History of Chinese Philosophy/Chapter 17

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History of Chinese Philosophy

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Chapter 17: New Confucianism — The Creative Transformation of Tradition

1. Xiong Shili and the Reconstruction of Confucian Metaphysics

New Confucianism (新儒学, Xin Ruxue or 新儒家, Xin Rujia) is the most philosophically significant intellectual movement in twentieth-century Chinese thought — a sustained and creative effort to demonstrate that the Confucian philosophical tradition possesses the resources to address the challenges of modernity and to contribute to the global philosophical conversation on terms of equality rather than subservience. Against the radical iconoclasts of the New Culture Movement, who regarded the Confucian tradition as a dead burden to be discarded, and against the uncritical traditionalists, who sought to preserve the Confucian heritage in its inherited form, the New Confucians argued for a "creative transformation" (创造性转化, chuangzaoxing zhuanhua) of the tradition — a process of reinterpreting, reconstructing, and developing Confucian philosophy in dialogue with Western thought while remaining faithful to what they regarded as its essential insights.

The founding figure of this movement was Xiong Shili (熊十力, 1885–1968), a philosopher of extraordinary intellectual power and personal intensity who spent his life constructing a comprehensive metaphysical system that attempted to synthesize the insights of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Western philosophy into a new philosophical vision. Xiong's philosophical journey began in the study of Yogacara Buddhism (唯识学, weishi xue), which he pursued under the great Buddhist scholar Ouyang Jingwu (欧阳竟无, 1871–1943) at the China Institute of Inner Learning (支那内学院, Zhina Neixueyuan) in Nanjing. But Xiong soon became dissatisfied with what he perceived as the fundamental limitations of the Buddhist philosophical position — its tendency toward world-negation, its doctrine of "consciousness-only" (唯识, weishi) which denied the reality of the external world, and its ultimate aspiration toward the extinction of worldly engagement.

Xiong Shili's magnum opus, Xin weishi lun (新唯识论, New Treatise on Consciousness-Only, first version 1932; revised version 1944), was a comprehensive critique and reconstruction of the Yogacara system that transformed it, paradoxically, into a vehicle for the expression of Confucian philosophical values. Where Yogacara Buddhism had argued that the phenomenal world is a construction of consciousness and that liberation consists in the cessation of this constructive activity, Xiong argued that consciousness and reality are not opposed but identical — that the creative activity of the mind is not an illusion to be overcome but the fundamental reality of the universe expressing itself through human awareness. This position allowed Xiong to affirm the reality of the phenomenal world and the value of worldly engagement — both of which orthodox Buddhism tended to negate — while retaining the Buddhist insight that reality is fundamentally dynamic, creative, and spiritual rather than static, inert, and material.

The central concept of Xiong Shili's mature philosophy is benti (本体, "original substance" or "fundamental reality"), which he understood as a dynamic, creative reality that ceaselessly produces and transforms the phenomenal world. Drawing on the Yijing (易经, Book of Changes) and its concept of sheng sheng bu xi (生生不息, "ceaseless creative production"), Xiong argued that benti is not a static substance underlying change but the dynamic activity of change itself — a ceaseless process of "closing and opening" (翕辟, xipi) through which reality continuously differentiates itself into the myriad phenomena of the world and then reintegrates them into a higher unity. This concept of reality as dynamic, creative process rather than as static substance represents one of the most original contributions of modern Chinese philosophy and resonates with aspects of the Western process philosophy of Whitehead and Bergson, though Xiong developed his ideas independently of these thinkers.

Xiong Shili's reconstruction of Confucian metaphysics was motivated by the conviction that the Confucian tradition possessed a profound and valid understanding of the nature of reality that had been obscured by the dominance of Buddhist and Neo-Confucian metaphysics and that could be recovered and developed through a creative return to the original Confucian sources — particularly the Yijing and Mencius. His philosophical project was not a backward-looking restoration of a past tradition but a forward-looking reconstruction that sought to develop the deepest insights of Confucian thought into a comprehensive philosophical system capable of engaging with modern science, Western philosophy, and the challenges of contemporary life.

Xiong Shili's influence on subsequent Chinese philosophy was immense. He was the teacher of the three most important New Confucian philosophers of the next generation — Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan — and his metaphysical framework provided the foundation on which they built their own philosophical systems. His insistence that Chinese philosophy possessed genuine metaphysical depth — that it was not merely a collection of practical moral maxims but a sophisticated philosophical tradition capable of addressing the deepest questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and human existence — established the intellectual self-confidence that would sustain the New Confucian movement through decades of political upheaval and cultural criticism.

