Chapter 4 From “Abstract Inheritance” to Complete Social Contextualization: 1960s–1970s

Through the 1950s and beyond, Feng Youlan’s fate as a Chinese intellectual, like that of other intellectuals throughout the country, was constantly decided by how he mattered in the social outcome that the government wanted to achieve. From 1950 to early 1957, Communist ’s need for social control of intellec- tuals often conflicted with the need to appropriate the intellectual labor of that group. Therefore, high-handed control and persecution often alternated, quite erratically, with more relaxed political control or encouragement toward academic achievements. Feng Youlan was constantly dangled in a politically and academically awk- ward position, at once whipped for his stand on Confucius and acknowledged as a leading intellectual. As a professor, Feng’s rank was level one, the highest and most prestigious among faculty members in Communist Chinese univer- sities after 1955. He was also one of the prestigious permanent academicians of the Chinese Academy of Science, and was appointed a representative of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference consecutively from the second to the sixth conference (1949–1988), as well as a representative at the Fourth Chinese People’s Congress (1975–1978). When Feng was politically attacked by his students and the Department of Philosophy in July 1960, Ping 陆平 (1914–2002), the Communist Party secretary at Peking University, went to visit him at home and remarked that the students were overly criti- cal of him. Wang Qingshu 王庆淑, the party secretary of the Department of Philosophy, also visited Feng at home and apologized for the students’ conduct on behalf of the party secretariat at the department.1 Yet it was the same Lu Ping who in 1957 regretted that senior professors such as Feng Youlan had not been sufficiently “exposed” so they could not be pinned down as “rightists.”2 Zhao Guodong 赵国栋, a member of the Peking University party division, expressed grave concern over the negative influence famous professors like Feng Youlan exerted on young students, that some students in the philosophy

1 FYLXSNPCB, 478–79. 2 Chen, Guguo renmin, 90–91.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004301306_006 From “Abstract Inheritance” to Social Contextualization 129 department called Feng a “live dictionary,” and said Feng did a better job study- ing the works of Marx and Lenin than some party members.3 Criticism against Feng had also come from higher up. In July 1958, Lu Dingyi 陆定一 (1906–1996), minister of the Central Propaganda Bureau, compared philosophy to common sense or popular knowledge, saying even a child knew materialism, being able to identify his or her mother as a human being instead of a dog. 康生 (1898–1975), an influential member of the Central Committee of the in charge of cultural affairs, com- mented on Feng Youlan’s abstract inheritance as linguistic sophism (yuyan shangde guibian 语言上的诡辩).4 In May 1959, Feng handed a manuscript of self-criticism, A Review of My Past Forty Years (Sishinian de huigu 四十年的回 顾), to Kang Sheng, in which he gave a systematic criticism of his own work from the 1930s on. Yet, within a week he turned in his self-criticism, at a col- loquium of the history of Chinese philosophy at Peking University on May 7–8, 1959, in response to the criticism of multiple colleagues includinzg Guan Feng, Ren Jiyu 任继愈 (1916–2009), and Du Guoxiang 杜国庠 (1889–1961), Feng argued that abstract inheritance should still be a topic of discussion despite any flaws it might have.5 In June 1959, against criticism from 陈伯达 (1904–1989), long-time secretary to and theoretician of the Chinese Communist Party, that Feng simply circled around in metaphysics with his “abstract inheritance,” Feng said that Chen had simply misplaced his attention and that focus should not be on the abstraction (hua 化), but on the method of historical inquiry. He called Chen Boda “muddle headed,” (sixiang hunluan 思想混乱) and confusing in his questions. If one was attacked merely for uttering the word abstraction, then no one would dare to talk history.6 Despite these criticisms, including a denunciation written by the Chinese Communist Party Committee of Peking University that charged Feng for never having seen eye to eye with the party after 1949, and for confronting the party through scholarly topics in the his- tory of philosophy,7 Feng serialized his article, “Lun Kongzi” (On Confucius), in the Guangming Daily 光明日报 on July 22 and 29, 1959, arguing that Confucius represented the interests of the new class of landlords and did propose social reforms, although his ideas were limited and did not challenge the aristocratic

3 Ibid., 94. 4 Ibid., 93. 5 FYLXSNPCB, 465. 6 Ibid., 466. 7 Ibid., 472–73.