Abstract

Nietzsche in China is a chapter in the intellectual history of twentieth century China. It shows how Nietzsche's philosophical ideas were understood by the Chinese and how, interacting with China's indigenous thought and other schools of Western thought, they influenced ethical, social, and political thinking in China. ;Chapter 1 and 2 discuss Nietzsche's reception in the last decade of the Qing dynasty . Liang Qichao and Wang Guowei, both pioneers in introducing Western thought to Chinese readers, had very different views of Nietzsche: while Liang treated him as part of the social Darwinist tradition, Wang regarded him as a philosopher who, like Buddha and Schopenhauer, fathomed the fundamental truth about human suffering. ;Chapters 3 through 6 discuss Nietzsche's influence on leading Chinese writers during the period of the New Culture Movement and the subsequent period of socio-political activism. All figures studied here, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Mao Zedong and Li Shicen, sooner or later turned to Bolshevism, but did not necessarily abandon Nietzsche. Case studies of this phenomenon bring to light the intellectual dynamism of the time. ;Chapter 7 deals with Fascist interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy in the late 1930s and the early 1940s. Chen Quan differed from all other figures dealt with in this book in his high-handed manipulation of Nietzsche's texts and concepts. This chapter is therefore a case study of a propagandist at work. ;Chapter 8 encompasses the first three decades of the People's Republic of China . It studies how Nietzschean ideas influenced the policy making of the New China through Mao Zedong and the Communist ruling elite in the guise of Marxism, although Nietzsche's philosophy was denounced publicly. ;The last chapter describes the surge of a new Nietzsche fever in the 1980s and reviews works on Nietzsche by Zhou Guoping. After free discussion of Marxism was censored by the Beijing authorities, some of the best scholars in China have found in Nietzsche's philosophy a new language of social and moral criticism