A Reader's Edition of Wang Fuzhi's Commentary on the Book of Changes

The Outer Commentary on the Zhouyi is a highly influential philosophical work by Wang Fuzhi, a renowned thinker of the Qing Dynasty. The book consists of seven volumes. Wang Fuzhi, courtesy name Ernong and pseudonym Jiangzhai, was from Hengyang, Hunan, and held an important place in the intellectual world of the early Qing Dynasty.

This work was written in the twelfth year of the Shunzhi reign (1655), after the Ming Dynasty had already fallen. Wang Fuzhi's life was full of hardships. He first raised an army in Hengyang to resist the Qing, but the effort failed. Later, he was sidelined by the Southern Ming Yongli regime and forced to return to Hunan to live as a fugitive. His style of expression here is freer and more exuberant than in the Inner Commentary, and brims with speculation and vivid imagination.

The book boldly refutes the traditional view that "the movement and stillness of the Supreme Ultimate give rise to yin and yang." It explicitly affirms that there is no Supreme Ultimate apart from yin and yang, arguing that the Supreme Ultimate is in fact the whole formed by the unity of opposites between yin and yang. Wang Fuzhi believes that the source of the formation and transformation of all things lies in the contradictions within them. Yin and yang oppose one another yet also complement one another: "Opposed, they are nonetheless bound to converge," and "the union of two into one already contains the inherent division of one into two." These ideas offer profound insight into the view of contradiction in naive dialectics. For example, his interpretation of the Qian hexagram explains how changes at different stages relate to the prevailing circumstances, reflecting his distinctive understanding of the laws governing the development of things.

In the field of Yi studies, the Outer Commentary on the Zhouyi offers a materialist explanation of the relationship between the images of the Yi. It forcefully critiques the Neo-Confucian doctrines of the Supreme Ultimate and the relationship between Dao and material objects, elevating naive dialectics to a new level. A key work for studying Wang Fuzhi's philosophical thought, it provides profound insights and valuable intellectual resources for later explorations of Yi studies and traditional philosophy.