by Ying-shih Yü
I feel pitiful and have a pain in my heart. I overlook the fact that I am unworthy
and wish to save them by this doctrine.” 41 This is also an extremely impor tant
statement about his doctrine of liangzhi. Generally speaking, liangzhi (“innate
knowledge,” or its vernacular expression liangxin
, “conscience”) has been
understood as something more individual than social. Consequently, traditional
metaphysically minded Confucians and modern phi los o phers alike have tended
to emphasize its individual dimension to a degree, as if the doctrine were only
concerned with spiritual cultivation of the individual self. Now, the above-
quoted letter clearly shows that the social dimension of his teaching is no less,
if not more, impor tant. Thus, we see that in his doctrine, liangzhi is designed to
serve dual purposes: it begins individually as spiritual awakening of each and
every person but ends collectively in bringing a desirable order to the world.
Read in this light, it dovetails perfectly well with the last paragraph of his essay
“Pulling Up the Root and Stopping Up the Source” where he made an impas-
sioned plea to fellow- Confucians to use their “intelligence of innate knowledge”
for the realization of his revised proj ect “without further delay.” 42
It was on account of his commitment to the ideal of “bringing order to the
world” as powerfully expressed in this essay that he was recognized, posthu-
mously, as a most outstanding “transmitter of Dao” in the Confucian tradition.
For illustration, allow me to cite two examples. In his memorial to the new em-
peror, Muzong (r. 1566–1572), Geng Dingxiang
(1524–1596) requested
288 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
that Wang Yangming be honored to receive sacrifi cial off erings in the Confu-
cian temple; as grounds for this honor, he specifi cally cited “Pulling Up the
Root and Stopping Up the Source.” The essay, he emphatically pointed out,
“has enlightened us on the human mind in a most articulate and penetrating
way. If generally heeded, it would surely contribute to the establishment of an
order of great peace.” 43 The second example is provided by Chen Longzheng
(1585–1645), a scholar associated with the famous Donglin Acad emy. He
characterized Wang Yangming’s teaching as follows: “The doctrine of ‘Pulling
Up the Root and Stopping Up the Source’ is the place where the Master’s ideas
and the Tradition of Dao ( Daotong
) meet in unison. . . . He was singled-
minded in securing a peaceful life for all the people as well as establishing an
enduring public order in the world. In this sense, he may be said to have really
felt the pulse of the Learning of Dao ( Daoxue).” 44 It is highly signifi cant that
both Geng and Chen focused on the same essay and took the idea of “bringing
order to the world” to be the quintessence of Wang’s teaching. Moreover, both
scholars’ views also converged on the recognition of Wang as a true standard-
bearer of the Confucian tradition. To single out the above- discussed essay
(“Pulling Up the Root and Stopping Up the Source”) of all of Wang’s writings
and link it directly to “the Tradition of Dao” and “the Learning of Dao” was ac-
tually to emphasize the continuity between Wang and his pre- Ming pre de ces-
sors from Confucius, Mencius, and all the way down to Zhu Xi. Clearly, here
both scholars were talking about the continuity of the Confucian tradition, not
in general terms, but with special reference to the ideal of a well- ordered society
in accordance with Dao, which for con ve nience has been referred to in this
chapter as “the Confucian proj ect.”
To sum up, the doctrine of innate knowledge and the revised Confucian
proj ect constitute the inside and the outside of Wang’s teaching as an interre-
lated and inseparable whole, corresponding closely to the paired ideas of “sage-
liness within” ( neisheng
) and “kingliness without” ( waiwang
) in Con-
fucian parlance. On the one hand, to the extent that Wang was ultimately
committed to the proj ect of a public order guided by Dao, he remained indeed
very much within the tradition from Confucius to Zhu Xi. On the other hand, to
the extent that his doctrine of innate knowledge was intended to supersede Zhu
Xi’s interpretation of “investigation of things and extension of knowledge,” his
break with mainstream Confucianism of his day— the Cheng Zhu orthodoxy—
was nearly complete. However, an under lying functional similarity between
the two opposing philosophical systems is unmistakable. Just as gewu zhizhi
had been conceived of as the intellectual basis for the top- to- bottom state- based
reformism in Zhu Xi’s system, liangzhi was also taken by Wang as the prime
mover of his bottom- to- top individual- based proj ect.
