Wang Fuzhi

王夫之・Wang Fuzhi

Wang Fuzhi (Chinese: 王夫之; pinyin: Wáng Fūzhī; Wade–Giles: Wang Fuchih), 1619–1692) courtesy name Ernong (而农), pseudonym Chuanshan (船山), was a Chinese philosopher of the late Ming, early Qing dynasties.

Life

Born to a scholarly family in Hengyang in Hunan province in 1619, Wang fu-zi began his education in the Chinese classic texts when very young. He passed his civil-service examination at the age of twenty-four, but his projected career was diverted by the invasion of China by the Manchus, the founders of the Qing (or Ch'ing) dynasty.

Staying loyal to the Ming emperors, Wang first fought against the invaders, and then spent the rest of his life in hiding from them. His refuge was at the foot of the mountain Ch'uan-shan, from which he gained his alternative name). He died in 1693, though it's not known for certain where or how.

Philosophical work

Wang fu-zi is said to have written over a hundred books, but many of them have been lost; the remainder are collected as the Ch’uan-shan i-shu ch’uan-chi.

Wang was a follower of Confucius, but he believed that the neo-Confucian philosophy which dominated China at the time had distorted Confucius's teachings. He therefore wrote his own commentaries on the Confucian classics (including five on the Yi Jing or Book of Changes), and gradually developed his own philosophical system. He wrote on many topics, including metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, poetry, and politics.

Apart from Confucius, his influences included Zhang Zai and the major early neo-Confucian Zhu Xi.

Metaphysics

Wang’s metaphysical approach isn't easily pigeon-holed, but it isn't too misleading to think of it as a version of materialism. Only qi (or ch'i; energy or material force) exists; li (principle, form, or idea), which was a central concept in traditional Confucian thought, doesn't exist independently, being simply the principle of the qi. Qi, thus the whole universe, has always existed.

Ethics

Wang's metaphysical ideas led him to a naturalist moral philosophy (which helped bring him popularity in modern China). There are no values in nature; virtues and values are assigned to objects and actions by human beings. In particular, human desires are not inherently evil (as the Buddhists argued); they're not only unavoidable, being an essential part of our nature, but can be beneficial — the moral nature of human beings is grounded in our feelings for others. It's only lack of moderation that leads to problems.

Human desires comprise the main example of our relationship – as material beings – with the material world in which we live, and human nature develops out of our initial material nature together with the changes that we undergo as a result of our interactions with the world.

Epistemology

Wang laid great stress on the need for both experience and reason: we must study the world using our senses, and reason carefully about it. Thus, knowledge and action are intertwined, and acting is the ground of knowing. The gaining of knowledge is a slow and laborious process; there's no room in Wang's epistemology for flashes of enlightenment.

Politics & history

Aside from his materialist stance, Wang' popularity in modern China came largely as a result of his political and historical thought. Government, he argued, should benefit the people, not those in power. History is a continuous cycle of renewal, involving the gradual but continuous progress of human society. There are, of course, periods of chaos and want as well as of stability and prosperity, depending on the degree of virtue of the emperor and of the people as a whole, but the underlying direction is upwards. This isn't the result of fate, of a mystical pattern of events built into the structure of the world; it's rather the result of the natural laws that govern human beings and society. Thus he rejects the notion of a golden age in the past which should be emulated.

With regard to practical politics, Wang believed that the power of the landlords was an evil, and should be weakened by means of higher taxation, which would also lead to an increase in numbers of land-owning peasants.

What is meant by the Way [Dao] is the management of concrete things. [...] Lao-zi was blind to this and said that the Way existed in emptiness [...] Buddha was blind to this and said that the Way existed in silence [...] One may keep on uttering such extravagant words endlessly, but no-one can ever escape from concrete things.

(Ch’uan-shan i-shu)

See also

• Chinese philosophy
• Confucianism

References

• Brian Carr & Indira Mahalingam [edd] Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (1997: London, Routledge) ISBN 0-415-24038-7
• Peter J. King One Hundred Philosophers (2004: Hove, Apple Press) ISBN 1-84092-462-4
• Jacques Gernet "Philosophie et sagesse chez Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692)", in: Gernet L'Intélligence de la Chine. Le social et le mental (1994: Paris, Gallimard) ISBN 2-07-073569-9
• Tang, Kailin, "Wang Fuzi". Encyclopedia of China (Philosophy Edition), 1st ed.

External links

• Template:Dlw-inline — lecture notes by JeeLee Liu (SUNY Geneseo)