He Xinyin

He Xinyin (1517 to 1579) was a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher of the Ming dynasty, whose family came from Yongfeng County in Jiangxi Province. He passed the provincial examinations in 1546 and was introduced to the philosophy of Wang Yangming through the teachings of Wang Gen of the Taizhou school, but decided that spreading ideas and teaching mattered more than an official career. In 1553 he set up a self-sufficient community for his family, centralizing education and tax payment, which the authorities distrusted and forced to disband after six years. He later ran a discussion club in Beijing open to people of every social class and lectured at private academies in central China. Counted among the left wing of Wang Yangming's followers, he held that material desires rest on human nature and should be selected and limited rather than rejected, and he placed the beginning of self-improvement in friendship. He was arrested in Nanjing in 1579 and killed in prison. His main surviving work is the Yuanxue yuanjiang, On Study and Discussion.