No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The transformation of the Wang Yangming scholarship in the West, ca. 1960–1980: a historical essay
Abstract
Students of Ming philosophy and the thought of Wang Yangming likely know that the 1960s–1970s was a period during which many scholarships in this field of study were produced in the English language. Indeed, it has been almost half a century since a group of scholars came together at the University of Hawaii to present papers on Wang Yangming in commemoration of the fifth centenary of his birth. That group included, for example, Wing-tsit Chan, David Nivison, and Du Weiming. These scholars, along with two others not present—Julia Ching and Carsun Chang—played a transformative role in introducing Wang Yangming to an English-reading audience. But, the history behind their achievement, as well as how they interpreted him for that audience, has yet to be written. This paper provides a synopsis of that history, explaining why the scholars chose to write about him and what they said about his life and ideas.
... 5 The first half of the twentieth century saw a revival of interest in him in China, and the second half a burgeoning scholarship in the west. 6 Hence, the secondary Japanese-, Chinese-, and English-language literature on Wang Yangming and his most prominent followers is voluminous. ...
Zhan Ruoshui 湛若水 (1466-1560) is a prominent scholar-official and Confucian philosopher of Ming China. Like his contemporary Wang Yangming, he served in several official capacities during the reigns of three mid-Ming emperors, earned a reputation as an important Confucian teacher, gained a substantial following of students, and was critical to the onset of the jiangxue 講學 movement of the mid-Ming and the academy building associated with it. He also elaborated a sophisticated Confucian philosophy, leaving behind a corpus of work and a school of thought. In 1517, when he was fifty-one, Zhan Ruoshui left office and retired to Mount Xiqiao 西樵山 in Guangdong, where he constructed both a hermitage for his family and an academy for his students. He remained there for four years until he was recommended for reappointment to office in 1521. These years were critical not only for his having established his first academy and writing the regulations for operating it but also because he produced a substantial volume of philosophical writings that were foundational to his becoming recognized as a Confucian master and establishing his school of thought. This study provides an overview of the biographical and historical setting, Zhan's pedagogy (xue 學), and his philosophy at a time when this lesser-known Ming Confucian passed through a crucial stage in the development of his Way (dao 道).
Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and his School of Mind dominated the intellectual world of sixteenth-century Ming China (1368-1644), and his Confucian philosophy has since remained an essential component of East Asian philosophical discourse. Yet, the volume of publications on him and his school in the Western-language literature has consistently paled in comparison to the volume of scholarship on classical Chinese philosophy, modern Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, and Daoism. Studying Wang Yangming: History of a Sinological Field explains the history of writing in the West about the famed Ming dynasty scholar-official. From eighteenth-century French Jesuit books to English-language publications in 2020, this book provides an historical overview and summary of a literature published by scholars attempting to grapple with one of the most influential Confucians in the history of China, East Asia, and the world.
本书是：阳明学之欧美传播与研究(学苑出版社, 2022)的英文版本
A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy is a milestone along the complex and difficult road to significant understanding by Westerners of the Asian peoples and a monumental contribution to the cause of philosophy. It is the first anthology of Chinese philosophy to cover its entire historical development. It provides substantial selections from all the great thinkers and schools in every period--ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary--and includes in their entirety some of the most important classical texts. It deals with the fundamental and technical as well as the more general aspects of Chinese thought. With its new translation of source materials (some translated for the first time), its explanatory aids where necessary, its thoroughgoing scholarly documentation, this volume will be an indispensable guide for scholars, for college students, for serious readers interested in knowing the real China.
This book documents the richness and diversity of Japanese philosophy as it has developed throughout history. Writings of more than a hundred philosophical thinkers from all eras and schools of thought have been translated, many of them available in English for the first time. The book has been set out to represent the entire Japanese philosophical tradition—not only the broad spectrum of academic philosophy dating from the introduction of Western philosophy in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but also the philosophical ideas of major Japanese traditions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto. The philosophical significance of each tradition is laid out in an extensive overview, and each selection is accompanied by helpful information on placing the work in its proper context. The bulk of the supporting material is given to original interpretive essays on topics not explicitly covered in other chapters: cultural identity, samurai thought, women philosophers, aesthetics, bioethics. An introductory chapter provides a historical overview of Japanese philosophy and a discussion of the Japanese debate over defining the idea of philosophy.
Following Mou Zongsan’s interpretation of Wang Yangming, this paper investigates the phenomenology of values and moral emotions in Max Scheler and the Confucian learning of heart, especially Wang Yangming. Part I illustrates the meaning of moral emotions in Confucianism and introduces Wang Yangming’s idea of pure knowing (liangzhi ). Part II introduces Max Scheler’s idea of a priori value and feeling in order to explain how pure knowing could be both immanent and transcendental, both subjective and objective. Part III explores the phenomena of value and feeling in Confucianism and Wang Yangming, giving a Schelerian interpretation of Wang Yangming’s teaching of four verses. Similar to Max Scheler, Confucian learning of heart affirms the intentional structure between hierarchy of values on the one hand and loving, preferring, and feeling of values on the other hand. This paper intends to clarify the basic structure of Wang Yangming’s thought; therefore, analyses on detailed moral emotions will be left to discussion in the future.
