Table of contents : Contents Editor’s Preface Dynastic Periods in Chinese History Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Neo-Confucianism, 1000–1400 CHAPTER 1. Song Dynasty Neo-Confucianism CHAPTER 2. Neo-Confucian Education Part II. The Great Learning and the Eight Steps to Personal Cultivation CHAPTER 3. The First Five Steps of Personal Cultivation CHAPTER 4. The Three Steps of Social Development Part III. Self-Cultivation Upgrades: The Fifteenth Century through the Nineteenth Century CHAPTER 5. Reforms in Neo-Confucianism: The Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries CHAPTER 6. The Nineteenth-Century Synthesis in Confucian Learning Legacies Appendix: Chronology of Works and Thinkers with the Sequence for Reading the Four Books Indicated Notes Further Readings Index About the Author