In Search of Modernity and Beyond - Development of Philosophy in the Republic of China in the Last...

,Q6HDUFKRI0RGHUQLW\DQG%H\RQG'HYHORSPHQWRI3KLORVRSK\LQWKH5HSXEOLFRI&KLQDLQWKH/DVW+XQGUHG

2014 by University ofHawaii Press

Features

In Search of Modernity and Beyond Development of Philosophy in the Republic of China in the Last Hundred Years

It is indeed a difficult job to reconstruct the development of philosophical thought in the Republic of China (ROC) over the last one hundred years. One of the reasons is that in its historical process, Chinese philosophical thinking is very much like a great river merging many streams whose continuity is hard to discern. It seems to be a vain attempt to cut and dissect the flow of the great river. Second, numerous and vehement social, political, and cultural changes have taken place inthe last hundred years, with fluxuating currents of thought that are, indeed, difficult to reconstruct into a conceptual framework. That is why, instead of trying to paint a complete picture of the history of philosophy over the last hundred years, what I can do is merely to highlight the main line of it, that is, its development in facing the challenge of modernity in the Republic of China. I will focus onits development, its main currents, and exemplar thinkers, and envisage its prospects in the future.

I use the plural form modernities instead of the singular modernity because, for me, different people with different historical and cultural backgrounds could have access to different modes of modernity. However, even if such be the case, the appearance of modernity in human history and its later diversions and transformations have their main reference in European modernity since the sixteenth century. Though the historical, cultural, and psychological processes thathave constituted European modernity are extremely complicated, still we cancharacterize it as a philosophy of subjectivity, a culture of representations, rationality, and domination, as explained in the following:

1. Philosophy of Subjectivity. In contrast to the Middle Ages, the modern world began with the Europeans self-awareness as the subject of their knowledge, freedom, and rights. The founder of modern philosophy, R. Descartes, summarized most succinctly this new spirit of the modern world by saying, Ithink, therefore I am, which announced also the foundation for modern philosophy would be human subjectivity. Philosophers of classical empiricism, such as J. Locke, G. Berkeley, and D. Hume, all have affirmed the human individual as the subject of his/her cognitive activities and freedom of choice. Modern artists and moralists also proclaimed the individual as responsible of actions that produced moral and artistic values. Members of the school of natural law, such as H. Grotius, S. Pufendorf, and Charles Thomasius, claimed the human person as the subject of rights based on natural law. In short, the human individual was the subject of knowing, freedom, rights, and values.

154 China Review International: Vol. 19, No. 2, 2012

Thus, modern Western philosophy began and developed as the philoso-phy ofsubjectivity. Kant, in criticizing both rationalism and empiricism, laid the transcendental foundation of human subjectivity and explored its three parts: the cognitive part in his Critique of Pure Reason, the moral part in his Critique of Practical Reason, and the aesthetic part, with treatises on art and human teleology, in his Critique of Judgment. After Kant, Hegel transformed human subjectivity intospirit, to be realized as the absolute spirit. Philoso-phers after Hegel, such as S.Kierkegaard, K. Marx, and F. Nietzsche, vehe-mently criticized Hegel; however, their philosophies were still conceived in the framework of a philosophy of subjectivity. In sum, modern philosophy should be seen as the establishment, extension, and critical reflections of the philoso-phy of subjectivity.

2. Culture of Representation. In the modern world, human individuals regarded themselves as the subject and the world as the object, and, through the construction of systems of representation, attempted to express themselves, to appropriate knowledge, and to dominate the objective world. All impressions, concepts, theories, art works, political systems of representative, and so forth were but different modes of representation through which human beings knew, built, and controlled their worlds. Thus, the term representation had two meanings: as performance and as representative. Scientific theories and artworks were representative of the world; political parties and parliamentary systems were representative of people and their political opinions. Meanwhile, scientific theories, artworks, and parliamentary representatives performed in microform the movement of the natural, social, or political worlds. Whereas in ancient and medieval times artworks were created for and situated in peoples life-worlds, in modern times they were created to be put into muse-ums or galleries as systems of representation. In short, the culture constructed in the modern world, be it science, art, or politics, all belonged to the culture of representations.

3. Rationality. Modern science and thought were rational in the sense that they should be in compliance with logical rules and scientific methodology. More important, as M. Weber said, modernization was itself a process of rationaliza-tion in which instrumental rationality was conflated, and value rationality shrunk. People indulged in using any effective means to achieve their ends, but they had no ideal values worthy of the dedication of their life. Further, reason somehow also included the functions of totalizing and legitimizing, forwhich purpose grand narratives were invented. As J. F. Lyotard said, modernity means that sciences and art have their ultimate legitimatization in the grand narratives (Lyotard 1979, p. 7), such as Hegels dialectics of spirit, W.Diltheys interpretation of meaning, K. Marxs liberation of the proletariat, and the Enlightenments liberation of the rational man. Sciences in accord with these grand narratives were understood to be modern. As to art, there were also grand narratives such as art for peoples sake or art for arts own sake (Burgin 1986, p. 179). In short, rationality not only concerned logically regulated and scientifically controlled activities, but also it subsumed all individual rational activities under the grand narratives, by which it presumed the totalizing function of reason.

Features 155

4. Domination. Modern man tended to use his knowledge and power to domi-nate the natural environment and other people. Since the dawn of modern times, European countries such as Great Britain, France, Holland, Spain, andPortugal expanded through imperial colonization to different parts of theworld, including China and other Asian countries. Also, the process of industrialization dominated an alienated humanity, and, as J. Habermas pointed out, the life-world was colonized by systems (Habermas 1987, p. 196). All these were but different modes of modern domination. Hegel used the term master/slave to name this relation of domination in which the master dominated over slaves who could live only for serving the subjectivity of the master. Hegels philosophy attempted to transform this relation into what he called the relation of mutual recognition (Annerkennung), in which you recognized my subjectivity and I recognized yours. However, it is still doubtful whether the Hegelian recognition could overcome the master/slave relation, since this relation of reciprocal recognition was merely an expansion of the philosophy of subjectivity, so essential to the modern world.

In sum, Western modernity was based on human subjectivity that used its rationality to build up all systems of representation in such a way that human subjectivity became so powerful as to allow for the domination of other things andother peoples. European national empires, expanding their power because of modernity, started their repression and exploitation of the Chinese people with theOpium War in 1840. Facing their challenge, Chinese elites and intellectuals responded through several attempts of reform, mainly by pursuing Western modernity, in order either to save China from perishing or to enlighten the Chinese mind. The result was the tendency of the xifeng (Western wind) prevailing over the dongfeng (Eastern wind) continued in the early Republi-can era and the period of the May Fourth Movement. However, subsequently, in the ten years of national construction beginning in 1927, a need for national spiritual support arose. Later, the war against the Japanese invasion awakened Chinese nationalism that called upon the national subjectivity in search of a Chinese model of modernity. All of these events revitalized the Chinese national spirit and philosophy. This continued even after the nationalist government moved to Taiwan in 1949 after its defeat by the Chinese Communists on mainland China. Since then, the Republic of China took Taiwan as a laboratory of Chinese moder-nity to build up a miniature modern China with relatively good success. However, in the 1970s Western postmodernism arose, and in the 1980s the process of globalization began, which, since 1990, has predominated. Thus, not only the ROCs national cultural development but also research in the area of philosophy had to take into account the worldwide process of globalization.

Thus, the recent hundred years of the history of the Republic of China can be seen as a historical process in which the ROC searched for modernity, worked on building a modern nation, and prepared to go beyond the negative side of Western modernity by developing a properly Chinese model of modernity. Chinese philo-sophers perception of and response to the subjectivity, representation, rationality,


and domination of Western modernity changed according to the development of historical periods.1 Based on these considerations, the development of philosophy in the ROC in the last hundred years can be divided into four periods:

First Period (19111927): Enthusiastic Appropriation of Western Modernity

Second Period (19271949): Revitalization of the Chinese National Spirit and Chinese Philosophy

Third Period (19491980s): Systems that Synthesized Chinese and Western Philosophies

Fourth Period (1980spresent): Globalization, Taiwanese Subjectivity and Postmodern Reflection

First Period (19111927): Enthusiastic Appropriation of Western ModernityIn the beginning years of the ROC, Chinese intellectuals continued the project of reformation and the introduction of Western thought launched at the end of Qing dynasty. With the success of the 1911 revolution, the establishment of the ROC under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen had laid the institutional political foundations for Chinas search for modernity. Together with the May Fourth Movement in 1919, this period of intensive change urged to cleanse the corrupt imperial China of its old social and cultural makeup. The basic trends of the time were to criticize and deconstruct the old social order and value system. It attempted also to search for a modernity modeled after such Western modern values as democracy and science; Chinese cultural subjectivity was not so much a featured concern at this stage. On the contrary, under the impact of the movement against Confucianism, summa-rized in the slogan down with Confucius store, the study of Chinese philosophy was much weakened. In this period, the focus was to introduce modern Western philosophy and learn from Western modernity.

