ABSTRACT
The first golden era of Chinese philosophy was in the late Zhou period when Zhou culture was in the decline. A hundred schools contended with one another to offer their solutions to problems. Therefore Chinese philosophies since that time have shown a practical character, quite different from the speculative nature of early Greek cosmologies. In the Han dynasty, study of Confucian Classics became the mainstream. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, intellectuals turned their interest to Neo-Daoism. Then Buddhism became prominent in the Sui and Tang dynasties. The Confucian scholars in the Song dynasty took up the challenge to respond to Daoism and Buddhism, formulated sophisticated philosophical theories, started the trend of Neo-Confucianism, in some ways not unlike the movement of the Renaissance in the modern West, which opened up as it were the second golden era of Chinese philosophy that covered the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. In this and the chapter which follows, I deal with two powerful trends of thought in Neo-Confucianism. But first I investigate the term and concept ‘Neo-Confucianism’.
