That is to say, it is not always easy to see the syntactic category into which zhi should be placed in a sentence.
In early Chinese philosophy, conseqentialist arguments typically appeal to the material well-being of a state's people, as well as to sociopolitical order (zhi) more generally.
Even the exalted cognitive process (yeshes) as a subject ceases (zhi ba) to operate".
Moreover, they clearly use zhi to mean simply "point" or "refer" as a verb and "what is pointed out" or "referent" as a noun (cf. Graham 1989: 91, Hansen 1992: 259-61).
For the Mohists, by contrast, the state is instrumentally justified because social order (zhi) is an intrinsic good, sought by all, and government by a hierarchy of moral leaders is needed to achieve it.
But some Mohist texts — mainly the triad devoted to the doctrine of "Heaven's intent" — use zhi in a broader sense, in which it is identified with yi (righteousness, morality) and zheng (good governance), which in turn is taken to require a hierarchical political system administered by the noble and wise.
Wang Yangming, the most influential representative of the latter, provided a crucial node in the inextricable link between Chinese epistemology and ethics, something that is especially evident in the main concepts of his epistemological system: the ideas of heart-mind (xin), the unity of knowledge and action (zhi xing heyi) and innate knowledge (liangzhi).
This crucial aspect of the unity between knowledge and action (zhi xing heyi 知行合一) has been emphasized and upgraded in the developing course of Neo-Confucian philosophy during the Song and Ming dynasties.
The dispute as to which of the elements forming the binary categorical pair of knowledge and action (zhi, xing) had priority, constituted one of the crucial debates in traditional, as well as modern Chinese epistemology.
In this context, knowledge (zhi) was primarily understood as recognition (shi 識) of the structural principles (li) of the all-embracing Way (dao), which, among all other entities of being, was also expressed in linguistic terms.
Cognition and practical wisdom, or knowing what to do and when to do it, are both considered aspects or forms of zhi (knowledge).
