In Revolt against Positivism, the Discovery of Culture: The Liang Qichao Group’s Cultural Conservatism in China after the First World War

Abstract

In the aftermath of the First World War, cultural conservatism emerged as a noticeable trend in the Chinese intellectual world, representing China’s reaction to the bankruptcy of Western scientific modernity. Contrary to the common evaluation of Chinese cultural conservatism as an idea of national modernization, this essay examines how Liang Qichao and his associates Zhang Junmai and Zhang Dongsun formulated their particular version of cultural conservatism out of their interest in restoring universal morality to the postwar world. Engaged with the global revolt against positivism, the philosophers of the Liang group reframed Chinese culture as a local source of universal morality that could contribute to the creation of a new world culture. This essay illuminates how their cultural conservatism historicized the universal as a goal to be realized through conscious human efforts to recover universal morality in concert with diverse local cultures.