An Outline of Wang Chuanshan’s Dialectics

Abstract

Wang Fuzhi’s 王夫之 philosophy was generated from unique historical circumstances in the 17th century. First of all, his philosophy as a whole touched on the cognitive aspects of several distinct processes, which he termed “inquiring the pattern through approaching concrete affairs” (ji shi qiong li 即事穷理), “governing the heart by the pattern” (yi li yu xin 以理御心 ), “crystallizing the way through [letting it] immerge in virtue” (ru de yi ning dao 入 德以凝 道 ), and “discerning the continuing through summarizing the changing” (yao bian yi zhi chang 要变以知常). Second, he examined the objective and contradictory movement of nature and human society with the dialectics of “integrating the manifold and synthesizing contrasts” (hui qi canwu, tong qi cuozong 会其参伍, 通其 错综), in order to put forward the dialectical historical view of nature and human society that “wholly realizes the change in the pattern of things and human affairs” (ji wuli renshi zhi bian 极物理人事之变). In addition, Wang also completed dialectical research on the process of cognition itself. By proposing that “the heart keeps pace with the coming of the affairs” (shi zhi lai, xin zhi wang事之来, 心之往) or, in other words, “how beginning and end form one structure and how outside and inside combine their properties” (shi zhong tong tiao, nei wai he de 始终同条, 内外合德), he established a unique dialectical epistemology. These three aspects in Wang’s naive materialistic dialectics mutually contain and correspond to each other, but they also have their own different categories and systems, and therefore it is possible to study them respectively. In this article I will provide an outline of Wang’s unique dialectics.