2. Liang Shuming: Cultures and Philosophical Foundations

Liang Shuming (梁漱溟, 1893–1988), whose early work on the comparative philosophy of civilizations was discussed in the previous chapter, occupies a unique position in the history of New Confucianism. He was the first major Chinese philosopher of the twentieth century to argue systematically that Chinese civilization possessed a distinctive philosophical vision of permanent value that could not be reduced to a "backward" version of Western modernity, and his work established the fundamental problematic — the question of the relationship between Chinese cultural identity and Western-derived modernity — that would define the New Confucian movement for the rest of the century.

Liang's contribution to New Confucianism went beyond the comparative cultural analysis of his early masterwork. In his later writings, particularly Zhongguo wenhua yaoyi (中国文化要义, The Essential Features of Chinese Culture, 1949), Liang developed a more detailed analysis of the distinctive characteristics of Chinese culture that he believed constituted its permanent contribution to human civilization. The central characteristic, in Liang's analysis, was the primacy of "ethical relations" (伦理关系, lunli guanxi) over all other forms of social organization. Where Western societies had developed impersonal institutional structures — legal systems, market economies, bureaucratic states — as the primary mechanisms of social order, Chinese society had relied on personal ethical relationships — the bonds of family, friendship, teacher-student, and community — as the foundation of social life. This reliance on personal ethics rather than impersonal institutions was, Liang argued, both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of Chinese culture: it produced a social life of extraordinary warmth, depth, and moral richness, but it also made Chinese society vulnerable to institutional inefficiency, corruption, and the concentration of power in personal networks.

Liang Shuming's concept of zhijue (直觉, "intuition") as the distinctive mode of Chinese knowing remained central to his mature philosophy. He argued that Chinese philosophy, unlike Western philosophy, was not based on logical analysis and abstract conceptualization but on a direct, intuitive apprehension of reality that engaged the whole person — intellect, emotion, and will — in a single, integrated act of understanding. This concept of intuition was not anti-rational but trans-rational: it did not deny the validity of logical analysis but insisted that logical analysis was a secondary, derivative mode of knowing that could not capture the full depth and richness of reality. The primary mode of knowing, for Liang, was the direct, lived experience of reality in its concrete, qualitative fullness — an experience that could be cultivated through moral practice and self-reflection but not through detached intellectual analysis alone.

Liang Shuming's lifelong commitment to rural reconstruction — his practical effort to revitalize Chinese rural communities through a combination of Confucian ethical education and modern institutional development — gave his philosophical ideas a practical dimension that distinguished him from many of his more academically oriented contemporaries. His Zouping experiment in Shandong province (1931–1937) demonstrated that Confucian values could be mobilized in the service of modern social development and that the defense of Chinese culture need not take the form of a backward-looking nostalgia for the past but could be a creative engagement with the challenges of the present.

Liang Shuming's extraordinary longevity — he lived to the age of ninety-five, surviving the Japanese invasion, the civil war, the Communist revolution, and the Cultural Revolution — made him a living link between the philosophical world of the early Republic and the intellectual ferment of the reform era. His famous defiance of Mao Zedong in 1953 — when he publicly criticized the Communist government's neglect of the peasantry and refused to retract his criticism despite intense political pressure — demonstrated the moral courage that was, for Liang, the essence of the Confucian tradition and the quality that Chinese culture most needed to preserve.

3. Feng Youlan: "New Principle Learning" and A History of Chinese Philosophy

Feng Youlan (冯友兰, 1895–1990) was the most widely read and most internationally influential Chinese philosopher of the twentieth century, and his work represents the most sustained attempt to reconstruct Chinese philosophy using the conceptual tools of Western philosophy while remaining faithful to the spirit of the Chinese tradition. Feng's intellectual project was twofold: to write a comprehensive, critical history of Chinese philosophy that would make the Chinese philosophical tradition accessible to the modern world, and to develop a new philosophical system — "New Principle Learning" (新理学, Xin Lixue) — that would demonstrate the continuing vitality and relevance of Confucian metaphysics.

