Wang Yangming

Wang Yangming (1472–1529) was a Ming dynasty philosopher and official who taught that innate moral knowledge and action are inseparable.

Confucianism: A Chinese ethical and philosophical tradition centered on human relationships, moral cultivation, and social order. Wang developed his ethics within Confucian debates about how people become virtuous.
Innate knowledge: Wang Yangming’s term for the inborn capacity to distinguish right from wrong. It is the moral faculty he believed people can recover and clarify through self-cultivation.
Longchang exile: Wang Yangming’s period of exile in Guizhou after criticizing the powerful eunuch Liu Jin. During this hardship, Wang described a decisive realization about the mind and moral principle.
Yangmingism: A philosophical tradition based on Wang Yangming’s teachings about mind, moral knowledge, and action. It names the broader movement that formed around his philosophy.
Neo-Confucianism: A revival and reinterpretation of Confucian philosophy that incorporated metaphysical and ethical theories. His thought belongs to this movement but challenges its dominant account of moral investigation.
Unity of knowledge and action: The doctrine that genuine knowledge is inseparable from acting on what one knows. This principle rejects the idea that moral understanding can be complete before conduct follows.
Ming dynasty: A Chinese imperial dynasty that ruled from 1368 to 1644. Wang’s official career and philosophical debates unfolded within Ming institutions.
Wang Ji: A Ming dynasty philosopher and prominent follower of Wang Yangming. Wang Ji developed a distinctive interpretation of his teacher’s account of innate knowledge.
Mencius: A Confucian thinker who argued that human nature has innate moral tendencies that can be cultivated. Wang drew on Mencius’s account of innate goodness to explain moral knowledge.
Extension of innate knowledge: The practice of extending one’s innate moral awareness to thoughts, choices, and circumstances. Wang presented this practice as the path by which moral insight governs concrete behavior.

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