One of the Three Great Confucians of the early Qing dynasty, known as Master Chuanshan. With extraordinary speculative power, he comprehensively re-evaluated six hundred years of Song-Ming Mind-Nature philosophy, establishing the naive materialism of "Principle depends on qi for its establishment" and the dialectical historical view that "the world consists only of concrete things." Living incognito for forty years in a remote valley of western Hunan, enduring hunger and cold, he wrote millions of words of astonishing scholarly work; his depth of thought is regarded as the highest peak of traditional Chinese philosophical speculation.
Wang Fuzhi, courtesy name Ernong, sobriquet Chuanshan, a native of Hengyang, Hunan. Precocious from childhood, he became a xiucai at fourteen and juren at twenty-four. At the end of the Chongzhen reign, Zhang Xianzhong captured Hengyang, seizing his father as hostage to coerce Wang into service. Wang cut himself with a knife, feigning severe injury, and secured his father's release. After the fall of the Ming, he and his friend Guan Siqiu organized militia at Mount Heng to resist the Qing; after their defeat, he went to the Southern Ming Yongli court in Zhaoqing as Messenger. Witnessing the intense factionalism and corruption of the Yongli court, he resigned in disgust. Thereafter, to evade Qing pursuit, he lived under a false name among the Yao people in the mountains of western Hunan, finally settling at the foot of Stone Boat Mountain (Shichuan) in Hengyang, building a thatched hut named "Western Hunan Thatched Hall." He exhorted himself: "The Six Classics demand I open new ground; this seven-foot body begs heaven to bury it." Under extremely harsh conditions, he devoted himself to writing for forty years, completing over a hundred works in over four hundred volumes spanning classics, history, philosophy, and literature. Because he lived in hiding during his lifetime, his works were long unknown, until the late Qing when Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan brothers published the Chuan Shan Posthumous Works, bringing them to the world.
Wang Fuzhi's cosmological cornerstone is "principle resides in qi; principle depends on qi for its establishment"—qi is the eternal, indestructible, objective material substance; principle is the inherent law of qi's operation: without qi there is no principle, without vessels there is no Dao. He proposes that "the world has only vessels" (tian xia wei qi)—the Dao of metaphysics is not a suspended entity beyond concrete vessels but the operating law within concrete things, thereby thoroughly overturning the Cheng-Zhu idealist premise of "principle precedes qi." In his view of history, he takes an evolutionary position, holding that before Yao and Shun humans were still in a barbaric state; the Three Dynasties were not a golden age of pure virtue; history evolves continuously through the dialectical movement of "tendency" (shi) and "principle" (li). In human nature theory, he主张 "nature is born and formed daily," denying the fixity of an a priori nature.
"The world has only vessels; without vessels there is no principle. Principle depends on qi for its establishment; qi has no existence without principle, and principle has no standing without qi. — Complete Works of Chuanshan"
How does Wang Fuzhi's "the world consists only of concrete things"—that objective material conditions determine metaphysical principles—show a striking remote resonance with Marx's historical materialism at the highest level of vision?
Wang Fuzhi's dialectical movement of "tendency" and "principle" and Hegel's "cunning of reason" both reveal the dialectical development of history; both examine human history through dynamic evolution rather than static moral judgment.
Can dialectical philosophy of history genuinely reveal the laws of historical development? Do the historical philosophies of Wang Fuzhi and Hegel converge on the same insight about historical progress, or do their fundamentally different commitments make them incommensurable?
Wang Fuzhi's "the world has only vessels" takes material objects as the ground of the Dao; Marx's "being determines consciousness" takes the mode of material production as the basis of society. Both hold materialist positions.
Can materialist philosophy genuinely explain the whole of human society and history? Do the materialist philosophies of Wang Fuzhi and Marx represent parallel discoveries of the same insight, or fundamentally different intellectual projects?
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