Therefore, with the establishment of the ROC, there began the second move-ment of introducing Western thoughts and ideas, different from the first, launched at the end of Qing dynasty, whose paradigm of dealing with Western science had been Zhang Zhidongs Zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong (Chinese learning as sub-stance, Western learning as function). However, at the beginning of the Republican era and during the period of the May Fourth Movement, the paradigm changed from the previous dualistic substance-function model to the extreme side of criticism and deconstruction of traditional values and philosophy. Arguably, this was for the purpose of either saving the Chinese nation from perishing ( jiuwang ) or for the enlightenment of the Chinese mind (qimeng ), and, thus, tocreate a new national power with new values. Under the catastrophic impact ofWestern modernity, Chinese intellectuals lacked the breadth of vision to reflect on their own national spiritual resources in order to guide Chinese development or to extend them to foreign countries. Instead, they focused on introducing Western thought, sciences, and technology, so as to push ahead as a modern country.

Features 157

In the modern Western world, such European philosophies as English empiri-cism, French rationalism, and German idealism had served as the philosophical foundations that had defined, directed, and deepened Western modernity. Thus, we can regard the introduction of Western philosophy in this period as an effort by Chinese intellectuals to appropriate Western philosophical discourses in their attempt to enter into the modernity exemplified by European great powers.

Liang Qichao (18731929) introduced modern Western philosophies such as rationalism, empiricism, and German idealism by publishing essays on such philosophers as Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Darwin, Bacon, Descartes, and Kant. These were later collected and published in the form of a book titled Xizhe xueshuo yi luan (One taste of Western philosophical doctrines) (Liang Qichao 1916). This could be seen as the first general appropriation in China of modern Western philosophy and exploration of the philosophical foundation of Western modernity. Specific philosophical doctrines introduced at the time included liberalism, pragmatism, Darwinian evolutionism, Nietzsches philosophy, and Marxism.

LiberalismLiberalism defined human subjectivity, so crucial to Western modernity, in terms of the subject of free choice and empirical identity. Prior to the Republican period, Yan Fu (18541921) had translated John Stuart Mills On Liberty as Qunji quanjie lun (), interpreting individuals freedom as the limit of the rights of individuals within the society. However, the liberalism introduced later by Hu Shi (18911962), quite different from that of Yan Fu, was based on the freedom of choice of individuals and emphasized the political dimension of freedom. Wrote Hu Shi in his essay on Ziyou zhuyi (On liberalism): The first meaning of liberalism is freedom; the second is democracy; the third is tolerance; the fourth is peaceful and progressive reformation (Liu Junning 1998, p. 71).

PragmatismJ. Dewey (18591952) visited China in 1919 and introduced pragmatism to China. Pragmatism, emphasizing human learning and growth through action and experi-ence, had its direct impact on such Chinese intellectuals as Tao Xingzhi (18911946), Guo Bingwen (18801969), Zhang Boling (18761951), Jiang Menglin (18861964), Cai Yuanpei (18681940), Yan Yangchu (18931990), and Mao Zedong (18931976). Even Thom Fang (Fang Dongmei 18991977), in his younger days, was inspired by pragma-tism and translated the booklet Pragmatism by D. Murray. Hu Shi himself explained the essentials of pragmatism by telling what he had learned from Dewey: Mr. Dewey has taught me how to think. He taught me to be concerned with problems in my presence. He taught me to take all doctrines and ideals as mere hypotheses to be verified. He taught me that, no matter where, I should always concern myself with the real consequences of thought (Hu 1973, p. 630). This


emphasized a way of thinking that was consequentialist and followed a scientific methodology.

The scientism and consequentialism Hu Shi learned from pragmatism pushed him to use scientific and logical methods to reconstruct the history of Chinese philosophy, which resulted in his Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang (An outline history of Chinese philosophy). At the same time, Zhang Shenfu (18931986) introduced B. Russells new realism, also emphasizing the use of scientific method and logical analysis. In sum, both pragmatism and new realism attempted to influence the Chinese search for modern rationality in terms of logical procedures and scientific methods.

Darwinian EvolutionismBefore the Republican era, Yan Fu translated Huxleys Evolution and Ethics in 1898. In order to encourage the Chinese people to enhance their physical strength and Chinas competitiveness, Yan deliberately neglected the ethical dimension in Huxley and interpreted the theory of evolution according to Spencers social Darwinism. Mottos such as competition for survival, survival of the fittest, and natural selection makes the strong win and the weak be defeated became familiar among Chinese intellectuals.

Nevertheless, in the Republican era, there was also an attempt to go back to the more scientific, indeed biological, evolutionism of Darwin. For that purpose, Ma Junwu (18811940) translated into Chinese Darwins The Origin of Species (Ma 1920). However, even if the scientific discourse of Darwinism some-how had its impact on Chinese intellectuals, it did not spread broadly and deeply into the Chinese mind. On the contrary, social Darwinism went deeper into peoples common ideology, pushing them to take competition for survival as the social rule to comply with if China was to enter into modernity. Consequently, together with liberalism, there began to emerge an image of a modern society in which individuals competed for survival.

Nietzsches PhilosophyPrior to the Republican era, Wang Guowei (18771927) had introduced Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in his Jingan wenji (An anthology of Jingan) pub-lished in 1905. Later, Li Shicen (18921934) published in Minduo Magazine two special issues focusing on Nietzsche and Bergson, as well as the book titled Chaoren zhexue xueshuo (Doctrine of the philosophy of superman, 1931). In fact, Nietzsches philosophy was a critical reaction to Western modernity, which, by the end of the nineteenth century, had produced many bad effects. Also, Nietzsches thought implied a metaphysical nihilism. However, in the beginning years of the Republican era, the Chinese peoples reception of Nietzsches thought was in the spirit of rethinking the values of everything, so as, on the one hand, to decon-structthe traditional value system and, on the other, to encourage the Chinese people to use their power to create new values. At this time, the book titled Kexue

Features 159

zhexue yu rensheng (Science, philosophy, and human life; 1936) published by Thom Fang focused mostly on the positive perspective of Nietzsches thought on the creation of new values.

MarxismAs early as 1905, Zhu Zhixin (18851920), a nationalist ideologue, pub-lished A Small Biography of German Revolutionists in Minbao. It introduced the life and thought of Marx and Engels, the basic ideas in their Communist Manifesto, and the ten steps it announced, along with his comments on Das Kapital. In 1912, Sun Yat-sen also mentioned Marx and Das Kapital in his speech in Shanghai. At atime when the First World War provoked in the European mind a sense of crisisabout their science and culture, Chinese intellectuals such as Lian Qichao inhis Ouyou xinying lu (Memories of my trip to Europe, 1920), and Zhang Junmai (18871969) in his 1923 talk on rensheng guan ( philosophy of human life), discussed their doubts about the nature of Western science. Thus, Chen Duxiu (18791942) and Li Dazhao (18891927) also started to cast doubts on European democracy and politics under the domination of capitalism. Chen and Li, in their search for a new solution to Chinas problems, appealed to class struggle and a dictatorship of the proletariat and began to use Marxist ideas and methods to analyze the problems of China and the world. Thus, after the October revolution in Russia, Marxism spread widely in China. Its adoption by Chinese intellectuals could be seen as their appropriation of a Marxist critique of capitalism to point out the negative side of Western modernity.

Although these Western thoughts introduced into China in the first period were quite different in their contents and emphases, nevertheless, they repre-sentedChinese intellectuals effort at the time to search out Western modernity and, at the same time, to reflect on its failings. Similarly, they were commonly instrumental in criticizing and deconstructing traditional Chinese philosophy andvalues, while contributing to the enhancement of science and democracy in China.

During this time of violent criticism of Chinese traditional philosophy, there were still intellectuals affirming and defending traditional Chinese philosophy, such as Liang Shuming (18931988), Cai Yuanpei (18681940), and Liang Qichao. Among them, the most powerful defense came from Liang Shu-ming, who was the first Chinese philosopher to refer to comparative philosophy in his defense of Chinese philosophy. In fact, Liang was the first to develop a Sino-centric comparative philosophy of the East and West. In 1921, Liang published Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue (Eastern and Western cultures and their philosophies), in which he claimed that Westerners used intuition to operate their reason, while the Chinese used reason to operate their intuition. For the Chinese, it was possible for man and nature to be in union, without separating them; affectivity was emphasized among human relations to the point that all intellectual activities were


transformed into art and metaphysics. For him, this Chinese way of life was higher on the spiritual plane than that of Western people.

Again, for Liang, Westerners started their culture from the corporeal level. That was why their relation with nature began by extending bodily energy to theoutside world so as to solve the first-level problems of survival. By contrast, Chinese culture started from the human heart and turned its energy inward, to the self, through reflection. This entailed an effort to transcend the first orientation in order to solve the second-level problems of satisfying the human heart. He held that, starting from the body, Western culture adapted itself well for the present and the past; while Chinese culture, starting from the heart, was more suitable for the future.

