| Chapter 6: | New and Old Elements on the Centrality of Self |
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only this and students learned only this, and there was no place for heterodox ideas and practices.18
On the flip side, we can argue that the innate conscience, liangzhi, the basis of Wang’s theory of ethics, leads to an apparently relativistic and individualistic view of ethics, elevating the mind to the position of sole judge of good and evil in individual concrete cases, and goes so far as to assert a certain principle of autonomy of the conscience, as we can read:
The spirit of life of Heaven and Earth is the same in flowers and weeds. Where have they the distinction of good and evil? When you want to enjoy flowers, you will consider flowers good and weeds evil. But when you want to use weeds, you will then consider them good. Such good and evil are all products of the mind’s likes and dislikes.19
The choice is fitting to circumstances and opportunities, but is not discretional, and, above all, it follows only the inner conscience:
Precious in learning is what we get from conscience [mind]. If words are examined in the conscience [mind] and found to be wrong, although they have come from the mouth of Confucius, I dare not accept them as correct. 夫學貴得之心。求之於心而非也,雖其言之出於孔子,不敢以為是也.20
Wang Yangming located the moral source of human actions in an immanent notion of “moral nature” (liangzhi) rather than in the transcendent “heavenly principle.” 21 This “relocation” impelled the cult of emotions to invert the principle-passions hierarchy and reduced the rigorous diffidence toward passions. “When asked whether the wise man—whose response to changes in conditions is inexhaustible—should make his enquiries beforehand, the Master answered that such an effort was impossible. The wise man’s mind is like a clear mirror; as it is completely limpid, it responds according to each influence, and there is no phenomenon that is not reflected there. [...] Moral principles have no fixed abode and are inexhaustible.” 22