From the development of cultural history, Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties is an objective stage of the development of ancient culture in China. All the major events that have existed and experienced in history always have their historical inevitability. During the Song and Ming Dynasties, there were many schools (90 cases in Song and Yuan Dynasties, 7 cases in Ming Confucianism/KLOC-0) and many academies. There are many important scholars who have left their historical footprints in the cultural history of China, which is another prosperous period of ancient culture in China. These scholars either give lectures in academies, write books and talk in rural areas, or exchange visits and letters, so as to revitalize the ancient culture of China. They collated and annotated ancient documents, collected and published ancient and modern works, and made great contributions to the preservation and dissemination of ancient cultural materials in China. In their lectures, they put forward some educational methods and learning methods, such as teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, step by step, cultivating feelings, attaching importance to self-satisfaction, advocating doubt, studying hard and thinking hard, and opposing making the past serve the present. These methods are a reasonable part of ancient educational thoughts, and they are still useful for reference. Many neo-Confucianists pay attention to absorbing the scientific achievements at that time and integrating them into their own ideological system. However, any historical phenomenon is always concrete and complicated. The main purpose of Neo-Confucianism is to revive Confucianism, explain orthodoxy and rebuild feudal ethics. Most of the cultural classics they compiled were Confucian classics; The content of their lectures is Confucian classics, and the purpose is to train the reserve army of feudal bureaucrats or Confucian teachers. Whether Zhu's "pure Confucianism", Chen Liangzhi's "hero" or "crazy man", they are only one aspect of the sage's personality or a cultivation stage. All these are inevitable because of the limitations of history and class at that time.
Judging from the development history of China's theoretical thinking, Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties was a new stage in the development of China's ancient thinking. No matter the richness of theoretical content, the integrity of ideological system, the breadth and depth of theoretical questions raised, especially the clarity of ideological concepts and the precision of philosophical speculation, the height and level reached by Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties are incomparable. However, this is only from the perspective of ancient cultural history and Confucian history. The thought of any school in any era can only reach the height that can be reached in the era when it was born. Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties did not break through the basic characteristics of China's traditional thinking, such as emphasizing the whole over the individual, emphasizing chaotic synthesis over logical analysis, emphasizing repeated circulation over sudden change and innovation, emphasizing visual images over logical abstraction. Although they changed the study of Confucian classics, they did not fundamentally give up the methods of Confucian classics. The idolization psychology of feudal ethics and sages' personality, as well as the theoretical requirement of absolutizing the universe itself, stifled the progress and development of some reasonable thinking methods in their thoughts and trapped quite innovative methods in a rigid system. This contradiction between ethics and philosophical system and method has been very acute in Song and Ming Dynasties, just like a growing teenager is still bound by a baby's clothes. In this sense, Song and Ming Dynasties can only be the last prosperity of feudal culture and traditional Confucianism, and its historical fate of being criticized and sublated is inevitable. The maturity of feudal culture and Confucianism also means familiarity in essence, and the final exclusive respect for Confucianism is the beginning of decline.
From the perspective of the history of political thought and ethics, Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties is a more rigid and stale ideological form. The mainstream schools of Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties, such as Lu and Wang, advocated "natural justice" and respected primitive conscience. This theory is accumulated in the cultural and psychological structure of the Chinese nation, which makes the word "natural conscience" popular in modern China and even in modern times. Its influence, from philosophy and morality to literature, art and drama, from political theory to folk customs, from the court's discussion of politics and scholars to villagers' disputes, can not be ignored. But this "natural conscience" is a very abstract and concrete cultural concept and value concept. It is abstract because it has no specific sociality and historicity in theoretical form, denies people's specific attributes and material interests, and is a sacred phantom only for people to fear, believe and worship. It is concrete because it actually permeates the ethical principles and values formed by Confucian culture for a long time. Compared with the era of Confucius and Mencius, this feudal ethical code has completely lost its historical inevitability and rationality, and has become the shackles of further social progress in China. The supremacy of moral values has hindered the progress of China society. As a result, "natural conscience" has become a canopy on the head of the Chinese nation and a harmful stone consolidated in the deep cultural psychology of the Chinese nation. In this sense, Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties is really unreasonable, demanding truth, stressing conscience against conscience, restraining humanity and stressing humanity. It is unreasonable for them to use their own theoretical system to demonstrate that feudal ethics conforms to heaven. Dai Zhen criticized the neo-Confucianism for "killing people by reason" and shouted "Down with Kongjiadian" in the May 4th Movement, which is probably the real historical significance. During the Song and Ming Dynasties, some feudal literati resisted foreign aggression and had good conduct, which was also related to this. It cannot be simply denied that China people have "reason" and "conscience" in dealing with others since the Song and Ming Dynasties. But from the mainstream of historical development, the objective function of "justice and conscience" does more harm than good. To deny this is to ignore the historical facts from modern times to modern times for nearly a thousand years.