Neo-Confucianism is a philosophy which was born from the need to explain the existence of man and the universe in a manner which was just as complex as the Buddhist one. The philosophers which belong to this school of thought took the core of the Confucian philosophy and enriched it with contributions from other philosophies. It can also be stated that neo-Confucianism is a reaction to various provocations of philosophical character coming from Buddhism, neo-Daoism and the yin-yang tradition. Its purpose was to come up not just with a comprehensive abstract explanation of the world, but also with the rightful principles and laws that would guide everyday behaviour. Naturally, there had to be a synergetic relation between the two categories. The revival of the Confucian thought began in the ninth century and reached important levels of creativity in the eleventh century during the northern Song dynasty.

It must be underlined that the term was coined up in order to describe the development of the Confucian thought between the Song dynasty and the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The neo-Confucian movement was never actually united into a proper philosophy because of the differences between the schools of thought contributing to its existence and development. Some of these were the school of principle, lixue, the school of the mind, xinxue or the school of the way, daoxue. All these schools competed between them , but despite this aspect they all considered master Confucius as the common departure point.<br 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