Philosophers · 哲學家 · China
Wang Yangming 王陽明 · 王守仁 Wang Shouren
A top graduate’s son who made himself ill staring at bamboo, was flogged at court and exiled to the far southwest, woke one night there with the answer, and then spent twenty years as a general and governor teaching that to know the good and to do it are one thing.
狀元的兒子。他盯著竹子看到病倒；在朝廷上挨了廷杖，被貶到遙遠的西南；有一夜在那裡忽然得到了答案。此後二十年，他一面帶兵、做巡撫，一面教人：知善與行善是同一件事。
- Born 出生
- October 26, 1472, Yuyao, Zhejiang
- Died 去世
- January 9, 1529, Nan’an, Jiangxi, on the journey home
- Names 名號
- Given name Shouren 守仁; called Yangming after the grotto where he studied
- Career 仕途
- Jinshi 1499; exiled 1506; governor and commander in Jiangxi and Guangxi
- Main works 主要著作
- Instructions for Practical Living (傳習錄), recorded by his students; Inquiry on the Great Learning (大學問)
- Teachings 學說
- The mind is principle; the unity of knowing and acting; extending innate knowing
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
Seven days with the bamboo 格竹七日
Wang was born into a family of scholars in Zhejiang. His father took first place in the palace examination of 1481, and the boy grew up in the capital with every advantage. The philosophy of the examinations was that of Zhu Xi, who had taught three centuries earlier that every thing has its principle and that a person becomes a sage by investigating things one by one until understanding breaks through. As a young man Wang took this at its word. He and a friend sat down before the bamboos in a courtyard to investigate their principle. The friend gave up, ill, after three days. Wang lasted seven and fell ill too. “So we sighed together,” he told his students long afterward, “that sages cannot be made.”
王陽明生在浙江的一個讀書人家。他的父親是 1481 年殿試的狀元；這個男孩在京城長大，什麼條件都不缺。科舉考的哲學，是朱熹的學說；朱熹在三個世紀之前教導：每一樣東西都有它的理；而一個人要成為聖人，就得一樣一樣地去窮究事物，直到豁然貫通。年輕的王陽明把這話當了真。他與一位朋友坐在庭院的竹子前面，要窮究竹子的理。朋友三天之後病倒，放棄了。王陽明撐了七天，也病倒了。許多年後他告訴學生：「遂相與嘆聖賢是做不得的。」
For the next fifteen years he tried other paths. He studied military strategy, practiced Daoist breathing in a grotto called Yangming, from which he took his name, and sat with Chan monks. He passed the highest examination in 1499 and entered the civil service. None of it settled the question the bamboo had raised: if the principles of right conduct are out in things, how does knowing them ever turn into being good?
接下來的十五年，他試了別的路。他研究兵法；在一個叫「陽明洞」的洞裡練習道家的導引，他的號就是從那裡來的；他也跟禪僧一起靜坐。1499 年，他考中進士，進入官場。這一切都沒有解決竹子提出的那個問題：如果正確行為的理是在外面的事物裡，那麼「知道這些理」到底是怎麼變成「做一個好人」的？
Longchang 龍場
In 1506 the eunuch Liu Jin, who controlled the young emperor, imprisoned a group of officials who had criticized him. Wang wrote a memorial in their defense. He was arrested, given forty strokes of the heavy bamboo before the court, and banished to Longchang in Guizhou, a postal station in the mountains among peoples whose languages he did not speak. He believed that Liu Jin’s agents followed him to kill him on the road. At Longchang his servants fell sick, and he cut wood, carried water, and cooked for them.