Feng Youlan's Zhongguo zhexue shi (中国哲学史, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2 vols., 1931 and 1934; English translation by Derk Bodde, 1937 and 1952) was a landmark work that established Chinese philosophy as a legitimate field of academic study in the modern world. For the first time, the entire history of Chinese thought — from the pre-Qin schools through the Neo-Confucians of the Song and Ming dynasties — was presented in a systematic, critical, and analytically rigorous manner that could be understood by readers trained in the Western philosophical tradition. Feng's History demonstrated that Chinese thought was not a collection of unsystematic moral maxims or mystical intuitions but a sophisticated philosophical tradition with its own logic, its own method, and its own distinctive contributions to the perennial questions of philosophy.

Feng's "New Principle Learning" (新理学, Xin Lixue), developed most fully in a series of six works written during the 1930s and 1940s (collectively known as the Zhenyuan liu shu 贞元六书, "Six Books of Zhenyuan"), was an ambitious attempt to reconstruct the metaphysics of Zhu Xi's lixue (理学, "Learning of Principle") using the methods of modern Western logic and analytic philosophy. Drawing on the philosophy of the "New Realists" — particularly Plato's theory of forms as mediated through modern realist philosophers like Bertrand Russell — Feng argued that Zhu Xi's concept of li (理, "principle") could be reinterpreted as a concept of formal or logical structure that is independent of any particular material instantiation. Just as the Platonic form of "triangle" exists independently of any particular physical triangle, so the li of each thing — its essential nature, its principle — exists independently of the particular material (qi) in which it is realized.

This reconstruction allowed Feng to defend the Zhu Xi metaphysical tradition against its modern critics while simultaneously purging it of what he regarded as its scientifically untenable elements. In particular, Feng rejected the Neo-Confucian cosmology — the detailed account of how li and qi interact to produce the physical universe — and retained only the formal, logical structure of the Zhu Xi system. The result was a "New Principle Learning" that was metaphysically austere, logically rigorous, and compatible with modern science — but that also, in the eyes of its critics, had been emptied of the concrete moral and spiritual content that had given the original lixue its philosophical power.

Feng Youlan's philosophy occupied a distinctive position in the spectrum of modern Chinese thought. Against the New Culture iconoclasts, Feng insisted that Chinese philosophy was a tradition of genuine and lasting philosophical value. Against the cultural conservatives, he insisted that this tradition must be subjected to the same rigorous critical analysis that Western philosophy had undergone. Against the Marxists, he insisted that philosophical questions could not be reduced to questions of class interest and economic determination. His effort to "inherit critically" (批判地继承, pipan de jicheng) the Chinese philosophical tradition — to preserve its essential insights while discarding its outdated elements — represented a model of philosophical engagement with tradition that remains relevant and influential today.

Feng Youlan's later career, during which he attempted to accommodate his philosophy to the demands of Maoist Marxism, has been the subject of much debate and some criticism. His participation in various political campaigns, including the denunciation of Confucianism during the "Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius" movement (1973–74), damaged his philosophical reputation and raised questions about the relationship between philosophical integrity and political survival. But his major philosophical works of the 1930s and 1940s retain their intellectual power, and his History of Chinese Philosophy remains the standard reference work in the field more than nine decades after its publication.

4. He Lin and "New Mind Learning"

He Lin (贺麟, 1902–1992), a philosopher trained at both Harvard and Berlin who was deeply influenced by the absolute idealism of Hegel and the Neo-Kantian tradition, developed a "New Mind Learning" (新心学, Xin Xinxue) that attempted to reconstruct the Wang Yangming tradition of xinxue (心学, "Learning of the Mind-Heart") using the conceptual resources of German Idealism. He Lin's project was the philosophical counterpart to Feng Youlan's "New Principle Learning": where Feng sought to reconstruct the Zhu Xi tradition of lixue using modern logic and analytic philosophy, He Lin sought to reconstruct the Wang Yangming tradition of xinxue using Hegelian dialectics and the philosophy of spirit.

He Lin's central philosophical argument was that the Wang Yangming concept of xin (心, "mind-heart") — the creative, self-aware, morally active consciousness that is the ground of all knowledge and value — corresponds, in fundamental respects, to the Hegelian concept of Geist (spirit, mind) — the self-developing, self-conscious universal reason that progressively realizes itself through history and culture. Both concepts posit a fundamental reality that is mental or spiritual rather than material, that is dynamic and creative rather than static and inert, and that achieves its fullest expression through the activity of self-consciousness. By establishing this correspondence, He Lin aimed to demonstrate that the Chinese philosophical tradition possessed its own version of philosophical idealism that was no less sophisticated or profound than the European tradition of Hegel and his successors.