During this period, somehow, there was a reflection on problems related to modernity, as implied in the debate between science and life-views. On February 23, 1923, Zhang Junmai gave a talk on the subject of the philosophy of human life at Tsinghua Yuan, Beijing, in which he claimed that a philosophy of human life was subjective, intuitive, and synthetic, emphasizing the free will and uniqueness of each human person. By contrast, science was objective, analytical, regulated by logic and methodology, and determined by causality and the universal regularity of nature. Therefore, no matter how science was developed, it would never be able to solve the problems of a philosophy of human life.

These ideas of Zhang were quite comparable to R. Euckens philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie). Also, the distinction between science and the philosophy of human life made by Zhang was similar to W. Diltheys distinction between Geisteswissheschaften, which emphasized the understanding of meaning, and Naturwissenschaften, which focused on the explanation by causality. It also contained a critical reflection on the narrow concept of rationality represented bythe natural sciences, which was seen as the measure of human progress by theEuropean Enlightenment and modernity. Furthermore, Zhangs thought also drew upon the resources of the philosophy of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism. However, after the May Fourth Movement, a time dominated by scientism, his ideas were not appreciated by those who favored scientism and total Westerniza-tion. In fact, it suffered vehement critiques from such scientists as Ding Wenjiang (18871936), who questioned, if a view of human life was outside of logicalcommon rules, definition and method, what kind of view would it become? Thus, Ding called Zhang a ghost of metaphysics (Zhang and Ding 1977,pp. 1516). In fact, the debate continued until the end of 1924, with supporters and antagonists on both sides. The supporters of Zhang included Liang Qichao, Lin Zhaiping, and Liang Shuming; those of Ding were Hu Shi and Wu Zhihui. Unfortunately, this debate did not develop a deeper critical reflection on the awkward effects of Western modernity and the Enlightenment, when the Chinesepeople was in need of its own spiritual support in its search for modernity.

Features 161

Second Period (19281949): Revitalization of the Chinese National Spirit and Chinese PhilosophyThe period between the end of the war against the warlords in 1928 and the begin-ning of the war against the Japanese invasion in 1938 was called by historians a period of National Construction Prior to the Japanese Invasion (Academia Sinica1984). Here the term national implied a certain appeal to national spirit. Unfortunately, at this time, Japan, having achieved the height of its power since its earlier modernization, expanded itself by militarism under the pretext of Asian modernization and invaded China and other Asian countries; thus, China had to go through difficult years fighting against the Japanese invasion. This national life-or-death challenge roused a concern for national spirit, which was to be found in Chinese philosophy in order to define Chinas cultural subjectivity. In order to face this catastrophic situation, an urgent call was generated to reconsider Chinese philosophy and to give it a new interpretation. Hence, there was a movement of revitalization of Chinese philosophical wisdom to redefine modernity in a more Chinese way.

First, Liang Shuming, in addition to his effort to feature Chinese philosophical wisdom in the context of comparative philosophy, was also a Confucian actionist in terms of sociopolitical reform. In 1931, Liang began to implement his philosoph-ical ideas in Zouping County, Shandong. According to Liang, Chinese society was based principally on the agricultural village, with its specific emphasis on ethical relations, human affectivity, and moral duties. In Chinese villages, there were, indeed, distinctions in social and professional positions; however, there was no class opposition or class struggle. In rural areas, the Chinese people were in need of more positive, constructive reformation and improvement, without need of violent revolution.

Liang ran his rural reconstruction movement from 1931 to 1937. He introduced technology and method of management into Chinese villages. He combined Confucian morality with managerial technology in order to modernize traditional Chinese society and culture. It is worthwhile to mention that Liang, after 1949 anduntil his death in 1988, attempted always to remain an independent thinker. However, under intense pressure from Chinese Communists, he once compro-mised, for the purpose of survival, and accepted the ideas of historical materialism and class struggle. In 1975 he published Renxin yu renxin (Human heart and human life), in which he daringly criticized the materialistic philosophy of history and class struggle, and developed a Confucian philosophy of freedom, morality, and culture.

Besides Liang, there was a deeper search for Chinese philosophical wisdom rooted in the Chinese classics at the Fuxing Shuyuan (Academy for revitalizing human nature) established in 1939 and taught by Ma Yifu (18831967). The academy published Mas Fuxing shuyuan jianglu (Lectures at the Fuxing Academy) and twenty-eight categories of Chinese classics and Confucian books, altogether


thirty-eight volumes. Ma Yifu introduced the idea of subsuming all sciences (including Western science and thought) in the Six Arts, and all Six Arts subsumed in the One Mind.2 This meant using Chinese philosophical wisdom to integrate the modernity founded on Western science and thought into Chinese philosophy. For Ma, the Six Arts taught about virtue formation, principles of myriad things, and the fulfillment of human nature. He traced the origin of all these to the Hongfan (Grand model) of the Book of Documents and attempted to systematize Confucianism. Mas philosophical project deeply inspired Xiong Shili and Liang Shuming.

Meanwhile, there was also an effort to modernize traditional religious wisdom, such as the China Inner Learning Academy established in 1922 by Ouyang Jingwu (18711943) and Lu Zhi (18961989). It had the mission of a modern revitalization of the conscious-only (Yogacara) Buddhism. Unfortunately, the academy and its library were burned down by the Japanese army in 1937. Therefore, Ouyang rebuilt the academy in 1939 in Sichuan Province to continue theteaching of Buddhism and to publish the Buddhist canons in 1940. In addition, Master Taixu (18901947) established in 1922 the Wuchang Buddhist Acad-emy to spread Buddhist philosophy. Taixu put forward the so-called Buddhism of human life, emphasizing humanism as the beginning of Mahayana Buddhism, which could be seen later as the inception of renjian fojiao (Buddhism in the human world).

In the same period, the Chinese nationalist government began to develop the philosophy of the three principles of the people. Also, the nationalist think tank of Chen Lifu proposed in 1934 a philosophy titled Weisheng zhexue (Philosophy of life-only). Historically speaking, the war against the Japanese invasion consumed all material achievements of the ten years of national construction. However, because of the awakening of a national spirit, this period was also the height of Chinese philosophy. In this period, several thinkers were particularly worth mentioning.

Xiong Shili (18851968)Xiong Shili was the most original philosopher of this period. He taught at the Beijing University, Fuxing Academy, and China Inner Learning Academy. He studied Buddhism, absorbed the philosophy of life of H. Bergson and process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, while tracing philosophical wisdom back to the philosophy of change and creativity in the Yijing to construct the philosophical foundation of the modern new Confucianism. For him, there should be no dual-ism of substance (ti) and function (yong), body and mind, energy and matter, heaven and man, and so forth. The cosmic process was a process of creativity through the dialectics of the power of explorative opening ( pi ) and that of concentrating closeness (xi ). For him, the human heart/mind shared the same ren xin (humane heart) with myriad things in the universe. Both could transcend

Features 163

all that was accomplished, to the extent that both were creative and unstoppable by any human construction in the world of matter and human institutions. This can be seen as a philosophical effort to appeal to the creative energy of man and the universe articulated in Chinese philosophy in an attempt to overcome the limits of modernity and its domination. In this period, Xiong published the Xin weishilun (New treatise on conscious-only) and Dujing shiyao (Essentials in reading Chinese classics). After mainland China fell into the hands of Chinese Communists, Xiong still taught as a professor in the Beijing University and published Yuan ru (On original Confucianism), Ti yong lun (On substance and function), Mingxin pian (Essays on enlightening the heart), Chunzhai shuibi (Casual essays from the preserving studio), and other works in an effort to maintain Confucian inspiration even under the ideological control of Communism. As he grew older, he dared to appeal to Confucian ontology and the theory of human nature to criticize Marxist materialism.

In short, facing the impact of Western modernity, Xiong appealed to the spirit of unceasing creativity in the Yijing to reinterpret Confucianism and to reevaluate Daoism and Buddhism. He and Liang Shuming were seen as the first generation of modern new Confucianism, continued and developed later by philosophers in Taiwan and Hong Kong, including Tang Junyi, Mou Zongshan, Xu Fuguan, and others.

Feng Youlan (18851990)Feng attempted to reconstruct the history of Chinese philosophy and build his own philosophical system by integrating Chinese philosophy with Western philosophy. From 1931 to 1934, his representative work was Zhongguo zhexueshi (Feng Youlan 1934). Its basic line of thought was to reinterpret Chinese philosophi-cal history with the assistance of Western philosophical categories and logical analysis. Unlike Hu Shi, who reinterpreted Chinese philosophy in terms of prag-matism and scientism, Feng first immersed himself deeply in Chinese philosophy before he attempted to structure it with Western logical analysis. Feng called his own history of Chinese philosophy a kind of critical orthodoxy that based itself genuinely on the tradition of Chinese philosophy, on the one hand, but with a critical attitude toward it, on the other. Though he inherited a Chinese tradition, he did not fall into a blind belief in the past; although he gave the tradition a rational critique, he did not fall into skepticism about the tradition.

