Neo-Confucianism
Answering Buddhism on its own ground: giving Confucianism a metaphysics without leaving the world.
1017 – 1584 · living tradition
Neo-Confucianism is the great renewal of Confucian thought under the Song and Ming dynasties (eleventh to sixteenth centuries). Facing and , which dominated metaphysical reflection, thinkers such as , and the Cheng brothers gave ethics a cosmology founded on the pair of () and (); they polemicized against these rivals while borrowing questions and practices from them. synthesized it and fixed the canon of the Four Books, which would form the basis of the imperial examinations until 1905. and later countered with a "school of mind" centred on (). This debate runs through the tradition, which found in Korea, with Yi Hwang and Yi I, its last great renewers recorded here, spread to Japan, was read by and revived in the twentieth century as "New Confucianism".
The ultimate principle is not outside the world: it dwells in each thing and is lived in human relations.
Human nature is good: evil is only the obscuring of a principle everyone carries within.
Anyone can become a , through study and through a practice in which knowing and acting are one.
Justification
The aim of study is to become a , and that aim is open to all. leads there through the (), the methodical reading of the classics and the practice of quiet sitting (jingzuo). leads there through the : to know the good without doing it is not yet to know it.
Zhu Xi, Classified Conversations (Zhuzi yulei), books 7-14 · Wang Yangming, Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxilu), I.5
Justification
The maxim calling for preserving () and extinguishing human desires targets selfish desires, not natural needs, which themselves belong to principle. It would earn Neo-Confucianism reproaches for its severity, notably from in the eighteenth century.
Zhu Xi, Zhuzi yulei, book 13 · Dai Zhen, Evidential Commentary on the Meanings of Terms in the Mencius
Justification
() makes the noble person one body with heaven, earth and the ten thousand things, but it is exercised by degrees, from those near to those far. Neo-Confucianism upholds against the impartial concern of the .
Cheng Hao, On Understanding Humaneness (Shiren pian) · Wang Yangming, Inquiry on the Great Learning (Daxue wen)
Justification
does not lie in a beyond: it is wholly present in each thing, according to the doctrine that principle is one and its manifestations many (li yi fen shu). Against Buddhism, accused of taking the world as illusory and of fleeing human relations, the Neo-Confucians assert that ultimate truth lies in the duties of children, parents and subjects.
Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian, Reflections on Things at Hand (Jinsilu), I and XIII · Zhang Zai, The Western Inscription (Ximing)
Justification
In the line of , human nature is good, for it is nothing other than principle within us. Evil comes from the turbid vital force that obscures it and from the selfish desires grafted onto it, hence the need for study and effort. , who held human nature to be bad, was excluded from the orthodox transmission.
Zhu Xi, Commentary on the Mencius, 6A · Cheng Yi, in the Jinsilu, I
Lineages
See on the friezeAll lineages↑ Influences received
- ReinterpretsConfucianismNeo-Confucianism refounded Confucianism around the Four Books, the Mencius among them, and a line of transmission of the Way (daotong) that leaps over the centuries to the Cheng brothers; the classics received a metap…Read
- ReinterpretsTaoismThe Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate of Zhou Dunyi, which came out of Taoist circles, became the cosmology of Neo-Confucianism: the "Ultimateless" and yin-yang were put in the service of a Confucian ethics.Read
- Reacts againstBuddhismNeo-Confucianism defined itself against Buddhism, accused of taking the world as empty and of fleeing family and political duties.Read