This is a study of Wang Yang-ming's philosophy, considered as a "Way" of acquiring wisdom and sage hood, based on his central insight into the nature of (mind-and-heart), the fundamental principle of all human activity which is capable of determining and of perfecting itself through its intuitive knowledge of the good, at once inborn and acquired. The "Introduction" indicates the broad problem of the quest for wisdom, and of the question of "correctness" of approach and "orthodoxy" of thought which arises, in the context of traditional Chinese philosophy. The first chapter defines the so-called "Confucian Way" as a quest for wisdom, with the latter consisting of the attainment of consciousness of the unity of man with all. things, and of the realisation of a high moral character. It speaks of Han Yu’s effort to "restore" Confucian learning, and especially of
the Neo-Confucian synthesis accomplished by Chu His. A brief description of Wang Yang-ming as man and philosopher follows, with special emphasis on his interior evolution. His philosophy is then presented in its gradual development, through an analysis of his teachings of hsin, leading up, after exchanges with certain of his contemporary thinkers, to the discovery of his method of acquiring wisdom through the "extension of liang-chih (knowledge of the good)". The deeper implications of his thought and method are then discussed, expecialy his teaching of the "unity of all things". His expressed attitudes concerning Taoism and
Buddhism are also studied, revealing his readiness to accept truth and goodness or "orthodoxy". The concluding chapter offers a critique of his philosophy, evaluating his attempt to solve the basic problem of the acquisition of wisdom, and indicating certain unresolved ambiguities which he has left behind.
This essay attempts to contextualize the importance of Wang Yangming’s philosophy in terms of world philosophy in the manner of Goethe’s innovative plan for “world literature” (Weltliteratur). China has the long history of philosophizing rather than non-philosophy contrary to the glaring and inexcusable misunderstanding of Hegel the Eurocentric universalist or monist. In today’s globalizing world of multicultural pluralism, ethnocentric universalism has become outdated and outmoded. Transversality, which is at once intercultural, interspecific, interdisciplinary, and intersensorial, is a far more befitting response than universality. In this context, what is focused and emphasized in Wang’s world philosophy is mainly fourfold. First, there is the unity or circularity of knowledge and action, that is, knowledge is the beginning of action, and action is the consummation of knowledge. Second, sincerity is the moral soul of Sinism as it is the enabling act of making perform all other virtues, including ren . Third, in Sinism, including Wang’s philosophy, there is no Cartesian dualism in that the mind and the body are inseparable soulmates. Fourth, if ethics is prima philosophia, then geophilosophy is ultima philosophia to sustain and perpetuate all life-forms on earth (geo).
1. The transcript says 1927, but this is clearly a mistake.
2. Gregg Sinclair was a professor of world literature, with a particular interest in Japanese literature. He organized the interdepartmental and interdisciplinary Oriental Institute in 1936 and in 1942 became President of the University of Hawaii.
3. This was a series of Lectures on the History of Religions initiated in 1936 by the American Council of Learned Societies through its Committee on the History of Religions. By the time of Professor Chan's lectures, the series had already resulted in a volume on Greek Popular Religion by Martin P. Nilsson (1940) and one on Ancient Egyptian Religion by Henri Frankfort (1948).
4. The review was published in Philosophy East and West 4 (2) (July 1954): 175-181.
5. Published in the United States by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1973.
6. Columbia University Press, 1963.
7. Columbia University Press, 1967.
8. This probably refers to the anthropologist Robert Redfield, who was at Lingnan at that time.
9. Princeton University Press, 1963.
10. Published under the title The Platform Scripture: The Basic Classic of Zen Buddhism (Jamaica, N.Y.: St. John's University Press, 1963).
11. Published under the title The Way of Lao Tzu (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963).
12. "The Evolution of the Neo-Confucian Concept Li as Principle," Tsing-hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 4 (2) (February 1964): 123-148.
13. Published by the Student Book Company in 1983.
14. Actually, Neo-Confucianism, Etc.: Essays by Wing-tsit Chan, published in a bilingual edition by the Oriental Society (Hanover, N.H., 1969).
15. The updated version in Chinese was published by the Student Book Company under the title Wang Yang-ming yü Ch'an (Taipei, 1984).
16. Published under the title Neo-Confucian Terms Explained (Pei-hsi tzu-i) by Ch'en Ch'un, 1159-1223 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
17. The earlier work by Professor Wei was titled Chung-kuo che-hsüeh tzu-tien (Taipei: Talin Ch'u-pan She, 1977); the larger work appeared under the title Chung-kuo che-hsüeh tzu-tien ta-ch'üan (Taipei: Shui-niu Ch'u-pan She, 1983).
