Wang Fuzhi
7 October 1619 – 18 February 1692
Wang Fuzhi was a Chinese philosopher, historian, and Ming loyalist of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, also known as Wang Chuanshan. After resisting the Manchu conquest, he withdrew into rural seclusion in Hunan and produced a vast body of writings on Confucian philosophy, history, and politics, developing a materialist reinterpretation of Neo-Confucianism that was rediscovered and celebrated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Wang Fuzhi.
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Life events
Wang Fuzhi was born into a scholarly family in Hengyang, Hunan province, in the late Ming dynasty.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe was educated in the Confucian classics from an early age within his family and showed exceptional literary talent as a youth.
Wang passed the provincial examination in Wuchang in 1642, earning the juren degree shortly before the collapse of the Ming dynasty.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe fall of Beijing in 1644 and the subsequent Manchu conquest shaped the rest of his life as a Ming loyalist.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgIn 1648 Wang and companions organized an uprising in Hengshan against the advancing Qing forces, which was quickly defeated.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe joined the fugitive Southern Ming court in the southwest and held a minor post, but left after becoming entangled in factional disputes.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgRefusing to serve the Qing, he retired to the countryside near Hengyang, eventually settling at the foot of Chuanshan mountain, from which his sobriquet derives.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDuring roughly forty years of seclusion he wrote over a hundred works, including commentaries on the Zhouyi and the Zizhi Tongjian, developing a philosophy that treated material force (qi) as fundamental.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWang Fuzhi died at his rural retreat near Hengyang, having never accepted Qing rule; his works were largely unpublished until the nineteenth century.
Source: en.wikipedia.org