A "New Humanities" Perspective on the Relationship between Xuanxue and Neo-Ruism
A relationship of severance and even opposition exists between Xuanxue and Neo-Ruism as por-trayed in currently-used university history textbooks.From an appropriately historical perspective,however,Xuanxue was in fact a part of Ruism itself,and despite it seeming to be some kind of Ruist heterodoxy,it was in fact a further development of Ruism itself.By integrating Ruist and Daoist ideas,it was both an inheritance of and revolution internal to Ruism,and was an integral part of the history of Ruism's development.It displayed itself outwardly as a form of Xuanxue but was nevertheless solidly internally grounded in Ruist tenets,and this was precisely how its intrinsic logic was connected to Neo-Ruism.From an appropriately philosophical perspective,the intrinsic logic connecting the two is cap-tured in the progression from"abstruse pattern-principle"to"heavenly pattern-principle"and"fun-damental ben and incidental mo"to"fundamental tiand functional yong".That is to say,from a"New Humanities"perspective,Xuanxue and Neo-Ruism are both sequentially connected parts of the history of Ruism's development-Neo-Ruism was a direct inheritance of and further development of Xuanx-ue.