Wang Yangming: The Only Perfect Human Being in History

Today, we’re going to talk about the legendary philosopher, military strategist, and educator Wang Yangming who was alive during China’s Ming empire and is reputed to have been the only perfect human being in Chinese history. 

In the 16th century, during the same era that Martin Luther launched the Reformation in Europe, a legendary figure started the Chinese Renaissance on the other side of the earth. 2022 marked the 550th anniversary of the birth of Wang Yangming, the philosopher, military strategist, and educator of the Ming Dynasty, who embodied all the characteristics considered to express the highest standards of human achievement in ancient Chinese culture.

Wang was held in the highest esteem as “the only perfect human being in history” and “a man with three eternities” by a wide range of intellectual and political figures, including Liang Qichao, China’s leading scholar and reformist of the transitional period spanning the latter part of the Qing Dynasty to the early republican era.

But what exactly is meant by “three eternities”? It means if a person could make contributions in the following three areas, he would live in people’s hearts forever. The three areas are the establishment of virtues, achievements in military performance, and the proposal of philosophies. And many scholars believe that Wang Yangming made significant contributions in all three areas during his 57 years of life.

As remarkable historical figures tend to have some legend associated with their birth, Wang Yangming is no exception. In 1472, he was born to a prominent family in Yuyao of east China’s Zhejiang Province. According to legend, his mother had been pregnant for 14 months and finally gave birth to him when she saw a fairy riding on a cloud playing a musical instrument.

Wang Yangming’s father was a member of the lesser nobility and served in the Imperial Academy, the highest learning institution in ancient China. Wang was a precocious child and was known to impress his parents and his tutor with his spontaneous compositions and recitation of classical texts.

But he was never a “normal” child who would obediently sit for the imperial examination to obtain an official government position. At 12, he made a wild statement that, instead of devoting his life to becoming a zhuangyuan 状元, a title conferred on the one who came first in the highest imperial examination, he would rather learn to be a sage.

When he was 15, he asked his father to take him to the Great Wall for military observation, and there he practiced riding horses and shooting arrows. After coming back, he was prepared to present his opinions on the frontier defense to the emperor, which of course his father denied.

As was arranged by his parents, he was married at the age of 17 but disappeared on his wedding day. The next morning, he was found at a Taoist temple in the suburbs talking with a Taoist priest and sitting in meditation for a whole day. According to tradition, after getting married, he was to take his newly wed wife to his hometown. On their way, he visited a learned scholar and inquired about the way of becoming a sage.

At that time, many scholars worshiped Song philosopher Zhu Xi as the greatest sage after Confucius and Mencius. Of Zhu Xi’s thoughts, the most noted was his concept of Gewu Zhizhi 格物致知, which means knowledge is acquired by investigating objects. It conveys the idea that if one investigates the specific law of an object with non-stop efforts and one by one, he will one day be enlightened and approach the universal law. Only by this can one become a sage full of knowledge.

To that end, Wang decided to apply Zhu Xi’s dictum by investigating the bamboo in a local grove until he could achieve insight into the universal law. He persevered for seven days and nights, until he developed a serious illness from this search. The failure of this “bamboo investigation” caused him to doubt the efficacy of Zhu Xi’s theory and might have also sowed the seeds for his own “philosophy of the mind”, which he formulated at a later stage.

Irritated by his maverick lifestyle, his father urged him to sit for the imperial examination. Wang capitulated and climbed up the official ladder, finally passing the highest level at the age of 28. After this, he served in several positions, including in offices overseeing public works, criminal prosecution, and the examination system.

However, the year 1506 saw a complete reversal of his fortunes, when he intervened in a case against a powerful and corrupt eunuch named Liu Jin. Liu used his influence to have Wang Yangming flogged, imprisoned for several months, and banished to the remote Guizhou Province in southwest China as head of a dispatch station. In this post, Wang had to endure extreme physical hardships and psychological isolation.

But as Mencius once said, “Whenever Heaven invests a person with great responsibilities to the world, it first tries his resolve, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, leaves him destitute, and disturbs his endeavors. This develops patience and endurance, and conquers his weakness.” And this was exactly what happened to Wang Yangming.

