A Ming dynasty military philosopher and the great synthesizer of Mind-Learning, known as Master Yangming. Having endured the life-and-death trial of his "Awakening at Longchang," he achieved in the depths of despair the enlightenment that "the Way of the sage is fully self-sufficient in my own nature," from which he created the teachings of "Unity of Knowledge and Action" and "Extending Innate Knowing." His philosophy, with its supremely elevated moral self-awareness, awakened the spirit of independent consciousness in countless individuals, profoundly influencing the intellectual world of mid-to-late Ming China and indeed all of East Asia.
Wang Shouren, courtesy name Bo'an, sobriquet Yangming, a native of Yuyao, Zhejiang. Born into an official family, he resolved as a youth to become a sage. He passed the jinshi examination in the twelfth year of Hongzhi and held posts such as secretary in the Ministry of Justice and secretary in the Ministry of War. In the first year of Zhengde, he submitted a memorial defending censors persecuted by the eunuch Liu Jin, angering Liu Jin. He was beaten forty times with a court rod, imprisoned, then exiled as station master of Longchang in Guizhou. Longchang was in the remote southwest, infested with miasma, where death was always possible. In this extremity, Yangming sat day and night in upright stillness, and suddenly in the middle of the night achieved great awakening to the meaning of "investigating things to extend knowledge": "The sage's way is inherent in my own nature; it was a mistake to seek it in external things"—the legendary "Longchang Awakening." He later suppressed the rebellion of the Prince of Ning, Zhu Chenhao, and pacified uprisings in Si'en, Tianzhou, Bazhai, and Duanteng Gorge. His military achievements were extraordinary yet he was repeatedly met with suspicion. His life combined extraordinary military accomplishment with the most luminous movement of spiritual liberation in Chinese intellectual history. His final words: "This mind is bright; what more is there to say?"
Wang Yangming's core proposition is "there is no principle outside the mind, no thing outside the mind"—the meaning and order of all cosmic things cannot be separated from the illuminating awareness of the human mind. Within the human mind there innately exists a "conscience" (liang zhi) that needs no external seeking and can independently judge good and evil. This conscience is heavenly principle as present in the human; therefore "extending innate conscience" (zhi liang zhi) means expanding this inner moral intuition to all affairs and things. On the relationship between knowledge and action, he主张 "knowledge is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowledge"—true knowledge necessarily contains the motive force of action; knowledge without action is not true knowledge; the substance of knowledge and action is one. In his later years he proposed the "Four Sentences" as the summary of his mind-learning: "No good, no evil—the mind's substance; good and evil—the movement of intention; knowing good and evil—conscience; doing good and eliminating evil—investigating things," revealing the dialectical unity of the transcendence of the mind's substance beyond good and evil with moral practice.
"This mind is bright; what more is there to say? Knowledge and action are one. Extend my mind's innate conscience. — Chuan Xi Lu (Instructions for Practical Living)"
Wang Yangming's "unity of knowledge and action" asserts that "to know but not act is in truth not to know at all." How can this radically cure modern humanity's information obesity and action paralysis?
Wang Yangming's "conscience" and Kant's "moral law" are both universal moral laws within the subject; both emphasize the autonomy rather than heteronomy of morality. But conscience has a more intuitive character.
Can inner moral intuition and rational moral law serve the same function? Do the moral philosophies of Wang Yangming and Kant converge on the same insight about moral autonomy, or do their fundamentally different foundations make them incommensurable?
Wang Yangming's "there is nothing outside the mind" and Husserl's "intentionality" both reveal the constitutive role of consciousness for the world; both redefine the meaning of existence from the standpoint of subjectivity.
Can the phenomenological and the mind-learning approaches to subjectivity genuinely converse? Do Wang Yangming and Husserl, from radically different starting points, arrive at a shared insight about the relationship between consciousness and world?
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