Huang Zongxi, also known as Huang Lizhou, was the most important figure during the transitional period from the late Ming to the early Qing dynasty. He was the last in line as a Sung-Ming neo-Confucian philosopher, and was also an intellectual historian who studied in depth the whole Sung-Ming neo-Confucian Movement. Huang was the disciple of Liu Zongzhou (1578–1645), and compiled the influential Mingru xue'an (Cases in Ming Confucianism) according to the guidelines he learned from his teacher.

The dominant trend of philosophy in the Ming dynasty was Wang Yangming's (1472–1529) xinxue (learning of mind). It was in sharp contrast to Zhu Xi's (1130–1200) lixue (learning of principle), which had been the dominant neo-Confucian philosophy as well as state ideology since the Yüan dynasty, because Zhu's Commentaries to the Four Books had been adopted as the basis for civil service examinations since 1313. Zhu had taught a...