Xiong Shili 1885 – 1968

Xiong Shili was a Chinese philosopher and one of the founders of the New Confucian movement of the twentieth century. After early training in classical studies and Yogacara Buddhism, he turned to a Confucian metaphysics rooted in the Book of Changes and articulated, in his New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness, an original ontology in which mind and world are two functions of a single underlying substance. His later works, including Substance and Function and An Inquiry on Confucianism, developed a distinctively Chinese philosophical vocabulary in dialogue with both classical Chinese thought and Western metaphysics. He was the principal teacher of the next generation of New Confucians, including Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi.