Southern Sòng 宋 official, classicist, and xīnxué 心學 (“mind-doctrine”) thinker, native of Yín 鄞 county in Qìngyuán fǔ 慶元府 (modern Níngbō 寧波, Zhèjiāng). Zì Héshū 和叔; hào Jiézhāi 絜齋; posthumously canonized Zhèngxiàn 正獻. Lifedates 1144–1224 are firm (CBDB id 10289). Jìnshì of Chúnxī 8 (1181, xīnchǒu 辛丑). Career: prefectural magistracies, then court service under Guāngzōng 光宗 and Níngzōng 寧宗, ending with the Xiǎnmógé xuéshì 顯謨閣學士 honorific; biography in Sòngshǐ 宋史 (本傳). His funerary xíngzhuàng 行狀 was written by Zhēn Déxiù 真德秀 (1178–1235), and records that he had four sons — Yuán Qiáo 袁喬 (zì Chóngqiān 崇謙, magistrate of Lìyáng 溧陽, who predeceased him), the second and third whose names the Sòngshǐ does not preserve, and the youngest, Yuán Fǔ 袁甫.
Together with 楊簡 (Cíhú 慈湖, 1141–1226), Shěn Huàn 沈煥 (1139–1191), and Shū Lín 舒璘 (1136–1199) he made up the so-called Yǒngjiā [sic — the standard “Four Disciples” of Lù Jiǔyuān is in fact the Yǒngzhōu 甬上 group, of which Yuán Xiè was the second after Yáng Jiǎn] sì xiānsheng 四先生, the four chief disciples of Lù Jiǔyuān 陸九淵 (1139–1192). Within this circle Yáng Jiǎn was the senior figure and Yuán Xiè the principal exponent of xīnxué 心學 in its applied-canonical form: where Yáng Jiǎn covered the Yìjīng, the Shī, and the five gào of the Shàngshū (KR1b0015), Yuán Xiè produced a comprehensive Shàngshū commentary in the form of family-school lectures recorded by his eldest son Yuán Qiáo and posthumously printed in 1231 at the Xiàngshān shūyuàn 象山書院 by his youngest son Yuán Fǔ. This is the Jiézhāi jiāshú shūchāo 絜齋家塾書鈔, transmitted in the Sìkù quánshū (KR1b0016). His other principal works include the Jiézhāi yìzhuàn 絜齋易傳 and the Máo shī jiěyí 毛詩解頤. SòngYuán xué àn 宋元學案 places him together with Yáng Jiǎn at the head of the Sānshān 三山 — strictly Yǒngshàng 甬上 — branch of the Lù school.