 The Confucian thinkers of the Song-Ming period came in for a great deal of criticism in the centuries following the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644. Much of the innovative scholarship in the subsequent Qing dynasty (1644–1911) was conducted by Confucian scholars closely affiliated with “evidential studies”, who tended to see philosophers like Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming as too reliant on abstract speculation and personal introspection. As Chinese intellectuals began to take more interest in Western philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, some saw themselves as belonging to a tradition continuous with philosophers like Zhu and Wang, but others rejected Confucianism outright and Song-Ming Confucianism with it. Still, Zhu Xi stayed squarely at the center of the formal education system and the civil service exams right up to the early 20th century. And there is little question that Song-Ming Confucianism—especially the works of Zhu and Wang—continue to be tremendously influential in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. To this day, many people in East Asia who take a more scholarly approach to Confucianism regard Zhu’s interpretations as authoritative. Standard Chinese-language “readers” (duben 讀本) of the Confucian canon follow Zhu Xi’s interpretations closely (e.g., Xie 2003). Consequently, some of the popular treatments of classical Confucianism continue to adopt the terminology, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical vision of Zhu Xi even as they purport to provide interpretations of the tradition’s founding figures and texts. In the West it is not uncommon to find specialists in Confucian philosophy who work primarily or exclusively on classical texts such as the Analects or the Mencius, but for scholars of Confucianism in Chinese-speaking countries, many of the philosophical disputes are extensions of those found in the Song and Ming. The Chinese-speaking world’s most celebrated present-day philosophers are “New Confucians” (Xin rujia 新儒家), thinkers that take themselves to be continuing the work of the Song-Ming Confucians (M. Lee 2017; Makeham 2003a). The same is true for scholars of Confucianism throughout East Asia, due in part to the tremendous influence of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. A great deal of current Confucian discourse in East Asia is framed as a matter of taking sides between competing lineages or factions of the Song and Ming, especially the Learning of Pattern (Lixue) school associated with Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi and the Learning of the Heartmind (Xinxue) school associated with Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming (Chen 2010).