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How to Make Sense of the Claim “True Knowledge is What Constitutes Action”: A New Interpretation of Wang Yangming’s Doctrine of Unity of Knowledge and Action

How to Make Sense of the Claim “True Knowledge is What Constitutes Action”: A New Interpretation... No one denies the importance of applying knowledge to actions. But claiming identity (unity) of knowledge and action is quite another thing. There seem to be two problems with the claim: (1) the identity claim implies that the sole cause for one to fail to act on what one judges to be right is ignorance, but it is obviously false that the sole cause of failure in moral actions is ignorance. (2) The identity statement implies non-separation of knowledge and action. But knowledge does not necessarily lead to action. However, the identity of knowledge and action is what a famous Ming Confucian scholar, Wang Yang-ming, proposed and the concept became the central doctrine of his teaching. Though there are several major interpretations of Wang’s doctrine in contemporary literature, it is not clear to me how they deal with the above mentioned difficulties. In this article, I will discuss these interpretations of the doctrine and propose a new interpretation. My purpose is to give an interpretation of Wang’s doctrine that has the capacity of dealing with these challenges to the doctrine and also captures the essence of his teaching. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Dao Springer Journals

How to Make Sense of the Claim “True Knowledge is What Constitutes Action”: A New Interpretation of Wang Yangming’s Doctrine of Unity of Knowledge and Action

Yang, Xiaomei
Dao , Volume 8 (2) – Apr 26, 2009
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References (10)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Subject
Philosophy; Non-Western Philosophy; Philosophy of Religion; Religious Studies, general; Ethics; Chinese
ISSN
1540-3009
eISSN
1569-7274
DOI
10.1007/s11712-009-9110-4
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

No one denies the importance of applying knowledge to actions. But claiming identity (unity) of knowledge and action is quite another thing. There seem to be two problems with the claim: (1) the identity claim implies that the sole cause for one to fail to act on what one judges to be right is ignorance, but it is obviously false that the sole cause of failure in moral actions is ignorance. (2) The identity statement implies non-separation of knowledge and action. But knowledge does not necessarily lead to action. However, the identity of knowledge and action is what a famous Ming Confucian scholar, Wang Yang-ming, proposed and the concept became the central doctrine of his teaching. Though there are several major interpretations of Wang’s doctrine in contemporary literature, it is not clear to me how they deal with the above mentioned difficulties. In this article, I will discuss these interpretations of the doctrine and propose a new interpretation. My purpose is to give an interpretation of Wang’s doctrine that has the capacity of dealing with these challenges to the doctrine and also captures the essence of his teaching.

Journal

Dao – Springer Journals

Published: Apr 26, 2009

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