1506 年，控制著年輕皇帝的太監劉瑾，把一批批評他的官員關進了監獄。王陽明上疏為他們辯護。他被逮捕，在朝廷上挨了四十下廷杖，貶到貴州的龍場；那是群山之中的一個驛站，周圍的民族說著他聽不懂的語言。他相信劉瑾派了人在路上跟蹤他、要殺他。在龍場，他的僕人都病倒了；他自己砍柴、挑水，為他們煮飯。
One night in 1508, by his disciples’ account, he woke shouting and startled his servants. He had seen that the investigation of things had been pointed in the wrong direction. The principle he had looked for in the bamboo was in the mind that was looking. A person does not find out how to treat a father by studying fathers. “The mind is principle,” he later said. “Is there any affair in the world outside the mind, any principle outside the mind?” He was thirty-six. Liu Jin fell two years later, and Wang was recalled.
照他弟子的記述，1508 年的一個夜裡，他大叫著醒來，把僕人都嚇著了。他看見了：「格物」一直指錯了方向。他在竹子裡找的那個理，就在那顆正在找的心裡。一個人並不是靠研究父親，才查出該怎麼對待父親的。他後來說：「心即理也。天下又有心外之事、心外之理乎？」那時他三十六歲。兩年後劉瑾垮臺，王陽明被召回。
The general who taught 講學的將軍
The rest of his life was spent in two occupations at once. As an official he was sent to the hardest posts in the south. He put down long-standing banditry in the hills of southern Jiangxi, and in 1519, when the Prince of Ning rose against the throne with a large army, Wang raised a force on his own authority and captured the prince in a little over a month. The court rewarded him with suspicion. Wherever he was posted he lectured, often in the evening after the day’s business, and students gathered around him by the hundred. They wrote down his conversations, and these became his chief work.
他的餘生，同時做著兩件事。作為官員，他被派到南方最難辦的地方。他平定了贛南山區長年的盜亂；1519 年，寧王率領大軍起兵反抗朝廷，王陽明未經授權就自行募集兵力，一個多月就擒住了寧王。朝廷回報他的是猜忌。不管被派到哪裡，他都講學；常常是在白天的公事辦完之後的晚上。學生成百地聚到他身邊。他們把他的談話記了下來；這些記錄成了他最主要的著作。
In 1527, already ill with a disease of the lungs, he was ordered to Guangxi to end a rebellion. He settled it largely by negotiation. On the eve of his departure two students asked him to judge between their readings of his teaching, and on the Tianquan bridge he gave the four sentences that his school argued over for a century. He set out for home without waiting for permission and died on his boat in January 1529. Asked for last words, he is reported to have said: “This mind is bright. What more is there to say?”
1527 年，他已經患了肺病，卻奉命前往廣西平亂。他主要靠著招撫了結了那件事。出發的前夕，兩位學生請他評斷他們對他學說的兩種讀法；在天泉橋上，他說出了那四句話；他的學派為這四句話爭論了一個世紀。他沒有等到朝廷批准就動身回鄉；1529 年 1 月，他死在船上。有人請他留下遺言；據記載他說：「此心光明，亦復何言？」
- 1472Born at Yuyao, Zhejiang生於浙江餘姚
- 1481His father places first in the palace examination父親王華中狀元
- c. 1492The seven days before the bamboo格竹七日
- 1499Passes the jinshi examination考中進士
- 1506Flogged at court and banished to Guizhou受廷杖，貶往貴州
- 1508The awakening at Longchang龍場悟道
- 1509Begins to teach the unity of knowing and acting開始講「知行合一」
- 1517–18Pacifies southern Jiangxi平定贛南
- 1519Captures the Prince of Ning擒寧王朱宸濠
- 1521Begins to teach “extending innate knowing”開始揭示「致良知」
- 1527The four sentences at Tianquan bridge; sent to Guangxi天泉證道；出征廣西
- 1529Dies on the journey home歸途中去世
The central idea · 核心觀念
To know is already to act 知了，就已經在行
His student Xu Ai put the obvious objection. Everyone knows that he should be filial to his father, and plenty of people are not. So knowing and acting are plainly two things. Wang replied that such a person does not know. “There has never been anyone who knows and does not act. To know and not to act is simply not yet to know.” His example is the way we respond to a foul smell. Smelling it and disliking it are not two steps, with a decision in between. The dislike is in the smelling. Real moral knowledge is like that. A person who truly sees that his father is cold is already moving to cover him. What people call knowing without doing is information held in the head and cut off from the heart by selfish desire. He summed it up: “Knowing is the beginning of acting, and acting is the completion of knowing.”
