Wang Fuzhi (王夫之), styled Quanshan (船山 Ch’uan-shan), also known as Wang Fu-zi or Wang Zi (1619–1692) was a Chinese philosopher of the late Ming, early Qing dynasties. The Ming Dynasty (Chinese: 明朝; Pinyin: míng cháo also called 大明帝国 The Great Ming Empire) was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, though claims to the Ming throne (now collectively called the Southern Ming) survived until 1662. ... The Qing Dynasty (Manchu: daicing gurun; Chinese: 清朝; pinyin: qīng cháo; Wade-Giles: ching chao), sometimes known as the founded by the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro, in what is today northeast China expanded into China proper and the surrounding territories of Inner Asia, establishing the Empire of the...

Life

Born to a scholarly family in Hengyang in Hunan province in 1619, Wang fu-zi began his education in the Chinese classic texts when very young. He passed his civil-service examination at the age of twenty-four, but his projected career was diverted by the invasion of China by the Manchus, the founders of the Qing (or Ch'ing) dynasty. Hengyang (Simplified Chinese: 衡阳; Traditional Chinese: 衡陽; pinyin: ) is the second largest city of Chinas Hunan Province. ... Hunan (Chinese: 湖南; pinyin: ) is a province of China, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting (hence the name Hunan, meaning south of the lake). Hunan is sometimes called 湘 (pinyin: Xiāng) for short, after the Xiang River which runs through the province. ... China has a wealth of classical literature, both poetry and prose, dating from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) and including the Chinese classics texts, or Chinese canonical texts. ... The Manchu (manju in Manchu; 滿族 (pinyin: mǎnzú) in Chinese, often shortened to 滿 (pinyin: mǎn) are an ethnic group who originated in northeastern Manchuria. ...

Staying loyal to the Ming emperors, Wang first fought against the invaders, and then spent the rest of his life in hiding from them. His refuge was at the foot of the mountain Ch'uan-shan, from which he gained his alternative name). He died in 1693, though it's not known for certain where or how.

Philosophical work

Wang fu-zi is said to have written over a hundred books, but many of them have been lost; the remainder are collected as the Ch’uan-shan i-shu ch’uan-chi.

Wang was a follower of Confucius, but he believed that the neo-Confucian philosophy which dominated China at the time had distorted Confucius's teachings. He therefore wrote his own commentaries on the Confucian classics (including five on the Yi Jing or Book of Changes), and gradually developed his own philosophical system. He wrote on many topics, including metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, poetry, and politics. Confucius (traditionally September 8? 551 BCE–479 BCE) was a famous thinker and social philosopher of China whose teachings have deeply influenced East Asia for twenty centuries. ... Alternative meaning: I Ching (monk) The I Ching (Traditional Chinese: 易經, pinyin y jīng; Cantonese IPA: jɪk6gɪŋ1; Cantonese Jyutping: jik6ging1; alternative romanizations include I Jing, Yi Ching, Yi King) is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. ... Metaphysics (Greek words meta = after/beyond and physics = nature) is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of first principles and being (ontology). ... Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ... Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the science (study) of morality. In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is good or right. ... Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Politics is the process and method of making decisions for groups. ...

Apart from Confucius, his influences included Zhang Zai and the major early neo-Confucian Zhu Xi. Zhu Xi Zhu Xi (朱熹, Hanyu Pinyin: Zhū Xī, Wade-Giles: Chu Hsi) (1130 - 1200) was a Song Dynasty (960-1279) Confucian scholar who became one of most significant Neo-Confucians in China. ...

Metaphysics

Wang’s metaphysical approach isn't easily pigeon-holed, but it isn't too misleading to think of it as a version of materialism. Only qi (or ch'i; energy or material force) exists; li (principle, form, or idea), which was a central concept in traditional Confucian thought, doesn't exist independently, being simply the principle of the qi. Qi, thus the whole universe, has always existed. This article primarily focuses on the general concepts of matter and existence. ... See Qi (disambiguation) for other meanings of Qi. Qi is the (partial) pinyin romanisation (more properly transliterated as qì) of what was once transliterated, using the older Wade-Giles romanisation, as chi (and frequently mis-spelled as chi). ... Confucianism (儒家 Pinyin: rújiā The School of the Scholars), sometimes translated as the School of Literati, is an East Asian ethical, religious and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of Confucius. ...

Ethics

Wang's metaphysical ideas led him to a naturalist moral philosophy (which helped bring him popularity in modern China). There are no values in nature; virtues and values are assigned to objects and actions by human beings. In particular, human desires are not inherently evil (as the Buddhists argued); they're not only unavoidable, being an essential part of our nature, but can be beneficial — the moral nature of human beings is grounded in our feelings for others. It's only lack of moderation that leads to problems.

Human desires comprise the main example of our relationship – as material beings – with the material world in which we live, and human nature develops out of our initial material nature together with the changes that we undergo as a result of our interactions with the world.

Epistemology

Wang laid great stress on the need for both experience and reason: we must study the world using our senses, and reason carefully about it. Thus knowledge and action are intertwined, and acting is the ground of knowing. The gaining of knowledge is a slow and laborious process; there's no room in Wang's epistemology for flashes of enlightenment.

Politics & history

Aside from his materialist stance, Wang' popularity in modern China came largely as a result of his political and historical thought. Government, he argued, should benefit the people, not those in power. History is a continuous cycle of renewal, involving the gradual but continuous progress of human society. There are, of course, periods of chaos and want as well as of stability and prosperity, depending on the degree of virtue of the emperor and of the people as a whole, but the underlying direction is upwards. This isn't the result of fate, of a mystical pattern of events built into the structure of the world; it's rather the result of the natural laws that govern human beings and society. Thus he rejects the notion of a golden age in the past which should be emulated.

With regard to practical politics, Wang believed that the power of the landlords was an evil, and should be weakened by means of higher taxation, which would also lead to an increase in numbers of land-owning peasants.

Sources

Brian Carr & Indira Mahalingam [edd] Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (1997: London, Routledge) ISBN 0-415-24038-7

Peter J. King One Hundred Philosophers (2004: Hove, Apple Press) ISBN 1-84092-462-4 Peter J. King (born March 27, 1956) is a British poet and humanist philosopher. ...

External links

Wang Fu-chih (http://www.geneseo.edu/~liu/WangFuChih.html) — lecture notes by JeeLee Liu (SUNY Geneseo)

See also

• Chinese philosophy
• Confucianism