Image: Wikimedia Commons

Yangmingism

Current of Confucianism founded by Wang Yangming

Also known as School of the Heart · Lu-Wang school · school of the hear-mind · xinxue · Lu–Wang school

Instance of: philosophical movement
Subclass of: Neo-Confucianism

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

The School of Mind, or the School of Heart, or Yangmingism, is one of the major philosophical schools of Neo-Confucianism, based on the ideas of the idealist Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Shouren. Throughout the whole Yuan dynasty, as well as in the beginning of the Ming dynasty, the magistral philosophy in China was the Rationalistic School, another school of Neo-Confucianism emphasizing the importance of observational science built by Cheng Yi and especially Zhu Xi. Wang Yangming, on the other hand, developed his philosophy as the main intellectual opposition to the Cheng-Zhu School. Yangmingism is considered to be part of the School of Mind established by Lu Jiuyuan, upon whom Yangming drew inspirations. Yangming argued that one can learn the supreme principle from their minds, objecting to Cheng and Zhu's belief that one can only seek the supreme principle in the objective world. Furthermore, Yangmingism posits a oneness of action and knowledge in relation to one's concepts of morality. This idea, "regard the inner knowledge and the exterior action as one" (知行合一) is the main tenet in Yangmingism.

Overview

All data

20 statements · 5% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Founded by: Wang Yangming
Lu Jiuyuan
Named after: Wang Yangming
Lu Jiuyuan
Native label: 陽明學 hanyu pinyin transliteration: Yángmíngxué
阳明学 hanyu pinyin transliteration: Yángmíngxué
陽明学 name in kana: ようめいがく · revised hepburn romanization: Yōmeigaku
양명학 revised romanization: Yangmyeonghak · mccune–reischauer romanization: Yangmyŏnghak
Country of origin: Southern Song dynasty
Ming dynasty

On other databases

8 identifiers linking Yangmingism across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

externally sourced

Source last edited July 10, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

Suggest a fact or correction

Links

Use this data

curl https://aidb.si/api/v1/entities/Q697205

API docs, limits & keys

Cite this page

AIDB. (2026). Yangmingism (Q697205). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/yangmingism-Q697205