他的學生徐愛提出了那個顯而易見的反駁。人人都知道應該孝順父親；而不孝順的人多得是。所以知與行明明是兩件事。王陽明回答：這樣的人並不知道。「未有知而不行者；知而不行，只是未知。」他舉的例子，是我們對惡臭的反應。聞到它與厭惡它，並不是兩個步驟，中間還隔著一個決定。厭惡就在聞到裡面。真正的道德知識就是那樣。一個真的看見父親在受寒的人，已經在動身去為他蓋被子了。人們所謂的「知而不行」，是存在腦子裡、卻被私欲與心隔斷了的資訊。他這樣總結：「知是行之始，行是知之成。」
What does the knowing is what he called liangzhi, innate knowing, a term from Mencius. “Innate knowing is simply the mind’s sense of right and wrong.” Everyone has it complete, the sage and the person in the street alike, as the sun is complete behind clouds. Moral effort is the work of extending it, which means acting on it in each affair as it comes, so that the clouds of self-interest thin. It follows that no book and no authority can replace a person’s own judgment in the situation before him. He said of this: “The two words right and wrong are a great compass and square. The skill in using them lies with the person.”
那個在「知」的東西，他稱為「良知」；這個詞出自孟子。「良知只是個是非之心。」每個人都完整地擁有它，聖人與街上的人都一樣；就像太陽在雲的後面是完整的。道德上的努力，就是「致」它的工夫；意思是：在每一件事到來的時候都照著它去做，使私心的雲變薄。由此可以推出：沒有任何一本書、任何一個權威，能夠取代一個人在眼前的情境裡自己的判斷。他這樣說：「是非兩字是個大規矩，巧處則存乎其人。」
There has never been anyone who knows and does not act. To know and not to act is simply not yet to know.未有知而不行者；知而不行，只是未知。
Said to Xu Ai, his brother-in-law and first disciple, who recorded it. The translation is made for this series. 是對徐愛說的；徐愛是他的妹夫，也是他的第一位弟子，這段話是他記下來的。英譯是為這個系列所作。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
Whose innate knowing? 誰的良知？
If each person’s innate knowing is the final standard, anything a person sincerely feels to be right is right for him, and there is no way to tell conscience from self-deception. The followers of Zhu Xi made this objection in Wang’s lifetime, and his own school supplied the evidence. In the generations after him some of his followers declared that the streets were full of sages, dropped study and discipline, and treated every impulse as the working of the original mind. When the Ming dynasty fell in 1644, scholars such as Gu Yanwu blamed the empty talk of mind for the failure of the educated class, and turned to the close study of texts and institutions.
如果每個人的良知就是最終的標準，那麼一個人真誠地覺得對的任何事，對他就是對的；而良心與自欺也就無從分辨了。朱熹的追隨者在王陽明生前就提出了這個反駁；而他自己的學派提供了證據。在他之後的幾代，有些追隨者宣稱「滿街都是聖人」，丟下了讀書與修持，把每一個衝動都當作本心的發用。1644 年明朝滅亡的時候，顧炎武這樣的學者，把士大夫階層的失敗歸咎於空談心性；並且轉向對文獻與制度的仔細研究。
Wang saw the danger. Innate knowing, he insisted, is not whatever one happens to feel. It shows itself only as selfish desire is cleared away, and clearing it is hard daily work, done in the middle of affairs. His own test was practical: what a person calls knowledge must show in what he does to his parents, his subordinates, and his enemies. He also kept the classics and the rites, as the compass and square that judgment uses. The reply does not fully meet the objection, since it is one’s own mind that must certify that the desire has been cleared. What it shows is that the alternative has the same problem one step back. A person who follows a book or a teacher has still judged that this is the book or teacher to follow.
