Q0211

Wang Fuzhi

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

All under heaven is nothing but concrete things (qi). The Way is the Way of things; one cannot reverse this and call things merely vessels of an abstract Way.
Thinker Wang Fuzhi
School Ming–Qing Concrete Learning
Source Outer Commentary on the Book of Changes
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Outer Commentary on the Book of Changes, within the tradition of Ming–Qing Concrete Learning. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Wang Fuzhi's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Wang Fuzhi. (n.d.). All under heaven is nothing but concrete things (qi). The Way is the Way of things; one cannot reverse this and call things merely vessels of an abstract Way. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0211

MLA: Wang Fuzhi. “All under heaven is nothing but concrete things….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0211.

Chicago: Wang Fuzhi. “All under heaven is nothing but concrete things….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0211.

Same thinker

More from Wang Fuzhi

  1. Habit and nature come to completion together and transform with each other.
  2. The great method of ordering the world lies in discerning the times and gauging the situation.

All quotations by Wang Fuzhi

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme