ko wu chih chih, Chinese philosophical terms used in the Ta-hsüeh (Great Learning) to refer to two related stages or aspects of the self-cultivation process, subsequently given different interpretations by later Confucian thinkers. ‘Ko’ can mean ‘correct’, ‘arrive at’ or ‘oppose’; ‘wu’ means ‘things’. The first ‘chih’ can mean ‘expand’ or ‘reach out’; the second ‘chih’ means ‘knowledge’. Chu Hsi (1130–1200) took ‘ko wu’ to mean arriving at li (principle, pattern) in human affairs and ‘chih chih’ to mean the expansion of knowledge; an important part of the self-cultivation process involves expanding one’s moral knowledge by examining daily affairs and studying classics and historical documents. Wang Yang-ming (1472– 1529) took ‘ko wu’ to mean correcting the activities of one’s heart/mind (hsin), and ‘chih chih’ the reaching out of one’s innate knowledge (liang chih); an important part of the self-cultivation process involves making fully manifest one’s innate knowledge by constantly watching out for and eliminating distortive desires. K.-l.S.