In Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming, George Israel offers an account of this influential Neo-Confucian philosopher’s official career and military campaigns. While his contribution to China’s intellectual history and the outlines of his political life are well known, the relation between his thought and what he did in his capacity as a Ming official has been given less attention.Prior writing on Wang Yangming has passed judgment on his ideas by either idealizing or condemning him for how he treated those he was assigned to govern. Through a detailed reconstruction of his career in the context of issues of empire, ethnicity, and violence, George Israel demonstrates that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
This bilingual, critically annotated edition of Wang Yangming’s Record of Instructions for Practice (Chuan xi lu 傳習錄) invites readers into the world of this transformative Ming dynasty Confucian master through his engaging dialogues and correspondence with disciples and colleagues. As one of the most influential philosophical works in East Asia, the Record sets forth Wang’s distinctive teachings on the mind and conscience (liangzhi), and on the effort necessary to realize conscience in everyday life. This edition provides students and scholars with a reliable foundation for studying one of the most important Confucians in Chinese history.
In Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming, George Israel offers an account of this influential Neo-Confucian philosopher’s official career and military campaigns. While his contribution to China’s intellectual history and the outlines of his political life are well known, the relation between his thought and what he did in his capacity as a Ming official has been given less attention.Prior writing on Wang Yangming has passed judgment on his ideas by either idealizing or condemning him for how he treated those he was assigned to govern. Through a detailed reconstruction of his career in the context of issues of empire, ethnicity, and violence, George Israel demonstrates that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
This bilingual, critically annotated edition of Wang Yangming’s Record of Instructions for Practice (Chuan xi lu 傳習錄) invites readers into the world of this transformative Ming dynasty Confucian master through his engaging dialogues and correspondence with disciples and colleagues. As one of the most influential philosophical works in East Asia, the Record sets forth Wang’s distinctive teachings on the mind and conscience (liangzhi), and on the effort necessary to realize conscience in everyday life. This edition provides students and scholars with a reliable foundation for studying one of the most important Confucians in Chinese history.