Feng Youlan (; 4 December 1895 – 26 November 1990) was a Chinese philosopher, historian, and writer who was instrumental for reintroducing the study of
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period () and Warring States period (), during a period known as the " Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural develop ...
in the modern era. The name he published under in English was 'Fung Yu-lan,' for which see, for example, the Bodde translation of ''A History of Chinese Philosophy.'' This earlier spelling also occurs in philosophical discussions, see for example the work of
Wing-tsit Chan.
Early life, education and career
Feng Youlan was born on 4 December 1895 in
Tanghe County,
Nanyang
Nanyang is the romanization of two common Chinese place names. It may refer to:
Written as 南洋 (Southern Ocean)
* Nanyang (region), a Chinese term denoting the Southeast Asian lands surrounding the South China Sea
;China
* Nanyang Fleet, Qing ...
, Henan, China, to a middle-class family. His younger sister was
Feng Yuanjun, who would become a famous Chinese writer. He studied philosophy in the China Public School in Shanghai, between 1912 and 1915, a preparatory school for college, then studied in Chunghua University, Wuhan (later merged into
Central China Normal University) and
Peking University
Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...
between 1915 and 1918, where he was able to study Western philosophy and
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from prem ...
as well as
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period () and Warring States period (), during a period known as the " Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural develop ...
.
Upon his graduation in 1918, he traveled to the United States in 1919, where he studied at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
on the
Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program. There he met, among many philosophers who were to influence his thought and career,
John Dewey, the
pragmatist, who became his teacher. Feng gained his PhD from Columbia in 1923. His PhD thesis was titled "A Comparative Study of Life Ideals".
He went on to teach at Chinese universities including
Jinan University
Jinan University (JNU, ) is a public research university based in Guangzhou, China. "Jinan" literally means "reaching southward", indicating the university's original mission to disseminate Chinese learning and culture from North to South wh ...
,
Yenching University
Yenching University (), was a university in Beijing, China, that was formed out of the merger of four Christian colleges between the years 1915 and 1920. The term "Yenching" comes from an alternative name for old Beijing, derived from its statu ...
, and
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University (; abbr. THU) is a national public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
The university is a member of the C9 League, Double First Class University Plan, Projec ...
in Beijing. From 1934 to 1938 (and again from 1946 to 1949) he was Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua. It was while at Tsinghua that Feng published what was to be his best-known and most influential work, his ''History of Chinese Philosophy'' (1934, in two volumes). In it he presented and examined the history of Chinese philosophy from a viewpoint which was very much influenced by the Western philosophical fashions prevalent at the time, which resulted in what Peter J. King of Oxford describes as a distinctly
positivist tinge to most of the philosophers he described. Nevertheless, the book became the standard work in its field, and had a huge effect in reigniting an interest in Chinese thought.
In 1935 Feng, on his way to a conference in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
, stopped briefly in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
and was impressed with the radical social changes and cultural ferment. His speeches extolling the utopian possibilities of communism, although also describing the mistakes he saw, drew attention from Chiang Kai-sheks's police. Feng was arrested and spent a short time in jail, but soon became a firm supporter of the government and its resistance to Japan. During the
Sino-Japanese War he published works which supported the
New Life Movement for revitalizing Confucian values.
In 1939, Feng brought out his ''Xin Lixue'' (''New Rational Philosophy'', or ''Neo-Lixue''). Lixue was a philosophical position of an important group of twelfth-century
neo-Confucianists (including
Cheng Yi and
Zhu Xi
Zhu Xi (; ; October 18, 1130 – April 23, 1200), formerly romanized Chu Hsi, was a Chinese calligrapher, historian, philosopher, poet, and politician during the Song dynasty. Zhu was influential in the development of Neo-Confucianism. He con ...
); Feng's book took certain metaphysical notions from their thought and from
taoism
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...
(such as
li and
tao), analyzed and developed them in ways that owed much to the Western philosophical tradition, and produced a rationalistic neo-Confucian metaphysics. He also developed, in the same way, an account of the nature of morality and of the structure of human moral development.
