He responded to contemporary economic and political failings of the Tokugawa shogunate, as well as the culture of mercantilism and the dominance of old institutions that had become weak with extravagance.

Sorai was born in Edo the second son of a samurai who served as the personal physician of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, who was at the time daimyō of Tatebayashi Domain.

In this rustic setting, he continued to study the major Chinese classics, as well as Japanese and Buddhist texts on his own for the next 13 years, which formed the foundations for his later philosophy.

Sorai opened a school near the temple of Zōjō-ji to teach Chinese classics, and in 1696 received a position in the service of Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, a senior councillor to the now Shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.

One of these issues involved the Akō vendetta in which the Forty-seven rōnin avenged their fallen lord by killing Kira Yoshinaka in 1702.

Sorai remained in Edo, but visited Kai Province in 1706 at the behest of Yoshiyasu, and wrote a travelogue of the journey, In 1709, following the death of Tokigawa Tsunayoshi, Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu fell from favor, and Sorai left his service and relocated to Nihonbashi, where he opened a private school, the Kenenjuku.He gradually turned away from the teachings of Zhu Xi to develop his own philosophy and school.

As a result of his teachings in putting emphasis on literature as a fundamental form of human expression, Chinese writing would begin to thrive in Japan, becoming an accepted artistic pursuit.

Goi wrote his opposition to Sorai in his essay Hi-Butsu hen, which was written in the 1730s, but not published until 1766 having been edited by Chikuzan and his brother.

Nakai later wrote his own, highly emotional, rebuttal to Ogyū's beliefs in his work Hi-Chō (1785), wherein he rejected the idea that individuals could not better themselves through moral choices.

In it he reinforces that literature is not so much intended for the purposes of instruction in morality or governance, but rather it simply allows for the flow of human emotions.

[7] Though Sorai was best known for being a teacher of Confucianism, he was also called on to find answers to some of the issues in the growing economy, the most notable of which was the rising inflation and prices that began after the debasement of coinage in 1695.

The Tokugawa shogunate carried out a total of 12 recoinages between 1695 and the start of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 debasing the currency in an attempt to match the rising demand for money as the commercial economy rapidly expanded.

There was an attempt to quell the inflation and high prices in 1714, when the government reminted coins in an effort to reduce the amount of gold in circulation.

In response to the currency reforms, Sorai noted that the monetary policies enacted failed as they accounted for only one of the causes of high prices and inflation.

It was all of these factors together, in addition to the monetary influences, that caused wealth and power to shift away from the shogun and into the hands of the merchants, which prompted the debasement of coinage, leading to inflation and exorbitant prices.