All In One,Awakening People And Village Regulations Institution

It is a controversial academic question that Wang Yang-ming’s rural govermance thoughts are the state ruling theory from the top to the bottom or the thought of social governance from bottom up.In response to this problem,this study reconstructs Wang Yang-ming’s rural thought system by examining the ideal social thought of Wang Yang-ming’s “all in one” and “awakening people” which is the path of his ideal society,as well as the theory and practice of the system of Village Regulations Institution.As a scholar-bureaucrat,Wang Yang-ming has an order complex of the “three generations society” like Song Confucianism.Unlike the Song Confucianism who had chosen the way of “depending on the highest imperial power to carry out the reforms” to return to the “three generations society ”,Wang Yang-ming built “the governance of the three generations” as an ideal society of “all in one”,and proposed a new route named “awakening people” to realize his ideal society of “all in one” based on the bad political and ecological environment of the Ming Dynasty and his theory of “conscience”.Wang Yang-ming constructed his village regulations institution which included Bao Jia,Social School and Village Convenance as his “awaking people” methods on realistic level.After Wang Yang-ming’s theory and practice of the village regulations institution were continuously improved,he promulgated and implemented his famous “Nangan Village Convenance”.In the “Nangan Village Convenance”,Wang Yangming rebuilt an ideal social order of “good people and kindness custom” according to the ideal social picture of "all in one" for Nangan area and a series of village convenance items which made “Nangan Village Convenance” be more practical and feasible.This method changed the people’s bad behavior and custom of Nangan area.Therefore,Wang Yang-ming’s rural govermance thoughts are the thought of social governance from bottom up.The village regulations institution by Wang Yang-ming and its practice are not the “rope for restrain people’s thought and behavior” for the governace of landlord class of feudal system,but for a reasonable human order through help people to realize their intuitive by assisting ordinary people to “break the thief of the mind” and “recover their conscience”.