ABSTRACT
Wang Yang-ming, the most influential Confucian thinker in the Ming dynasty in China, was a critical inheritor of the two main tendencies of Neo-Confucianism: that is, the philosophies of Ch'eng I-ch'uan and Chu Hsi on the one hand and those of Ch'eng Ming-tao and Lu Shiang-shan (1138–92) on the other. The most basic requirement of the moral philosophy of Yang-ming is unity of knowledge and action. Wang Yang-ming had critically inherited another thesis of Ch'eng Ming-tao: 'jen is the love of all things in the universe as one body'. Yang-ming's social ethics and the vitality of his thoughts inspired samurai revolutionaries when Japan opened its door to the West and caused the Meiji Restoration. While utilitarian concern focuses on the interests of sentient beings, Yang-ming's concern was with all beings interrelated under heaven. But such eco-holistic views were abolished and instead the Western dualistic tendency was, under the pressure from Western powers, imported and the dominion of nature had prevailed.
