Self-Transcending Images in the Yijing: Wang Bi’s “Clarifying the Images” as a Religious Perspective and an Epistemological Inquiry

Most studies of Wang Bi’s “Mingxiang” 明象 (“Clarifying the Images”) treat its “grasping the meaning lies in forgetting the words” as a methodological rule for interpreting the Yijing, overlooking the deeper philosophical position behind it. We argue that this position shifts the inquiry from objective entities assumed by other Wei-Jin thinkers to the mind’s own activity, offering an epistemological and religious perspective on how the Yijing conveys the sages’ insight. On this basis, we reinterpret two key terms in Wang Bi’s reading: jin 盡 should be understood not as “exhaust” but as “express properly”, capturing the dialectical interplay of “loss” and “gain” in the presentation of meaning; wang 忘 should be understood in the sense of Aufhebung (sublation), which negates, preserves, and transcends images and words. Wang Bi’s insight is that the “words–images–meaning” triad forms a living unity that emerges only within the concrete activity of the mind. Through imagination, images are not fixed signs but self-transcending movements toward meaning. A concrete reading of the Mingyi 明夷 hexagram illustrates this dynamic, and an analysis of the Chinese script (revealing the etymological link between yan 言 and yin 音 and the internality of yi 意) further supports the argument that meaning is inseparable from the mind’s activity. The comparison with Augustine’s distinction between vox and verbum then brings to light the universal religious significance of this hermeneutics framework: the “words–images–meaning” triad offers a model of how the transcendent becomes accessible through symbols, and a vision of scriptural reading as spiritual cultivation. “Clarifying the Images” thus advances not merely a hermeneutic method within the Yijing tradition, but opens an epistemological path that takes the mind’s own activity as its starting point. This, we hold, is the universal philosophical and religious value of Wang Bi’s text, and a contribution deserving attention in the study of how the Yijing informs the mind’s grasp of meaning.