Wang Yangming
1472-1529 · Neo-Confucianism · Prominent
Wang Yangming was a Ming philosopher who taught that knowing and doing are one act, and he made that unity the center of his teaching. If you know a thing is right and fail to do it, you never knew it. Moral truth sits in the heart-mind from birth, an inborn knowing he called liangzhi, so the work is clearing away what blocks it rather than piling up more study of texts and outward ritual.
Signature
The position Yangming is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity
- Knowledge
- Intuition
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- mildly between Illiberalism and Liberalism (46 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Yangming refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Epistocracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Virtue / Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue / Intention
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Authority
- Wisdom / Natural Law
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Role of Emotion
- Cognitive Theory of Emotion
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Family / All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?