Between 1939 and 1946, Feng published his systematic thought in the six books of the zhen-yuan era (zhenyuan liushu),3 seen by him as not merely a historians style of speaking in compliance with, but as a genuine philosophers speaking in continuity with philosophical systems in the past. One favorite obser-vation he enjoyed mentioning was that while he wrote the Xin lixue (New doctrine of principle) during those troubled years of war against the Japanese invasion, Jin Yuelin was writing Lun dao (On the Dao). He saw his influence on Jin Yuelin as reminding Jin of the depth of ancient Chinese thought. Also, Jins work gave his


readers a taste of Chinese philosophy by the word Dao he used in the books title. Fengs system of thought in the six books of the zhen-yuan era constituted a new doctrine of li ( principle), in which Western philosophical terms such as particu-lar and universal, true and real, and so on were used to reinterpret Chinese philosophical terms such as li and qi. Thus, in the Xin lixue, he took li to be the universal, the true, and qi to be the particular, the real. From the metaphysical point of view, li existed prior to shi (event), while event was based on li. In the Xinshilun (New theory of event), he developed the idea that the real difference between Eastern and Western cultures was the difference that existed between urban area and countryside, which was a question of modernization. For him, Western culture was based on society, while Chinese culture was based on the family. Hence, the way to freedom for China was to use the process of moderniza-tion and industrialization, thereby to develop from a family-centered model to a society-centered model.

Fengs Xin zhiyan (New treatise on epistemological discourse) put forth a new methodology of philosophy. His main idea was to combine Chinese philosophy with the logical positivism and new realism of the time in order to develop a new philosophical methodology and to promote Chinese philosophy. Finally, Fengs Xin yuandao (New treatise on the Dao) was a philosophical treatise on some basic concepts in Chinese philosophy such as li, qi, dao ti, and daquan so as to reinterpret Chinese metaphysics, which, according to his characterization, had the spirit of jigaoming er daozhongyong (exploring the ultimate perfection while keeping to the middle way), that would allow the Chinese to coordinate the meta-physical with the empirical.

He Lin (19021992)He Lin, a Chinese philosopher who studied in the United States and Germany, put his emphasis on the absorption of Western philosophy in order to integrate it with Chinese philosophy, in particular Confucianism. In 1941, he published an article entitled Rujia sixiang de xinkaizhan (New unfolding of Confucian thought), claiming that the new prospect of Confucian thought consisted in absorbing the best parts of Western culture. For him, China first had to absorb the genuine Western philosophy to develop Confucian philosophy of li ( principle); second, China had to absorb the essence of Christianity to solidify Confucian ritualism; and third, China had to apprehend Western arts to develop Confucian poetic teaching. His basic idea was to combine Hegels philosophy with Lu Xiangshan andWang Yangmings Neo-Confucianism in order to create a new philosophy of xin (heart/mind). This was very different from Feng Youlans new philosophy of li ( principle). For He Lin, xin (heart/mind) meant two things: first, psychological xin; second, logical xin. With this distinction, He Lin made explicit the logical xin implied in Lu and Wangs xin ji li (heart/mind as principle) so as to develop Confi-cian logical subjectivity.

Features 165

Unfortunately, this effort of combining Confucian philosophy and German idealism into a kind of logical idealism was later given up by He Lin under the pressure of the Communist regime with its dominant materialistic ideology. Thus, he did translation work instead of theoretical construction so as to avoid any political involvement. Nevertheless, he made a huge contribution to contemporary Chinas understanding of Western modern philosophy through his translation of the major works of Hegel, Marx, and other modern philosophers, such as Hegels Shorter Logic, Phenomenology of Spirit, Lectures on the History of Philosophy; Marxs General Critique of Hegels Dialectics and General Philosophy, and Difference between Democritus and Epicurus Natural Philosophy; Spinozas Essays on the Improvement of Understanding and Ethics; and so forth.

Zhu Guangqian (18971986)In 1930, Zhu Guangqian went abroad to study at the University of Strasburg, France, and got his PhD with a dissertation on the psychology of tragedy before hereturned to China to work on Chinese aesthetics. He said that usually his readers would take him as a Crocean idealist; however, he saw himself as a believer in Nietzschean idealism. Zhus basic philosophical effort was to synthesize Chinese and Western aesthetic theories. In his early career, he focused on Western roman-tic literature, on the pure formalism in the sense of Kant and Croces aesthetics, Nietzsches Apollonian and Dionysus spirits, and the psychological aesthetics of Lips. Zhus basic tendency in his early days was the free expansion of the individu-als emotion and imagination, as expressed in his publications such as Tan mei (Talks on beauty, 1933) and Wenyi xinlixue (Psychology of literature and art, 1936).

In Zhus Shilun (On poetry, 1946), he began to put forth a synthesis of Western and Chinese aesthetics for the purpose of creating a new modern type of poetics. Basically, he used Croces concepts of intuition and expression and Nietzsches sense of tragedy to be integrated with Chinese doctrines of mental imagery and spiritual realm. However, in 1948, he published Keluoqi zhexue shuping (Critique of Croces philosophy), in which he concluded his general review of Western idealism since Kant and criticized Croces philosophy. Subsequently, his focus changed to synthesizing Marxism and Chinese aesthetics. After Chinas reform and opening tothe West in the 1980s, Zhu was able to express his views in Hong Kong on G. B. Vicos Scienza nuova (New science), which he translated into Chinese. It was published posthumously in 1986.

In addition to Zhu, Zong Baihua (18971986), who studied aesthetics and the philosophy of human life in the United States and Germany, dedicated himself also to the research of and education in Chinese aesthetics. He emphasized leading an artistic way of life, and his philosophical thought was more like that ofapoet, with a high level of spirituality. He did not publish much, though. He collected his writing from 1920 to 1948 in preparing a manuscript under the title YiJing (The spiritual realm of arts); unfortunately, it was not published at the time.


In the later part of his career, he collected again all his writings and published them under the title of Meixue shanbu (Aesthetic promenade, 1981). This was, indeed, a classic of aesthetics in contemporary China.

In the same period, Thom Fang published his Zhongguo rensheng zhexue gaiyao (An outline of Chinese philosophy of human life), which resulted from his radio broadcasts to the nation during the war against the Japanese invasion. Tang Junyi published his Daode ziwuo zhi jianli (Establishment of moral self ). Also, Luo Jialun published his works on philosophy of life and his new views on the nation.

In the camp of Chinese Marxists, Ai Siqi (19101966) published his most popular Dazhong Zhexue (Philosophy for common people) in 1936, and Mao Zedong published Shijian lun (On pratice) and Maodun lun (On contradiction) in 1937, both attempting to synthesize Marxist philosophy with Chinas concrete situation.

As to the study of Western philosophy, Jin Yuelin published his Luoji (Logic) and Lun dao (On Dao); Shen Youding published several important papers, includ-ing On Expressions, On Finite Systems, Zhouyi guaxu fengxi (Analysis of the order of hexagrams in the Zhou Yi), and Lun ziranshu (On natural numbers), and others, later collected in the Shen Youding ji (Anthology of Shen Youding). He also published Mojing de luojixue (Logic in the Mohist Scriptures). Indeed, Shen proved himself a great Chinese genius in logic and in using logic to study the Yijing and the Mohist Scriptures. In addition, Cha Hung, who had participated in the activities of the Vienna Circle, published in China his works on the Vienna School and logical empiricism. Zhang Dongsun published a translation of Platos Six Dialogues, Bergsons Creative Evolution and Matter and Memory, his exposition of Kants philosophy, and his own systematic works on the pluralist epistemology and political philosophy such as Xin zhexue lunchong (Essays on new philosophy), Renshi lun (Epistemology), and Lixing yu minzhu (Reason and democracy), always in the view of synthesizing Chinese and Western philosophies.

In this period, there were many attempts to synthesize Western philosophy with Chinese philosophy; however, these attempts resulted in the use of Western philosophy to explicate and articulate some preferred schools in Chinese philoso-phy. We have to wait for the next period to create some systems of real synthesis.

Third Period (19491980s): Systems that Synthesized Chinese and Western PhilosophiesChinese philosophy experienced another period of development after 1949, when the ROC government moved to Taiwan, which had been retroceded from Japan in 1945. With the emphasis on the formation of the national spirit on all levels of the educational system beginning in 1950 and the launch of the Chinese cultural renaissance movement in 1966, all the governmental cultural and educational policies were favorable to an idea much closer to what I call Chinese modernity. Officially, it was named Taiwan jingyan (the Taiwan experience). However, I would

Features 167

propose to replace the term Taiwan jingyan, which is too narrow a concept, by the much broader term Chinese modernity, given that the best of Taiwan jingyan serves as a successful laboratory for Chinese modernity and therefore is very significant for the future of China and all Chinese people.

The nationalist government, having learned painful lessons from the cata-strophic war against the Japanese invasion, eagerly wanted to develop its model of Chinese modernity and to erase the residue of the previously existing modernity implemented under Japanese colonization in Taiwan. Although good for the implementation of Chinese modernity, this general orientation had its negative effect in the area of philosophy that had been developing since the Japanese occu-pation. For example, tragedy befell some faculty members teaching philosophy under Japanese colonization, such as the disapearance of Lin Maosheng (18871947) in 1947. This case showed continued conflict between Chinas policy toward Chinese modernity and the residual Japanese modernity on the newly retroceded Taiwan Island. In the area of philosophy, the structure of research and teaching implemented by Japanese colonization was not well integrated into the new project of Chinese modernity.

