If you are interested in Wang Fuzhi's works and thoughts, which book should you start reading?

Wang Fuzhi is a prolific thinker, and even though a large number of works are scattered, the number is still very large. For beginners, I don't recommend reading the original directly. No matter whether it is true or not, you can have a better understanding on a certain basis by reading Four Books, Daquanshuo, Shangshu, Laozi Tong and Zhuangziyan.

It is recommended to read second-hand materials, such as Biography of Wang Fu, especially Xiao Yuefu's works. Chen Lai's books also have certain reference value. If you really want to read the original work directly, the best choice is the feeling after reading and Song Theory. First of all, historical works, without many specific concepts, are stories in themselves and are very interesting to read. Moreover, Mr. Chuanshan's insights are brilliant, and his arguments are different from vulgar Confucianism, which often makes people stunned.

Wang Fuzhi (16 19-1692, that is, forty-seven years of Wanli-thirty-one years of Kangxi) was born in Wang Yaping (now Yanfeng District of Hengyang City), Han nationality, whose real name was Jiang Zhai. One of the most famous thinkers, philosophers, historians, writers and aestheticians in the world is the spiritual source of Huxiang culture. Together with Hegel, he was called the twin stars of eastern and western philosophy, the master of China's simple materialism and the forerunner of the Enlightenment. He, Huang Zongxi and Gu are also called the three great thinkers in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. In his later years, he lived in seclusion in Ishikawa Mountain, shaped like a stone. He is a sick man of Chuanshan, a survivor of South Vietnam, so scholars call him "Mr. Chuanshan". He wrote a lot in his life, among which Zi Zhi Tong Jian and Song Lun are his representative works. Wang Fuzhi advocated practical application all his life and resolutely opposed Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism. He claimed that "Six Classics blamed me for opening a new face, and seven feet begged me to be buried alive from the sky", and his works were compiled into "Chuanshan Quanshu" by later generations. Wang Fuzhi's main contribution lies in his philosophical thought and historical view. Philosophically, he opposed the neo-Confucian epistemology of "the unity of knowing and doing", put forward the materialistic view of knowing and doing before doing, pointed out that "doing and knowing cannot have both" and emphasized that "doing" means the role of practice in cognition. He also put forward the dialectical thought of dynamic change, opposed the thought of neo-Confucianism governing quietness, and put forward the proposition that "the quiet is still moving, but not static"