The Quest for Ethical Truth: Wang Yangming on the Unity of Knowing and Acting

Abstract

Drawing an analogy between Wang Yangming's endeavor to know ethical truth and Descartes' quest for epistemic certainty, this paper proposes a reading of Wang's doctrine of the unity of knowing and acting to the effect that the doctrine does not express an ethical teaching about how the knowledge that is already acquired is to be related to acting, but an epistemological claim as to how we know ethical truths. A detailed analysis of Wang's relevant texts is offered to support the claim.

Conceptions of Genuine Knowledge in Wang Yangming

“…QJ 8.308 for similar points). As I have said before, 27 My presentation of the practical and normative models differs substantially from two of these models' most important proponents, Shi (2017) and Huang (2017). These authors (and especially Huang) present their own views as views about the knowledge liangzhi has, and not specifically about genuine knowledge (although they do claim that their hypotheses are relevant to the unity of knowledge and action).…”

“…According to the practical model, genuine knowledge is a form of "knowledge how", for instance, knowing how to be filially pious. On this view, the unity of knowledge and action concerns the claim that knowing how to be virtuous is acquired through, manifested in, and even constituted by virtuous action (Chen (1991, §5.3), Yu (2014), Yu (2016), Shi (2017)). According to the normative model, by contrast, genuine knowledge is understood as "knowledge-to" (as in, "a good child knows to care for their parents").…”

What Is the “Unity” in the “Unity of Knowledge and Action”?

“…Gu expresses the concern that, if Wang's doctrine is not to be understood merely as a 3 A word about how I will handle the secondary literature in this essay: many scholarly discussions of the unity of knowledge and action (Ching 1976: 66-68;Cua 1982;Ivanhoe 2002: 78-80, 99-100;Shun 2011: §II;Wu 2011: ch. 5;Yu 2014;Angle and Tiwald 2017: 127-131;Shi 2017;Cheng 2018;Van Norden 2019;Zheng 2019) include claims (and some arguments for those claims) which clearly bear on the question of the sense in which knowledge and action are unified, but they do not consider this question directly in its own right. Since it would require a great amount of space to settle what these authors' views on my central question are, for the sake of space and tractability, I have largely (though not exclusively) focused on engaging in detail with authors who do discuss the question more thematically, for example Lao 1984-86/2019, Frisina 1989, L. Chen 1991, Lee 1994-S. Chen 2015, Huang 2017 Throughout this essay I will assume without argument that Wang's views on the unity of knowledge and action remained consistent from 1509, when he first proposed the unity of knowledge and action, until his death in 1529.…”