Commentary on Zhang Zai’s Correcting the Unenlightened

Introduction

Wang Fuzhi, a Ming loyalist who spent decades in seclusion in the hills of Hunan after the Manchu conquest, completed this commentary in 1685. Zhang Zai’s Correcting the Unenlightened (1076) had explained the world as the condensation and dispersal of qi, the vital stuff of which all things consist. Wang defends and sharpens this view: principle (li) is nothing but the pattern of qi, not a separate entity prior to it, and the world of change is fully real, against Buddhist emptiness and against the idea of a quiescent principle. From this he derives an ethics in which principle is found within human desires rather than opposed to them. Like most of his writings, the commentary remained unprinted until the nineteenth century.

Connections

Builds on

• Correcting the Unenlightened (Zhengmeng)1076 · Zhang Zai

Criticizes

• Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxi lu)1518 · Wang Yangming