Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
The thought of the first outstanding Ming Confucian scholar, Xue Xuan (1389–1464), already revealed the turn toward moral subjectivity. Although a devoted follower of Zhu Xi, Xue’s Records of Reading clearly shows that he considered the cultivation of “mind and nature” to be particularly important. Two other early Ming scholars, Wu Yubi (1391–1469) and...
...early Ming litterateurs, such as the poet Gao Qi and the thinker Fang Xiaoru, made for widespread philosophical conformity during the 15th century. This was perhaps best characterized by the scholar Xue Xuan’s insistence that the Daoist Way had been made so clear by Zhu Xi that nothing remained but to put it into practice. Philosophical problems about human identity and destiny, however,...
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