Wang Yangming · Philosophy
Wang Yangming’s most famous doctrine, <em>zhi xing he yi</em>: that genuine knowing and doing are not two separate stages but one thing. To know the good and not act on it, he insisted, is not really to know it yet - a direct challenge to the study-first curriculum of the reigning Zhu Xi orthodoxy.
You learned that Wang held knowledge and action to be one ( zhi xing he yi ): knowing is the beginning of action and action the completion of knowing, so ‘knowledge that does not act is not yet knowledge.’ Explain the doctrine, and why it was aimed at the study-first learning of Zhu Xi.
Leads to Aristotle.
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