Wáng Tíngxiāng 王廷相 (zì Zǐhéng 子衡, hào Jùnchuān 浚川; yǎngshēng sobriquet Hébīn zhàngrén 河濱丈人; 1474–1544), mid-Míng Grand Secretary, Minister of War, and one of the principal philosophers of the early-Míng qì-monist tradition. Native of Yífēng 儀封, Hénán. Jìnshì of 1502 (Hóngzhì 15). Rose through the censorate (Vice-Censor-in-Chief 都察院右副都御史) to the great ministries: Grand Secretary by the Jiājìng mid-1520s, Minister of War 兵部尚書 (= Dàsīmǎ “Grand Marshal”) from 1538 until his dismissal in 1542; among the Sān gōng 三公 grandees of his generation. Dismissed and demoted in 1542 in the political fallout of the Yán Sōng 嚴嵩 ascendancy; died in 1544.
Philosophically the principal early-Míng exponent of qì-monism (qìxué 氣學), defending the view that the universe consists of nothing but qì in its various consolidations and resisting the rising WángYángmíng xīnxué. Principal philosophical works: Shènyán 慎言 (“Cautious Words”), Yǎshù 雅述 (“Refined Account”), Wángshì jiācáng jí 王氏家藏集.
Also author of the Shèshēng yàoyì 攝生要義 (KR3eo015) — a yǎngshēng treatise published under his Hébīn zhàngrén sobriquet — which integrates yǎngshēng practice with his philosophical qì-monism, and which the present record corrects to him (the KR catalog meta records only the sobriquet and an erroneous 南宋 dynasty assignment).
CBDB 68246. See DMB (Goodrich and Fang 1976), s.v. Wang Ting-hsiang.