Liangzhi
良知 (liángzhī)
The "innate knowledge": the faculty of the *heart-mind* that spontaneously knows good and evil, without study or deliberation. For Wang Yangming, this is not bookish learning but the very substance of the mind, present in everyone; all practice consists in "bringing it to its fullest" (*zhi liangzhi* 致良知, the extension of innate knowledge)—that is, to follow it without betraying it. (Confucianism has no proper entry in the nomenclature: this term is classified there as transversal.)
Innate knowledge is nothing but the sense of right and wrong, and the sense of right and wrong is nothing but to love [the right] and to hate [the wrong]. To love [the right] and to hate [the wrong] cover all senses of right and wrong and the sense of right and wrong covers all affairs and their variations.
« Innate knowledge is nothing more than the sense of right and wrong, and the sense of right and wrong is nothing more than loving [the right] and hating [the wrong].» — Innate knowledge is simply the awareness of good and evil, and this awareness is simply a matter of cherishing what is just and rejecting what is false. Wang Yangming thus reduces all moral life to a single faculty, already present in every heart before any teaching.
The term liangzhi, which Wang borrows from Mencius—for whom children know without being taught—becomes the cornerstone of his thought: this knowledge is not an opinion one forms, but the very substance of the mind (xin), clear so long as no self-serving aim obscures it. When asked how to expand it, he replies: «Your innate knowledge is your own standard»—it knows, the moment you form an intention, whether it is upright or crooked, and you cannot deceive it.
Hence the decisive movement: zhi liangzhi, bringing this knowledge to its fullest. Not by accumulating external learning, but by ceasing to betray this compass and following it in all things—«preserve the good, cut away the evil.» The sage’s study does not seek principle elsewhere; it uncovers what already knows.
Innate knowledge is not bookish knowledge, which is filed away and forgotten: it is not learned, it is uncovered. Nor is it remorse, that conscience which judges only after the fact and remains passive: liangzhi precedes action, measures it, and urges one to follow—through which it already commands the unity of knowledge and action.