Philosopher
Wang Tingxiang
1474–1544
Also known as Wang T’ing-hsiang
Maverick Ming Confucian who held that qi alone accounts for everything, rejected the oneness of all things, and denied that human nature is necessarily good.
Wang Tingxiang was one of the mavericks of Ming Confucianism, working at the edges of, and against, the mainstream Neo-Confucian tradition that took its cues from the Cheng brothers.
His view of human nature was especially unorthodox. In denying that people are naturally good, he broke with an agreement among Confucians that had held, almost unchallenged, for centuries.
Key ideas
- Qi explains everything
- Against the dualists of his time, Wang held that qi, behaving as it ordinarily does, explains all there is, even the order and generation in nature that mainstream Neo-Confucians credited to pattern (li) as something irreducible.
- No oneness of things
- Wang denied that the universe forms one unified whole, and went further: such total unity, he held, would not even be a good thing.
- Human nature is not necessarily good
- Goodness and the dispositions to virtue are not necessary features of human nature. Feelings such as shame, which Confucians took as proof of innate goodness, mostly track what society expects.
- Tradition
- Chinese
- Region
- China
- Period
- Song–Ming
- Themes
- Human nature
Terms on this page
- qi
- Vital force or material force (氣), the stuff of which all things are made. Neo-Confucians paired it with principle (li), and explained the differences between people by the qi each is endowed with.
Sources
- Justin Tiwald, Song-Ming Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy