Is ‘neither good nor evil’ moral relativism?

Not simply. The next lines explicitly retain knowing good and evil and acting to realise the good.

Was Wang Ji or Qian Dehong right?

Wang says the approaches can complement each other, but ordinary people still obscured by habit cannot omit concrete moral work.

Chuanxilu

Does ‘Neither Good nor Evil’ Abolish Morality?

The Four-Sentence Teaching belongs to a debate over two paths of cultivation, not a mystical line for casual quotation. Wang preserves an account of original mind while insisting that ordinary people still do good and remove evil.

Neither good nor evil belongs to the mind in its original substance. Good and evil arise in the movement of the intention. Knowing good and knowing evil is innate knowing. Doing good and removing evil is rectifying things.Chuanxilu, Volume III · Passage 115

Return the four sentences to Tianquan Bridge

Qian Dehong stresses doing good and removing evil in each intention. Wang Ji argues that if original mind is beyond good and evil, practice should enter directly through that insight. Wang does not simply award victory. The paths can support one another: an unusually perceptive person may awaken from the source, while ordinary people obscured by habit require concrete work in intention. The scene shows that the four sentences are not an abolition of ethics but a map containing both original condition and cultivation.

What ‘neither good nor evil’ describes

It does not say that conduct lacks moral difference or that harm and care are personal taste. It describes the mind before a particular intention engages it, not as an object already classified good or evil. Moral difference appears as intention enters relationships and action, and innate knowing discriminates it. Turning a description of original condition directly into a rule for conduct is a category error—like denying the need for direction on the ground because the sky itself has no road signs.

Why power can abuse the phrase

Power makes it easier to call one’s own perspective beyond good and evil and another person’s objection attachment. If a theory exempts an actor from stating facts, hearing injured people and bearing consequences, it has departed from doing good and removing evil however elevated its language. At Tianquan Bridge, Wang warns against clinging to moral emptiness. A credible transcendence increases the density of responsibility; it does not enlarge the space of exemption.

Keep two levels in difficult choices

When no option is perfect, first refuse to essentialise opponents as evil; that openness belongs to the perspective of original mind. Then compare foreseeable harm, rights and promises and choose concretely; that is moral discrimination in practice. Preserve conditions for review: what new evidence would change the decision, and to whom would explanation or repair be owed? The contemporary value of the teaching is not escape from judgement, but avoiding both self-absolutisation and abandonment of responsibility.