The Dialogue Between Wang Yangming’s Psychology And Pragmatism

Although Wang Yangming and John Dewey are in different time and located in different regions,there are many similarities in the view of knowledge and action between Wang Yangming and John Dewey.Their concern for life practice,their attention to the inseparability of knowledge and action,and their emphasis on practical behavior all resonate across time and space.But their differences in the view of knowledge and action is also obvious.Wang Yangming’s theory of "unity of knowledge and practice" tends to the level of morality and ethics,and tends to improve the internal moral cultivation of the subject.It is related to the perfection of personal realm and the process of sanctification.In essence,"unity of knowledge and practice" is the unity of morality.However,he did not ignore the "unity of knowledge and practice" at the empirical level,but tried to control the "empirical knowledge" under the "conscience".In contrast,John Dewey’s "unity of knowledge and practice" tends to experience,to improve the relationship between people and the surrounding environment,related to people’s pursuit of certainty,related to the avoidance of danger,and the pursuit of safety through action.John Dewey’s "unity of knowledge and action" means that knowledge and action are unified in experience.After combing the views of knowledge and action of Wang Yangming and John Dewey,this paper makes a comparative study on their views of knowledge and action.The content of the comparison mainly involves the background of the two concepts of knowledge and action;Their analysis of the concept of "knowledge",which involves the source of knowledge and the object of cognition;The conceptual analysis of "action" between them involves the process of cognition and the purpose of behavior,and the similarities and differences of the "knowledge-action relationship".As far as the source of knowledge is concerned,Yangming’s "knowledge" includes innate moral knowledge and empirical knowledge,both of which are based on the metaphysical "conscience noumenon".For John Dewey,knowledge comes from the interaction between man and the world,that is,from experience,rather than from the mind thought by previous epistemologists.As far as the object of cognition is concerned,Wang Yangming’s cognitive object refers to a kind of relational object "thing",which on the one hand refers to the relational meaning object of the interaction between subject and object;On the other hand,it refers to the object of purely subjective ideas.In Dewey,the object of knowledge is constructed through external practical behavior,which is a changed situation.As far as the process of "action" is concerned,the cognitive process of Wang Yang Ming and John Dewey starts from the problem and ends from the behavior verification.Only Wang Yangming ’s "problems" focus on ethical issues,while John Dewey’s "problems" are more extensive,which are all human related problems faced by people in the environment.In the whole process of cognition,knowledge and action are inseparable,and in Wang Yangming it is presented as a mutually inclusive and mutually causal relationship,while in Dewey it is a one-way causal relationship.