How exactly is Wang Yangming's understood? And how to apply it to real life

The question should be: How is Wang Yangming's "unity of knowledge and action" understood? How does it apply to real life?

Wang Yangming's "unity of knowledge and action" came into being in a specific historical context. He emphasized that knowledge and action should permeate each other and not be separated, and that moral practice and moral understanding should be interrelated and interact with each other through the argumentation of "the unity of knowledge and action". The idea of the unity of knowledge and action not only had a guiding effect on people's moral practice at that time, but also had a guiding effect on people's moral cultivation in modern society. but also has important reference significance for people to improve their moral cultivation in modern society.

Wang Yangming's idea of the unity of knowledge and action is to make knowledge and action one and the same thing, to unify moral knowledge and moral practice, so as to eliminate the disconnection between knowledge and action brought about by the former Cheng-Zhu school, which emphasized knowledge first and action later. "Knowledge" is conscience, and "action" refers to the practice of conscience as well as the experience and practice of morality. While criticizing the Cheng-Zhu school for separating "mind" and "reason", Wang Yangming put forward his own idea of teleology, the so-called "mind is reason", on the basis of which he produced his On the basis of this, he came up with his "Zhi Liang Zhi (致良知) "saying. He not only did not give up the claim of unity of knowledge and action, but also often emphasized that conscience itself embodies the spirit of unity of knowledge and action.

There is no difference in the order of knowledge and action in Wang Yangming's view; they are two aspects of the same process. He emphasized that knowledge and action should be interpenetrated and cannot be separated from each other, and that moral practice and moral understanding should be interrelated and interact with each other through the argumentation of "the unity of knowledge and action". The idea of the unity of knowledge and action not only had a guiding effect on people's moral practice at that time, but also had a guiding effect on people's moral cultivation in modern society. and it is also an important reference for people to improve their moral cultivation in the modern society.

Wang Yangming once believed that a true moral theory is judged by the completion of moral practice. If there is no moral practice, then moral theory is reduced to empty talk. And morality is not just a kind of knowledge, "the way of morality and the way of knowledge are two different ways of progress". The level of moral cultivation does not increase with the enrichment of knowledge, but the search for knowledge can promote the forward development of people's moral level, and of course, the improvement of moral knowledge needs to be further put into practice. What Wang Yangming wanted to do was not to exhaust the theory of the world, but to take the practice of morality as the ultimate goal of his theory.

Wang Yangming's "unity of knowledge and practice" is a process from knowing the good to doing the good, which requires people to put their ethical and moral knowledge into practice, so as to perfect their own moral character, and to achieve the realm of inner saint and outer king. Today, with the rapid development of economy and technology, people know more and more about the world and face more and more problems. As an ordinary person how to transform his moral knowledge into moral practice, Wang Yangming's unity of knowledge and action provides us with a good method. What modern people lack is not moral knowledge; what we lack is concrete behavior to put moral knowledge into practice. Morality should not just remain in words or books, but should be embodied in our actual behavior.

This society does not require everyone to give up their lives for righteousness and kill themselves, all we need to do is just a little bit of small things, to put their moral knowledge into moral practice, only in this way is it possible to reverse some of the current social morbid atmosphere. Wang Yangming's unity of knowledge and practice is an important guidance for awakening people's moral conscience and improving the moral level of the whole society, and it builds a bridge for communicating moral knowledge and moral behavior.