History of Chinese Philosophy in the Ming Dynasty Xuezhi Zhang

History of Chinese Philosophy in the Ming Dynasty

123 Xuezhi Zhang Department of Philosophy Peking University Beijing, China

Translated by Benjamin Michael Coles Huaqiao University Xiamen, China

Supported by Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences (本书获中华社会科学 基金资助)

ISBN 978-981-15-8962-1 ISBN 978-981-15-8963-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8963-8

Jointly published with Higher Education Press The print edition is not for sale in China Mainland. Customers from China Mainland please order the print book from: Higher Education Press.

© Higher Education Press 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publishers, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Introduction

The Ming Dynasty [1368–1644] was a unique period in Chinese history. For most of the period, the imperial state was relatively weak, and towards the end of the Ming, the country fell into a very desperate situation. However, the Ming was also a period when the whole society began to modernize at a high speed in a wide range of aspects. Due to advances in productive technology, development of industry and commerce, expansion of the scale of cities, and a continued rise in the class status of city residents, the life of city residents became a central focus of attention for the whole society. Of key importance is the imperial examination (keju 科举) system of the Ming Dynasty, which promoted the influence of Neo-Confucianism in all aspects of social life with an unprecedented depth and breadth. Since Buddhism and Daoism were already in decline, they had no choice but to attempt to ride the coattails of Confucianism in order to survive. Within Buddhism and Daoism themselves, the tendency towards a syncretic unification of the Three Teachings (sanjiao 三教 [i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism]) was very strong. All of these trends influenced the situation of philosophy in the Ming Dynasty, giving it a distinct quality different from that of earlier periods. The mainstream academic thought of the Ming Dynasty was Neo-Confucianism (lixue 理学 [lit. Learning of Principle]). A distinctive quality of Ming Dynasty Neo-Confucianism was the fading of interest in theories of principle (li 理) and qi 气 (material force), and the rise of theories of mind (xin 心) and inherent nature (xing 性) to become the central focus of thought. An important reason for this is that with the efforts of promotion of great Confucians in the Song and Yuan dynasties, Neo-Confucianism had been thoroughly developed, and increasingly became a doctrine concerned with value, such that exploring the ultimate reality of the myriad things had already become a question of empirical demonstration, and thus grad- ually fell into a place of secondary importance in the view of many people. There was thus little space remaining in which to continue to pursue questions of principle and qi. Questions of mind and inherent nature, however, represent the fundamental understanding of philosophers concerning the essence of humanity and its relation with the wider cosmos. In particular, after a prolonged period of absorption, con- flict, and synthesis between Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, the Three

