Spinoza and Wang Yang-Ming

Abstract

This paper is a design which will bring into relief certain striking and crucial similarities between things said in Spinoza's Ethics and Wang Yang-ming's Instructions for Practical Living. I am not concerned with points of close scholarship. My purpose is to deepen our understanding of The Ethics and perhaps, thereby, to make it more useful than it has been. I want also to bring this out: if we read these men as though they presented a philosophy or had worked out a system of ideas, their usefulness as teachers is lost. Finally, I am trying by these means to make mysticism clearer.