He Lin argued that the contemporary crisis of Chinese culture was not, as the New Culture iconoclasts maintained, a crisis caused by the backwardness of Chinese thought but a crisis caused by the failure to realize the philosophical potential already latent within the Chinese tradition. The Wang Yangming tradition, in particular, contained philosophical resources — its concept of the creative mind, its emphasis on the unity of knowledge and action, its vision of moral cultivation as the realization of innate potential — that were directly relevant to the challenges of modernity and that could, if properly developed, provide the philosophical foundation for a distinctively Chinese form of modernity.

He Lin's "New Mind Learning" was less influential than Feng Youlan's "New Principle Learning," partly because of its greater philosophical difficulty and partly because the Hegelian framework on which it was built was less accessible to Chinese readers than the logical and analytic framework employed by Feng. But He Lin's work made an important contribution to the New Confucian movement by demonstrating the philosophical richness and contemporary relevance of the xinxue tradition and by establishing connections between Chinese idealism and Western idealism that would be further developed by Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi.

5. The 1958 Manifesto for Chinese Culture

The "Manifesto for a Reappraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture" (为中国文化敬告世界人士宣言, Wei Zhongguo wenhua jinggao shijie renshi xuanyan), published on New Year's Day 1958 and signed by Tang Junyi (唐君毅, 1909–1978), Mou Zongsan (牟宗三, 1909–1995), Xu Fuguan (徐复观, 1903–1982), and Zhang Junmai (张君劢, 1887–1969), was the defining document of the New Confucian movement and one of the most important philosophical statements in the history of modern Chinese thought. Written in the aftermath of the Chinese Communist revolution and the establishment of the People's Republic, which the signatories — all of whom were living in exile in Hong Kong or Taiwan — regarded as a catastrophe for Chinese culture, the Manifesto was both a defense of the Chinese philosophical tradition against its modern critics and a program for its creative development in the contemporary world.

The Manifesto addressed itself to "scholars studying China throughout the world" and argued that the dominant Western approaches to the study of Chinese thought and culture — whether Marxist, positivist, or Orientalist — were fundamentally flawed because they failed to understand Chinese culture from within, on its own terms, as a living tradition of philosophical reflection and moral cultivation. Western scholars, the Manifesto charged, tended to treat Chinese culture as an object of detached, scientific study — as a "museum piece" to be analyzed and classified — rather than as a living philosophical tradition with its own integrity, its own logic, and its own continuing relevance to the fundamental questions of human existence.

The Manifesto identified what it regarded as the distinctive philosophical contribution of the Chinese tradition: the concept of "moral reason" (道德理性, daode lixing) or "moral subjectivity" (道德主体性, daode zhutixing) — the idea that the deepest reality accessible to human beings is the moral consciousness itself, and that the cultivation and realization of this moral consciousness is the central task of human life. This concept, the Manifesto argued, represents a genuine and valuable philosophical insight that has no precise parallel in the Western tradition and that the Western tradition needs in order to correct its own one-sidedness — its tendency to develop science, technology, and institutional organization at the expense of inner moral cultivation.

At the same time, the Manifesto acknowledged that the Chinese tradition had its own limitations and blind spots — particularly in the development of science, democratic institutions, and systematic philosophical methodology — and that it needed to learn from the West in these areas. The Manifesto argued for a program of "creative development" (开出, kaichu, literally "opening out") in which the Chinese tradition would develop new dimensions from within its own resources, guided by but not subordinated to Western models. Specifically, the Manifesto argued that the Chinese concept of "moral subjectivity" — properly developed — could generate both a scientific worldview (through the "self-negation" of moral reason, which will be discussed in connection with Mou Zongsan) and a democratic political order (through the extension of moral concern from the individual to the institutional level).

The 1958 Manifesto established the intellectual agenda that would define the New Confucian movement for the next several decades: the defense of the philosophical depth and continuing relevance of the Chinese tradition; the acknowledgment of its limitations in specific areas; the program of "creative development" through dialogue with Western thought; and the aspiration to a global philosophical conversation in which the Chinese tradition would participate as an equal partner rather than as a subordinate borrower. Whatever one's assessment of the specific arguments of the Manifesto, its historical significance is beyond question: it marked the emergence of New Confucianism as a self-conscious philosophical movement with a clear program and a coherent identity.

