ABSTRACT
The account of the philosophies of China presented in the last two chapters is taken up again here as we turn to some major developments that took place after the classical era. The core ideas of neoConfucian philosophy are introduced as we consider the relationship between that philosophy and ideas from the School of Names, Daoism and the emergent Chinese Buddhist philosophy. Two key questions are addressed: ‘How are words and things related?’ and ‘How is the mind related to the world?’. Thinkers connected with the School of Names laid the conceptual
groundwork for many of the ideas to be examined in this chapter. Hence, although this takes us briefly back into the classical era, we begin with a discussion of this school.
