Wang Fuzhi (1619–92)

A seventeenth-century neo-Confucian and Ming loyalist, Wang Fuzhi is best known for his nationalism and his theories of historical and metaphysical change. His classical commentaries and other writings, not published until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, present an exceptionally comprehensive and vigorously argued synthesis and critique of China’s intellectual tradition. His ideas on topics such as politics, cosmology and knowledge have fascinated readers of widely differing philosophic persuasions.