The Message in the Mind in Neo-Confucianism

by William Theodore de Bary

In recent years the scholarly discussion of Neo-Confucianism in both China and the West has divided it into two rival schools, the orthodox school of Principle (Ii-hsueh) identified with the Ch'eng brothers and Chu Hsi, and the reformist School of Mind (hsin-hsueh) matched with Lu Hsiang-shan and Wang Yang-ming. Building on Professor de Bary's earlier work, this book examines the development of Neo-Confucianism and how, in the absence of any school deriving from Lu Hsiang-shan, Wang later drew upon and modified the Ch'eng-Chu teaching concerning the mind to create a new form of learning in the 16th century, retroactively linked to Lu Hsiang-shan. This innovative work presents a new interpretation of Neo-Confucianism while also covering 650 years of Chinese history.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

William Theodore de Bary was an East Asian studies expert at Columbia University, with the title John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and Provost Emeritus.

De Bary graduated from Columbia College in 1941, where he was a student in the first iteration of Columbia's famed Literature Humanities course. He then briefly took up graduate studies at Harvard before the US entered the Second World War. De Bary left the academy to serve in American military intelligence in the Pacific Theatre. Upon his return, he resumed his studies at Columbia, where he earned his PhD.

He has edited numerous books of original source material relating to East Asian (primarily Japanese and Chinese) literature, history, and culture, as well as making the case, in his book Nobility and Civility, for the universality of Asian values. He is recognized as essentially creating the field of Neo-Confucian studies.

Additionally, DeBary was active in faculty intervention during the Columbia University protests of 1968 and served as the university's provost from 1971 to 1978. He has attempted to reshape the Core Curriculum of Columbia College to include Great Books classes devoted to non-Western civilizations. DeBary is additionally famous for rarely missing a Columbia Lions football game since he began teaching at the university in 1953. A recognized educator, he won Columbia's Great Teacher Award in 1969, its Lionel Trilling Book Award in 1983 and its Mark Van Doren Award for Great Teaching in 1987.

Now the director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities and still teaching, De Bary lives in Rockland County, New York.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_de_Bary