A Modern Chinese Philosophy Built upon Critically Received Traditions: Feng Youlan’s New Principle-Centered Learning and the Question of Its Relationship to Contemporary New Ruist (“Confucian”) Philosophies

In his recent book on “new traditionalism” (xin chuantongzhuyi 新傳統主義) Zheng Jiadong 鄭家棟 refers to Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1895–1990) as part of a broader movement to reinstate selective traditional concepts within the framework of a distinctively modern style of Chinese philosophizing. Much to his credit, Zheng handles the varying philosophical concerns of Feng’s controversial career before and after the establishment of the People’s Republic in China in 1949 with considerable objectivity, recognizing that Feng’s writings display some very new interests after that watershed event. In addition, he notes Feng’s consistent concern to build an interpretative bridge—or perhaps it is better to speak of him building several different bridges at various times during his long career—between the traditional concepts he coined as early as 1931 as “Chinese philosophical” ideas, and the modern “Western” and later explicitly “Marxist” philosophical concepts to which he regularly compared them.