6. Mou Zongsan: "Self-Negation of Moral Reason"

Mou Zongsan (牟宗三, 1909–1995) was the most philosophically rigorous and systematically ambitious of the New Confucian philosophers — and arguably the most important Chinese philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. A student of Xiong Shili who later became a leading interpreter of Western philosophy (particularly Kant and Hegel) and a scholar of extraordinary breadth in both the Chinese and Western traditions, Mou devoted his career to the construction of a comprehensive philosophical system that would demonstrate the ability of the Confucian tradition to address the full range of philosophical problems raised by Western thought — from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics and political philosophy — on terms of genuine philosophical equality.

Mou Zongsan's most original and most controversial philosophical concept is the "self-negation of moral reason" (道德理性之自我坎陷, daode lixing zhi ziwo kanxian), also translated as the "self-restriction" or "self-limitation" of moral reason. This concept represents Mou's attempt to solve what he regarded as the central problem of Chinese philosophy: the problem of how a tradition that has achieved the highest development of moral consciousness (道德主体性, daode zhutixing) — but that has not developed science, democracy, or systematic philosophical methodology — can generate these developments from within its own resources rather than simply borrowing them from the West.

Mou's argument, drawing on a creative appropriation of Kant's distinction between the "noumenal" and "phenomenal" realms and Hegel's dialectical method, proceeds as follows. The Chinese philosophical tradition, at its best, has achieved direct access to what Kant called the "noumenal" realm — the realm of moral reality, of things as they are in themselves, of the "intellectual intuition" (智的直觉, zhi de zhijue) that Kant himself had denied to human beings but that, Mou argued, is precisely what the Chinese concept of liangzhi (良知, "innate moral knowledge") describes. The Western philosophical tradition, by contrast, has been unable to access the noumenal realm directly (because Kant's philosophy blocks this access) but has achieved extraordinary development in the "phenomenal" realm — the realm of empirical knowledge, scientific investigation, and institutional organization.

The concept of the "self-negation of moral reason" describes the process by which moral consciousness — which in the Chinese tradition remains at the level of direct noumenal awareness — must "negate" or "restrict" itself in order to "open out" (开出, kaichu) the phenomenal realm of objective knowledge and institutional organization. This self-negation is not a loss or a diminution of moral consciousness but a creative act through which moral consciousness generates a new dimension of itself — the dimension of objective, empirical, scientific knowledge — that it had previously lacked. Just as, in Hegel's dialectic, a concept must "negate" itself in order to develop into a higher, more comprehensive form, so moral reason must "negate" its immediate, intuitive mode of knowing in order to develop the mediated, analytical, empirical mode of knowing that is the foundation of science and democratic governance.

This concept is philosophically audacious and has been both praised for its creativity and criticized for its obscurity. Its admirers regard it as a brilliant solution to the problem of how to reconcile the insights of Chinese moral philosophy with the achievements of Western science and democracy — a solution that preserves the primacy of moral consciousness while explaining how science and democracy can be developed from within the Confucian tradition. Its critics argue that the concept is philosophically confused — that it conflates Kantian and Hegelian frameworks that are fundamentally incompatible, and that it fails to provide a convincing explanation of how a tradition centered on moral cultivation can generate the specific, concrete achievements of Western science and democratic governance.

Mou Zongsan's broader philosophical project included ambitious works on Chinese Buddhist philosophy (particularly the Tiantai school, which he regarded as the highest expression of Buddhist metaphysics), on the comparative philosophy of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, and on the systematic reconstruction of Confucian epistemology and metaphysics. His prolific output — dozens of major works published over a career spanning more than five decades — established him as the most comprehensive and most philosophically demanding of the New Confucian thinkers and ensured that his ideas would set the terms of philosophical debate in the Chinese-speaking world for generations to come.

7. Tang Junyi: Cultural Consciousness and the Philosophy of Spirit

Tang Junyi (唐君毅, 1909–1978), a student of Xiong Shili and co-signatory of the 1958 Manifesto, developed a comprehensive philosophy of culture and spirit (精神, jingshen) that represents one of the most ambitious intellectual achievements of twentieth-century Chinese philosophy. Where Mou Zongsan focused on the rigorous logical and epistemological reconstruction of Confucian philosophy, Tang Junyi's philosophical project was broader and more humanistic in scope: he sought to articulate a vision of "cultural consciousness" (文化意识, wenhua yishi) that would encompass the entire range of human spiritual activity — from science and philosophy to art, religion, and moral practice — within a single, comprehensive philosophical framework.