The Qing scholar Jiao Xun
(1763–1820) once made the following obser-
vation about the diff erence between Zhu Xi’s and Wang Yangming’s teachings
from a social point of view: The former was intended to morally enlighten the
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 289
learned, whereas the latter was intended to morally enlighten the underedu-
cated or illiterate. The reason, he explained, is not far to seek: While, on the one
hand, gewu zhizhi requires extensive reading and rigorous thinking on the
part of those who wish to pursue it, liangzhi, on the other hand, refers to what
is popularly known as “conscience” ( liangxin), which, being inborn in every
individual human, can be readily activated without any prior intellectual
cultivation.45
Jiao Xun was the fi rst scholar to pinpoint the social diff erence between the
two leading Confucian schools of thought, even though he may have somewhat
overdrawn the distinction. In the case of Wang Yangming, his intended audi-
ence included all the four major categories of people ( simin), namely, scholars,
farmers, artisans, and merchants. However, there are clear indications that he
was indeed particularly interested in getting his messages across to the masses.
For example, he once reminisced that after his “enlightenment” at Longchang
in 1508, he was in the com pany of exiled criminals, émigrés, and the aborigi-
nals. But much to his surprise and delight, when he explained to them about
his newly developed doctrine of “the unity of knowing and acting,” an early
version of liangzhi, they turned out to be his most sympathetic and appreciative
audience. Years later, he further related, it was rather in scholars’ circles that
his new doctrine met with much re sis tance and skepticism.46 This early experi-
ence must have been very encouraging, thereby making him ever more deter-
mined to reach out to the common people. The following instruction to his dis-
ciples is highly revealing: “You assumed the bearing of a sage to lecture to people
on learning. When they saw a sage coming they were all scared away. How could
you succeed in lecturing to them? You must become one of the people of simple
intelligence and then you can discuss learning with them.” 47 I
take this to be yet
another piece of evidence that his new teaching was conceived from the begin-
ning as part and parcel of his fundamental revision of the Confucian proj ect. He
placed so much emphasis on the importance of “lecturing to the people of simple
intelligence” because the very success of his revised proj ect would depend on
their active participation. Moreover, when he insisted that one must fi rst become
one of “the people” and then “lecture” to them, he was clearly speaking from his
personal experience. As noted above, he was rather proud of his success in con-
veying his ideas to people with little education around him at Longchang. He
continued to exercise this art of communication whenever the occasion arose. A
vivid example is his “lecture” to a deaf- mute conducted through writing. The text
is written entirely in the spoken tongue and contains no technical philosophical
terms. The two key words, “Heavenly princi ple” ( tianli
) and “mind/heart”
( xin), in the “lecture” happened to be in the vocabulary of everyday conversation
of common people at the time.48 This is exactly what he meant by “becoming one
of the people” in order to “lecture” to them. In this way, he personally set the ex-
ample for his disciples to follow regarding how to bring Dao to the world from
the grassroots.
290 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
Fi nally, I wish to end this section with a brief clarifi cation of Wang Yang-
ming’s relationship with the famous Taizhou school
. Generally
speaking, there were two side- by- side tendencies in Wang Yangming’s teaching
of liangzhi, the theoretical and the practical. The former was continuing the
metaphysical debate of Princi ple ( li) versus Mind ( xin) between Zhu Xi and Lu
Xiangshan. This line of work was carried on by his most learned disciples of
the Zhezhong
and Jiangyou
branches, notably Wang Ji
(1498–
1583), Qian Dehong
(1496–1574), Ouyang De
(1496–1554), Nie
Bao, and Luo Hongxian
(1504–1564). The latter, the practical tendency,
was deeply rooted in his commitment to the Confucian proj ect. According to
his revised version, as shown above, the social practice of the proj ect required a
large- scale participation of people from all walks of life including, especially,
farmers, artisans, and merchants. It was the Taizhou school that fulfi lled Wang
Yangming’s cherished hope of awakening the liangzhi of a large number of
commoners through popu lar lectures and other social activities. Apart from
Wang Gen, other members of the school who made distinctive contributions in
this re spect also included Yan Jun
(1504–1596) and He Xinyin
(1517–1579). Now the question is why did the Taizhou school alone, out of all the
diff er ent groups of Wang Yangming’s disciples, succeed in promoting the prac-
tical tendency to such a remarkably high degree?
