10 - Neo-Confucianism

Summary

In China, the classical tradition was eclipsed by the rise of those whom Chung-yin Cheng called the “later Neo-Confucians”: adherents of the School of Principle founded by Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, and of the School of Universal Mind founded by Lu Hsiang-Shan and Wang Yangming. In the late Song dynasty, the School of Principle was declared to be the orthodox interpretation of Confucianism. The School of Universal Mind was its leading opponent. Nevertheless, “[it] is natural,” as Cheng said, to consider them a group apart. They both “deviated from Classical Confucianism in two important respects; First, they completely objectified human reason into a nonhuman order of things” – a doctrine that the School of Principle formulated and “Wang Yangming subjectivised” by identifying principle with the mind. “A second deviation concerned the status of human nature in relation to its ideal of perfection and development.”