War and upheaval
When the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific T ...
broke out, the students and staff of Beijing's Tsinghua and Peking Universities, together with Tianjin's
Nankai University
Nankai University (NKU or Nankai; ) is a national public research university located in Tianjin, China. It is a prestigious Chinese state Class A Double First Class University approved by the central government of China, and a member of the f ...
, fled their campuses. They went first to
Hengshan, where they set up the
Changsha Temporary University, and then to
Kunming, where they set up
Southwest Associated University.
When, in 1946 the three Universities returned to Beijing, Feng instead went to the U.S. again, this time to take up a post as visiting professor at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
. He spent the year 1948–1949 as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii. He served as President of Tsinghua University from December 1948 to May 1949 because of
Zhang Dongsun's refusal (it was known as National Tsinghua University until January 1949).
While he was at Pennsylvania, news from China made it clear that the communists were on their way to seizing power. Feng's friends tried to persuade him to stay, but he was determined to return; his political views were broadly socialist, and he thus felt optimistic about China's future under its new government.
Once back home, Feng began to study Marxist–Leninist thought, but he soon found that the political situation fell short of his hopes; by the mid-1950s his philosophical approach was being attacked by the authorities. He was forced to repudiate much of his earlier work, and to rewrite the rest – including his ''History'' – in order to fit in with the ideas of the
Cultural revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
.
Despite all this, Feng refused to leave China, and after enduring much hardship he finally saw a relaxation of censorship, and was able to write with a certain degree of freedom. He died on 26 November 1990 in Beijing.
Bibliography
Monographs and collections of essays
*1934: ''A History of Chinese Philosophy''
**1983: translated by
Derk Bodde (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)
**1948: ''
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy'' (Collier-Macmillan) — reprinted 1997: Free Press
*1939: ''Xin Li-xue'' (''New Rational Philosophy'') (Changsha: Commercial Press)
*''Selected Philosophical Writings of Fung Yu-lan'' (Beijing: Foreign Language Press)
*''Xin yuan ren'' (''A New Treatise on the Nature of Man)'' (Chongqing: Commercial Press)
*1946: ''Xin zhi yan'' (''A New Understanding of Words'') (Shanghai: Commercial Press)
**1997: ''A New Treatise on the Methodology of Metaphysics'' (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press)
*1947: ''The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy'' transl. E.R. Hughes (London: Kegan Paul)
**1970: (Greenwood Press)
*1961: ''Xin yuan dao'' (''A New Treatise on the Nature of Tao'') (Hong Kong: Zhong-guo zhe-xue jan jiu hui)
*1986: ''A New History of Chinese Philosophy'' (Beijing: Renmin Press)
As translator
* 1933: ''
Chuang-tzu: A New Selected Translation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of
Kuo Hsiang'' (Shanghai)
** 1991: ''A Taoist Classic:
Chuang-Tzu'' (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press)
Secondary
* 2004: Peter J. King ''One Hundred Philosophers'' (Hove: Apple)
* 2001: Francis Soo "Contemporary Chinese Philosophy", in Brian Carr & Indira Mahalingam
dd/nowiki> ''Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy'' (London: Routledge)
References
External links
'Philosophy of Contemporary China'
— on-line text provided b
* Xiaofei Tu,
Fung Yu-lan, 1895-1990
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feng, Youlan
1895 births
1990 deaths
20th-century Chinese historians
20th-century Chinese philosophers
Boxer Indemnity Scholarship recipients
Central China Normal University alumni
Chinese Confucianists
Chinese socialists
Columbia University alumni
Educators from Henan
Historians from Henan
Historians of philosophy
Jinan University faculty
National Southwestern Associated University faculty
National University of Peking alumni
People's Republic of China historians
People's Republic of China philosophers
Philosophers from Henan
Republic of China historians
Republic of China philosophers
Tsinghua University alumni
Tsinghua University faculty
University of Hawaiʻi faculty
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Victims of the Cultural Revolution
Writers from Nanyang, Henan