Mencius and Wang Yangming

Abstract

In this chapter, after telling a concise history of the reception of Mencius’s philosophy before Wang Yangming, I compare Wang Yangming’s thought with Mencius’s at three points: (1) Wang Yangming appropriates Mencius’s statement that “righteousness is internal” to argue against Zhu Xi’s way of self-cultivation. Wang Yangming develops Mencius’s “motivation internalism” towards the direction of “motivation-and-normativity internalism,” but this does not rule out other possible interpretations of Mencius. (2) the self-reflexivity in moral consciousness is the new dimension of liangzhi (original knowledge) in Wang Yangming. (3) Some of Wang Yangming’s discourses seem to suggest that liangzhi is complete and perfect, in contrast with Mencius’s view that liangzhi is the incipient predisposition towards goodness that needs further development. I explain why despite the apparent contrast Wang Yangming’s thought is consistent with Mencius’s. To conclude, I adopt Tang Junyi’s observation that Wang Yangming’s philosophy is a synthesis of Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan, and a synthesis of Mencius and the “learning of Yan Hui” partially re-invented by the Neo-Confucians.