Wang Yangming's Conscience Philosophy:Justification or Oblivion of Things
The establishment of the doctrine of conscience can be attributed to Wang Yangming’s enlighten⁃ment at Longchang.This enlightenment contained a new understanding of the study of things to acquire knowledge,and it also represented a reaction against Zhu Xi’s doctrine of the study of things to acquire knowledge.Wang Yangming’s conscience is the subjectified essence,which can be called the"knowing of the beginning."It encompasses the functions of emotion,will,and knowledge in the subject.The function of conscience is the knowing of the unknowing.It does not have a subject-object relationship with the ob⁃ject of sensation.The object of conscience’s sensation is not the object that the cognitive mind confronts,but the object of non-object.Wang Yangming’s study of things to acquire knowledge is an event of direct sensation of conscience.The heart and the object are not empirical concepts,but transcendental concepts,and they still act on the real world.Zhu Xi’s doctrine of the study of things to acquire knowledge also pre⁃supposes that the heart and the object have a transcendental aspect.It is manifested at the end of the self-cultivation process in which the scholar suddenly catches the principle of moral.However,in the process of self-cultivation in Zhu Xi’s school of thought,there is a dialectical relationship between heart-knowl⁃edge and object-principle.The scholar must first understand the cognitive principle of real things,and then the principle contained in his heart can be revealed.As the heart becomes clearer,the understanding of the object’s principle also becomes deeper and wider,and so on.Zhu Xi’s doctrine of the study of things to acquire knowledge emphasizes that moral judgments in the real world must be based on the back⁃ground knowledge of differentiation and indirectness.In the end,it can reach the state of both heart and ob⁃ject ascending into the innate realm.Wang Yangming’s doctrine of the study of things to acquire knowl⁃edge and Zhu Xi’s doctrine of the study of things to acquire knowledge are not necessarily contradictory.However,because Wang Yangming emphasizes the embodiment and realization of the principle of con⁃science,he highlights the innate meaning of the object,but he cannot prove the knowledge meaning of the object.This article takes the calligraphy and military that Wang Yangming used to describe the field of conscience’s wonderful use as examples,and points out that conscience’s immediate judgment still needs to be based on the indirect knowledge of the broad supportive awareness.Such a doctrine of conscience is the unity of sudden teaching and gradual teaching.
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