Ogy? Sorai
Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728). Japanese Confucian scholar who laid, indirectly, the foundations for the School of National Learning (Kokugaku). When 25, he started to give free lectures in Edo, in front of the temple of Zōjō-jī. Itō Jinsai (1627–1705) had already argued for a return to the classic Confucian sources, in a school known as Kogidō, ‘School for the Study of Ancient Meaning’. Ogyū followed him at first, but concluded that Itō had not gone far enough in making his study of the past serve the needs of society: he was right in criticizing the neo-Confucians, but he had remained, like them, too concerned with individual ethics and self-improvement. In his view, Hsun Tzu was a better guide. Ogyū had a profound effect, because it was realized by his pupils that the antiquity of Japan could equally be studied and established as a court of appeal against the domination of Chinese thought.
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Ogy? Sorai