Most positive in this period was the fact that, in contrast to the stringent and rigid ideological control on mainland China under the Communist regime, begin-ning in 1949, scholars in Taiwan enjoyed relative freedom of research. So, in a relatively free atmosphere, there were several conscious efforts to develop systems of synthesis of Chinese and Western philosophies. This became the main task of philosophical activity in Taiwan in the third period, even if the government and society in general were too busy with practical and utilitarian matters to pay attention to philosophy.

Because of these synthetic systems, philosophy in Taiwan was different from other disciplines in the natural and social sciences that were either entirely deter-mined by and in compliance with the paradigm of modern Western sciences, or merely applying Western theoretical frameworks to Taiwanese empirical data. The work of realizing systems synthesizing Chinese and Western ideas had been most fruitful in the area of philosophy, even if the relevance to the real life-world is still open to question.4 Generally speaking, there were three approaches to synthesizing Chinese and Western philosophies: the organicist synthesis, the contemporary new Confucian synthesis, and the Chinese neoscholastic synthesis.

Organicist Synthesis Represented by Thom FangThom Fang (Fang Dongmei , 18991977) was very well versed in Western and Chinese philosophies. He wrote on Greek philosophy and modern philosophy with deep insight into their historical development and cultural background. He put them into elegant, poetic Chinese in his Kexue, zhexue yu rensheng (Science, philosophy, and human life), Zhexue sanhui (Three traditions of philosophical wisdom), and Shengsheng zi de (The virtue of creative creativity), among other


works. His conceptual framework was clearly structured, made substantial with his artistic and poetic insights that released the fragrant taste of a Chinese philosopher.

As to Chinese philosophy, Fang reconstructed the history of Chinese philoso-phy with the metaphysical approach, and published in English Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit and Its Development and Creativity in Man and Nature, in which he unfolded the deep philosophical meanings of primordial Confucianism, Daoism, Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, and Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism. After he passed away, his students transcribed his lectures and published them in several volumes, including Yuanshi rujia daojia zhexue (Philosophy of primordial Con-fucianism and Daoism), Zhongguo dasheng foxue (Chinese Mahayana Buddhism), Huayanzong zhexue (Philosophy of Huayan school), and Xinrujia zhexue shibajiang (Eighteen lectures on the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism).

Thom Fang developed Chinese philosophy in terms of a system of meta-physics, balancing transcendence and immanence, which saw reality itself as imbued with an immanent energy going toward the transcendental and a creative energy that penetrated being and value, the heavenly way and human nature. His meaning of metaphysics contains four parts: ontology, cosmology, a theory of human nature, and a theory of value. He systemized these four realms into a unified system that reorganized Chinese philosophy into an organicist system of thought.

The philosophical system of Thom Fang originated from his aesthetic experience, which he took as the basic line to integrate Chinese and Western philosophies. His emphasis on the experience of beauty could be illustrated by the fact that, in his personal copy of the Zhuangzi, the only sentence he underlined was shengren zhe, yuan tiandi zhi mei er da wanwu zhi li (the sage appeals to the beauty of heaven and earth to obtain the principles of the myriad of things). Indeed, the beauty of Thom Fangs rhetoric, in its elegance and delicacy, inspired thought by revealing truth through beauty.

The two pillars of Thom Fangs philosophical system were his theories of being and of human nature. In the realm of being, he affirmed the multifaceted nature of existence, including the physical, biological, psychological, aesthetic, moral, and religious, concluding with the unfathomable ultimate reality. He argued that beings at a basic, fundamental level could evolve and develop into beings at subsequent higher levels, represented as a shang huixiang (turning upward). Beings existing at higher levels could pour their creative forces down to, and thereby fortify, those at lower levels, represented as a xia huixiang (turning downward).

As for human nature, Thom Fang argued that a person could advance from homo faber to homo creator to homo sapiens (which means a person of knowledge), and then to homo symbolicus, homo honestatis or moral human being, and finally homo religiosus. Human nature could either develop from lower levels to higher levels, or come down from higher levels and firmly settle on lower levels, thus realizing the two processes of turning upward and turning downward.

Features 169

For Thom Fang, the interaction of the higher levels of being and levels of human nature created various worlds of differentiation: a physical world, a biologi-cal world, a mental world, an artistic world, a moral world, and a religious world, which had also the movement of turning up and turning down. Being and human nature culminated on the unfathomable mysterious spiritual horizon, seen by him as the ultimate source of all creativity. Thus, various, differentiated realms might develop themselves, level after level, into the unfathomable mysterious spiritual horizon. The unfathomable spiritual horizon, as the ultimate source of creativity, might pour its own power into each level of the differentiated realms of being and human nature, to allow them to take it as the energy to go upward. Therefore, this system stressed the unending creativity that found a common denominator, or more specifically, a common creative energy, among all differentiated realms and the unfathomable, and unified them as well. In short, Thom Fangs philosophy emphasized the creativity, rationality, and interconnectedness of thinking and existence to build up a comprehensive and organicist philosophical system inte-grating the best elements of Chinese and Western philosophies.

The Modern New Confucian Synthesis of Tang Junyi and Mou ZongsanAfter mainland China came under the Communist regime in 1949, Confucian scholars like Qian Mu and Tang Junyi fled to Hong Kong, where they established the New Asia College. In 1957, as proposed by Zhang Junmai, Qian and Tang in Hong Kong and Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan in Taiwan signed a document titled Wei zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan (Manifesto for proclaiming Chinese culture to people of the world), in which they conceived of the launching of a Chinese cultural movement in the new world situation. They were the second generation of the modern new Confucianism. Two philosophers among them, Tang and Mou, had each built up a comprehensive philosophical system integrat-ing Western and Chinese philosophies for a modern Chinese culture founded on Chinese subjectivity. As Mou said in his Renshi xin zhi pipan (Critique of the cognitive mind), What I am building up is a subjectivism that subsumes logic under the cognitive subjectivity. . . . There are two subjectivities: one is cognitive subjectivity, another is moral subjectivity (Mou 1955, ivi).

With the philosophical framework of subjectivism, Tang and Mou attempted to solve the urgent problem of Chinas cultural crisis under the Communist regime. They emphasized the spiritual resources of human subjectivity conceived by the idealist Confucians, especially Mencius, Lu Xiangsan, and Wang Yangming, and updated them with the philosophical discourse of German idealism, in par-ticular Kants transcendental philosophy and Hegels phenomenology of spirit.

Tang Junyi (19081978), in regard to Western philosophy, preferred to use objective idealism and absolute idealism combined with the Chinese philosophy ofmoral subjectivity, to work out a guideline for reconstructing the history of Chinese philosophy and a Chinese philosophical system. His reconstruction of the


history of Chinese philosophy could be found in his series Zhongguo zhexue yuanlun (Treatises on Chinese Philosophy), in which Yuan dao pian (On Dao) dealt with the historical development of Chinese metaphysics, which emphasized the ultimate realization of human beings and the dao of the human world, while Yuan xing pian (On human nature) dealt with the historical development of Chinese theories of human nature. Finally, Yuan jiao pian (On education) dealt with the historical development of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, which could also be seen as a history of moral philosophy. It can be said that in these works Tang was philosophizing by reinterpreting the history of Chinese philosophy.

Moral experience was the original source of Tang Junyis philosophy. Its ultimate objective was to work out the image of the perfect person and the itiner-ary toward the realization of that image. In his magnum opus, Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie (The existence of life and the horizons of spirit), Tang systemati-cally explored the structure and dynamism of human subjectivity in much the same way as did Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit. It was a work using philosophy of man in a broad sense to integrate theories of human nature, metaphysics, and epistemology. On the level of metaphysics, Tang took existence to be a vital or living existence; on the level of epistemology, he took objective horizons as those that were felt and responded by the human mind. Objective horizons and the human mind interacted with each other, through which human nature was on in its way to self-fulfillment. Here, Tang discerned the human minds movement frominternal to external, from down to up, so as to distinguish objective horizons, subjective horizons, and trans-subjective-objective horizons, to see how the human mind penetrated through nine horizons to achieve its own self-realization. He called this a philosophical enterprise in the model of Zhou Dunyis doctrine of li ren ji (establishing the ultimate perfect model for human beings).

Thus, Tang schematized the structure of human subjectivity into what he called nine horizons of the mind/spirit. The first three horizons ascertained the status and content of individual, concept, and principle, to explain the constitution of the world of material substances and to lay the transcendental foundation for natural sciences in human subjectivity. The second three horizons dealt with perception, language, and morality, to explain the constitution of the world of meaning and to lay the transcendental foundation for the humanities in human subjectivity. The last three horizons dealt with God, dharma, and heavenly power thus reinterpreting Monotheism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (Tang 1977: vol. 1, pp. 3946). Here Tang laid the transcendental foundation of religion in human subjectivity and placed Confucianism above Christianity and Buddhism. Meanwhile, he added a religious dimension to Confucianism and thus laid the philosophical foundation of Confucian religiosity.

