The Fifteen Exponents of New Ru Learning (Supplement to Chapter 9)

The fifteen exponents of New Ru Learning (supplement to chapter 9) Table of contents 1. Additional text 2. Notes https://bloomsbury.com/uk/confucianism-in-china-9781474242431/ © Tony Swain (2017) Confucianism in China, Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 1. Additional text In chapter 9, I explained how a major research project headed by Fang Keli eventually settled on 15 individuals said to be the prime representatives of New Ru Learning. I also mentioned that few of the 15 in fact closely conformed to the criteria being used to define the movement. This supplement offers brief intellectual biographies of each of these thinkers. This should further clarify my decision to focus on a few select individuals in chapter 9. There has been some debate over the ordering of ‘generations’. Besides their raw age, the generations as I present them correspond to Chinese political developments. The first generation’s most important philosophical works predate the formation of the PRC in 1949. Some of them remained to subsequently defend or revise their ideas under Mao while others left the country for Taiwan, Hong Kong and the USA. The second generation contains scholars who studied under mainland teachers but whose thinking came to maturity abroad. The second generation defines the core of New Ru Learning. Together with Zhang Junmai, they constitute the signatories of the Manifesto of 1958. It was the fact that they were all followers of Xiong Shili which subsequently saw him being identified as the patriarch of the movement. The third generation completed their education overseas. While they have not produced grand philosophical edifices like their predecessors their presence has redefined all that preceded them. Referring in particular to Tu Weiming and Liu Shuxian, John Makeham has observed: ‘It is [the so-called third generation New Confucians] that, together with post-1985 mainland scholars, retrospectively created the very idea of New Confucianism as a philosophical school with its own self-identity.’i * First Generation A. First generation who remained in the PRC. Liang Shuming (1893-1988) is discussed in chapter 8. He did not receive a classical education and only became a self-made scholar in adulthood. He was primarily attracted to Buddhism and the Buddhist-influenced teachings of Wang Yangming and his followers. His highly influential Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue (Eastern and Western Cultures and their https://bloomsbury.com/uk/confucianism-in-china-9781474242431/ © Tony Swain (2017) Confucianism in China, Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Philosophies) began a vogue for defining the fundamental differences between East and West and in that context he gave the impression that he saw Ru thought as embodying the ultimate philosophical stance. This was the position adopted by Xiong Shili, with whom Liang disagreed. Liang himself retained his allegiance to Buddhism and he is thus usually regarded as a precursor of Xin ruxue rather than an advocate of its tenets. While headstrong and outspoken, Liang was effectively silenced by Mao. Xiong Shili (1885-1968) is usually considered the founder of Xin ruxue and is discussed in chapters 8 and 9. Although from a poor family and orphaned at a young age he nonetheless managed to study the Classics while also herding cows and eventually came to assist Liang Shuming teaching Buddhist philosophy. In his Xin weishi lun (New Treatise on Weishi) he draws heavily upon Consciousness Only (weishi) Buddhist thought but tries to show how it was superseded by authentic Ru Philosophy. Xiong managed to avoid being heavily monitored or persecuted when the Communists came to power, although he too suffered during the Cultural Revolution. His metaphysics changed very little in this period but he reworked the political implications of his ideas so that Kongzi was presented as a champion of socialist revolution. Xiong Shili’s direct influence on the three second generation exponents of Xin ruxue (Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan and Mou Zongsan) provided the primary lineage which shaped and defined the movement. Ma Yifu (1883-1967) had a traditional Ru education and had done exceptionally well in examinations. Although he lived in the USA for a year and poured himself into Western learning (from Aristotle to Darwin and Marx) he returned to China and never alluded to Western ideas thereafter. He was reclusive by temperament and established a short-lived academy to restore traditional education. He was unusually well treated by officials of the new PRC but was nonetheless persecuted by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, which probably hastened his death. While highly regarded, he was seen more as a quaint relic of Song-Ming scholarship than an active participant in the new synthetic ideas that distinguish Xin ruxue. https://bloomsbury.com/uk/confucianism-in-china-9781474242431/ © Tony Swain (2017) Confucianism in China, Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Feng Youlan (1895-1990) studied at Peking University where he trained under Liang Shuming amongst others. Later, he took his doctorate at Columbia University where John Dewey was his mentor. Feng is primarily known, East and West, for his histories of Chinese philosophy. Although he developed some original ideas from concepts found in Zhu Xi, he was hardly a champion of Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy. Indeed Feng later reflected that it was only on the eve of the Communist takeover that he ‘became dissatisfied with being a historian and became a philosopher’.ii As a historian, Feng had great enthusiasm for his subject matter, but as a philosopher he seemed to be - sometimes to a greater extent and at other times to a lesser degree - Marxist. Feng has been the most controversial inclusion amongst the New Ru. He Lin (1902-1992) obtained some university education in China before going to the United States and studying under Alfred North Whitehead who inspired in him an interest in the resonance between Song-Ming Principle Learning and Spinoza’s philosophy. He subsequently became more engaged with Neo-Hegelian thought and so continued his education in Berlin, before returning to teach in China. Despite the fact that he first identified the emergence of ‘Xin rujia’ in twentieth century China and spoke highly of Liang Shuming and Xiong Shili, and notwithstanding his regard for Ru philosophical and ethical legacies, He was at heart primarily Hegelian. He chose to stay in mainland China when the Communists came to power and he soon renounced Hegelian idealism to embrace dialectical materialism and he joined the campaigns to critique Liang Shuming and others. B. First generation who departed the PRC. Zhang Junmai (Carson Chang, 1886-1869) was certainly closely affiliated with the core group who came to define Xin ruxue. A friend and with some reservations a follower of Liang Qichao who had in turn been a (not uncritical) follower of and collaborator with Kang Youwei, Zhang was first and foremost a frustrated politician who sought to introduce democracy in China. Philosophically, he professed a blend of Song-Ming Principle Learning with Kantian and Hegelian idealism but he insisted that China’s future could not be tied to any ‘ism’ and maintained Kongzi himself advocated tolerance of philosophical pluralism. He was, with Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan and Mou Zongsan a signatory of the Manifesto of 1958, https://bloomsbury.com/uk/confucianism-in-china-9781474242431/ © Tony Swain (2017) Confucianism in China, Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC which he had in fact initiated, but unlike Tang and Mou he did not see Ru Learning as inherently religious and he did not demand the recognition of an orthodox lineage of interpretation (daotong). Traveling widely to experience a spectrum of political systems in practice, he is perhaps best seen as a less doctrinaire supporter of the philosophies being developed by his co-signatories. Qian Mu (1895-1990) was to a large extent self-educated but his publications on Chinese intellectual history were of such a high quality that he was offered a university post at Peking University. He was branded a conservative and chose to retreat to Hong Kong when the Communists came to power in 1949. There, with Tang Junyi, he founded the New Asia College which came to be seen as the focus of Xin ruxue. In 1967 he moved to Taiwan. He definitely deemed the Chinese national ethos to have been primarily shaped by Ru values and these he believed were of cardinal importance to China’s future. He was nonetheless disinclined to push a particular interpretation of Ru learning. His student Yu Yingshi (see below) has stressed that while his teacher was a close friend of those now deemed to be core advocates of Xin ruxue, he did not fully endorse their views. He declined to sign the Manifesto of 1958 and was not willing to promote their sectarian interpretations. He is more accurately seen as a sympathetic historian of Ru tradition rather that an advocate of a specific form of its revival. Fang Dongmei (Thomé H. Fang, 1899-1977) once said: ‘I am a Confucian by family tradition; a Daoist by temperament; a Buddhist by religious inspiration; moreover, I am a Westerner by training.’iii Fang had too great an appreciation for the ultimate mystery of existence and too great a love for the vast diversity of human attempts to fathom that mystery, to be a dogmatic advocate of any one philosophical view. He had studied the Classics as a child and whilst at university in Nanjing was inspired by a visit by John Dewey to continue his education in the USA. He was particularly attracted to the ideas of Bergson, William James and Hegel but he also researched ancient Greek Philosophy and, at a later date, Indian thought.

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