The Study Of Wang Tong’s Thought And Its Influence

Based on the comparative perspective,this paper studies Wang Tong’s philosophy from a relatively long history of the development of Confucianism,analyzing the impact of Wang Tong’s impact on the handling of related issues in later Confucianism,and compares its relationship with the development of Confucianism in Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty.Being advocated by some thinkers in the late Tang Dynasty,Wang Tong’s thought provides a great impact for the establishment of new thought in the early Song Dynasty.As for criticizing Buddhism,Wang Tong divided the critical path from two aspects:academic theory and politics,which implied the fate of Confucianism who shared the same structure of thinking with Buddhism after the Song Dynasty.At the same time,it also showed the vitality of Classic Confucianism’s view of the world: an continuous and only one.This view of the world still burst out from time to time when Neo-Confucianism occupied the mainstream of the ideological circle in the Song Dynasty,trying to reverse the ideological structure in that time.As for political thought,Wang Tong’s position was partly and respectively inherited by Zhu Xi and Chen Liang.This inheritance caused the mutual refutation between moralism and pragmatism in the Song Dynasty,which showed the conflict between the traditional Chinese ideological structure and the new ideological structure under the baptism of Buddhism,which indicated the return to the traditional ideological structure in the Ming Dynasty.As for the Ming Dynasty,Wang Yangming’s philosophy points out the essence of the subject’s conscience and action,and explores a way to bridge the question of the dual division in Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty.Wang Tong’s philosophy became the nutrient of Wang Yangming’s philosophy and also became the historical basis to establish his own belief and criticize the Zhu Xi’s philosophy.In fact,Wang Tong’s theory should be understood as an important stage of the transformation from Classic Confucianism to Neo-Confucianism,which changed from the continuous and unitary view of the world to the dual view of the world.Secondly,Wang Tong’s academic research also provided ideological nourishment for Confucianism in Ming Dynasty to bridge the split of dualistic view of the world.