Cheng Yi 1033 – 1107

Cheng Yi, with his elder brother Cheng Hao, was one of the founders of the Neo-Confucian School of Principle that would culminate in the synthesis of Zhu Xi. He served briefly as imperial tutor and was repeatedly exiled for his uncompromising criticism of court policy. His teaching, recorded in the Surviving Works of the Two Chengs, identified the principle of all things, li, with the moral order of heaven and developed an austere ethic of reverent attention as the path of self-cultivation. His thought, taken up and systematized by Zhu Xi, became the orthodox tradition of Chinese learning for the next seven centuries.