WANG YANGMING (1472–1529), literary name, Wang Shouren; the most influenctial Confucian thinker in Ming-dynasty China and one of the most important scholar-officials in Chinese history. Wang's intellectual impact on East Asian culture and his transformation of the spiritual orientation of the Confucian tradition in China made him one of the greatest philosophers of the relation between knowledge and action in any age or culture.

Born to a prominent gentry family in the Yangtze River delta, Wang was subject as a youth to great social pressure to excel in Confucian learning. Hagiographical accounts relate that in his early teens Wang startled his teacher when, in response to the teacher's admonition that the most important thing in life was to study hard in order to pass the examinations with distinction, Wang said: "To learn to become a sage is of the utmost importance." Wang's competitiveness with his father, who...