The hardships and solitude led him to achieve a deep philosophical awakening at the age of 36, that to investigate the universal law is not to seek for it in actual objects as Zhu Xi had taught, but in one’s own mind. Thus, he brought the “philosophy of the mind” – first proposed by Song philosopher Lu Xiangshan in the 12th century – to its highest expression.

Fortunately, by the time his term of service in Guizhou was over, the eunuch who had Wang exiled had himself been executed. Wang’s official level was restored, and he was appointed as governor of east China’s Jiangxi Province in 1517.

By then, bandits had controlled Jiangxi for decades. So, in order to improve community morals and solidarity, he carried out a series of reform measures including reconstructing the economy, reforming tax laws, and establishing schools. In the meantime, he spent a little more than a year eradicating the bandits in the border areas of the four provinces Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, and Guangdong. Thus, he enabled the local people to live a peaceful life. Besides dealing with local government and military affairs, he also gave lectures on his thoughts and attracted quite a number of young followers.

Through the three campaigns by which he eradicated the bandits, Wang Yangming completed his first step in becoming a sage. It was not only the fruit of his long years of studying military tactics, but also a test of probably the most well-known aspect of his philosophy, Zhixing Heyi 知行合一– the unity of knowledge and action. He applied his military knowledge in the battles and in turn he took from them more military knowledge to enrich his military thought. Therefore, knowledge and action are mutual and indispensable to the process of gaining knowledge.

In 1519, on his way to suppress a rebellion in Fujian Province, he accidentally discovered a military coup d’état by Zhu Chenhao, the prince of Ning. He promptly decided to confront Zhu’s well-equipped troops of 100,000 soldiers with a motley crew of 10,000 men that he had gathered in haste. By employing a series of tactics, within 35 days he managed to suppress the rebellion and captured Zhu alive. In today’s terminology, what Wang did was wage a war of intelligence, using tactics such as mixing false information with the truth, spreading misleading news, and creating discord and confusion within the enemy camp. 

Despite such a military victory, jealous court officials accused Wang of plotting the rebellion together with the prince and changing sides only because the imperial army was approaching. Fortunately, Wang was able to prove his innocence and the crisis was quickly averted. Nevertheless, he was constantly slandered by his fellow officials, making him tired of the wheeling and dealing of corrupt politicians.

When his father passed away in 1522, he returned home for the Confucian-mandated three-year period of mourning. For more than five years, he established academies in Yuyao and Shaoxing and lectured on his doctrine of the “philosophy of the mind” to followers who came from all over the country. These and earlier conversations with his followers constitute his main work, Instructions for Practical Living. 

In 1527, Wang was called to suppress a rebellion in Guangxi. The rebel leader had heard of Wang’s track record and surrendered not long after his arrival. However, his coughing, which developed from the bamboo investigation in his teens and had bothered him for years, became severe. He died in Nan’an of Jiangxi Province while on his return trip home in 1529. His last words to his followers surrounding his deathbed were, “My heart is bright, and there is no regret anymore.”

In 1584, sacrifices were offered up to Wang Yangming in the Confucian temple: it was the highest honor possible and marked his sagehood as well as the official recognition of his philosophy. In his own time, Wang’s teachings were enthusiastically received and served as a catalyst for complex and wide-ranging debates and controversies, making the tradition of Chinese philosophy more complex and profound.

His philosophies also had an impact outside China, being introduced to countries such as Japan and making indelible contributions to the development of Japanese intellectual history. During the Meiji Restoration of the latter half of the 19th century, Wang Yangming’s philosophies became the basis of traditional thoughts to resist indiscriminate westernization. The group of Japanese scholars and politicians following Wang Yangming’s school was called Yomei-gaku. 

And as an interesting piece of trivia that reveals Wang’s lasting influence, the admiral who led the Japanese fleet to victory in the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century, Togo Heihachiro, took with him a seal reading “worship Yangming over one’s entire lifetime”.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.