Neo-Confucian revival takes root in Song academies

1136

The philosophical revival gathered serious momentum across the Southern Song as disciples of the Cheng brothers spread through the Yangtze valley academies, teaching that the careful investigation of things - from bamboo stalks to human nature - led to genuine moral knowledge. Their school of thought would produce the great synthesizer Zhu Xi a generation later, whose commentaries would dominate East Asian intellectual life for seven centuries.