Shào Bǎo 邵寶
Style name Guóxián 國賢, sobriquet Èrquán 二泉, posthumous canonical title Wénzhuāng 文莊. Native of Wúxí 無錫 in Chángzhōu prefecture. Jìnshì of Chénghuà jiǎchén (1484). Career under Hóngzhì, Zhèngdé, and Jiājìng — rose to Hùbù zuǒ shìláng 戶部左侍郎 (Vice Minister of Revenue, Left). His career is given in the Míng shǐ Rúlín zhuàn (j. 282).
Studied with Lǐ Dōngyáng 李東陽 and is the principal forerunner of the Dōnglín 東林 school: the WYG tíyào on the Jiǎn duān lù 簡端錄 (KR1g0016) explicitly names him as the kāi qí xiān 開其先 (“the one who opened the way before”) for Gāo Pánlóng 高攀龍 (Jǐngyì 景逸) and Gù Xiànchéng 顧憲成 (Jīngyáng 涇陽). He stood firmly against the rising Yángmíng 陽明 liángzhī 良知 movement of his day, defending the ChéngZhū gé wù qióng lǐ programme: “gé wù is just qióng lǐ; lǐ is what makes a thing be that thing; we say gé wù not qióng lǐ because we want to ground the doctrine in the concrete” — the formulation reportedly hostile to the Yángmíng dùn wù (sudden enlightenment) that wanted to sweep away everything. The Wúxī 無錫 lineage of orthodox ChéngZhū Dào xué descends from him through Gù and Gāo.
His chief surviving works are the Jiǎn duān lù 簡端錄 in 12 juàn (a posthumous compilation by his disciple Wáng Zōngyuán 王宗元 of the marginalia and reading-notes Shào had inscribed at the heads of his books) and the Róng chūn jí 容春集 (collected works). The Jiǎn duān lù arrangement: Yì in 3 juàn, Shū in 2, Shī in 1, Chūnqiū in 3, Lǐjì in 1, Dàxué + Zhōngyōng in 1, Lúnyǔ + Mèngzǐ in 1.
CBDB id 34580; lifedates 1460–1527.