Mou Zongsan (, 19091995) translated the three Critiques of Kant and gave commentaries on them. The Renshi xin zhi pipan continued his early interest

Features 171

in logic, while imitating Kants Critique of Pure Reason and modifying it with his taste in Chinese philosophy to lay a transcendental foundation of mathematics and logic in human subjectivity. His Zhi di zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue (Intellectual intuition and Chinese philosophy, 1971) was under the influence of Daoism, Buddhism, and Heidegger, thereby transforming the previous logical approach into an ontological approach to propose an ontology without attachment. The Xianxiang yu wuzhishen (Phenomena and thing-in-itself ) was a synthesis of Kant and Chinese philosophy; it was also a synthesis of what he called metaphysic principle and metaphysic reason (Daoism), empty principle and empty reason (Buddhism), and xing principle and xing reason (Confucianism). Also, his essays written from 1949 to 1959, a period when his sense of historical tragedy and cultural consciousness was most intense, were collected and published as Lishi zhexue (Philosophy of history, 1955) and Zhengdao yu zhidao (Dao of politics and Dao of governance, 1961), in which the ultimate concern was to lay the historical and transcendental foundation of science and democracy.

The philosophy of Mou took human cognitive activities as its core of reflection. Its aim was to synthesize the Neo-Confucian philosophy of the Lu-Wang school with the philosophy of Kant, so as to articulate the transcendental subjectivity and legitimize human subjective experience, to the extent of laying a transcendental foundation for science and democracy. His target was to integrate Kants philoso-phy that exhausted human knowledge to bring out the importance of virtue, into Chinese philosophy that subsumed knowledge under virtue. He appealed to intellectual intuition to get beyond the limits of Kantian philosophy, he used transcendental philosophy to criticize the insufficiency of positivism and formal logic, he referred to the principle of coordination to counterbalance Western modernitys domination, and he emphasized Confucian virtue formation in order to go beyond Western modernity. Finally, he replaced the Christian God with liangzhi (inborn knowledge), or the infinite free mind and its creativity, thus giving Confucianism a religious overtone.

In sum, the philosophical system completed by the second generation of modern new Confucianism was achieved by appropriating modern Western philosophical discourses. This was for the purpose of returning to oneself, to reconstruct the history of Chinese philosophy, and to make clear the structure and dynamism of Chinese cognitive and moral subjectivity. Modern new Confucians attempted to lay the Chinese foundations of science and democracy on the tran-scendental subjectivity articulated by Chinese philosophy. Therefore, we may see their work as an attempt to build Chinese modernity on the Chinese theory of the human mind/heart and human nature. Modern new Confucians emphasized the totalizing function of human reason and proposed a grand narrative of the human itinerary that went through different levels of spiritual horizons, in order to pro-vide guidance for the individual and for the collective fate of the Chinese people.


They were not satisfied with formal logic; instead they wanted to trace formal logic back to transcendental logic. They disliked the inflation of instrumental rationality and disagreed with the modern Western culture of representation. Instead, mod-ern new Confucians argued for an immediate intuition that Mou termed intellec-tual intuition. They criticized Western modern powers and their domination, attempting to replace them with the spirit of coordination. As a whole, modern new Confucians still limited themselves to the philosophy of subjectivity and to the values of science and democracy emphasized by the May Fourth Movement. How the modern new Confucians could get beyond the difficulties of the philoso-phy of subjectivity is still a big question for their followers.

After Fang, Tang, and Mou, Lao Sze Kwang (19272012) was the fourth most important figure in this period. In addition to his solid work on the history of Chinese philosophy, Laos philosophical focus was on the question of methodology and the foundation of virtue formation in Chinese philosophy. With an open, philosophical mind, he did not limit himself to any closed system, and, therefore, he was not easily classified into any one school. Recently, his students published a festschrift titled Wanfu qianmeng ren shujuan (Ten thousand gates free to open and close) in celebration of his eightieth birthday (Lau 2010). The title itself suggests the idea that Lao penetrated in and out freely through ten thousand gates, not belonging to any particular school, and also that Laos focus was on the gate that represented the methodology of studying philosophy in general and Chinese philosophy in particular. In fact, the focus of Laos concern was on the philosophers fundamental questions and the discursive rules of philosophy. In his magnum opus, Zhongguo zhexue shi (A history of Chinese philosophy), he argued thatall philosophers and philosophical schools were concerned with some basic questions that he called the jiyuan (fundamental and original) questions (Lao 1980). Thus, Chinese philosophys fundamental and original question was the question of subjectivity, and he delineated four meaningful horizons of the self: bodily self, cognitive self, affective self, and virtuous self. Basically, this seems to bestill within the conceptual framework of the philosophy of subjectivity.

On the other hand, Lao accepted the importance of the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy, and he paid great attention to the rules of language and philosophical discourses. He said, the foundation of the truth of philosophical thinking consists in identifying a set of propositions that can serve as axioms not limited to any levels in the hierarchy [of propositions] (Lao 2006, p. 391). Lao made a distinction between conducive discourse of moral advices and cognitive discourse with truth content. Thus, he characterized traditional Chinese philoso-phy as belonging to conducive discourse, which from now on should pay attention to cognitive discourse in integrating moral theories, moral education, and spiritu-ality. Lao also made the distinction between general language rules and specific language rules; philosophy should supply not only general but also specific rules, such as those articulated by moral discourse.

Features 173

Chinese Neoscholastic Synthesis Represented by John C. H. Wu and Luo GuangChinese Neoscholasticism has inherited the tradition of Christian-Chinese phi-losophy ever since Matteo Ricci, Giulio Aleni, Diego de Pantoja, Xu Guangqi, YangTingyun and others introduced and translated the works of Aristotle and SaintThomas into China in an attempt to dialogue with Chinese philosophy. As G.Aleni said in Xixue fan (Introduction to Western sciences):

Together with our colleagues, we will translate these works into Chinese language. We plan to use some ten years to finish translating them one after another, . . . so that the doctrines of many sages from the Western sea and the Eastern sea could be synthesized coherently . . . This is the original sincere intention of us to travel through the long, arduous voyage. (Aleni 1965, p. 59)

This mission of synthesizing the philosophies of China and the West was continued and updated by contemporary Catholic philosophers with contempo-rary Western philosophies, in particular the neo-Thomism in the twentieth cen-tury. Thus the school could be called Chinese neoscholasticism. Scholars working in this direction include John C. H. Wu, Luo Guang (Lokuang), Albert Zhao, Thaddeus Hang, Li Zheng, and Kunru Wu. Here I will discuss only Wu and Luo, its two major representatives. This school was based on the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition that attempted systematically to combine with Chinese philosophy. In consideration of Chinese philosophy, the emphasis was put particularly on classical Confucianism of the pre-Qin period.

John C. H. Wu (Wu Jingxiong , 18991986) was an internationally renowned jurist and an expert on jurisprudence; his major contribution was in thearea of legal philosophy. In books such as Fountain of Justice and Cases and Materials on Jurisprudence and in papers such as Mencius Theory of Human Nature and Natural Law, My Philosophy of Law Natural Law in Evolution, and Comparative Studies in the Philosophy of Natural Law, Wu synthesized the basic ideas in the classical Confucianism of Confucius and Mencius with the scholastic philosophy of Saint Thomas using their similar concepts of natural law based on their ontologies and theories of human nature. As to ontology, he assumed that the ontological statuses of Zhongyongs mandate of heaven, human nature, and educa-tion corresponded to those of St. Thomass eternal law, natural law, and positive law. For Wu, human nature was based on the relation between heaven and man. Human nature had its finality in fulfilling its perfection. He assumed that Menciuss idea of a human being fulfilling his heart to know his own nature and heaven wasvery much compatible with Jesuss words You must be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48, in New Jerusalem Bible 1985, p. 1153).

Under the tension of ontology and human nature, natural law had its perma-nent side as well as its ever-changing side. Wu pointed out that his philosophy of law consisted of two major points. First, natural law was the foundation of all law systems. Second, natural law was not unchanging; instead, it grew with time. As tothe first point, for him the eternal law, natural law, and positive law, though


different one from another, still enjoyed a certain degree of continuity. As to his second point, for him there was convergence between one and many, change and permanence, each with its own justification as demonstrated by both Confucian-ism and Thomism. They were distinct yet part of the same continuum.

Luo Guang (Lokuang, 19112004), a Catholic archbishop and president of the Fujen Catholic University, was very well versed in both Chinese and scholastic philosophies, and he attempted to synthesize both in his metaphysical philosophy of life. He taught scholastic philosophy and Chinese philosophy for thirty years in Rome before he started his career in Taiwan. He used the scholastic conceptual framework, which he reconstructed and integrated with Chinese philosophy. He published nine volumes of Zhongguo zhexue sixiang shi (History of Chinese Philosophical Thought), covering the development from the pre-Qin era to the Republican period, including the philosophy of modern new Confucianism. Finally, he published his Xingshang shengming zexue (Philosophy of life: A meta-physical approach), which represented his own philosophy.

