"Reading for All" Chen Lai: Wang Yangming's "Being" and "None"

Chen Lai: Wang Yangming's "being" and "none"

Readable for all

★★★★★

Yangmingxue is an ideological system that has influenced second only Zhu Zixue in ancient East Asian civilizations. As far as Chinese culture is concerned, this system undoubtedly shows certain trends in the development of Chinese culture to the 15th and 16th centuries, and the development of science since the 11th century has also undergone some important changes here, reflecting certain mature characteristics. However, in the past forty years, compared with the research of academic circles in Europe, the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong, our research on Yangming philosophy is very insufficient, of course, there are no external reasons, but there is no breakthrough in the philosophical understanding and cultural interpretation of Yangming philosophy, which is also one of the important reasons. After the open cultural exchanges and cultural reflections of the 1980s, it has become possible for us to further expand the horizon of understanding and interpreting Yangming philosophy.

First, yes and no

Understanding the wisdom and realm of "being" and "nothing" in classical Chinese philosophy is a core issue in the study of Chinese culture. One of the main thrusts of this article is to understand how Yang Ming deals with the opposition and connection between the realm of existence and the wisdom of nothingness, thus showing the internal clues and topics of the entire Song Ming Theory, as well as the status and contribution of Wang Yangming and his philosophy.

The spiritual realm refers to the overall level and state of a person's worldview. The worldview mentioned here does not refer to the understanding of the external natural material world, but to the understanding and attitude of the meaning of the entire universe, society, life and self. The realm is the category that marks the perfection of man's spirit, the category that includes the level of understanding of the whole universe of life, including man's moral level.

The realm of "being" or the realm of having me mentioned in this article does not refer to the realm of having the selfishness of the ego, but refers to the realm of "having a big self." The "state of no-self" mentioned in this book is not trapped in the selflessness of the moral realm, but more refers to the state of freedom without stagnation.

In Wang Yangming's time, the question of the existence of ontology has passed from the era of rationalism. The significance of Yang Ming lies in the fact that he not only exalted the subjectivity of morality, pushed the inherent "being" realm of Confucianism to the extreme through "irrationality outside the heart", "to the extreme conscience", and "benevolence and object", but also proceeded from the Confucian standpoint, fully absorbed the survival wisdom of the Buddhist Tao, combined the state of self with the state of no-self, and with his own life experience, completed the efforts of Confucianism since the Northern Song Dynasty to adhere to the value rationality of entering the world, and also absorbed the spiritual realm and spiritual cultivation of the Buddhist Tao.

2. Respect and pleasure

In any case, Yangming philosophy as a whole is a reaction to Zhu Xue, not a reconciliation. Ming Dynasty theory can be said to revolve around Yang Ming's so-called debate between "caution" and "harmony" or "reverence" and "sprinkling".

However, Ganquan later became the Lord of Heavenly Reason, and was inherently inseparable from the Shimen. And Yang Ming's so-called "fragmentation and shame as Zheng Kangcheng" is the direction of inheriting Baisha's "true Confucianism is not Zheng Kangcheng", and Xia Dongyan said that Yang Ming's learning is all initiated by Baisha, which is a real insight. ”

For Yang Ming, we must remember that on the one hand, he has a true understanding of the realm of sprinkling and self-sufficiency, and on the other hand, he always insists on taking the body as the body, the uselessness, and the reverence for sprinkling.

On the surface, the basic problems of Ming Dynasty science are "ontology" and "workmanship", ontology refers to the natural body of the mind (or sex), and kung fu refers to the specific method of spiritual practice; in essence, the realm meaning of the ontological debate is the dispute between reverence and sprinkling, which is the internal clue for us to grasp the Ming Dynasty.

Third, rationality and existence

In short, from the position of objectivity, necessity, universality and extroversion of Zhuzi classical rationalism, it has shifted to subjectivity, internality, subjectivity, and inner experience. In this sense, the shift from science to psychology is similar to the shift from rationalism to existentialism in Western philosophy after Hegel.

If the comparability of Kant's philosophy to Yangming philosophy lies mainly in the ethical aspect and not in the general philosophical characteristics, then it can be said that the comparability between existential philosophy and Yangming philosophy is mainly not in ethics but in its general characteristics and main philosophical tendencies as a movement of thought.

The most prominent of these is the concern for emotional subjects and emotional experiences. The first sentence of Wang Yang's famous "Four-Sentence Teaching" in the next night is "the body without goodness and no nausea", which is equivalent to Sartre's 'reflection before I think', And Heidegger's 'true state of existence' and 'basic appearance' refers to the natural body of emotions. The selfless state that Yang Ming wants to absorb is to face the self of emotion and emotion, so that people can transcend all negative and negative emotions and emotions, and obtain a peaceful, calm, and comfortable spiritual realm, which in the sense of the mind body is the emotional state of returning to man's true nature.

[Chen Lai: Lecturer of Chang'an Avenue Reading Club, Dean of Institute of Chinese Studies, Tsinghua University]