ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the development and influence of the Song-Ming Neo-Confucian schools. Zhang Zai, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming were key figures. Each offered accounts of qi (氣 psycho-physical energy), li (理ordered patterning or principled order), and xin (心mind or consciousness), and each constituted a discrete philosophical school. Li argues that the Neo-Confucian movement involved an inward turn from cosmology to ethics.
During this era, the problem of human nature became crucial to understanding tian (cosmos, the heavens) and ren (the human, humanity). This was done through a focus on the nature of the individual mind and how this transcended a person’s limited sensuous existence. Ultimately, this revealed an unchanging and immaterial final reality, access to which was characterized as “participating in the heavens and the earth” (參天地can tiandi).
