Concept

Xuanxue

Overview

Xuanxue (simplified Chinese: 玄学; traditional Chinese: 玄學; pinyin: Xuánxué; Wade–Giles: Hsüan2-hsüeh2), sometimes called Neo-Taoism or Neo-Daoism, is a metaphysical post-classical Chinese philosophy from the Six Dynasties (222-589), bringing together Taoist and Confucian beliefs through revision and discussion. The movement found its scriptural support both in Taoist and drastically reinterpreted Confucian sources. Xuanxue, or "Mystic Learning", came to reign supreme in cultural circles, especially at Jiankang during the period of division. The concept represented the more abstract, unworldly, and idealistic tendency in early medieval Chinese thought. Xuanxue philosophers combined elements of Confucianism and Taoism to reinterpret the I Ching, Daodejing and Zhuangzi.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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So long as what are termed Universals were regarded as a peculiar kind of substances, having an objective existence distinct from the individual objects classed under them, the _dictum de omni_ conveyed an important meaning; because it expressed the intercommunity of nature, which it was necessary on that theory that we should suppose to exist between those general substances and the particular substances which were…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Xuanxue is.
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Another passage in the same place has this sense, “He whom ye look at and do not see, is named I; thou hearkenest to him and hearest him not, and he is called Hi; thou seekest for him with thy hand and touchest him not, and his name is Weï. Thou meetest him and seest not his head; thou goest behind him and seest not his back.” These contradictory expressions are called the “chain of reason.” One naturally thinks in…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
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We know not the essence, nor the real mode of production, of any fact, but only its relations to other facts in the way of succession or of similitude. These relations are constant; that is, always the same in the same circumstances. The constant resemblances which link phaenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phaenomena are all…
John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism
States what Xuanxue is.
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