Under the Song, scholar-officials remade Confucian teaching in answer to the centuries of Buddhist and Daoist ascendancy. The Cheng brothers, Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, and their circle built a metaphysics of principle and material force and a discipline of self-cultivation meant to recover the Way of the ancient sages. Their renewal, carried to its sum by Zhu Xi, is the movement the West calls Neo-Confucianism.
Tagged: Confucianism Neo-Confucianism
The Event
- Date
- 960-1279 (exact)
- Era
- The Song-Ming Renewal; Standard periodization of Confucian history
- Location
- Kaifeng and Hangzhou; today China
- Traditions
- Confucianism
- Streams
- Neo-Confucianism
- Key figures
- Zhou Dunyi, Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao
Primary Sources
- The writings of the Cheng brothers.
Secondary Sources
- Yao, Xinzhong. An Introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- de Bary, Wm. Theodore, and Irene Bloom, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition. 2nd ed., Columbia University Press, 1999.
Provenance: HIST-0707; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-27.
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