Wang Yangming

Wang Yangming was a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher who developed the school of mind (xinxue), arguing that moral knowledge is innate and that knowledge and action are one. He challenged Zhu Xi's emphasis on external study, insisting on the primacy of inner moral intuition.

Wang's teaching that the mind itself is principle (xin ji li) and that genuine knowledge is always already expressed in action proved enormously influential in Japan as well as China. His philosophy offered a more dynamic, morally activist alternative to Zhu Xi's emphasis on textual study.