Wang Tong was born in Longmen County in 587. Wang Tong was a great student and somewhat of a child prodigy, with legend saying he starting teaching at the age of 15. In 602, he received political office and was made Secretary of Shuzhou. In the year 603, he submitted a memorial to Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty entitled the "12 Point Plan for Great Peace", advocating for an overhaul of the political system. When his proposals were rejected, Wang Tong lost confidence in the Sui court and resigned his post. Leaving Chang'an, he retired to the Hefen region and dedicated himself fully to teaching. During this time, he also wrote numerous works on Confucian philosophy. His most famous work is the philosophical treatise Explanation of the Mean, which was complied by his sons shortly after his death and was written in the same style as the Analects. The Explanation of the Mean seeks to be a revival of Confucian thought after the turmoil of the Sixteen Kingdoms and Northern and Southern Dynasties periods. The work is as wide-ranging as the Analects and covers many topics, from ideas about education and moral cultivation to what Confucianism can learn from the competing schools of Daoism and Buddhism. With the work and his teachings, Wang Tong sought to revive pre-Qin Dynasty Confucianism, and not what he saw as the perverted Confucianism of the Han Dynasty. Wang Tong is the grandfather of Wang Bo, famous poet and one of the Four Paragons of the Early Tang.
Influence
Wang Tong is a controversial figure in Confucianism, with many later Confucians taking offense to his hubris in emulating the writing style of the Analects and acting as though he were an equal to Confucius himself. Some detractors in the Ming and Qing dynasties even questioned his very existence, pointing out his youth and some dating discrepancies. For the most part, however, Wang Tong has a firm place in the Confucian canon as one of its' most noted thinkers. His innovative ideas about Confucianism helped to enliven the philosophy after the turmoil of the previous two centuries. After his death, the writer's disciples viewed him on the same level as Confucius. His work on political philosophy and the master-subject relationship has been said to have been influential during the early Tang Dynasty, especially during the Zhenguan era of Tang Taizong. Song Dynasty philosopher Cheng Yi said that Wang Tong surpassed famous Han DynastyConfucianYang Xiong in merit. Later, eminent Ming Dynasty Confucian Wang Yangming praised Wang Tong in his Instructions for Practical Living and defended his emulation of the Confucian Classics, saying that "Master Wenzhong was a worthy scholar" and that famous Neo-ConfucianHan Yu was "vastly inferior to Master Wenzhong". While still poorly studied in modern times, scholarship on Wang Tong has been picking up since the revival of interest in Confucianism that followed the Chinese Economic Reform of the late 1970s.
