Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy

This Companion is the first volume to provide a comprehensive introduction, in accessible English, to the Neo-Confucian philosophical thought of representative Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. It brings together nineteen essays on a range of topics in Neo-Confucian philosophy, embracing natural and speculative philosophy through to virtue ethics and political philosophy. Written for undergraduate and postgraduate university students in philosophy and Chinese history courses, as well as academics, the Companion is distinguished by several features: It demonstrates the key role played by philosophical discourse in Neo-Confucian self-cultivation; it evidences the fundamental connections that were posited between morality in human society and its cosmological and ontological underpinnings; and it provides detailed insights into changing perspectives on key philosophical concepts and their relationship with one another.