Abstract: Unlike other Wang Yangming's disciples who mainly intervened in the form of lectures in the “Controversy between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming”,Ji Ben,known as a “scriptural scholar of Wang Yangming's school”,resorted to classical exegesis,starting from the “Controversy between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming” in the Great Learning,and devoted his efforts to writing his book,Notes of the Great Learning,and carried out in-depth analyses of both texts and doctrines.From the texts of the Great Learning,Ji Ben constructed his characteristic “Ji's altered version of the Great Learning” based on the condemnation and absorption of the ideas from Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming.In doctrines of the Great Learning,he largely followed the ideas of Wang Yangming,and his ideas greatly deviated from those of Zhu Xi.He pioneered an academic program to resolve the dispute between Zhu and Wang by “basing himself on Confucianism,taking Yangming's doctrines as its basis and showing compatibility with Zhu's doctrines”.This scheme reflects,on the one hand,that the internal Yangming School of Mind is by no means a declining classic,as existing studies have shown,and,on the other hand,that Zhu Xi's philosophy is always “present” in the early “Controversy between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming”,influencing the evolution of Wang Yangming's philosophy in the form of a reference.This not only helps us to grasp the academic pattern of the early “Controversy between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming”,but also helps us to understand the two-way interaction between classical interpretations and academic trends.

Key words: Ji Ben, Notes of the Great Learning, the Controversy between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, classics scholarship