Wang Yangming Quotes on Knowledge

Wang Yangming (1472–1529) developed the most influential Ming Neo-Confucian alternative to Zhu Xi's investigation of things. The doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action (zhi xing he yi) holds that genuine knowledge is inseparable from its expression in conduct: to know what one ought to do but fail to do it is not to know in the full sense at all. The corresponding doctrine of the innate moral knowledge of liangzhi — the original mind whose intuitive recognition of right and wrong each person possesses prior to deliberate reflection — locates moral cultivation in the recovery of this innate knowing rather than in the external investigation of principle in things that Zhu Xi had recommended.