Luo Guangs Xingshang shengming zexue was an attempt to combine the ontology of scholastic philosophy, which emphasized the infinite and creative Being, with the doctrine of changes in Chinese philosophy, which emphasized the unceasing process of giving birth, so as to lay a philosophical foundation of life encompassing both the ethical and religious life. He interpreted the concept of taiji (great ultimate) in Chinese philosophy as the creative God. He argued that the great ultimate was God, the uncreated Being itself, the source of the creation of life, the one who had created the perpetually changing universe. For him, all beings in the universe came from their creator, who was an infinite Being full of the power of creation and had created the myriad things that were in an unceasing process of change, imbued with the power of giving birth. The powers of creation and of giving birth were different yet related. The whole realm of beings, because of these two powers, could be seen as a comprehensive realm of life.

Based on this metaphysical foundation, Luo Guang built up his theory of human nature and ethics. The main concept of his philosophy of life was ren ( humaneness). For Luo, human beings shared the life of the universe and became humane in caring for others life. Thus, human beings should develop human life and the myriads things life so as to participate in the process of creativ-ity of heaven and earth. That human beings have intellect is why they are capable of truth; that they have will is why they are capable of searching after goodness; that they have talent is why they are capable of pursuing beauty. Through ren, humanity is capable of endless development, because ren is a dynamic energy relating all human beings and all things. Thus a human being extends his life by larger and larger concentric circles ranging from the realization of self/other relation to a great world of commonwealth of harmony, then from this to the unity of all things, finally to the union of heaven and humanity. For Luo Guang, human beings should unfold their human nature through these four concentric circles. In

Features 175

this regard, Luo belonged to an open humanism. However, even though human beings can be in union with heaven, they themselves are not heaven. For this reason, Luo said that human beings should recognize their finitude, empty their tiny selves, examine their mistakes and trespasses, transcend their self-limitations, and facilitate the way toward a loving communion with the heavenly God. In this way, Luo Guang interpreted the traditional Chinese idea of tianren heyi (heaven in union with humans) in terms of human union with the myriads things and in communion with God, and put this into his ethical and religious practice.

In short, Chinese neoscholastic philosophers did not limit themselves to the subjectivity so dear to modernity, because they had inherited in depth the pre-modern experience of ancient Greek and medieval philosophy, and also because of their deep religious experience with God and ethical concern with strangers and foreigners. Also, Chinese neoscholastic philosophers emphasized the dimension of communication and exchange in human existence. They posited a personal God as the creative source of all life forms, and the communion of love as the ultimate achievement in human life. Therefore, what they built was a system of philosophy with a broader view of reality, a higher view of human development, and an ethics of love and self-cultivation with humbleness, not only as theory but also as praxis. In this synthesis, some elements go beyond the difficulties of modernity.

Logical Analysis and Study in Chinese PhilosophyIn addition to scholars who studied the three systems of synthesization of various Chinese and Western philosophies, there were also scholars who studied Chinese logic and the application of logical analysis to the study of Chinese culture. Among them, Chen Daqi (18861983) began first as a scholar of psychology before he focused his interest on logic. When he moved to Taiwan with the nationalist government, he turned to the study of Chinese logic and eventually to Confucian studies. In fact, logic was his lifelong interest, which he extended to the areas of Indian logic and the art of argumentation of Mencius and Xunzi, ending up with Confucius. Indeed, because of his versatility in logic, his studies of classical Confu-cianism had a very high level of analytical and argumentative rigor. Thus, he was the forerunner of the conceptual and argumentative study of Confucianism that made Confucian studies more scientific. In this perspective, Chen played a great role in contemporary Confucian studies. That is why Antonio Cua in his Moral Vision and Tradition said, To my knowledge, the pioneering study of the concep-tual aspect of Confucian ethics is Chen Ta-chis Kung Tzu hseh-hsuo (Cua 1998, pp. 271272). Furthermore, Chen was also the earliest among contemporary scholars to propose a theory of virtue ethics and to reinterpret and discern positive contributions from other theories such as prescriptivism and hedonism. In short, Chen Daqi launched the approaches of conceptual analysis and virtue ethics in Confucian studies, which were his precious contributions to contemporary Confucianism.


Yin Haiguang (19191969) was originally named Yin Fusheng. He took Haiguang as his pen name after Chinas victory over the Japanese invasion. Yins philosophy and logic were influenced by Jin Yuelin. He taught at Jinling University before he transferred to National Taiwan University in 1949, where he taught such courses as logic, logical empiricism, Bertrand Russells philosophy, theoretical semantics, philosophy of science, and modern symbolic logic. Also he joined the Free China Review, founded by Hu Shi, Lei Zheng, and FuSinian, and served as one of the editors. Taking freedom of thought and rationality as his ideal values, he used the scientific method, individualism, and the spirit of democratic enlightenment as his criteria to criticize current affairs and policies. In his Zhong-guo wenhua di zhanwang (The prospect of Chinese culture), he combined logical thinking and liberalism to measure the future of China. He had great influence on many students who later became great scholars in different areas.

Fourth Period (1980spresent): Globalization, Taiwanese Subjectivity, and Postmodern ReflectionIn the 1970s in Europe and North America, the movement of postmodernism arose, which questioned, criticized, and even denied the overemphasis on subjec-tivity, representation, rationality, and domination in Western modernity. Post-modernism turned its focus on the other, multiple cultures, polyphony, and mutual dialogue. Postmodernism started to affect Taiwan in the 1980s when Taiwan was positively implementing its project of Chinese modernity. Also, in the late 1980s, globalization was developing more widely and deeply, and the discourse of globalization became more widespread, even to the point of absorbing post-modern discourse in the 1990s. In Taiwan, under the tension of globalization and localization, and some specific Taiwanese interpretations of post-colonialism, the so-called Taiwan subjectivity awakening reached its height. In this period, which is still going on, philosophy in the Republic of China has to face the challenges of globalization and postmodernism and also become involved in thinking about Taiwan subjectivity.

Internalization and Globalization of Philosophical StudiesGlobalization is a very complicated historical process. Elsewhere I have defined it, from a philosophical point of view, as an historical process of border-crossing, in which human desire, human universalizability and ontological interconnectedness are to be realized on the planet as a whole, and to be concretized now as global free market, trans-national political order and cultural glocalism.5

However, in the eyes of the common people, governmental officers, and educational institutions, globalization is often seen as merely a process of interna-tionalization. Because of the increasing rapidity of worldwide population mobility in the last forty years, there have been many more opportunities for scholars to goabroad, teach Chinese philosophy, participate in international conferences,

Features 177

andorganize cooperation and publication projects. In this context, Chinese scholars started to contribute to the internationalization of Chinese philosophy.

Before the beginning of the fourth period, the internationalization of Chinese philosophy was prepared for by Wing-tsit Chan, who, from the 1950s to the 1990s, contributed greatly to the study of Chinese philosophy and religion in the United States and to the translation of Chinese philosophical texts into English. Chans A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy has been used by several generations of Western scholars and is still used as a good textbook of Chinese philosophy. In the last twenty years of his life, his work on Zhu Xi became famous among Western scholars and made Neo-Confucianism a popular subject. As he said, For twenty years I have worked like singing alone in the desert; now, all of a sudden, lixue becomes very prosperous (Chan 2007, p. 5).6

During the fourth period, the international extension of Chinese philosophy has been done not only by Chinese scholars from the Republic of China, but also by many Western scholars such as William de Bary, Benjamin Schwartz, Angus Graham, Herbert Fingarette, Chad Hansen, Roger Ames, David Hall, Henry Rosemont, Robert Neville, David Nivison, Donald Munro, and Nicholas Bunnin, with also the contribution of younger scholars in philosophy from the mainland China. Among Chinese scholars from Taiwan or having connections with Taiwan, we may mention Charles Fu, Julia Ching, Antonio Cua, Tu Wei-ming, Shu-hsien Liu, and Chungying Cheng. Among them, Tu, Liu, and Cheng are regarded as the third generation of modern new Confucianism. Thus I will limit my discussion only to them.

Tu Wei-ming (, 1940), an undergraduate at Tunghai University, Taiwan, came to study in the United States in 1962, focusing on the Zhongyong under the inspiration of Wang Yangming and Mou Zongsan. As an intellectual in the Chinese diaspora, Tu Wei-ming sought the spiritual root of the Chinese people and their Chineseness. For that purpose, Tu interpreted the concept of centrality, which was essential for Chinese culture, by referring it to the core of human subjectivity. In Tus terms, the centrality was a profound persons deep self, the core of ones moral subjectivity. For him, centrality was human subjectivitys original source of creativity. With this core in their subjectivity, human beings could be in union with heaven and thus constitute an anthropocosmic core of existence. While extended outside, it could be developed and implemented in social and political actions to the benefit of the world. Interpreting centrality as the source of creativity, Tu believed that a profound person, who combined heaven and humanity in the inner self, was able to contribute to the harmony of the society and political order.

