A Probe into the Implication of Education with Zhang Junmai’s Philosophy of Mind

In modern times, under the dual crisis of nationality and culture, Zhang Junmai returned to the internal philosophy of “Inner Sage,” whereby he started the global exploration of “Outer King” and constructed his own categorized Neo-Confucianism thoughts based on the contents of Yangming’s philosophy of mind as well as western philosophies. Therefore, by probing into the foundation of Zhang Junmai’s philosophy of mind, this paper explores the educational significance of the view of life based on honesty, the methodology of giving equal importance to learning and doing, and the world’s point of view contained in it, which may serve as a certain reference for the current education development.

Zhang Junmai’s Early Political Philosophy and the Paradoxes of Chinese Modernity

This article examines the significance of reflexive self-critical modernity in the development of early “New Confucianism” by reconsidering the example of Zhang Junmai in the context of the May Fourth and New Culture Movements. Whereas these movements advocated scientific rationality and thorough Westernization, Zhang’s education and research in Germany before and after the First World War led him to a critical perspective on Western modernity informed by its contemporary crisis tendencies and Western philosophical and social-political critics. Zhang adopted elements from German Idealism, life-philosophy, and social democracy to critique the May Fourth and New Culture Movements and reconstruct the “rational core” and ethical sensibility of Confucian philosophy. Zhang’s “self-critical modernity” was oriented toward a moral and social-political instead of a scientific and technological vision of Westernization. Zhang’s position was condemned by New Culture champions of scientific modernity who construed Zhang’s position as reactionary metaphysics beholden to the past without addressing his self-critical interpretation of modernity that adopted early twentieth century Western critiques of the spiritual and capitalist crisis-tendencies of modernity. In response to this complex situation, Zhang articulated a phenomenological interpretation of the social-political, ethical, and cultural lifeworld, drawing on classic and contemporary Chinese and Western sources, which endeavoured to more adequately address the paradoxes of Westernization and modernization, and the crisis of Chinese ethical life.

Une lecture chinoise d’Arnold Toynbee: Zhang Junmai et le problème de la continuité historique de la culture chinoise

The historical continuity of Chinese culture from the early dynasties to modern times is a common topic in Chinese “culturalist discourses”. The intellectuals who wanted to defend the legitimacy of a Chinese culture compatible with modernity almost never put it into question. Zhang Junmai (1887–1969), in a short book entitled

Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China

This article explores the political dynamics of modern Chinese cultural conservatism. It proceeds from the premise that modern Chinese conservatism, as distinct from traditionalism, was a response to modernity and, as such, a part of modernity. The article identifies the conservative with the nationalist, but not vice versa, and understands politico-cultural conservatism as politico-cultural nationalism. It will first trace the rise of modern Chinese conservative thought, revisit the ideas of two noted cultural conservatives Liang Shuming and Zhang Junmai, examine the politics of China-based cultural reconstruction, and then explore the conservative thought of the war period (1937–1945) to illustrate the interplay of war, culture and nationalism. It argues, basically, that although the conservatives did not defend the prevailing socio-political order as a whole, their understanding of politics from a cultural perspective was nuanced and that they stood in an ambiguous relationship with the existing regime and the party-state.