This chapter explains the scope of coverage of Southern Sung Confucianism, but concentrates in only two directions. First and primarily, it shows that one needs to look at a much larger "fellowship" or community of Tao-hsueh thinkers in order to understand how ideas developed, how Chu Hsi only slowly emerged as its representative figure, and how it eventually became both intellectual and state orthodoxy. Secondarily, the chapter treats the fellowship's most outspoken and effective Southern Sung critics, the "conventional Confucians", more seriously than most other modern accounts, which often depict them as being merely establishment bureaucrats and/or anti-intellectual. In setting Tao-hsueh Confucianism in its historical context, political, social, and intellectual factors have been integrated to trace its development from the pursuit of the Tao by various individuals to a school of thought that won state recognition as Confucian orthodoxy.