Wang Yangming (1472–1529) was a Chinese statesman, general, and Neo–Confucian

philosopher. He was one of the leading critics of the orthodox Neo–Confucianism of Zhu
Xi (1130–1200). Wang is perhaps best known for his doctrine of the “unity of knowing
and acting,” which can be interpreted as a denial of the possibility of weakness of will.

This philosopher’s family name was “Wang,” his personal name was “Shouren,” and his
“courtesy name” was “Bo–an.” 1 However, he is normally known today as “Wang
Yangming,” based on a nickname he adopted when he was living in the Yangming
Grotto of Kuaiji Mountain. Born in 1472 near Hangzhou in what is now Zhejiang
Province, Wang was the son of a successful official. As such, he would have received a
fairly conventional education, with a focus on the Four Books of the Confucian tradition:
the Analects (the sayings of Confucius and his immediate disciples), the Great Learning
(believed to consist of an opening statement by Confucius with a commentary on it by
his leading disciple, Zengzi), the Mean (attributed to Zisi, the grandson of Confucius,
who was also a student of Zengzi), and the Mengzi (the sayings and dialogues of
Mencius, a student of Zisi). The young Wang would have literally committed these
classics to memory, along with the commentaries on them by the master of orthodox
Confucianism, Zhu Xi (1130–1200). The study of these classics–cum–commentary was
thought to be morally edifying; however, people also studied them in order to pass the
civil service examinations, which were the primary route to government power, and with
it wealth and prestige. At the age of seventeen (1489), Wang had a conversation with a
Daoist priest that left him deeply intrigued with this alternative philosophical system and
way of life. Wang was also attracted to Buddhism, and remained torn between Daoism,
Buddhism and Confucianism for much of his early life. Whereas Confucianism
emphasizes our ethical obligations to others, especially family members, and public
service in government, the Daoism and Buddhism of Wang’s era encouraged people to
overcome their attachment to the physical world. Wang continued the serious study of
Zhu Xi’s interpretation of Confucianism, but was disillusioned by an experience in which
he and a friend made a determined effort to apply what they took to be Zhu Xi’s method
for achieving sagehood:

…my friend Qian and I discussed the idea that to become a sage or a worthy one must
investigate all the things in the world. But how can a person have such tremendous
energy? I therefore pointed to the bamboos in front of the pavilion and told him to
investigate them and see. Day and night Qian went ahead trying to investigate to the
utmost the Pattern of the bamboos. He exhausted his mind and thoughts, and on the
third day he was tired out and took sick. At first I said that it was because his energy
and strength were insufficient. Therefore I myself went to try to investigate to the
utmost. From morning till night, I was unable to find the Pattern of the bamboos. On the
seventh day I also became sick because I thought too hard. In consequence we sighed
to each other and said that it was impossible to be a sage or a worthy, for we do not
have the tremendous energy to investigate things that they have. (Translation modified
from Chan 1963, 249)

1
Among the best sources for Wang’s life are the Nianpu, written by Wang’s disciple Qian Dehong (1496–1574),
found in the Wang Wencheng Gong Quanshu, and the Wang Wencheng Chuanben, by Mao Qiling (1623–1716).
Useful English–language accounts may be found in Chan 1963, Chang 1939, and Tu 1976.
As we shall see (Section 2, below), it is unclear whether Wang and his friend were
correctly applying what Zhu Xi meant by “the investigation of things.” However, Wang’s
experience of finding it impractical to seek for the Pattern of the universe in external
things left a deep impression on him, and influenced the later course of his philosophy.

Wang continued to study Daoism as well as Buddhism, but also showed a keen interest
in military techniques and the craft of writing elegant compositions. Meanwhile, he
progressed through the various levels of the civil service examinations, finally passing
the highest level in 1499. After this, Wang had a meteoric rise in the government,
including distinguished service in offices overseeing public works, criminal prosecution,
and the examination system. During this period, Wang began to express disdain for
overly refined literary compositions like those he had produced in his earlier years.
Wang would later criticize those who “waste their time competing with one another
writing flowery compositions in order to win acclaim in their age, and…no longer
comprehend conduct that honors what is fundamental, esteems what is real, reverts to
simplicity, and returns to purity” (Tiwald and Van Norden 2014, 275).

In addition, Wang started to turn his back on Daoism and Buddhism, which he came to
regard as socially irresponsible: “…simply because they did not understand what it is to
rest in the ultimate good and instead exerted their selfish minds toward the achievement
of excessively lofty goals, [Buddhists and Daoists] were lost in vagaries, illusions,
emptiness, and stillness and had nothing to do with the family, state or world” (Tiwald
and Van Norden 2014, 244, gloss mine). Nonetheless, Wang continued to show an
intimate familiarity with Daoist and Buddhist literature and concepts throughout his
career.

A life–changing event for Wang occurred in 1506. A eunuch who had assumed
illegitimate influence at court had several able officials imprisoned for opposing him.
Wang wrote a “memorial” to the emperor in protest. The eunuch responded by having
Wang publicly beaten and exiled to an insignificant position in a semi–civilized part of
what is now Guizhou Province. Wang had to face considerable physical and
psychological hardship in this post, but through these challenges he achieved a deep
philosophical awakening (1508), which he later expressed in a poem he wrote for his
students:

Everyone has within an unerring compass;

The root and source of the myriad transformations lies in the mind.
I laugh when I think that, earlier, I saw things the other way around;
Following branches and leaves, I searched outside! (Ivanhoe 2009, 181)
In other words, looking outside oneself for moral truth, as he and his friend Qian had
tried to do when studying the bamboos, was ignoring the root of moral insight, which is
one’s own innate understanding.

