Cheng-Zhu school (Learning of Pattern, lixue)
A living tradition within Daoxue / Neo-Confucianism (Song-Ming lixue). The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Cheng-Zhu school (Learning of Pattern, lixue) is a living tradition within Daoxue / Neo-Confucianism (Song-Ming lixue). Also written 程朱理學, School of Principle, Zhu Xi school.
Origin
Founders named in the sources: Cheng Yi (1033–1107), Zhu Xi (1130–1200). No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. No founding date in my sources. Zhu Xi (1130–1200) is described by the Stanford Encyclopedia as the most influential Neo-Confucian. The school holds li (pattern/principle) to be fundamental and advocates 'the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge'. Its commentaries on the Four Books became the basis of the Chinese civil examinations and were exported as orthodoxy to Korea and Japan.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Cheng-Zhu school (Learning of Pattern, lixue).” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-cheng-zhu-school-learning-of-pattern-lixue.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-cheng-zhu-school-learning-of-pattern-lixue-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Cheng-Zhu school (Learning of Pattern, lixue)},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-cheng-zhu-school-learning-of-pattern-lixue},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.