China

Philosophy and religion

Daoism and Buddhism by Ming times had declined into ill-organized popular religions, and what organization they had was regulated by the state. State espousal of Zhu Xi thought and state repression of noted early Ming litterateurs, such as the poet Gao Qi and the thinker Fang Xiaoru, made for widespread philosophical conformity during the 15th century. This was perhaps best characterized by the scholar Xue Xuan’s insistence that the Daoist Way had been made so clear by Zhu Xi that nothing remained but to put it into practice. Philosophical problems about human identity and destiny, however, especially in an increasingly autocratic system, rankled in many minds, and new blends of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist elements appeared in a sequence of efforts to find ways of personal self-realization in contemplative, quietistic, and even mystical veins. These culminated in the antirationalist individualism of the famed scholar-statesman Wang Yangming, who denied the external “principles” of Zhu Xi and advocated striving for wisdom through cultivation of the innate knowledge of one’s own mind and attainment of “the unity of knowledge and action.” Wang’s followers carried his doctrines to extremes of self-indulgence, preached to the masses in gatherings resembling religious revivals, and collaborated with so-called “mad” Chan (Zen) Buddhists to spread the notion that Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism are equally valid paths to the supreme goal of individualistic self-fulfillment. Through the 16th century, intense philosophical discussions were fostered, especially in rapidly multiplying private academies (shuyuan). Rampant iconoclasm climaxed with Li Zhi, a zealous debunker of traditional Confucian morality, who abandoned a bureaucratic career for Buddhist monkhood of a highly unorthodox type. Excesses of this sort provoked occasional suppressions of private academies, periodic persecutions of heretics, and sophisticated counterarguments from traditionalistic, moralistic groups of scholars, such as those associated with the Donglin Academy near Suzhou, who blamed the late Ming decline of political efficiency and morality on widespread subversion of Zhu Xi orthodoxy. The zealous searching for personal identity was only intensified, however, when the dynasty finally collapsed.