Neo-Confucianism was a heterogeneous philosophical tradition, and is generally categorized into two different schools.
Two-school model vs. three-school model In medieval China, the mainstream of neo-Confucian thought, dubbed the "Tao school", had long categorized a thinker named
Lu Jiuyuan among the unorthodox, non-Confucian writers. However, in the 15th century, the esteemed philosopher
Wang Yangming took sides with Lu and critiqued some of the foundations of the Tao school, albeit not rejecting the school entirely. Objections arose to Yangming's philosophy within his lifetime, and shortly after his death, Chen Jian (1497–1567) grouped Wang together with Lu as unorthodox writers, dividing neo-Confucianism into two schools. As a result, neo-Confucianism today is generally categorized into two different schools of thought. The school that remained dominant throughout the medieval and early modern periods is called the
Cheng–Zhu school for the esteem it places in
Cheng Yi,
Cheng Hao, and
Zhu Xi. The less dominant, opposing school was the
Lu–Wang school, based on its esteem for Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming. In contrast to this two-branch model, the
New Confucian Mou Zongsan argues that there existed a third branch of learning, the
Hu-Liu school, based on the teachings of
Hu Hong (Hu Wufeng, 1106–1161) and
Liu Zongzhou (Liu Jishan, 1578–1645). The significance of this third branch, according to Mou, was that they represented the direct lineage of the pioneers of neo-Confucianism, Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai and Cheng Hao. Moreover, this third
Hu-Liu school and the second
Lu–Wang school, combined, form the true mainstream of neo-Confucianism instead of the Cheng–Zhu school. The mainstream represented a return to the teachings of
Confucius,
Mengzi, the
Doctrine of the Mean and the Commentaries of the
Book of Changes. The Cheng–Zhu school was therefore only a minority branch based on the
Great Learning and mistakenly emphasized intellectual studies over the study of sagehood.
Cheng–Zhu school Zhu Xi's formulation of the neo-Confucian world view is as follows. He believed that the
Tao () of
Tian () is expressed in principle or
li (), but that it is sheathed in matter or
qi (). In this, his system is based on Buddhist systems of the time that divided things into principle (again, li), and function (). In the neo-Confucian formulation,
li in itself is pure and almost-perfect, but with the addition of
qi, base emotions and conflicts arise. Human nature is originally good, the neo-Confucians argued (following
Mencius), but not pure unless action is taken to purify it. The imperative is then to purify one's
li. However, in contrast to Buddhists and Taoists, neo-Confucians did not believe in an external world unconnected with the world of matter. In addition, neo-Confucians in general rejected the idea of reincarnation and the associated idea of
karma. Different neo-Confucians had differing ideas for how to do so. Zhu Xi believed in
gewu (), the Investigation of Things, essentially an academic form of observational science, based on the idea that
li lies within the world.
Lu–Wang school Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren), probably the second most influential neo-Confucian, came to another conclusion: namely, that if
li is in all things, and
li is in one's heart-mind, there is no better place to seek than within oneself. His preferred method of doing so was
jingzuo (), a practice that strongly resembles
Chan (Zen) meditation, or
zuochan (; ). Wang Yangming developed the idea of
innate knowing, arguing that every person knows from birth the difference between
good and
evil. Such knowledge is
intuitive and not
rational. These revolutionizing ideas of Wang Yangming would later inspire prominent Japanese thinkers like
Motoori Norinaga, who argued that because of the
Shinto deities, Japanese people alone had the intuitive ability to distinguish good and evil without complex rationalization. Wang Yangming's school of thought (
Ōyōmei-gaku in Japanese) also provided, in part, an ideological basis for some samurai who sought to pursue action based on intuition rather than scholasticism. In doing so, it also provided an intellectual foundation for the radical political actions of low ranking samurai in the decades prior to the
Meiji Restoration (1868), in which the
Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868) was overthrown. ==In Korea==