Title

How is It Possible to Restore the Ancient Way without First Restoring Ancient Writings? Huang Xingzeng’s Synthesis and Transformation of Wang Yangmingism and the Literary Archaist Movement

Author

Ong Chang Woei

Genre

Article

Pages

651-687

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

Huang Xingzeng 黃省曾, Wang Yangming王陽明, Li Mengyang 李夢陽, Wang Yangmingism, the literary archaist movement

Abstract

　　For most intellectual and literary historians of Ming China, Huang Xingzeng 黃省曾 is neither a prominent nor important figure. This article attempts to show that an examination of Huang’s career and thought has the potential to shed light on the interaction and competition between Wang Yangmingism and the literary archaist movement led by Li Mengyang 李夢陽. Generally speaking, since the mid-Ming period, scholars have labelled Wang Yangmingism as a learning that emphasized discovering the Way (dao 道) and the archaist movement as one that privileged literary accomplishment (wen 文). For this reason, wen and dao have been viewed as two mutually exclusive concepts, and consequently, a literatus turning away from the archaist course to take up Wang Yangmingism was often praised for finally understanding the true meaning of learning. Against this intellectual backdrop, Huang’s effort to fuse literary archaism with Wang Yangmingism provides a unique case where the relationship between these two modes of thought can be understood from a different angle. More importantly, during the process of fusion, Huang actually turned the egalitarian outlook of the two schools into a unique intellectual vision that favoured cultural elitism.