In treatments of the relation of Chinese thought to pragmatism, pragmatism most commonly refers to the philosophy of John Dewey, and such treatments look to the Chinese past, whether recent or distant, not to contemporary Chinese philosophy. Nearly a century ago Dewey became the foremost exponent of pragmatism, both in the English-language world and also around the globe. In China, Dewey’s student Hu Shi was a seminal figure in the New Culture Movement. Dewey himself had a direct effect on Chinese (...) intellectuals during the just over two-year period that he spent lecturing and teaching in China between May 1919 and July 1921, his most immediate impact being in the arena of education.1 Beyond studies of... (shrink)

This study contributes to the definition of populism as a significant current of thought in modern China through a focus on the development of the populist ideas of Liang Shuming . It provides an avenue to understanding a major thinker and social activist of modern China. At the same time, through a comparison with Russian Narodism, it develops populism as a general sociohistorical concept, denoting a constellation of ideas which emerges in a specific historical environment and includes a concern with (...) rural society and a critique of the modern West in the context of questions of the moral nature of progress. ;The dissertation describes the origins and development of Liang's ideas, presenting them against the background of major intellectual tendencies of the times. After an early urban, Westernizing focus, Liang arrived at a populist approach relatively late. A persisting habit of thought, involving a metaphor of mind, informed his early concerns, his attention to the ambiguities of progress and to the appeals of socialism, and his later foci on a critique of the West, an historical approach, and a particular concept of the psyche. The events of the 1920's provided the context in which Liang was able to reconcile his disparate concerns and develop a mature populist theory in which the villages provided a practical intersection of individual subjectivity and history. ;In the evolution of his ideas, Liang Shuming shared with other Chinese, Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Shizhao, Li Dazhao, and Mao Zedong, affinities which help define populism as a broad current of thought still important in China. A critique of the West and desire to skip over capitalism on the way to the future have more weight in Chinese populism than does a focus on rural society. In the absence of a specifically populist political movement, the historical importance of Chinese populism has derived from its interpenetration with Marxist ideas. One potential of the legacy of Chinese populism is to provide a self-conscious orientation toward the future from the perspective of a critique of both the Western present and the Chinese past. (shrink)

In _Liang Shuming and the Populist Alternative in China_, Catherine Lynch examines the role of populist ideas in the development of Liang’s thinking.