Wang Yangming’s two identity theses of heart-mind and principle

This article reconstructs two identity theses in the Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yangming. The first thesis concerns the identity of the human heart-mind and the principles of things or affairs. Wang rejects the idea that the principle of human activity pertains to a given content outside of us. Instead, the principle is in and through intentional awareness of the activity. I shall call this Wang’s anti-empiricism. The second thesis concerns the identity of an inherent reality of the heart-mind and the cosmic principle. Wang argues that human activity is grounded in an unconditioned inherent reality, a sense of right and wrong, which is, at the same time, the principle of the cosmos itself. I shall call this Wang’s idealism. Unlike the bat’s echolocation, the human heart-mind does not pertain to the disposition of a circumscribable lifeform but to the unity of the myriad things—that is, the cosmos as a whole.