- Lived:
- 1472–1529 · Ming-dynasty China (Zhejiang, Beijing, the Guizhou frontier, the war-torn south)
- Tradition:
- Neo-Confucianism — the School of Mind (Lu-Wang), against the reigning Zhu Xi orthodoxy
- The Big Idea:
- Knowledge and action are one thing, not two: if you truly know the good, you are already doing it — and the moral compass you need is built into your own mind.
- In their words:
- "Knowledge is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowledge."
- If you remember one thing:
- A disgraced clerk woke up shouting in a frontier hut, realized the sage's way was complete inside his own mind — and then proved it by crushing an imperial rebellion in about a month, with almost no army, between philosophy lectures.