Cheng Hao

Life

Hao's grandfather was a county magistrate in Huangpi and died there while in that capacity. Hao's father Cheng Xiang (程珦) was still young at the time and was unable to return to Luoyang, so he was forced to grow up in Huangpi instead. He later became county magistrate (Chinese: 縣尉; pinyin: xiànwèi), at which time his two sons Hao and Yi were born. In 1057 Hao passed the Imperial examinations and became an entered scholar. He successively served as an administrative clerk in Hu County, Shaanxi, as an administrative clerk in Shangyuan County (an area now in Nanjing), as an administrative director in Zezhou, as well as a minister of ceremony, a Censor, a tax and tariff official, a ceremony minister to the military, and various other positions.

Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi were among the pioneers of Song dynasty Neo-Confucianism, and they are often credited with its formal creation along with Zhu Xi and several other scholars. The two brothers were sometimes referred to as "The Two Chengs" (二程), or individually as "Cheng the Elder" (大程) and "Cheng the Younger" (小程). They dealt extensively with cosmology in their studies, applying Neo-Confucian principles to their studies of celestial bodies. In particular, the brothers identified and applied the principle of Divine or Natural Order, called li, to that of Tian, the Heavens, as their original and guiding power. Hao established schools at Fugou and Songyang (in modern Dengfeng). Throughout his life he promoted the view that study and scholarship were means to making men sages, once writing: "The studies of a superior man must arrive at sagacity [sage-hood] and then upon his own intellect; in the case of not arriving at sage-hood but upon his own intellect, all is lost." Hao died in 1085 at the age of fifty-three.