On The Inner Structure Of Yangming's Mindology From The Perspective Of Mencius's View Of Benevolence And Righteousness

As the peak of neo-Confucianism in Ming Dynasty,and the synthesizer of mind system,Wang Yangming's theory originated in the opposition to the abuses of neo-Confucianism of Cheng Zhu,came from Cheng Hao,Lu Jiuyuan,Chen Xianzhang lately,and inherited Mencius long before.The biggest impact on future generations of Mencius theory is the theory of heaven and mind,that is the combination of intrinsic moral experience and external ethics practice,moral autonomy ability and its transcendental destination,and one of its main content is the theory of benevolence and righteousness.According to the cases and text of <Mencius>,we can find that Mencius considered benevolence as natural and moral compassion and love emotion,considered righteousness as natural likes and dislikes emotion with value orientation and rational moral consciousness developed in the social environment,and benevolence and righteousness follow the “absorbtion”,“creation” and “implementation”,“adjust” interacting principles between them.While,Wang Yangming is indeed in the very field where he understanded and followed the essence of the thought of Mencius and developed a complete set of mind ontology and theory on body and skill.Although among the “Li”,“Qi”,“Mind” and “Nature” context of neo-Confucianism,he did not consciously take benevolence and righteousness to express his thoughts systematically,but as the inherent characteristics and the spirit of mind theory,Mencius benevolence and righteousness architecture implicitly or explicitly reflected in the expression of Yang ming.Firstly,to analyze conscience as the core concept of Yangming by benevolence and righteousness' s own characters of Mencius,we can find there are two levels which are benevolence and righteousness,benevolence refers to sincerity and sympathy,righteousness refers to right and wrong,likes and dislikes,experiencing what the mind should be.In the expansion process of conscience,benevolence is the beginning and origin,righteousness is the result and complete form.Secondly,by refining the core essence of Mencius' s benevolence and righteousness,using a more abstract thinking to analazing Yangming's two couple of mind ontology concept-neither good nor evil and goodness,myriad things share one body and different love,we can find the relationship of coexisting,being premise and conclusion for each other of benevolence and righteousness.The true goodness must be neither good nor evil,and neither good nor evil take goodness as the root;love of one body is benevolence,and the difference of love is righteousness;love of one body is different naturally,and the difference of love is based on love of one body.Ultimately,analying Yangming's theory on body and skill by the interaction between benevolence and righteousness of Mencius as a clue,with “Tianquan sermon” as a typical case,we can discover the two kind of path of “from benevolence to righteousness” and “from righteousness to benevolence”,and benevolence and righteousness going together,which Yangming identifies more,and then examine the whole structure of Yangming's theory on body and skill by the three kind of path,and we can pass through all aspects of his theory on body and skill,including some famous theories like “the unity of knowledge and action”,“sincerity and investigating things”,“the extension of innate knowledge”.