Wang Yangming stared at bamboo for seven days and fell ill. Was he refuting empiricism?
I teach ethics at a secondary school in Seoul, and the story my students remember best from the whole Neo-Confucian unit is the bamboo.
As a young man, Wang Yangming tried to put Zhu Xi's teaching into practice. Zhu Xi said that we extend our knowledge by "investigating things", because principle (li) is present in all things. So Wang and a friend sat in front of the bamboo in the courtyard and tried to investigate its principle. The friend fell ill after three days. Wang lasted seven, and then he fell ill too. Years later, in exile, he concluded that principle is not to be sought outside: the mind itself is principle.
My students laugh at the story, and then one always asks: "So was Wang a rationalist and Zhu Xi an empiricist?" It's a tempting mapping. Zhu Xi looks outward, towards things and books; Wang looks inward, towards innate moral knowing. That sounds a lot like Locke's experience versus Descartes' reason.
Toegye, whose face is on our 1,000-won note, followed Zhu Xi and argued at length about how principle and the mind relate, so for my students this is not ancient Chinese history but part of their own tradition.
I'd like competing answers. Does the Zhu–Wang dispute map onto the rationalism–empiricism dispute? If not, what is the difference, and is there anything in either debate that would help the other?