Fortunately for Wang, in the year when his term of service in Guizhou was over (1510),
the eunuch who had Wang beaten and banished was himself executed. Wang’s official
career quickly returned to its stratospheric level of achievement, with high–ranking posts
and exceptional achievements in both civil and military positions. This inevitably led to
opposition from the faction–ridden court. Wang was even accused of conspiring with the
leader of a rebellion that Wang had himself put down.

Wang had begun to attract devoted disciples even before his exile to Guizhou, and they
gradually compiled the Record for Practice (the anthology of his sayings,
correspondence, and dialogues that is one of our primary sources for Wang’s
philosophy). It is reflective of Wang’s philosophy that the discussions recorded in this
work occurred in the midst of his active life in public affairs. Near the end of his life,
Wang was called upon to suppress yet another rebellion (1527). The night before he
left, one of his disciples recorded the “Inquiry on the Great Learning,” which was
intended as a primer of Wang’s philosophy for new disciples. Wang put down the
rebellion, but his health had been declining for several years, and he died soon
afterward (1529).

On his deathbed, Wang said, “ ‘This mind’ is luminous and bright. What more is there to
say?”2

Mind and the world

He held that objects do not exist entirely apart from the mind because the mind shapes
them. He believed that it is not the world that shapes the mind, but the mind that gives
reason to the world. Therefore, the mind alone is the source of all reason. He
understood this to be an inner light, an innate moral goodness and understanding of
what is good.

In order to eliminate selfish desires that cloud the mind's understanding of goodness,
one can practice his type of meditation often called "tranquil repose" or "sitting still" ( 靜
坐 jingzuo). This is similar to the practice of Chan (Zen) meditation in Buddhism.

Philosophy
Wang was the leading figure in the Neo-Confucian School of heart, founded by 陸九淵
Lu Jiuyuan (or Lu Xiangshan) of Southern Song. This school championed an
interpretation of Mencius, a Classical Confucian who became the focus of later
interpretation, that unified knowledge with action. Their rival school, the School of
Principle (Li) treated gaining knowledge as a kind of preparation or cultivation that,
when completed, could guide action.

Innate knowing
Out of Cheng-Zhu's Neo-Confucianism that was mainstream at the time, Wang
Yangming developed the idea of innate knowing, arguing that every person knows from
birth the difference between good and evil. Wang claimed that such knowledge is
intuitive and not rational. These revolutionizing ideas of Wang Yangming would later

2
“This mind” is an expression taken from Mengzi 1A7. Neo–Confucians use the term to refer to our innate moral
sense. Consequently, Wang’s dying words were not bragging about the quality of his own individual mind, but
rather were a call for everyone to recognize the capacity they have within them.
inspire prominent Japanese thinkers like Motoori Norinaga, who argued that because of
the Shinto deities, Japanese people alone had the intuitive ability to distinguish good
and evil without complex rationalization. His school of thought (Ōyōmei-gaku in
Japanese, Ō stands for the surname "Wang", yōmei stands for "Yangming", gaku
stands for "school of learning") also greatly influenced the Japanese samurai ethic.

Integration of Knowledge and Action

Wang's rejection of the pure investigation of knowledge comes from the then traditional
view of Chinese belief that once one gained knowledge, one had a duty to put that
knowledge into action. This presupposed two possibilities:

That one can have knowledge without/prior to corresponding action.

That one can know what is the proper action, but still fail to act.
Wang rejected both of these which allowed him to develop his philosophy of action.
Wang believed that only through simultaneous action could one gain knowledge and
denied all other ways of gaining it. To him, there was no way to use knowledge after
gaining it because he believed that knowledge and action were unified as one. Any
knowledge that had been gained then put into action was considered delusion or false.

Political And Military Career

A year later he pronounced another epoch-making theory: that knowledge and action
are one (zhixing heyi). One knows filial piety (xiao), he argued, only when one acts upon
it, and correct action requires correct knowledge. As a magistrate in Jiangxi in 1510, he
carried out many reforms, including a novel “joint registration system” whereby 10
families shared responsibility for security. An imperial audience followed and then
appointments as Ministry of Justice secretary, Ministry of Personnel director (1511),
Imperial Studs vice minister (1512), State Ceremonials minister (1514), and assistant
censor in chief and governor of southern Jiangxi and adjacent areas (1516).

Bandits and rebels had controlled Jiangxi for decades. In four military campaigns in
1517–18, Wang eliminated them. He carried out reconstruction, tax reform, joint
registration, establishment of schools, and the “community compact” to improve
community morals and solidarity.

On his way to suppress a rebellion in Fujian in 1519, he learned that Zhu Chenhao,
prince of Ning, had rebelled. He turned to surround the prince’s base, Nanjang. Four
days later he joined battle with the prince and captured him. Because Wang had been in
contact with the prince, jealous officials at the capital accused him of plotting rebellion
and attacking the prince only because imperial armies were approaching. One of his
pupils, whom he had sent to the prince for negotiation, was imprisoned. The crisis was
soon over, however, and Wang was made governor of Jiangxi.

In 1521 the new emperor appointed him war minister and awarded him the title of earl of
Xinjian. His father died in 1522, and he remained home to mourn his loss. For more
than five years he stayed home and discussed doctrines with his followers, who came
from various parts of China and numbered in the hundreds. These conversations and
those earlier constitute his main work, Chuanxilu (“Instructions for Practical Living”). In
1521 he had enunciated his doctrine of complete realization of the innate knowledge of
the good.