18. The title Professor Chan ultimately chose was Chu Hsi: New Studies (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989).
19. Referring here, of course, to World War II.
This paper is a design which will bring into relief certain striking and crucial similarities between things said in Spinoza's Ethics and Wang Yang-ming's Instructions for Practical Living. I am not concerned with points of close scholarship. My purpose is to deepen our understanding of The Ethics and perhaps, thereby, to make it more useful than it has been. I want also to bring this out: if we read these men as though they presented a philosophy or had worked out a system of ideas, their usefulness as teachers is lost. Finally, I am trying by these means to make mysticism clearer.
The quest of self-realization: A study of Wang Yang-ming’s formative years
- W Tu
Tu, W. (1968). The quest of self-realization: A study of Wang Yang-ming's formative years. Ph.D.
Diss. Harvard University.
The philosophical letters of Wang Yang-ming
- J Ching
Ching, J. (Ed.). (1971). The philosophical letters of Wang Yang-ming. Canberra: Australian National
University Press.
Individualism and humanitarianism in late Ming thought
- W T De Bary
De Bary, W. T. (1970). Individualism and humanitarianism in late Ming thought. In W. T. De Bary
(Ed.), Self and society in ming thought. New York: Columbia University Press.
The unity of knowledge and action: A postscript to Wang Yangming's existential phenomenology
- H Y Jung
Jung, H. Y. (1986). The unity of knowledge and action: A postscript to Wang Yangming's existential
phenomenology. Journal of Chinese Studies, 3, 19-38.
Zhang Junmai ping zhuan
- Y Liu
- Q Luo
Liu, Y., & Luo, Q. (1996). Zhang Junmai ping zhuan. Nanchang: Baihuazhou Wenyi Chubanshe.
The problem of 'knowledge' and 'action' in Chinese thought since Wang Yang-ming
- D S Nivison
Nivison, D. S. (1953). The problem of 'knowledge' and 'action' in Chinese thought since Wang
Yang-ming. In A. F. Wright (Ed.), Studies in Chinese thought (pp. 112-145). Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
The philosophy of Wang Yang-ming
- D S Nivison
Nivison, D. S. (2009). The philosophy of Wang Yang-ming. In B. W. Van Norden (Ed.), The ways of
confucianism: Investigations in Chinese philosophy. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing.
Review of Wang Yang-ming: Idealist philosopher of sixteenth-century China by Carsun Chang
- W Chan
Chan, W. (1962b). Review of Wang Yang-ming: Idealist philosopher of sixteenth-century China by
Carsun Chang. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 82(3), 458-459.
Principle and practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and practical learning
- C Cheng
Cheng, C. (1979). Practical learning in Yen Yuan, Chu Hsi, and Wang Yang-ming. In W. T. De Bary
(Ed.), Principle and practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and practical learning. New York:
Columbia University Press.
The butterfly healing: A life between East and West
- J Ching
Ching, J. (1998). The butterfly healing: A life between East and West. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Chen Ronjie yu Meiguo de Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe
- Y Cui
Cui, Y. (2010). Chen Ronjie yu Meiguo de Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian
chubanshe.
Manifesto on behalf of Chinese culture respectfully announced to the people of the world: Our joint understanding of Sinological study and Chinese culture with respect to the future prospects of world culture
- E Harris
Harris, E. (Trans.). Manifesto on behalf of Chinese culture respectfully announced to the people of
the world: Our joint understanding of Sinological study and Chinese culture with respect to the
future prospects of world culture. Retrieved from https://www.hackettpublishing.com/mou_
zongsan_manifesto
1916 nian xifang wenxian zhong de Wang Yangming
- G L Israel
Israel, G. L. (2017). 1916 nian xifang wenxian zhong de Wang Yangming. Di Shiba Jie Ming Shi Guoji
Xueshu Yantaohui Lunwen Huibian, 36-42.
Obituary for David S. Nivison
- B W Van Norden
Van Norden, B. W. (2015). Obituary for David S. Nivison. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/
pulse/obituary-david-nivison-bryan-van-norden.
Das Wichtigste im Leben: Wang Yangming (1472-1529) und seine Nachfolger über die "Verwirklichung des ursprünglichen Wissens
- I Kern
Kern, I. (2010). Das Wichtigste im Leben: Wang Yangming (1472-1529) und seine Nachfolger über die
"Verwirklichung des ursprünglichen Wissens.". Basil: Schwabe.
For the conference and journal, see prefatory information in
For the conference and journal, see prefatory information in Philosophy East and West (1973),
23(1-2). 3-4.
Review of The philosophy of Wang Yang-ming by Frederick Goodrich Henke
- D S Nivison
Nivison, D. S. (1964). Review of The philosophy of Wang Yang-ming by Frederick Goodrich Henke.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 84(4), 436-442.