A comprehensive answer obviously lies beyond the scope of the pres ent in-
quiry. However, I would like to make two points about Wang Gen, the founder
of the school. First, unlike other leading disciples of Wang Yangming, he did
not come from a well- educated family. His father was a salt farmer and small
businessman. In his early years, he also underwent training as a tradesman,
often accompanying his father on business trips. With the founder being one of
the common people, it was only natu ral that the school attracted a large num-
ber of commoners as its members, such as a potter, a woodcutter, a yamen
clerk, farmers and merchants, etc.49 Second, he had not only developed a similar
teaching in de pen dently of Wang Yangming but also had been as enthusiastic
in “bringing Dao to the world” as the latter before they met in 1520. However, it
may be recalled that in their fi rst meeting, Wang Gen, who was then still ad-
hering to the traditional notion of “making Dao prevail in the world with the
blessing of the throne” ( dejun xingdao), pushed Wang Yangming very hard for
po liti cal criticisms. In the end, he was stopped by the latter, who showed him
what a perilous path he was treading given the recklessness of Ming despo-
tism. Taking the teacher’s warning much to heart, Wang Gen, ever after, kept
clear of all po liti cal entanglements. As a result, he redefi ned Dao in terms of
“the daily activity of the common people” ( baixing riyong
),50 which fi t-
ted in remarkably well with Wang Yangming’s conception of the social practice
of Dao from the grassroots. Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that of all of Wang
Yangming’s disciples, Wang Gen alone had the fi rmest grasp of the teacher’s
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 291
intentions with regard to the implementation of the revised Confucian proj ect.
Although tension sometimes did exist between the teacher and the disciple,
Wang Gen and his Taizhou school were nevertheless mainly responsible for
transforming the teaching of liangzhi into a power ful popu lar movement that
continued well into the early seventeenth century.
The rise of a sustained popu lar movement and, indeed, the very emergence
of a well- organized sociointellectual group such as the Taizhou school, which
opened up a new chapter in the social history of Confucianism, clearly indicate
that some profound social changes must have occurred in sixteenth- century
China. The next sections will be devoted to a brief discussion of the basic changes
in social structure and value orientation in the age of Wang Yangming.
M E R C H A N T S A N D C O N F U C I A N I S M
As already mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, the budding business
culture in sixteenth- century China constituted a major historical force, beside
despotism, that helped set in motion the re orientation of Confucian social
thinking. To begin with, let me give a brief sketch of the origins and develop-
ment of this culture based on my previous studies.
From about the middle of the fi fteenth century on, market economy was fast
growing in many parts of the Ming Empire; large business establishments with
networks on an empirewide scale ranging from salt, grain, textile, paper, to
pawnshop, etc., became a new social real ity. As a result, the business world of-
fered, for the fi rst time since the unifi cation of China in 221 b.c.e., far better op-
portunities to young members of the educated elite than did the bureaucratic
world by way of examinations. According to a sixteenth- century estimate, “while
one out of ten scholars will attain success in examinations, nine out of them will
be in business.”51 Further studies show that this is rather an understatement.
By this time, the examination system had already become indeed a very narrow
“thorny gate” ( jimen
) as population increased markedly while the quota of
the jinshi (
), juren (
), and gongsheng (
) degrees remained stationary.
In 1515, for example, Wen Zhengming
(1470–1559), a famous scholar,
&
nbsp; calligrapher, and painter, reported that his native Suzhou Prefecture alone had
no less than 1,500 shengyuan (
), out of which only about 20 gongsheng and 30
juren were produced in every three- year period. The ratio of success was actually
30 to 1. As a pos si ble solution to this urgent prob lem, Wen therefore proposed
that the quota of gongsheng be drastically increased.52 However, the overpopula-
tion of shengyuan was not a phenomenon unique to the eco nom ically and cultur-
ally advanced lower Yangzi region like Suzhou. As a matter of fact, the pressure
was empirewide, including even in the northwest, then the economic and cul-
tural backwater of China.53 For instance, Han Bangqi
(1479–1556), a
292 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
prominent scholar and high- ranking offi
cial from Shaanxi Province, also took
this prob lem most seriously and suggested a diff er ent solution, namely, to ex-
pand the quota of jinshi in each metropolitan examination to one thousand and
that of juren in provincial examinations proportionally.54
On the other hand, the business world became so increasingly attractive that
more and more educated young men turned away from the examination sys-
tem and pursued careers in the market. As far as we can determine from the
sources now at our disposal, this new social trend that had begun sporadically
in the fi fteenth century grew into a power ful, empirewide movement in the
sixteenth century and beyond. In its own time, it was generally labeled as qiru
jiugu (
), literally, “abandoning Confucian studies for commercial pur-
suits.” The label is somewhat misleading, however, because what was really
“abandoned” was not Confucianism itself but “studies of Confucian texts for
examinations.”
This qiru jiugu movement was nowhere more clearly shown than in Huizhou
(in Anhui), a region particularly famous for producing numerous enterprising
merchants in Ming- Qing China, where, as a late Ming short story says, the so-
cial custom was such that people generally took commerce and trade as the oc-
cupation of primary importance and considered success in examinations to
be secondary.55 Here the storyteller, Ling Mengchu, 1580–1644, gives us not
fi ction, but vivid description of social real ity, which happens to be corroborated