王陽明看見了這個危險。他堅持：良知並不是一個人碰巧感覺到的任何東西。它只有在私欲被清除的時候才顯現出來；而清除私欲是艱難的、每天要做的工夫，要在事務當中去做（事上磨練）。他自己的檢驗是實際的：一個人所謂的「知」，必須顯現在他怎麼對待父母、部屬與敵人上。他也保留了經典與禮；把它們當作判斷所用的「規矩」。這個回應並沒有完全接住那個反駁；因為「私欲已經清除了」這件事，還是得由自己的心來認證。它所顯示的是：另一條路在往後退一步的地方，有同樣的問題。一個依從某本書或某位老師的人，還是先判斷了「該依從的就是這本書、這位老師」。
How we know · 史料
The flowers on the cliff 巖中花樹
Wang said that there are no things outside the mind, and a friend on a walk in the hills tested him. He pointed to a tree flowering on a cliff. “You say there is nothing under heaven outside the mind. These flowers bloom and fall by themselves in the deep mountains. What have they to do with my mind?” Wang answered: “Before you looked at these flowers, they and your mind were both in stillness. When you came and looked at them, their colors at once became clear. From this you know that the flowers are not outside your mind.”
王陽明說「心外無物」；而有一次在山裡散步，一位朋友考了他。朋友指著巖壁上一棵開著花的樹問：「天下無心外之物：如此花樹在深山中自開自落，於我心亦何相關？」王陽明回答：「你未看此花時，此花與汝心同歸於寂；你來看此花時，則此花顏色一時明白起來。便知此花不在你的心外。」
The passage is often read as saying that the tree does not exist when no one sees it, which would make Wang a Chinese Berkeley. He does not say that. He says that the unseen flowers and the mind are both in stillness, and the claim concerns what it is for something to be a thing for us, with color, value, and a place in our concerns. His interest throughout was in conduct. A “thing,” in his usage, is an affair that the mind is engaged with: serving a parent is a thing, governing is a thing. The point of the doctrine is that the world we act in is already shaped by attention and care. It then matters what we attend to. Whether this entitles him to the larger statement that there is nothing outside the mind is a question his critics were right to press.
人們常把這段話讀成：沒有人看見的時候，那棵樹不存在。那樣的話，王陽明就成了中國的柏克萊。他並沒有那樣說。他說的是：沒被看見的花與心「同歸於寂」。這個主張談的是：一樣東西「對我們來說是一件物」，有顏色、有價值、在我們的關切裡有一個位置，這是怎麼一回事。他自始至終關心的是行為。在他的用法裡，「物」是心所涉入的一件事：事親是一物，治民是一物。這個學說的要點是：我們在其中行動的這個世界，已經被注意與關切塑造過了。那麼，我們注意什麼，就是要緊的事。至於這是否使他有資格說出「心外無物」這個更大的陳述，他的批評者緊追這一點是對的。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Wang Yangming and the Buddha 王陽明與佛陀
Wang’s critics called him a Chan Buddhist in Confucian dress, and the resemblance is real. Innate knowing, complete in everyone and hidden like the sun behind clouds, is close in form to the teaching of buddha-nature. His method of pointing a student directly to his own mind, and his distrust of book-learning as a path, recall Huineng. The first of his four sentences, that the substance of the mind is without good and evil, could stand in the Platform Sutra, where Huineng tells a pursuer to think of neither good nor evil and see his original face. Wang had sat with monks in his youth and never denied what he learned from them.
