Wang was a native of Yiieh in present Chekiang. His private name was Shoujen and courtesy name Po-an. His father was an earl and a minister of civil personnel. In his youth he was with his father in Nanking and then Peking. In 1492 he obtained the "recommended person" degree and in 1499 the "presented scholar" degree. He then served in the government as an executive assistant in one department after another. In 1506, because he offended a eunuch, he was banished to modern Kueichow where he stayed for more than two years.
In 1510 he was appointed a magistrate in Kiangsi, where he built up a remarkable record of administration in seven months. From late 1510 through 1516, he served in various posts in Peking and Nanking. From 1517 to 1519, he suppressed several rebellions in Kiangsi and Fukien, including the one by Prince Ning. He also established schools, rehabilitated the rebels, and reconstructed the economy. He was awarded the title Earl of Hsin-chien and promised certain hereditary privileges, but his enemies at court accused him of conspiring with the prince and he was therefore ostracized by them. From 1521 to 1527 he was in virtual retirement in his native Yueh.
In 1527, he was called to suppress rebellions in Kwangsi, which he did successfully. On his return he died on the way in the seventh year of the Chia-ching period at the age of fifty-seven. Ordinarily this year is equated with 1528, but his death actually occurred on January 10, 1529.
Now he was accused of spreading false doctrines and opposing Chu Hsi. His hereditary privileges were revoked. It was not until 1567, thirty-eight years after his death, that he was given the title Marquis of Hsin-chien and honored with the posthumous title of Wen-ch'eng (Completion of Culture). In 1584 by imperial decree it was ordered that he be offered sacrifice in the Confucian temple. This was the highest honor for a scholar. Only four scholars were so honored during the whole Ming period.
Wang had a searching mind from his youth. It is said that on his wedding day, he became so absorbed in talking to a Taoist priest about everlasting life that he did not go home until the next morning. At first he studied military crafts. In 1492 he began to study Chu Hsi's philosophy. Following Chu Hsi's doctrine of the investigation of things, he and a friend sat in front of bamboos to try to investigate their principles, only to become ill after seven days. After trying the writing of flowery compositions, he went back to military crafts and then to Taoist techniques of nourishing everlasting life. Only after having found all these to be futile did he return to Confucianism.
He started his official career at twenty-eight. In the next several years he developed his own philosophy and began to attract disciples. He lectured on the primary importance of making up one's mind to become a sage, and he severely attacked the current habits of recitation and flowery compositions. This did not please the rulers or conservative scholars. In 1506, when he protested the imprisonment of a scholar official by a powerful eunuch, he was beaten forty times before the emperor and then banished to modem Ku.-ichow which was then inhabited by aborigines. There, having to face in isolation political, natural, as well as cultural hardships, he was driven to search within his own mind. One night in 1508, he suddenly understood the doctrine of the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge. A year later, he realized the unity of knowledge and action. Later, in 1514-1516, when he was an official at Nanking, his fame spread and many scholars became his followers, including one of his superior officials. But his radical doctrines, including his insistence on following the old text of the Great Learning instead of the one rearranged by Chu Hsi, attracted more and more criticism. From 1516 to 1519 he was ordered to suppress several rebellions, which he successfully did. But the combination of his blunt personality, his attack on orthodoxy, and his novel ideas worked against him. Instead of being rewarded for his accomplishments, he became persona non grata. From 1521 to 1527 he was in virtual retirement in his native place. Hundreds of scholars from all over China came to him. It was in 1521, when he was fifty, that he arrived at the doctrine of the extension of innate knowledge which culminated his philosophy, and it was about 1527, a little over a year before his death, that he wrote down the Inquiry on the Great Learning which embodies virtually all of his major doctrines. During this last decade of his life, attack and ridicule on him grew in extent and intensity, but they only served to reinforce his search for fundamental values. As he said, his doctrines were "achieved from a hundred deaths and a thousand sufferings. This is why he demanded determination, firm purpose, self-examination and self-mastery, "always be doing something," "polishing and training in the actual affairs of life," and realization of truth through personal experience.
Both his teachings and technique are new and challenging. But his final goal-forming one body with all things-and his basic value-humanity (jen) are typically Confucian. He has many similarities with Zen Buddhism and has been attacked for centuries because of this, but any superficial similarity is far outweighed by his stress on active involvement in human affairs and a dynamic approach to the mind.
His influence extended to Japan where his school, known as the Yomeigaku, rivaled the Chu Hsi School (Shushigaku) from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century and provided strong leadership for the Meiji Restoration in 1868. In China itself, Wang's followers disagreed on their interpretations of his teachings, especially on the meaning of innate knowledge. This led to division and confusion. Moreover, some of his followers became socially uncomformative and intellectually undisciplined. In many cases they even committed evil in the name of innate knowledge. Many historians have gone too far in blaming the collapse of the Ming dynasty on his degenerated followers, but there is no doubt that the Wang School had allowed the pitfalls of an unorthodox system to spoil itself. However, the dynamic quality and the purposefulness of his philosophy appealed to modern thinkers like Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), T'an Szu-t'ung (1865-1898), and Hsiung Shihli (1885-).
Source : Wing-Tsit Chan, in Chinese Philosophy
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