Chinese philosophy---Neo-Confucianism
In the Sung dynasty (960-1279), Confucianism became a powerful
force of thought in what is generally called the Sung Confucian
Revival. In the centuries preceding, Buddhism was the dominant
force in China; the intellectual centers of China were the
Buddhist temples. But in the Sung, the center of intellectual
activity again devolved on the scholar. The most important
of these new scholars was Hu Y¨šan (993-1059) who almost single-handedly
is responsible for the revival of Confucianism at this time.
Like Confucius and his followers, Hu Y¨šan is primarily concerned
with ethics rather than abstract religious or metaphysical
speculation; his overwhelming concern lies in the concerns
of government and the ethics of day to day living. As a result
of this Confucian revival, the government itself undertook
massive reforms according to Confucian principles; part of
this reform was the extension of the examination system for
choosing government officials (see your textbook).
Eventually, this revival would split into two central Confucian
schools, the School of Mind or Intuition, whose greatest thinker
was Wang Yang-ming, and the School of Principle, which culminated
in the great thought of Chu Hsi (1130-1200). Both schools
agreed that the world consisted of two realms: the realm of
principle (li ) (which we might call "laws") and
the realm of material force(ch'i ). Principle governs material
force and material force makes manifest principle; the ultimate
origin of principle is in a single principle, called the Great
Ultimate (tao ch'i ), which emanates from Heaven. The School
of Mind, founded by Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085), emphasized that
the human mind is completely unified and reflects perfectly
in itself the principle of the universe. Since the human mind
is perfectly identical with the Universal Mind or the Ultimate
Principle, the duty of any philosopher is to investigate the
nature of the human mind to the exclusion of all other investigations.
The School of Principle believed that there was an immaterial
and immutable principle or law that inheres in all things,
giving them form, motion, and change. The mind of humanity
is essentially the same as the mind of the universe and can
be perfected to reflect that higher mind; however, the principle
inhering in the human mind applied to everything, so that
any investigation into any phenomenon whatsoever would reveal
the principle of the human and the Universal mind. Studying
the heavens or an insect will lead you eventually to that
same principle which characterizes the human mind and the
Universal mind. The scholars of the School of Principle believed
in empirical investigation, for they believed that to find
the principle of any material process was to find the principle
inherent in all material and intellectual processes.
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