The most well-known philosophical view that Wang Yangming had is called the Unity of Knowing and Acting. From the face of it, it seems like this is a metaphysical view somewhat related to the mind-body problem in Philosophy of Mind, but in fact, this is not an accurate translation. What he said was “Zhi Xing He Yi”, and while “Zhi” means knowledge, more specifically, like most ancient Chinese philosophers, Wang Yangming is more concerned with ethics and metaethics than other philosophical topics, so here he means moral knowledge by “Zhi” rather than the knowledge we usually speak of. Therefore, the so-called “unity of knowing and acting” is not the general relationship between knowledge and practice, instead, it refers to the relationship between moral consciousness and practice. The second half of the phrase, “He Yi”, means “as one”. Together, Wang Yangming’s doctrine of the Unity of Knowing and Acting roughly means that moral consciousness and behavior are inseparable, and you can’t have one without the other.
There is action in knowing, and there is knowledge in action. Wang Yangming believes that knowledge and action are the same things and “cannot be divided into two parts”. In his own words, “knowing and acting are two words, but they’re saying one thing”. From the viewpoint of moral education, Wang Yangming suggests that “knowledge without action” is detrimental, and attributes all morality to the conscious action of individuals, which is of positive influence. As long as moral consciousness cannot be separated from moral behavior, and the two co-exist, knowledge must be expressed as action, and not practicing moral behavior cannot be considered to truly possess moral knowledge. In other words, if one possesses moral knowledge, he must be able to express that knowledge in a tangible way; in turn, if one does moral practice knowingly, it is shown that he possesses true moral knowledge.
Wang Yangming gives some examples of the unity of knowing and acting in his discussion with his students, as recorded in Chuan Xi Lu, or “Instructions for Practical Living”, the first part of Wang Wencheng Gong Quanshu, “the complete works of Wang Yangming.” He uses sense experience as well as general moral code to prove that knowing and acting are inseparable:
One cannot say he knows filial piety or brotherly respect simply because he knows how to say something filial or brotherly. Knowing pain offers another good example. One must have experienced pain oneself in order to know pain. Similarly, one must have been cold in order to know coldness, and have been hungry in order to know hunger.
Wang Wencheng Gong Quanshu, Chapter 1, Section 7
According to Wang Yangming, knowing and acting are two sides of the same coin, there is action in knowing and there is knowledge in acting. Knowledge that is separated from action is not true knowledge but delusion; action that is separated from knowledge is not sincere but stumbled upon the right behavior. By putting forth the idea of the unity of knowing and acting, Wang Yangming emphasizes the consciousness of moral knowledge that requires one to actively work on one’s spirit, and to look internally for moral advancement rather than externally; on the other hand, he stresses the practical nature of morality, pointing out that one must be consistent in word and deed, and in internal thought and external behavior. Moreover, he points out that “there is action when a thought is activated”, which blurs the boundary between conscious activity and actual practice. The fundamental purpose of his advocacy of the unity of knowledge and action is to alarm people to get rid of any single “one thought of badness”, that is his “purpose of saying those words”.
It is worth noting that Wang Yangming isn’t the most famous of the Neo-Confucian philosophers. The most famous one, many would argue is Zhu Xi. He came hundreds of years before Wang Yangming, and his idea was already famous by the time Wang Yangming started practicing philosophy. Zhu Xi’s view on the relationship between knowledge and action is precisely what Wang Yangming is trying to challenge in his view of the Unity of Knowing and Acting. Zhu Xi, as well as many philosophers at the time, famously argued that one has to possess moral knowledge first before one is able to act morally. Wang Yangming is the first to challenge this orthodox and proposed, as mentioned earlier:
Knowledge is the idea of action, action is the effort of knowledge; knowledge is the beginning of action, action is the completion of knowledge. If you say only one word “knowledge,” it already contains action; if you say only one word “action,” it already contains knowledge.
Wang Wencheng Gong Quanshu, Chapter 1, Section 7
In 1509, after Wang Yangming was demoted to Longchang, a secluded and uncivilized part of China at that time, he came to a deep understanding of the truth of life and reached a sense of enlightenment after hard thinking. He believed that the attitude of one’s mind determines one’s behavior and view of the world. From then on, he parted ways with Zhu Xi’s traditional doctrine of knowledge and action, called “Learning of Pattern,” and began establishing his own school of thought, “Learning of Heartmind” (Tiwald, 2.3). His unity of knowing and acting is mainly directed against “Learning of Pattern”, the school of thought that Zhu Xi founded. He opposed Zhu Xi’s theory that it “separated knowing and acting, to think one must obtain knowledge first and then be able to perform action.” He claims that Learning of Pattern results in an overemphasis on knowledge and ignores the part of action that leads to a purely theoretical style of learning.
Glossary
- 知行合一 (Zhi Xing He Yi) – Unity of Knowing and Acting
- 心学 (Xin Xue) – Learning of Heartmind
- 理学 (Li Xue) – Learning of Pattern
Work Cited
Tiwald, Justin, “Song-Ming Confucianism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/song-ming-confucianism/>.
“Unity of Knowing and Acting.” Baidu Baike, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%9F%A5%E8%A1%8C%E5%90%88%E4%B8%80/1496?fromModule=lemma_inlink.
Van Norden, Bryan, “Wang Yangming”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/wang-yangming/>.
Wang, Yangming. Wang Wencheng Gong Quanshu. Wikisource, https://zh.m.wikisource.org/zh-hans/%E7%8E%8B%E6%96%87%E6%88%90%E5%85%AC%E5%85%A8%E6%9B%B8_(%E5%9B%9B%E9%83%A8%E5%8F%A2%E5%88%8A%E6%9C%AC)/%E7%9B%AE%E9%8C%B2. Accessed 11 Oct. 2022.