New Outlook On Wang Yangming's The Learning Of The Mind

Since the Ming Dynasty, there have existed a good many scholars to research Wang Yangming and his the learning of mind. These views embody rebuke and honor. The research approaches of present and contemporary are diverse, and many achievements have been obtained. But we cannot only use their works and quotations to research Wang Yangming's philosophy, and should combine his personal experience closely. To discuss the relation between his personality and the creation of his philosophy, his philosophy can be got understood more clearly.Wang Yangming's liang zhi, namely the cognitive and affective faculty, is a very important concept in his philosophy, and it is inborn in human being. It has extremely close relations with those concepts such as heart, principle and material force, and it is the foundation of Wang's teaching methods such as quiet setting, unity of knowledge and practice, causing liang zhi. Wang Yangming's the learning of mind is the production of the combined force of Wang's living background, home environment, family education, his father's status, his personal ambition, status and experiences. The unity of three religions is the soul that his thought produced, his personal ambition is the power who produces his philosophy, his family's conscious and unconscious education factors had decided his thought's main trend and his sinuous personal experiences are promoting and perfecting factors to the production of the learning of mind.Wang's the learning of mind is not subjective idealism. It is a monism, which is neither materialism nor materialism. It takes the unity of heart (or principle) and material force as the sovereign being. The heart (or principle) and material force is naturally a whole, inalienable, not existential independently each other.Wang Yangming's liang zhi includes a kind of feudal ethical philosophy. It is formed by the times localization. The production of Wang's the learning of mind is not only the reasonable development of neo-Confucian in Song and Ming dynasty, but also the production of the times promotion and social crises.