Under the influence of Mou Zongsan, Tu put his emphasis on the depth of the human self and on moral subjectivity. Thus, he paid more attention to the self rather than to the other, emphasizing that one should learn for oneself, instead of learning for others, to the extent of watching over oneself when one is alone, as stressed by the Zhongyong.


After the 1980s, Tu was engaged in spreading Confucianism both internation-ally and inside China. He focused on the modernization of Confucianism from the perspective of industrial East Asia and on the renewal of Confucianism. He tried to develop what he called the third phase of Confucianism. Also, he focused on criticizing Western Enlightenment as his response to the postmodern critique of Western modernity.

More recently, Tu featured the concept of cultural China and dialogue among civilizations in the context of globalization. However, he became hesitant about the philosophical attempt to define Chineseness. This was because of the fluidity of the concept and the fact that he saw the attempt as not only intellectually bland but ideologically repugnant (Tu 1994, p. vii). Recently, he moved to metaphorical expressions such as the living tree or a majestic flowing stream (Tu 1994, p. 1).

Shu-hsien Liu (1937) in his early days was a student of Western philosophy and was much influenced by E. Cassirers philosophy of symbolic forms and cultural philosophy. He always had a strong concern with culture and translated Cassirers An Essay on Man into Chinese and published also Essays on Cultural Philosophy. His PhD dissertation was on P. Tillichs cultural theology. Nevertheless, with influences received from the lectures of Thom Fang and his reading of Xiong Shilis Xin weishilun, he was able, while teaching in the United States, to go back to Chinese philosophy and focus on the modernization of Confucianism. In 1980, he published Zhongguo zhexue yu xiandaihua (Chinese philosophy and modernization), and in 2000, Rujia sixiang zhi xiandai quanshi lunji (Essays on the modern interpretion of the meaning of Confucian thought).

Lius focus on the modernization of Chinese thought is twofold: to explore the eternal truth in Confucianism and to develop Confucianism in response to the needs of the time. Thus, it does not mean merely the appropriation of Western modernity. As to the history of Confucianism, Liu has done more than Tu Wei-ming who speaks of the three phases of Confucianism. Liu has published Understanding Confucian Philosophy: Classical and Sung-Ming in 1998, and in 2003, Essentials of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Thereby, he has drawn a relatively complete image of the three major phases of Confucianism: the pre-Qin, the Song-Ming, and the modern new Confucianism.

Among the third generation of modern new Confucians, Liu is the one who has developed from modernity to face the challenge of postmodernism and global-ization. However, unlike the Western understanding of postmodernism as the questioning, critique, and denial of Western modernity, Liu focuses in a more positive way by facing the challenges of the postmodern situation. Agreeing with Hans Kung and L. Swidler, he tries to contribute from the modern new Confucian point of view to global ethics and religious dialogue in a pluralist context. In his Quanqiu lunli yu zhongjiao jiaotan (Global ethics and religious dialogue), pub-lished in 2001, he creatively reinterprets Zhuangzis concept of liangxing (walking

Features 179

on two roads) and Zhang Zai and Zhu Xis idea of liyi fengshu ( principle is one and manifestations are many) as the basic Chinese guidelines to face the challenge of global pluralism.

The fourth generation of modern new Confucians, such as Wang Bangxiong (1941), Zeng Zhaoxu (1943), Yang Zuhan , Yuan Baoxin , Lin Anwu , and Li Minghui , might be further classified into the two categories of apologetic modern new Confucians, such as Yang and Li,and critical modern new Confucians, such as Lin. Yet all have contributed one way or another to the continuation of Mou Zongsans philosophical project. Lin Anwu, with his strong critical spirit, has proposed the idea of post-Mou new Confucianism.

Cheng Chung-ying (1935), a student of Thom Fangs, not recognized by Mous disciples as belonging to the same school, is actually recognized by the international academic community and scholars in China as one of the eminent members of the third generation of modern new Confucianism. Cheng founded, with friends, the International Society for Chinese Philosophy and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, to contribute to the internalization and modernization of Chinese philosophy. For him, the modernization of Chinese philosophy should base itself from the inside, on the spirit of shizhong (timely centrality) in the Zhongyong and the Yijing. Based on his ontocosmological interpretation of the Yijing, Cheng prefers to say that Confucian ethics is not an ethics of situation, but rather an ethics of timeliness. He says, in the item Time and Timeliness in the Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, Moral action, whether Daoist or Confucian infocus, can be described as time-minded, time-fitting, time-based and time-valued, and this is how the Confucian notion of the timeliness shizhong of a moral action is to be understood. All moral actions are, and must be, a matter of shizhong, for only in seeking shizhong can an action be considered moral (Cua 2002, p. 731). Thus, the concept of timeliness is interpreted by him as time-minded, time-fitting, time-based, and time-valued, indeed a creative interpretation of the Confucian notion of the timeliness.

Also, Cheng has proposed what he calls an onto-hermeneutics, emphasizing that interpretation should go along with the life-world of a cultural community, its moral values, and ontocosmology in order to conduct a self-aware and critical interpretation. Thus, he considers his hermeneutical approach different from Western exegesis and philosophical hermeneutics. Cheng considers interpretation as an unceasing process, going from subjectivity to intersubjectivity, in order to achieve understanding. The goal of interpretation is to reveal the comprehensive truth, thus the task of interpretation is not only to serve as a method; it is a mag-nanimous search for the ultimate truth.

For Cheng, philosophy should be applicable to the actual world; thus, he attempts to apply Chinese philosophy practically to the area of management. He


has launched the idea of a Chinese philosophy of management. He proposes to integrate science, culture, and art, using traditional Chinese cultural management to lead the operation of Western institutions and instruments, to form a manage-ment system that is both creative and effective. He calls this the C theory: featuring control, coordination, centrality, contingency, and creativity in Chinese management.

Philosophical Reflections on Taiwanese SubjectivityUnder the tension between globalization and localization, there emerged among politicians and social groups in Taiwan various discourses of Taiwan subjectivity. In response to this sociopolitical tendency, there have been philosophical reflec-tions on the problem of Taiwan subjectivity. Jiang Nianfeng (19551996) was among the first university professors in Taiwan to have joined the Democratic Progressive Party. In his Taiwanren yu xinzhongguo-gei minjingdang de yige xingdong zhexue (Taiwanese people and New China a philosophy of action for the Democratic Progressive Party), he proposed the idea that Taiwan should achieve its modernity by synthesizing the Western legal-political subjectivity and the Confucian moral subjectivity. For him, Taiwanese vitality will be able to solve not only the problems left by Nationalist dictatorship, but also that of the Commu-nists (Jiang 1988, p. 9).

Lin Anwus Taiwan, China, toward a World History is an effort to rethink Jiangs proposal from the starting point of Taiwans life-world and Taiwanese life-energy (Lin 1992). He believes that Taiwan, in order to get rid of what he calls double slave consciousness under the Western (external) domination and Chinas (internal) domination, should develop its own life-energy beyond what he calls, in Hegelian terms, abstract sensibility and move to a Socratic dialogical philosophy, so as to redefine Taiwanese subjectivity in a global context. Inspired by the Socratic dialogues of the ancient Greece, Lin said, Confucius legacy has being existing in the Oriental traditions, now the only way out is to overcome it with the Socratic emphasis, and the so called overcoming should be the renewal of Confucian tradition itself in a new context, only in this way can a true subjectivity be created (Lin 1998, p. 87).

It is clear that both Jiang and Lins positions, though taking into account the global context, are still limited to the modern idea of subjectivity when they feature Taiwanese subjectivity. However, today, under the challenge of post-modernism, there is a shift from the emphasis on subjectivity to the Other, or as I prefer, to many others. The so-called Taiwan spirit, Taiwan life-energy, and Taiwan subjectivity need critical reflection, conceptual analysis, and ideological clarifica-tion. Also, Taiwans relation with China and other countries needs deeper philo-sophical reflections. At least, Taiwan should go beyond the currently self-claimed Taiwanese subjectivity. This is what I have explored in my Taiwan jinsheng yu wenhua fazhan (Taiwan spirit and cultural development; Vincent Shen 2001), in

Features 181

which I discuss from a philosophical point of view Taiwanese culture and life-world in the global context.

Postmodern Philosophical ReflectionsIn the 1980s, postmodernism began to spread in Taiwan and impact academic and cultural circles. In the area of philosophy, some Taiwanese scholars have done work on posmodernism, though not much has been achieved yet. However, there are attempts to overcome the difficulties of postmodernism from Chinese philo-sophical points of view, such as Shu-hsien Lius interpretation of liangxing and liyi fenshu as Chinese philosophical response to postmodernism. Similar attempts can be found also in my own works. In regard to the postmodern shift from subjec-tivity to the Other, I attempt to replace the French postmodernists concept of the Other by the concept of many others (Vincent Shen

In Search of Modernity and Beyond - Development of Philosophy in the Republic of China in the Last...

Documents

Transcript of In Search of Modernity and Beyond - Development of Philosophy in the Republic of China in the Last...