Xuanxue

[1] In general, these scholars sought to reinterpret the social and moral understanding of Confucianism in ways to make it more compatible with Taoist philosophy.

[1] Xuanxue philosophers of the Han dynasty were concerned with restoring unity and harmony to the land, not by condemning the teachings of the sages, but by interpreting them in new ways.

Xuanxue thinkers thereby developed their theories by reinterpreting the relationship between Taoist and Confucian texts through an appreciation of their common themes.

Two influential Xuanxue scholars were Wang Bi and Guo Xiang, editors and leading commentators on the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, respectively.

Richard Wilhelm said the Wang Bi commentary changed the Daodejing "from a compendiary of magical meditation to a collection of free philosophical aperçus."

During the 5th-century CE, Xuanxue formed a part of the official curriculum at the Guozijian, together with Rú (Confucian learning), Literature, and History.

It started from the assumption that all temporally and spatially limited phenomena (anything "nameable"; all movement, change, and diversity; in short, all "being") is produced and sustained by one impersonal principle, which is unlimited, unnameable, unmoving, unchanging, and undiversified.

Xuanxue seeks to bring together Confucian and Daoist ideologies with fresh annotation and discourse, working with the classical definitions, doctrines, and rules set by previous philosophers.

[1] Xuanxue is committed to analytic rigor and clarity in explicating the meaning of Dao, employing the new, contemporary language of the time.

[8] To classify Xuanxue as merely "Neo-Taoism" misleadingly reinforces suggestions that Wei-Jin thinkers were only "reinterpreting Confucianism through the lens of Taoism" (Chan 2010: 5).

Instead of seeing them as attempting to reconcile Confucianism with Taoism, it may be suggested that they were primarily concerned with the substantive issue of the relationship between mingjiao and ziran.