A New Exploration Of Wang Yangming's Thought Of "The Unity Of Knowledge And Action"

Wang Yangming's thought of "the unity of knowledge and action",based on the thought of the Great Learning and Mencius,was put forward under the historical background of the social ills and morals decay in the middle of Ming Dynasty and criticizing Cheng Zhu's separation of knowledge and action."Mind is Theory" is the theoretical premise of "the unity of knowledge and action"."Intuitive knowledge " and "knowledge gained by seeing and hearing" are the key concepts of knowing while"notion" and " practice " are the main concepts of doing in the idea of"the unity of knowledge and action".Intuitive knowledge is the noumenon of "knowledge gained by seeing and hearing and action","notion" and" practice".From the perspective of viewing intuitive knowledge as the noumenon of knowledge and action,"the unity of knowledge and action" first embodies as the unity of knowing and doing and secondly as the two making progress together in the process of development.From the perspective of ethics,"unity of knowledge and action" emphasizes the relationship between moral consciousness and moral behavior.It includes two levels of meaning:first,under the circumstance of absence of selfish desire interference,intuitive knowledge such moral consciousness can certainly be converted into objective moral behavior;secondly,in the case of selfish desires interference,intuitive knowledge can make the subject's consciousness and behavior always regulate within the moral framework through self-reflection.Both meanings highlight the subjectivity of morality and include the connotation of moral freedom thus revealing the moral freedom implication of "unity of knowledge and action" from two dimensions.From the perspective of the unity of the noumenon of knowing then must doing,"the unity of knowledge and action" embodies the unification of rational consciousness,voluntary volition and affective identification which is the moral freedom state of acting at will but by rule.From the angle of knowing and doing making progress together in the process of development,the idea "the unity of knowledge and action"is shovn as the unification of the subjects of moral cognition,norm and moral practice.It is the moral freedom with self-disciplined intuitive knowledge also it is an approach reaching to the moral freedom state of acting at will but by rule.