v vi Introduction

Teachings had come into a state of harmonious integration, which gave questions of mind and inherent nature a unique importance and depth. Furthermore, in the Ming Dynasty [Confucian] Classical Learning (jingxue 经学) had become very worn-out and took a separate path from Neo-Confucianism. In the absence of new methodologies and social demands, it was very difficult for the Study of Classics to develop further. The influence of the imperial examination system meant that the study of meanings and principles (yili 义理) became firmly fixed at the center of the intellectual world, and innovation and development in meanings and principles required personal experience of mind and inherent nature. Theories of mind and inherent nature were best able to express a thinker’s level of fundamental knowl- edge. From the perspective of methodologies of thought, theories of principle and qi took their described objects as systems existing outside the mind, using a method of separation between subject and object; the laws of objects themselves, as well as the relationships between their various parts, were still taken as existing outside the self. Theories of mind and inherent nature, however, were aimed at the relationship between subject and object, with objects as projections of the subjective plane, already imprinted with the stamp of subjectivity. For Neo-Confucians, “mind” generally referred not to a rational subject, but to a complex synthesis of rationality, intuition, individual experience, and awareness, in which the subjective and objective worlds were inseparably connected together. “Inherent nature” generally referred not to external principles obtained rationally, but rather to a self-positing set within the frame of the unity of Heaven and humanity (tian ren he yi 天人合一). It represented the basic view of Neo-Confucians concerning the essential nature of the cosmos, the position of humanity within this cosmos, and relationships between people. Understanding these questions through grasping the myriad phe- nomena of the cosmos in terms of their meaning and value was not something that could be achieved through rational analysis alone. Reason is always an important aspect of thought, and regardless of which method was used to grasp an object, in expressing their thoughts and communicating this information to others, scholars could not leave rationality behind. However, for Neo-Confucians, especially the Ming Dynasty Neo-Confucians focused on mind and inherent nature, simply relying on the instrument of rationality was insufficient. The method used in this book is first to establish the field of problems of the particular thinker under consideration based on a thorough reading of original texts, and then to uncover all the concepts and categories related to this field of problems; using the principle of the unification of logic and history, and taking key concepts as a guide, to construct conceptual and categorical framework; and sorting out the logical relations within this framework, then laying these out according to their logical order. In this process, the emphasis is placed on explaining the formation of the main concepts in this framework, and their relationship with other concepts. However, it is relatively difficult to precisely define the problems a particular thinker was attempting to solve. Influenced by their tradition, the works of thinkers in the Song and Ming dynasties are mostly not systematic or consistent from beginning to end, with their key concepts often diffused throughout records of sayings (yulu 语录) or scholarly letters, and their arguments often fragmented, requiring that one Introduction vii summarize through delving into the depths of a great quantity of material. Once a field of problems has been defined, it is then necessary to analyze the concepts used. Most of the concepts used by Ming Dynasty thinkers were taken up from their predecessors, and [Huang Zongxi’s 黄宗羲] Case Studies of MingConfucians (Mingru xue’an 明儒学案) generally already uncovered the core concepts of the important thinkers, however, the difficulty of differentiating between the various meanings expressed in identical words and phrases remains. This book expends a lot of effort in this regard, as it is only by first clarifying the concrete, singular meanings of a particular concept that the threads of a philosopher’s thought can be uncovered. The method of dealing with a philosopher’s thought by arranging it in a logical structure has been frequently questioned in recent years, being viewed as having the deficiency of forcing ancient figures into a fixed schema. However, if a thinker’s thought is systematic, if its different parts are clearly logically related, it can be dealt with according to a framework. In researching the history of thought, one should aim to make a thinker fresh and alive, rich and full, possessing clear levels and stages, and set out through main points, rather than careless and scattered, fragmented and various, with no main points; ideally, one should make the object of one’s study into a reconstruction in one’s own thought. Researchers do not remold ancient figures or force them to fit into fixed schemas, but rather attempt to represent the structural form of the thought-processes of a thinker based on a full grasp of his material, such that even if the thought of the figure being studied does not have a strict systematic form, one can still find the structural relations between the various parts of his thought. The task of the researcher is precisely in revealing these structural relations. As the historian Chen Yinke 陈寅恪 once noted, researching ancient thought is just like appreciating ancient paintings or statues, the researcher has to help damaged places return to their original form, to make vague places become clear. The quality of such restorative work entirely depends on the researcher’s ability to grasp a thought system that has already passed away. In order to achieve this goal, the method of individual experience (tiyan 体验) is indispensable. Individual experience is an extremely important method in the research of Chinese philosophy, especially Neo-Confucianism. Most Neo- Confucians placed great emphasis on [a person’s] ambience (qixiang 气象) and spiritual plane (jingjie 境界), which formed an organic, constitutive part of their academic studies. Their plane and ambience are sometimes expressed within their writings, sometimes outside; some concern the content of their thoughts, others their distinctive styles. Ambience, plane and content of thought are unified. When researching Chinese thinkers, especially Neo-Confucians, one truly grasps them only when one has grasped their ambience and plane, and ambience and plane depend on individual experience. Individual experience does not only mean standing in the same position as the objects of one’s research, using an attitude of sympathetic under- standing to interpret them, but more importantly refers to experiencing and observing their ambience, the emotion expressed in their words and in between their lines, and the role played by this emotion in the construction of their thought. Philosophy is not merely a communication of meanings and principles, but is simultaneously an expression of emotion, even if this expression is not as direct or explicit as in liter- ature. Researchers should aim to reveal this emotion in their research. viii Introduction

