A Slip of Memory of Sun Yingkui——The Backbone of the Wang Yangming School in Ming Dynasty

Sun Yingkui held a comparatively high rank in Wang's School around Wang Yangming's death. However, his authority was intentionally weakened in compilation of A Chronicle of Wang Yangming's Life by Qian Dehong etc. Moreover, Huang Zongxi excluded him out of scholar's list in Ming Dynasty without any identification of evidence. Although it is not easy for us to make clear details in Tianzhen School owing to failure of handing down book A Record of Tianzhen School, we can infer that person in charge of compilation of A Record of Tianzhen School and writing preface is likely to be an influential one in school history. Sun Yingkui interpreted Wang Yangming's theory with learning being ultimate goal, anything can be sacrificed. His idea of getting knowledge by studying phenomena of nature has great difference with that of Wang Yangming and Wang's other best pupils. Indeed, Sun Yingkui attempted to seek for a good way to interpret Wang Yangming's speech in accordance with narration and texts. However, keynote he interpreted focused on the existence and warning of intuitive ability to know right or wrong, which is quite similar with idea of Revision School of Wang Yangming's theory, but he featured it with more of his personality.