we look for this understanding.

Therefore, when those who do not understand the root of ri-ki dualism rush toward "action" out of an easy criticism, they move forward while remaining on that same severed ground. They chase the impossible hope that action alone will solve the problem, and their actions are destined to become extreme. Because action in this context has its limits—limits that appear much earlier than they expect—they must increase their radicalism simply to be noticed.

To see the essence clearly, we must step away from Zhu Xi for a moment. Mencius, the great refiner of ancient Confucianism, spoke of ki in a profoundly different way. He introduced the concept of kozen no ki (浩然の気), a powerful moral energy that fills the body when one accumulates righteous conduct.

For Mencius, truth was not an external Principle to be analyzed by the intellect; it was a truth felt as a physical reality, a vitalization of the entire self.

This leads us back to the question: where is the truth that possesses life? Modern academia exists merely to manipulate the pieces of a severed world, bloating knowledge and making it absolute. The university system as we know it today began its true rise during the Song dynasty.

Intellectualism and activism. Whether anti-intellectual or not, there is no future in either.