Happiness was the highest experience of human life advocated by Confucianism and the ideal realm pursued by Zhu Xi’s NeoConfucianism. A form of aesthetic experience, happiness actually suggests that the unity between the true, the good and the beautiful is the greatest happiness of human life. Thus experience of happiness in Zhu’s philosophy contains the beauty of aesthetic personality, the beauty of harmony between nature and men and the artistic beauty. Pursuit of an artistic and poetic life to attain the realm of the true, the good and the beautiful is significantly characteristic of Chinese philosophy, including Zhu’s philosophy.

Zhu Xi’s philosophy; experience of happiness; aesthetic realm