Abstract

This article is designed to offer a phenomenological reading of Wang Yang-ming’s doctrine of ge-wu, which, as a part of Wang radical reading of The Great Learning, distinguishes his doctrine from that of Zhu Xi. Wang argues that ge-wu, as rectifying things, is the same process with the act of cheng-yi, in which yi and wu form a relation of intentionality in Edmund Husserl’s sense. Since for Wang, what can be made sincere are emotional yi such as liking and disliking, Husserl's phenomenology on emotional intentionality will be used in this article. The emotional intentionality is the unity of emotional noeses and valued noemata. For Wang, ge-wu is to change a wu improperly valued into a proper one, which is the same process of rectifying an immoral yi into a moral one.