This book takes its primary task the revealing of the thinkers’ thought itself. Philosophy is a general, indirect theoretical reflection of social life, certainly, but it itself is also a kind of synthetic intellectual activity. This synthesis refers to a speculative, intuitive, experiential mode of grasping objects. The activity of philosophical thought is sufficient to itself. Philosophers, especially Chinese philosophers, have always had a very close relationship with political reality, yet most Chinese philosophers did not use their philosophical thought to allude to or make analogies of political reality. Given the combined official-scholar identity of Chinese thinkers, they had the channel to voice political opinions; even where the path of speech was blocked and they had no choice but to utilize the method of allusion, these contents were not the mainstream. Furthermore, a great many Ming Dynasty thinkers still chose to use the traditional method of commentating on the classics in order to express their thought. Commentating on the classics was a rather pure theoretical activity. This book selects rather pure philosophical content and elaborates on this, rather than assimilating intellectual activity to indirect political claims or veiled expressions. Other than for important thinkers, it generally does not deal with the background of social life against which thought was produced, but rather focuses on the logical structure of thoughts themselves. The goal of this is to make its content more clear and vivid, with higher consistency. In relation to a few important points of thought, it is not sufficient to merely summarize specific problems discussed at the time, but is necessary to further explicate the general philosophical meaning contained within a specific problem, in order to more deeply grasp the thought’s meaning and value. Finally, concerning the period of the thinkers Huang Zongxi, Fang Yizhi 方以 智, and Wang Fuzhi 王夫之, who are generally described as thinkers of the Ming-Qing transition, in terms of the division of periods, works on the history of philosophy, use different methods, and some have placed them in the Qing Dynasty. This book holds that placing Huang Zongxi, Fang Yizhi, and Wang Fuzhi in the history of Ming Dynasty philosophy is more reasonable. In terms of time, when Li Zicheng 李自成 entered Beijing in the year in which the Ming Dynasty collapsed (1644), these thinkers had all already formed their thought, and after this Ming political power persisted in the south of China, for almost 20 more years, a period in which the philosophical creativity of these thinkers reached its peak. In particular, these thinkers all experienced the desperate drifting of the chaos of war, feeling agony at the collapse of the country and pain at the hardships of the people. Their emotion towards the preservation of Chinese culture and the consciousness of problems expressed within their works both represent a continuation of Ming Dynasty thought. For example, Huang Zongxi’s teacher Liu Zongzhou 刘宗周 was one of the great Confucians of the late Ming, who had already begun to summarize Ming Dynasty Confucian thought, and warned against the harms caused by the tendency to neglect effort (gongfu 功夫) and directly rely on original substance (benti 本体) as found in the “innate moral knowing” (xiantian liangzhi 先天良知) faction, his attempts to correct the academic fashion of the time being plainly evident. The most clear and penetrating expression of Huang Zongxi’s philo- sophical thought is found in his Case Studies of Ming Confucians, a work whose Introduction ix fundamental points in its reviews of each thinker are entirely inherited from Liu Zongzhou. The problems that he worked hard to emphasize, including innate and acquired (xiantian houtian 先天后天), original substance, and effort were all classic Ming Dynasty problems. Placing Huang Zongxi in the context of Ming Dynasty philosophy and describing his direct inheritance from Liu Zongzhou is thus both natural and reasonable. The same is true for Fang Yizhi, who in his early years was fond of fine culture and encyclopedic investigation along with the study of pene- trating inflections (tongji 通几), but who after the events of the Jiashen 甲申 coup [of 1644] was reduced to wandering the land, leading to great changes in his thought. After being forced to leave his home, his thought came to be full of disconsolation, strange absurdity, and feelings of unfathomable restlessness. The most important and representative work of his late period was The Equalisation of East and West (Dong xi jun 东西均) which was completed in the sixth year of the Yongli 永历 period in the Southern Ming (1652). His fundamental “three as one” (sanyi 三一) model had already come to maturity by this time. Also, the most important origin of his thought was the tradition of study of the [Book of] Changes (yi 易) passed down in his family, which also represents a continuation of Ming Dynasty scholarship. After fleeing in panic and hiding in the Yao caves, Wang Fuzhi also entered into creative scholarship activities with a self-conscious awareness of being an inheritor and innovator of Chinese culture. His important works were all completed while he was living in hiding in Xiangxi Cottage, a time during which he was almost completely isolated from the world of society. His lofty aspiration to inaugurate a new form of Chinese culture and his recognition of his identity as a surviving citizen of the Ming are both expressed in his couplet, “the Six Classics demand that I open them up anew, this poor body follows Heaven [i.e., the Ming] at the price of being buried alive [by the Qing] 六经责我开生面, 七尺从 天乞活埋”. The collapse of the Ming provoked in all these great thinkers a desire to rectify the corruption of culture and innovate new forms of thought and scholarship, and thus considering these problems by situating them against the background of Ming Dynasty scholarly culture is more appropriate. The founding of Qing Dynasty scholarship had to wait until Qing imperial rule was stabilized, when they gathered Han ethnicity scholars to take part in scholarly activities, and only really began in earnest once intellectuals had begun to accept in their minds the rule of an imperial house of a foreign ethnicity and to gradually give up their desire to resist the Qing and restore the Ming (fan Qing fu Ming 反清复明). Based on these considerations, this book includes the thinkers Huang Zongxi, Fang Yizhi, and Wang Fuzhi in the history of Ming Dynasty philosophy. One regret is that a complete history of philosophy in the Ming Dynasty should also include some discussion of problems of philosophical methodology in [Confucian] Classical Learning. Identifying the lines of development in Ming Dynasty Classical Learning, picking out changes in methodology and their reasons is, however, a topic requiring time-consuming and painstaking research, and is lacking in this book. Contents

