 Accordingly, the rest of the essay is organized around the individual and respective examinations of the four ideal-types of philosophical thinking, and hence the quadripartite structure. Section 2 explores vitalism as the philosophical emphasis on qi (material force or psycho-physical force) as the metaphysical fulcrum on which the world turns. Section 3 reveals the ways in which historicism engendered the tendency to seek meaning in human agency by appreciating particular contingencies in changing contexts. Utilitarianism, elucidated in section 4, is my hermeneutic rendering of the Confucian activist ideal of ordering the world by extending utility and function to the fullest (jingshi). Intellectualism, also discussed in section 4, is a representation of the Confucian quest for external, discursive knowledge, most vividly and concertedly manifested in the intellectual movement of evidentiary research (kaozheng). 