Jonathan Liu

Neo-Confucianism
• Neo-Confucianism started in the
second half of the 11th century and
was founded by Zhou dunyi and
the Cheng brothers, who wanted to
describe the principle that is the
foundation of all living things.
 Neo-Confucianism Schools
• Neo-Confucianism is divided into two major
schools, the school of mind and the school of
principle. Both schools had different thinkers
but most of their differences came down to
methodology. The school of principle
believed in gradual learning. The school of
mind believed that you don’t have to go
outside to accumulate understanding but to
realize the principle already inherit within
 Zhu Xi
• Neo-Confucianism’s greatest thinker was Zhu
Xi (1130-1200). He combined a lot of Neo-
Confucian thoughts known as the Rational
School. This is a major branch of Neo-
Confucianism. He created more precise
definitions for many important Chinese
definitions. He also believed in li and qi, which
are the two things that made up everything.  
 Wang Yangming
• The school of mind or intuition is the second
major branch of Neo-Confucianism. LuXiangshan
and his follower Wang Yangming founded this
school. Wang argued that man is born with
knowledge of what is good and can use it if he has
a pure mind. For Wang, knowledge is the
beginning of action and action is the completion of
knowledge. Wang’s philosophies influenced early
20th century thinkers with his philosophy.
 Connection
• I can connect to Neo-Confucianism because I have
learned about Buddhism in class and Prince
Siddhartha had never known about the worlds
suffering but once he saw the world outside of his
palace he wanted to experience suffering to attain
more wisdom of it. That is just like what Wang
Yangming said because action is the completion of
knowledge so experiencing suffering completed his
knowledge of it.
Wang Yangming
This is a picture of
Wang Yangming who
is one of the most
influential philosophers
of Neo-Confucianism