Wang Yang-Ming's Youth

My systematic study of Wang Yang-ming's life and thought began ten years ago. Although by then I had already read most of Wang Yang-ming's philosophical and political writings, it was my participation in Professor Erik Erikson's seminar on History and Life History in 1965 that prompted me to take Wang Yang-ming seriously as a “witness” of the Confucian tradition. Inspired by Erikson's imaginative inquiry into YOUNG MAN LUTHER and his particular concern for the intricate relation between “psychological reality” and “historical actuality,” I wrote a paper on “Wang Yang-ming: A Witness of the Confucian Ideal of Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness” in early 1966. However, even at that time I felt uneasy about applying a methodology—of which I had as yet acquired superficial knowledge—to a subject which was still beyond my comprehension. This sense of uneasiness became greatly intensified as I continued to read psychoanalytical literature in conjunction with my study on Wang Yang-ming. For, as I realized, the kind of autobiographical data indispensable for a sophisticated psychohistorical analysis is absent in Wang Yang-ming's case

Art · Comprehension · Epistemology · Erikson's stages of psychosocial development · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Relation (database · Sociology · Subject (documents · Witness · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

• Ahuia Ova

  Open Access•Reg Shelley•Oceania•1978

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