Chapter 9 - Reconceptualizing the order of things in Northern and Southern Sung

Summary

The intellectual legacy of the Sung period was a reconceptualization of the order of things, of the relations between past and present, cosmos and human affairs, state and society, culture and morality, that would not be fundamentally challenged until the seventeenth century. In tracing the development of literati thought there is an important distinction between the Northern and Southern Sung periods, a distinction that also has a regional character. For the Southern Sung state came to depend on the same market-based economy of the south that supported the large numbers of literati elite families who participated in the examination system. In contrast to T'ang, the Southern Sung government rarely sought control over the economy and private interests and, in contrast to Northern Sung, the Southern Sung government was far less interested in transforming society into an ideal order.