1 Cao Duan and the Rise of Ming Dynasty Neo-Confucianism ..... 1 1 The Supreme Polarity, Principle, and Qi ...... 2 2 Sincerity and Nature-Endowment ...... 7 3 Sincere Respect and Benevolence ...... 12 2 Xue Xuan’s Hedong Learning and Ming Dynasty Guanzhong Scholars ...... 17 1 The Non-polarity and the Supreme Polarity, One Principle and Its Many Divisions ...... 18 2 Knowing and Restoring Inherent Nature ...... 23 3 Investigating Things and Abiding in Respect ...... 29 4 Xue Xuan and Ming Dynasty Guanzhong Scholars ...... 33 3 Wu Yubi’s Self-governance and Hu Juren’s Holding to Respect ...... 37 1 Wu Yubi’s Self-governance and Diligent Practice ...... 37 2 Hu Juren’s Holding to Respect ...... 42 3 Hu Juren’s Theories of Principle, Qi, Mind and Inherent Nature ...... 46 4 Hu Juren’s Criticisms of Buddhism and Daoism ...... 49 4 Chen Xianzhang and the Origins of the Learning of the Mind .... 55 1 The Learning of Self-attainment ...... 56 2 The Plane of the Mind Together with Dao ...... 59 3 Fusing Principles, Dispersing Fixation ...... 65 4 Chen Xianzhang’s Poetics ...... 72 5 Chen Xianzhang’s Students ...... 76

xi xii Contents

5 Zhan Ruoshui’s ‘Ubiquitous Realisation of Heavenly Principle’ and His Academic Lineage ...... 81 1 The Mind Embodies Things Without Omission ...... 82 2 The Ubiquitous Realisation of Heavenly Principle ...... 87 3 Zhan Ruoshui’s Debates with Wang Yangming ...... 93 4 Zhan Ruoshui’s Academic Lineage...... 99 6 Wang Yangming’s Learning of Innate Moral Knowing ...... 113 1 The Highlighting of Morality ...... 113 2 No Principle Outside the Mind ...... 125 2.1 No Principle Outside the Mind-the Investigation of Things ...... 125 2.2 The Substance of the Mind-Mind Is Inherent Nature ...... 129 3 The Unification of Knowledge and Action ...... 132 4 The Extension of Innate Moral Knowing ...... 141 4.1 The Proposing of the Extension of Innate Moral Knowing ...... 141 4.2 The Various Meanings of Innate Moral Knowing ...... 145 4.3 The Extension of Innate Moral Knowing ...... 158 5 The Four-Sentence Teaching ...... 163 7 Wang Longxi’s A Priori Rightness of Mind and Qian Dehong’s A Posteriori Sincerity of Intention ...... 179 1 Wang Longxi’s Learning of the a Priori Rightness of Mind ...... 179 2 Quietude and Affectivity ...... 188 3 Qian Dehong’s Learning of the a Posteriori Sincerity of Intention ...... 196 8 Huang Wan’s “Rest-Stopping” and Ji Ben’s “Fear of the Dragon” ...... 203 1 The Meaning of “Rest-Stopping” ...... 204 2 Criticism of Wang Yangming ...... 212 3 Ji Ben’s “Vigilance of the Dragon” ...... 217 9 Zou Shouyi’s Precept of “Vigilance” and His Family Learning ...... 225 1 The Core Precept of “Vigilance” ...... 226 2 Criticism of His Fellow Students as Departing from Yangming’s Original Precepts ...... 232 3 Zou Shouyi’s Family Tradition of Learning ...... 238 10 Ouyang De’s Doctrine of the Unification of Activity and Stillness and of Substance and Function ...... 241 1 The Relationship Between Innate Moral Knowing and Knowing Awareness ...... 241 Contents xiii

