Work · East Asian Philosophy
Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472–1509)
An intellectual biography of Wang Yangming’s early years, read as an example of how Confucian self-cultivation is carried out in a concrete life.
Introduction
The book is based on Tu Weiming’s Harvard dissertation of 1968 and was published in 1976. It follows Wang Yangming from his birth in 1472 to his enlightenment in exile at Longchang and the formulation of the unity of knowing and acting in 1509. Tu reads the young Wang’s searching, failures and conversion as an example of how Confucian learning is a process of self-realisation, not the acquisition of doctrines. Drawing on the psychology of Erik Erikson, the study was among the first in English to treat a Neo-Confucian thinker as a living personality.
Connections
Builds on
- Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxi lu)1518 · Wang Yangming
Taken up in
- Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation1985 · Tu Weiming
More works by Tu Weiming
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