The Morality And Knowledge In WangYangMing's Philosophical System

Honoring Moral Nature and Following the Path of Inquiry is an important issue in the Song and Ming Dynasties, and it collectively reflected in the relationship between ethics and knowledge in Yangming's School of Mind. Through the experience of himself, Yangming waked up to that parting of Heart and Reason leads to the tense relationship of ethics and knowledge in the "to investigate things is to attain knowledge" skill. And the parting also can lancinate the relationship of ethics and knowledge, which can lead people departure from the saint-to-be ultimate goal when he try to be.In order to solve this problem, firstly, Yangming constructed a "heart" theory which is centered on the Extension of Innate Knowledge and based on the syncretism of Heart and Reason. The reunification of ethics and knowledge remolded the custom of Song and Ming Dynasties, which established the logical construction of "Honoring the Virtuous Nature" first and "Following the Knowledge" based. He made further discussion on the relationship of ethics and knowledge, which is centered on four couples of concepts: "erudite learning" and "binding with rites", "peculiar learning" and "universal understanding", "quintessence" and "single-minded", "sincerity" and "investigation of things". Through the discussion, Yangming pointed out that, knowledge is the representation of ethics, ethics is the domination of knowledge, and individuals can be saint when he got rid of the interference of outside fragmented and hairsplitting knowledge.Secondly, Yanyming analyzed the conscience played as moral norm and knowledge played as moral foundation. Yangming endowed normal as the main role of knowledge or cognition, at the same time, he also endowed knowledge as the wing of normal sublimation. All of these made individuals to know good and evil, thereby unified the knowledge and the normal in deed.Lastly, the hermeneutic of Yangming as characteristic of self-realization of life showed that: the acquisition and the accumulation of knowledge must be commanded and dominated under the normal, the illustriousness of normal in daily life formed as knowledge, the purpose of study was more than the increase of knowledge, we should pay more attention to "learning for oneself of Confucianism Spirit. In practice, knowledge was the base of normal expansion of individual, on the contrary, the expansion of normal enhanced the meaning of knowledge, both complement each other, peculiar learning for universal understanding.