Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism (daoxue, "the learning of the Way," or lixue, "the learning of principle") is a philosophical revival and reworking of classical Confucian ethics that emerged in Song-dynasty China, beginning with Zhou Dunyi and developed most influentially by Zhu Xi, who integrated Confucian moral and political teaching with a systematic metaphysics of principle (li) and vital force (qi) partly in response to the metaphysical sophistication of Buddhism and Daoism. Zhu Xi's synthesis holds that every thing and every person embodies a share of a single, universal principle, most fully realized in the innate goodness of human nature, and that self-cultivation proceeds through the investigation of things (gewu) and rigorous study of the Confucian classics to recover and manifest that principle in ethical conduct. A rival strand founded by Wang Yangming in the Ming dynasty rejected Zhu Xi's investigation-then-action model in favor of the unity of knowledge and action (zhixing heyi), locating moral principle directly within the innate moral knowing (liangzhi) of the mind rather than in external investigation. Zhu Xi's version of Neo-Confucianism became the officially sanctioned interpretation of the Confucian classics for the imperial examination system from the fourteenth century onward and spread as the dominant state philosophy of Korea's Joseon dynasty and, more selectively, of Tokugawa Japan and Vietnam, shaping East Asian statecraft, education and family ethics for centuries.