2 The Unity of Activity and Stillness ...... 245 3 Elaboration of the Unity of Substance and Function ...... 249 11 Nie Bao’s Learning of Returning to Quietude ...... 253 1 The Opposition Between Quietude and Affectivity ...... 254 2 Debates with Various Followers of Wang Yangming ...... 259 3 The Expansion of the Learning of Returning to Quietude ...... 267 12 Luo Hongxian’s Comprehensive Exposition of the Doctrines of Returning to Quietude and Holding to Stillness ...... 271 1 The Core Precept of Holding to Stillness ...... 272 2 Rejection of the School of Pre-formed Innate Moral Knowing .... 276 3 Luo Hongxian’s Process of Theoretical Development Through His Life and His Transcendence of the Jiangyou School ...... 283 13 Wang Shihuai’s Doctrines of Penetrating Inherent Nature and Scrutinising Inflections ...... 291 1 Empty Stillness, Production and Reproduction ...... 292 2 Penetrating Inherent Nature ...... 297 3 Scrutinising Inflections ...... 303 14 Hu Zhi’s Development of the Core Precept of the Learning of the Mind ...... 309 1 Principle Is Not Separate from the Mind; Preserving the Spirit and Transforming that Which Passes ...... 311 2 Things Are Not External to the Mind; No Things Outside Observation ...... 318 15 Li Cai’s Learning of “Stopping-Cultivation” ...... 325 1 Knowing and Inherent Nature ...... 326 2 The Core Precept of Stopping-Cultivation and Its Internal Contradictions ...... 331 3 Stopping-Cultivation, Rest-Stopping and Returning to Quietude ... 335 4 Cultivating the Self, Governing and Pacifying ...... 339 16 Wang Gen and the Formation of Taizhou Learning ...... 343 1 Innate Moral Knowing as Pre-Formed and Self-Present ...... 346 2 Ordinary People and Elites...... 350 3 The Huainan Investigation of Things ...... 354 4 Learning and Joy ...... 359 5 The Different Directions Taken by Wang Gen’s Followers ...... 361 17 Luo Rufang’s Studies of the “Innate Moral Mind of the Infant” ...... 367 1 The Great Dao Is Present Only in This Body ...... 368 2 Following and According with the Immediate Present ...... 372 3 The Illumination of Heaven and the Vision of Light ...... 374 xiv Contents

