Wang Fuzhi

Wang Fuzhi (王夫之, 1619-1692), of its pen name Quanshan (船山 CH' uan-shan ), also known under the names of Wang Fu-zi or Wang Zi, was a philosopher Chinese end of the Dynastie Ming and beginning of the Dynastie Qing.

Life

Born in a modest family of well-read men with Hengyang in the province from the Hunan in 1619, Wang Fuzhi started very young person to study the Chinese traditional texts. It launches out in the political action at 20 years by creating a Société for the reform inspired by the Société of the Revival . It passed the examinations at the 24 years age, but the career for which it was intended was stopped by the invasion of China by the Mandchou S, which founded the Dynastie Qing. Animated of a major hostility to the Manchu usurper, it was put at the service of the emperor Yongli who tried to save what remained Ming dynasty. After the fall of Beijing, it composed at the request of his father a comment on the Annales of Springs and the Falls . In this work, it tried to justify the " war right " that the Chinese must carry out against the barbarians. Very quickly, however, it renonca with the policy and was constrained to pass the remainder of its life to be hidden in a studious retirement. It found refuge with the foot of the mountain Quanshan, of which it made its pen name. He died in 1693, even if one is unaware of exactly where and when.

Philosophical works

One allots more than one hundred of books to Wang Fuzhi, but much of them were lost. Its works, put under the bushel by the Qing capacity were not published (expurgées) only in the 19th century. What it of remainder is joined together under the title of Quanshan yishu quanji .

Wang was a disciple of Confucius, but considered that the philosophy néo-confucéenne which dominated China at that time had diverted the teaching of Confucius. This is why he wrote his own comments of traditional the confucéens, including five on the Yi Jing, or Classique of the changes . He developed his own philosophical system gradually. He wrote on many subjects: metaphysics, epistemology, morals, poetry, policy… Today, Wang Fuzhi is regarded as the major thinker of the beginning of Qing. Its work registers it in the line of the well-read men confucéens offering on this long tradition an ultimate total point of view before it comes into contact with the occident and its influence does not undergo.

In addition to Confucius, Wang was also inspired by Zhang Zai and the néo-confucéen Zhu Xi of which he refuted dualism.

Metaphysics

Wang Fuzhi is a solved adversary of the Bouddhisme of which he denounces the thesis of the illusory character of the sensitive world which discourages any will of action and conduit to the ruin of the man, the company and the state. He is also opposed to the Idéalisme of Wang Yang-ming. Against the solvent influence of Buddhism, it reaffirms the life and the objective world " who allow the reflection and the action humaines." Wang is thus a philosopher vigorously Réaliste which accepts the human condition and refuses to escape some. For him " it is madness to want to slice the bonds which link us in the world, because it belongs to us and we let us belong to him at any moment… who imagines an absolute, loses the true direction of the monde". Author of a comment of the Zhengmeng of Zhang Zai, in the line of the committed Confucianism and militant, it fustigates the designs taoists not-expressed (Wu) and Buddhists of vacuity. He opposes eternal and indestructible reality to them IQ (universal energy) which passes by multiple transformations between differentiated states into indifférentiés. Contrary to Zhu Xi, he refuses the assimilation of this process with the Buddhist concept of Transmigration. Like Zhang Zai, he thinks that " empty space is not other than the volume occupied by the énergie." When energy condenses, of the significant forms appear. When energy disperses, " it is not visible any more, and the men think whereas there is no more rien." The interaction of the Yin and the yáng is enough to explain all the operation of the universe. Thinker of the immanence, Wang Fuzhi not considers the principle (Li) at the origin or the top of the universe, but like his dynamism even. He aims here the idea of overriding principle inspired by Buddhism. For him, the principle is structuring. It makes that very orders oneself spontaneously in ramified forms and networks.

Lastly, Wang refuses the dualistic interpretation of the relationship between energy and principle, developed by Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi. For him " the principle lies in energy and energy is not anything else that the principle… all is only one, it does not have there a dualité". The metaphysical approach of Wang could not thus be reduced with a kind of Matérialisme. It is rather about a realistic Not-dualism of the type.

Ethics

The ideas metaphysics of Wang led it to a moral philosophy naturalist; it is what brought a great popularity to China to him. There are no values in nature; in fact the human beings allot to the objects and the actions the virtues and the values. In particular, the human desires are not intrinsically bad (as the Bouddhiste S claimed it); not only they are inevitable, as an essential part of our nature, but they can be beneficial: the moral nature of the human beings is founded on our feelings with regard to the others. Only the absence of moderation can create problems.

The human desires constitute the principal example of our relation, as being material, with the material world in which we live. The human nature is spread to leave our initial material nature, at the time of the changes which we undergo in our interaction with the world.

Epistemology

Wang insists much on the reciprocal need for the experiment and the reason. We must study the world by means of our directions, and reason prudently above. This is why knowledge and the action are interlaced, and that the action is with the base of knowledge. The acquisition of the knowledge is slow and hard; there is not, at Wang, of illumination or inspiration.

Policy and history

It is especially with its political thought and history that Wang owes its popularity in China. The government, says it, must benefit the people; the capacity is not an end in itself. The history is a perpetual cycle of renewal, in which the gradual but continuous progress of the human society takes place.

There is, certainly, of the periods of chaos, as well as of stability and prosperity, according to the degree of virtue of the emperor and the people; but even during these time, the tension towards progress is subjacent.

It is not the effect of the destiny, but rather the result of natural laws which control the human beings and the company. This is why Wang rejects the idea of a last golden age which one should imitate.

As for the practical policy, Wang thought that the capacity of the lords was an evil, and was to be weakened by an increase in the taxes, which would also lead to the increase in the number of the peasants owners of their grounds.

Interpretation of Wang Fuzhi

The interpretation of Wang Fuzhi was the topic of a debate in the review Chinese Études , in 1990, between Jean-François Billeter and François Julien.

Jean-François Billeter proposed a phenomenologic reading of inspiration of it, advancing that the thought of the world at Wang was projection on the world of an experiment of conscience. Billeter criticized the method specialist in comparative literature that Julien adopted in Procès or creation, and who led it to consider the work of Wang by disregarding the dimension of truth of his thought.

Julien, as for him, reproached Billeter for projecting on Wang Fuzhi of the properly Western categories, like those of conscience, action, subject and object, etc; and thus, to miss the otherness and the specificity of Chinese mental constructions.

See too

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