 A once-influential but now somewhat neglected set of philosophers in the Song dynasty are often associated with what is called the “Yongjia school” of Confucianism, named after the county in which some of its most prominent thinkers lived and taught at various points in their lives. The Yongjia Confucians had roots in the teachings of the Cheng brothers and Daoxue, but with the passage of time some of the leading thinkers came to see themselves as opponents of that tradition, in part because of their impatience with speculative metaphysics and their more practical orientation toward issues of governance and administration. Two of the most distinguished Confucians aligned with Yongjia were Chen Liang (1143–1194) and Ye Shi (1150–1223), both contemporaries and occasional interlocutors of Zhu Xi. Chen and Ye tended to measure public policies and moral practices in terms of their contributions to public welfare or general social benefit (li 利), a tendency that eventually led some 20th and 21st century historians to characterize Chen and Ye as “utilitarian” thinkers (Qi 1982: 1178–1187; Tillman 1982; Xiao 1982: 539). For both Chen and Ye, the rightness and desirability of a particular practice was determined by its consequences and not (or at least not directly) the agents’ motives and character. Chen and Ye also argued against accounts of the Way (Dao) that posited it as a timeless, abstract entity independent of concrete affairs and circumstances (Niu 1998; Tillman 1982).