Tang Junyi's magnum opus, the Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie (生命存在与心灵境界, Life, Existence, and the Horizons of the Mind, 1977), published a year before his death, is a vast work of systematic philosophy that traces the progressive development of human consciousness through nine ascending "horizons" (境界, jingjie) — from the most elementary forms of sensory experience to the highest forms of moral and spiritual awareness. These nine horizons are organized in three triads: the "objective" horizons (客观境, keguan jing), which encompass the experience of the natural world, including scientific knowledge; the "subjective" horizons (主观境, zhuguan jing), which encompass the experience of the self, including moral self-cultivation and aesthetic experience; and the "transcendent" horizons (超主客观境, chao zhukeguan jing), which encompass the forms of awareness that transcend the subject-object distinction, including religious consciousness and what Tang called the "horizon of the heavenly virtue flowing forth" (天德流行境, tiande liuxing jing) — the Confucian vision of the moral subject united with the creative activity of Heaven itself.

This schema — which draws on the Yijing, the Huayan Buddhist concept of progressive levels of consciousness, and the Hegelian phenomenology of spirit — is Tang Junyi's most original philosophical creation and represents his attempt to construct a comprehensive "map of the mind" that can accommodate all forms of human experience within a single philosophical framework. Each of the nine horizons represents a genuine and valuable form of human awareness, and none can be reduced to or replaced by any other. Science is valid within its own horizon but cannot replace moral self-cultivation; moral self-cultivation is essential but cannot replace religious awareness; and religious awareness, in its highest form, is not a withdrawal from the world but a deepening of one's engagement with it — a "flowing forth of heavenly virtue" in which the moral subject becomes a creative participant in the ongoing moral transformation of the world.

Tang Junyi's philosophy of culture was motivated by a deep concern for what he perceived as the spiritual crisis of the modern world. The dominance of scientific materialism and technological rationality, Tang argued, had produced a civilization of extraordinary material power but of impoverished spiritual depth — a civilization in which the objective, quantitative dimensions of human experience were developed at the expense of the subjective, qualitative dimensions. The result was a world in which human beings possessed the power to transform nature but lacked the wisdom to guide that power toward genuinely human ends — a world of material abundance and spiritual poverty, of technological mastery and moral confusion.

Tang Junyi's response to this crisis was not a rejection of modernity or a nostalgic return to the past but a call for the development of what he called "cultural consciousness" — a comprehensive, self-reflective awareness of the full range of human spiritual possibilities that would enable modern civilization to integrate its scientific and technological achievements with the insights of moral, aesthetic, and religious experience. This cultural consciousness, Tang argued, was not the exclusive possession of any single philosophical tradition but must be constructed through a genuine dialogue between the philosophical traditions of the world — a dialogue in which each tradition contributes its distinctive insights to the common project of understanding the human condition.

Tang Junyi's emphasis on dialogue, comprehensiveness, and mutual learning among philosophical traditions — his refusal to assert the superiority of any single tradition and his insistence that genuine philosophical understanding requires the integration of multiple perspectives — makes his philosophy one of the most open and most generous in the modern Chinese philosophical landscape. His work represents a vision of global philosophy that remains compelling and relevant in the increasingly interconnected world of the twenty-first century: a vision in which the philosophical traditions of East and West engage each other not as competitors or adversaries but as partners in the common human project of understanding ourselves and our world.

Tang Junyi's personal life embodied the diaspora experience that shaped much of twentieth-century Chinese philosophy. Forced to leave the Chinese mainland after the Communist revolution, he settled in Hong Kong, where he co-founded New Asia College (新亚书院, Xinya Shuyuan) with Qian Mu (钱穆, 1895–1990) in 1949 — an institution dedicated to the preservation and development of Chinese humanistic learning in an age of political upheaval and cultural crisis. New Asia College, which later became part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, served as the institutional base for the New Confucian movement in its crucial formative decades and trained a generation of scholars who would carry the movement's ideas into the twenty-first century. Tang Junyi's death in 1978 — the same year that Deng Xiaoping's reforms began to open China to the world — marked the end of the "founding generation" of New Confucianism and the beginning of a new phase in which the movement's ideas would be taken up, criticized, developed, and transformed by a new generation of thinkers in a radically changed world.