王陽明的批評者說他是「陽儒陰釋」，披著儒家外衣的禪者；而這個相似是真的。人人具足、像太陽被雲遮住那樣被掩蓋的良知，在形式上很接近佛性的教法。他直接把學生指向自己的心的方法，以及他對「以讀書為道」的不信任，都令人想起慧能。他四句教的第一句「無善無惡是心之體」，放進《壇經》裡也站得住；慧能在那裡告訴一位追趕他的人：不思善、不思惡，看看自己的本來面目。王陽明年輕時與僧人一起靜坐過；他從來沒有否認自己從他們那裡學到的東西。
He also said clearly where he parted from them. “The Buddhists fear the burden of father and son, and so they flee from father and son. They fear the burden of ruler and minister, and flee from ruler and minister.” To flee a relation, he argued, is to be attached to it after all. The Confucian has a father and answers him with humaneness, and so is not bound. The charge is unfair to the bodhisattva ideal, which also refuses to leave the world behind, and Chinese Buddhists replied that leaving home is itself a way of serving one’s parents. It marks a real difference of emphasis all the same. For Wang the innate knowing is tested and extended in family and office and nowhere else. A Buddhist reader can take this as a challenge worth hearing, and can note that his account of knowing and acting says of moral knowledge what the Buddha said of wisdom: it is counted as known when it has changed how one lives (Dharma and Western Philosophy D25).
他也清楚地說出了自己在哪裡與他們分手。「佛怕父子累，卻逃了父子；怕君臣累，卻逃了君臣。」他主張：逃離一種關係，終究還是執著於它。儒者有父子，「還他以仁」；所以並沒有被綁住。這項指控，對菩薩的理想是不公平的；菩薩的理想同樣拒絕拋下世間。而中國的佛教徒也回應過：出家本身就是一種報答父母的方式。儘管如此，它標出了重點上一個真實的差異。對王陽明來說，良知是在家庭與職守裡受檢驗、被推擴的；不在別處。一位佛教的讀者，可以把這當作一個值得聽的挑戰；也可以注意到：他對知與行的說明，針對道德知識所說的，正是佛陀針對智慧所說的：當它改變了一個人怎麼生活，才算是知道了（佛法與西方哲學 D25）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Ch. 良知 liángzhī
The inborn sense of right and wrong, complete in every person.
天生的是非之心；每個人都完整具足。
Ch. 致良知
Acting on that sense in each affair, so that selfish desire no longer obscures it.
在每一件事上照著它去做，使私欲不再遮蔽它。
Ch. 知行合一
The doctrine that real knowing and acting are one process, so that not to act is not yet to know.
一種學說：真正的知與行是同一個過程；所以不行，就是還沒有知。
Ch. 心即理
The claim that moral principle is found in the mind itself and not in external things.
一個主張：道德的理就在心本身，不在外面的事物裡。
Ch. 格物
For Zhu Xi, studying things to find their principles; for Wang, setting right the affairs the mind engages in.
在朱熹：研究事物以求其理；在王陽明：把心所涉入的事端正過來。
Ch. 四句教
His late summary: the mind’s substance is without good and evil; good and evil arise with intention; innate knowing knows them; to do good and remove evil is the investigation of things.
他晚年的總結：無善無惡是心之體，有善有惡是意之動，知善知惡是良知，為善去惡是格物。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What did the episode with the bamboo teach Wang?
2. What does Wang say of a person who knows he should be filial and is not?
3. What is innate knowing (liangzhi)?
4. What was the main objection to his teaching?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- 王陽明《傳習錄》 ↗The recorded conversations. Part 1, section 5, has the exchange with Xu Ai on knowing and acting. 語錄。卷上第五條，是與徐愛談知行的那一段。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Wang Yangming” ↗A clear account of his life and the three main doctrines. 對他的生平與三項主要學說的清楚說明。
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Wang Yangming” ↗With more on his relation to Zhu Xi and to Chan. 對他與朱熹、與禪的關係談得更多。
- Mencius, in this series ↗The source of the term liangzhi and of the child at the well. 「良知」一詞與「孺子將入於井」的出處。
- Buddha-Nature and Human Nature (D25), in this series ↗Mencius, Xunzi, and the tathāgatagarbha teaching side by side. 孟子、荀子與如來藏的教法並排來看。