4 Luo Rufang and Wang Longxi ...... 377 5 Being Careful When Alone and Filial Kindness ...... 381 18 Geng Dingxiang’s Studies of “Allowing No Stopping” ...... 385 1 “The True Impulse that Allows No Stopping” ...... 386 2 The Taizhou Precept of “Plain Simplicity” ...... 391 3 “Learning Has Three Key Steps” ...... 396 4 The Unity of Confucianism and Buddhism; Buddhism as Useful for Confucianism ...... 401 19 Jiao Hong’s Studies of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism .... 407 1 Confucianism: Knowing and Restoring Inherent Nature ...... 408 2 Buddhism: No Duality Between Confucianism and Buddhism .... 414 3 Daoism: Using Daoism to Supplement Confucianism ...... 422 4 A Metaphysical Explanation of Ritual Propriety ...... 427 20 Li Zhi’s Explanation of the Childlike Mind ...... 431 1 The Childlike Mind: Returning to the True Self ...... 432 2 The Foregrounding of the Principle of Individuality ...... 441 3 The Pure and Clear Root-Origin ...... 448 4 Li Zhi’s Posthumous Influence ...... 453 21 The Philosophical Thought of Luo Qinshun ...... 459 1 Principle and Qi ...... 460 2 Mind and Inherent Nature ...... 467 3 Criticisms of Buddhism and the Learning of the Mind ...... 475 4 Theory of the Investigation of Things and Debate with Wang Yangming ...... 485 22 Wang Tingxiang’s Theory of Qi and His Empiricist Tendencies ...... 493 1 The Supreme Polarity Dao-Substance ...... 494 2 Theory of Inherent Nature ...... 501 3 Theory of Cultivation ...... 509 4 Criticisms of Buddhism, Daoism and Various Neo-Confucians ... 516 23 The Philosophical Thought of Wu Tinghan ...... 527 1 The Chaos of Qi as the Ancestor of Heaven, Earth and the Myriad Things ...... 528 2 Criticisms of the Learning of the Mind ...... 538 3 Theory of Cultivation and Effort ...... 545 24 Chen Jian’s Elaboration of Master Zhu Learning in His Comprehensive Analysis of Learning Obscured ...... 551 1 Zhu and Lu as Diverging Only in Their Later Years ...... 553 2 Debates Concerning Confucianism and Buddhism ...... 562 Contents xv

25 Gu Xiancheng’s Reconciliation Between Master Zhu Learning and Yangming Learning ...... 575 1 An Equal Emphasis on a Priori Innate Moral Knowing and a Posteriori Effort ...... 576 2 Distinctions Concerning “Neither Good Nor Bad” ...... 585 3 Being Careful—Respect ...... 594 26 Gao Panlong’s Learning of Investigation of Things and Knowing the Root ...... 601 1 Qi, Mind, Inherent Nature, Principle ...... 602 2 Investigating Things and Knowing the Root ...... 610 3 Enlightenment and Cultivation ...... 616 4 Respect and Following the Natural ...... 620 27 Liu Zongzhou’s Studies of Sincere Intention and Being Careful When Alone ...... 629 1 Dao-Substance ...... 630 2 Intentionality and Making One’s Intentions Sincere ...... 637 3 Uncovering the Word “Intention” ...... 637 4 The Content of the Word “Intention” ...... 639 5 Criticisms of Wang Yangming and Later Students of the Wang School ...... 646 6 Mind, Inherent Nature and Being Careful When Alone ...... 653 28 Huang Zongxi’s Summation of the Learning of the Mind...... 665 1 The Unification of Principle and Qi, and of Mind and Inherent Nature ...... 666 2 All that Fills Heaven and Earth Is Mind ...... 671 3 Methodology in the History of Philosophy ...... 678 4 Political Thought in Waiting for the Dawn ...... 688 29 The Philosophical Thought of Chen Que ...... 697 1 Distinctions Concerning the Great Learning ...... 698 2 Distinctions Concerning Knowledge and Action ...... 705 3 Distinctions Concerning Inherent Nature as Good ...... 707 4 Distinctions Concerning Principle and Desire ...... 714 5 Distinctions Concerning Burials ...... 719 30 The Philosophical Thought of Fang Yizhi ...... 725 1 Academic Origins ...... 726 2 Material Measurement and Penetrating Inflections ...... 729 3 Qi and Fire; the Supreme Polarity ...... 737 4 The Unification of the Three Teachings and Overturning the Three Truths ...... 746 xvi Contents

31 The Philosophical Thought of Wang Fuzhi ...... 755 1 The Supreme Polarity: Substance and Function as Contained in All and Mutually Required for Reality ...... 756 2 The Harmony of Heaven and Earth and the Transformations of Daily Renewal ...... 769 3 Mind and Inherent Nature ...... 778 4 Epistemology ...... 785