The Message of the Mind in Neo-Confucianism (Gender & Culture (Hardcover))

In recent years the scholarly discussion of Neo-Confucianism in both China and the West has divided it into two rival schools, the orthodox school of Principle (Ii-hsueh) identified with the Ch'eng brothers and Chu Hsi, and the reformist School of Mind (hsin-hsueh) matched with Lu Hsiang-shan and Wang Yang-ming. Building on Professor de Bary's earlier work, this book examines the development of Neo-Confucianism and how, in the absence of any school deriving from Lu Hsiang-shan, Wang later drew upon and modified the Ch'eng-Chu teaching concerning the mind to create a new form of learning in the 16th century, retroactively linked to Lu Hsiang-shan. This innovative work presents a new interpretation of Neo-Confucianism while also covering 650 years of Chinese history.