Philosopher
Wang Gen
1483–1541
Also known as Wang Ken
Ming Confucian and founder of the Taizhou school, who held that sagehood lies in the everyday practices of ordinary people and set out to bring Confucian learning to all.
Wang Gen lived and taught in Taizhou, which gave its name to the school he is said to have founded. He was a student of Wang Yangming, and took to heart his teacher’s idea that everyone has an innate capacity for moral knowledge and sagehood.
Mainstream Neo-Confucians often disparaged the Taizhou school, whose members were an eclectic group linked by teaching lineages and a common temperament more than a single doctrine. Among the philosophers associated with it were Luo Rufang and Li Zhi.
Key ideas
- Sagehood in everyday life
- Everyone is born able to know what is right and to become a sage, and neither schooling nor books are needed for it. Sagehood can be realised through “the everyday practices of the common people”.
- Confucianism for everyone
- Wang Gen and many of his followers set out to carry Confucianism beyond the educated elite, and saw it as their mission to help ordinary people become sages.
- Close to Daoism and Buddhism
- The Taizhou Confucians departed further from orthodoxy than most, and saw more agreement between Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism than the mainstream allowed.
- Tradition
- Chinese
- Region
- Taizhou, China
- Schools
- Confucianism
- Branches
- Ethics
- Period
- Song–Ming
Influences
Where these links come from
- Wang Gen studied with and drew on Wang Yangming. Source: Justin Tiwald, Song-Ming Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Luo Rufang drew on Wang Gen. Source: Justin Tiwald, Song-Ming Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Sources
- Justin Tiwald, Song-Ming Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy