Liang Shuming

Abstract

Liang Shuming’s Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (1921) compares Chinese, Indian, and Western philosophies, trying to establish the relevance of traditional Chinese culture in the modern world. Lauding Confucius as a life philosopher, he connects Confucianism with the life philosophy of Eucken and Bergson and relates to the latter’s theory of becoming as the key to life as well as things in the universe. The basic problem with Liang Shuming’s thought is the essentialist dichotomy of “Easternization” and “Westernization”: Believing that there are essential and unresolvable differences between Eastern and Western cultures, he juxtaposes Western scientific rationality with the intuitive thinking of Chinese metaphysics, criticizing John Dewey and Bertrand Russell for maintaining that the two cultures should compromise with each other. The Lecture Society established by Cai Yuanpei and Liang Qichao with their allies in 1920 invited international thinkers such as Dewey and Russell as well as Rabindranath Tagore and Hans Driesch (Eucken’s student) to lecture in China, testifying to the Lifeview school’s systematic introduction of life philosophy as a means of refuting scientism.