Tang Junyi

Front matter

| 13 MCP | Modern Chinese Philosophy

Tang Junyi

Confucian Philosophy and the Challenge of Modernity

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments vI ji

Tang Junyi’s Intellectual Endeavor 1 A Journey into a Broken World 1 The Vantage Point of Modern Confucianism 7 The Watershed of 1949 18

2 Critical Issues in Research on Modern Confucianism 23 Stereotypes and Omissions 23 Coherence and Comparison 31

CHAPTER 1 A Journey into a Broken World

Tang Junyi conveyed a vivid impression of the huge distance between the Sichuan of his youth and the modernizing Hong Kong of the late 1960s in an interview that he gave to a student journal two decades after his emigration to Hong Kong in 1949. He revealed that his interest had been piqued by the American hippie movement after watching a documentary about Woodstock in a movie theater in Hong Kong. His comments are particularly illuminating not only because they highlight his extensive intellectual journey, but also his liberal mindset. For instance, he indicated his fascination with the fact that the hippies practiced a passive form of social protest, albeit without a clear objective. While he sympathized with the hippies, he critically observed that they had no adequate form of expressing their opinions or their longing for individuality. They also had no real idea of how to proceed. At most, they seemed only able to engage in a form of protest that was specifically linked to their clothing and hair style. Tang believed that they ultimately did not know how to positively change the external world and thus resorted to transforming their own internal realities—their feelings—through another form of protest, namely, by taking drugs. While he was convinced that hippies lacked “inner peace” and individual strength, he also recognized that their music appealed to audiences despite its sense of despair and restlessness. What is more, even though he disclosed his conservative sexual morality in diagnosing an “indulgence in sexual life” in Europe and America (believing it to be a sign of the “degeneration of Western culture”!), he still refrained from condemning the hippie movement altogether.”

Woodstock might seem far removed for a Chinese philosopher who was born in suburban Southwestern Sichuan on January 17, 1909, four days before the reign of the second to last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the Guangxu-Emperor,

1 Tang, Zhonghua renwen yu dangjin shijie, Vol. 8, p. 325 (interview in the Mingbao HHY} from 1974).

2 Tang, Zhonghua renwen yu dangjin shijie bubian, Vol. 10, pp. 385, 393-394. The interview was published on August 7, 1970 in Zhongguo Xuesheng Zhoubao, No. 42.

© THOMAS FRÖHLICH, 2017 | DOI 10.1163/9789004330139_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc-BY-Nc License.

had officially ended.? At that time, the Chinese state was rapidly disintegrating and many parts of the country were caught in the grip of tumultuous political, social, and intellectual change. Tang not only lived through these events and the upheavals of the following decades, but he felt compelled to make sense of them. His philosophical oeuvre, which reflects this endeavor, is marked by many achievements and failures, along with some surprises. Tang was one of modern China's most prolific thinkers. He relentlessly produced his lifework, which spans a remarkable range of intellectual concerns, over the course of half a century.* His life indeed seems to be characterized by a persistent effort to keep pace intellectually with an age of unprecedented cataclysms and recurrent political and social turmoil in China and the world.

Tang’s statements about the hippie movement are also remarkable because they reveal his open-mindedness toward social phenomena that must have been unsettling to a tradition-conscious thinker. Tang himself would have referred to his intellectual and personal attitude as “humanistic,” but it might also be called “liberal.” Liu Shu-hsien aptly sums up this attitude when he writes that “[f]or Tang everyone has to find the best for himself in the context given.”> This liberal mindset was certainly prone to ambiguity, for while Tang upheld a culturally conservative world view, he was also convinced that a rigid insistence on traditional orders of political and moral values was untenable for modernizing societies. As a result, his reflection on modernity was largely free from schematic distinctions between (Chinese) tradition and (Western) modernity.

Tang maintained his liberal outlook in the face of hostile political tendencies and historical turmoil. The most severe disruption in his life came in 1949, when he left the Chinese Mainland for good. At the time he immigrated to Hong Kong, his life had probably not been in immediate danger, nor did Chinese communism likely pose a personal threat to him. Indeed, he had never publicly criticized the communists before his years in exile. This would

3 Fora brief biographical summary of Tang’s life, see the Biographical Survey at the end of this book. A major source for Tang’s biography, apart from Tang’s diaries, is Tang Duanzheng’s Chronicle of the life and work of Tang Junyi, see Tang, Nianpu; see also Tang Duanzheng’s Tang Junyi zhuanlüe.

4 In Tang's thirty volumes of collected writings there are over 450 publications, including 20 books; an index of these works can be found in Tang, Zhushu nianbiao, pp. 3-71; cf. also Feng, Tang Junyi xiansheng jinian ji, pp. 29-117.

5 Liu, Essentials of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Philosophy, p. 103.

6 Tang, Tang Junyi zhuanlüe, p. 50. Perhaps it was due to Tang’s reticence that Liang Shuming decided to write him a letter in December 1951 suggesting that Tang return to the Mainland. Li Yuandeng 4° Ji and Qian Ziyuan $$- JA also wrote letters to the same effect. In a letter change almost immediately after his arrival in Hong Kong. In the context of the Cold War period, he began to equate communist rule on the Chinese Mainland with totalitarianism, which, for him, was inextricably linked to modernity (see Chap. 12). Other aspects of modernity appeared on Tang’s philosophical agenda as well which were no less threatening to him. His reflection on the exilic experience was, above all, closely intertwined with a perceptive observation of modernity’s downsides. These included the experience of the individual’s cultural alienation, social isolation, and intellectual marginalization. Tang once remarked that the contemporary situation of the exiled Chinese is characterized by the fact that their “motherland has been destroyed and [their] home lost”’— that their hopes for their lives and educational ideals now “loom in the emptiness,’ and they therefore “roam around” and are “carried by the wind.” In fact, Tang conceptualized the exilic experience as a sort of prism through which one could not only grasp the nature of modernity, but also conceive of ways to cope with it. This interweaving of exile and modernity informs his reflection on the identity and stability of the individual self in modern society (see Chap. 4).

At the interface between exile and modernity, Tang also pondered the aggressive colonization of human societies by hegemonic forms of instrumental rationality and an ensuing reification of social and cultural relations. This led to his diagnosis of the global unfolding of an instrumental type of modernization that was posing a lethal threat to the remnants of intellectual traditions and established ways of life. In the wake of the communist takeover on the Chinese Mainland, he described this threat at times in a dramatic way, detecting initial signs of a withering away of China’s humanistic culture. However, he insisted that a wholesale rejection of modernity was not feasible, and he was keenly aware of the dangerous implications of ideologies that promised fundamental solutions to the modern malaise. He also did not opt for a “Chinese” solution, for he knew that many emancipatory facets of political modernity—among them constitutional government, human rights, the rule of law, and democracy—had Western, not Chinese origins. The same could be said, by and large, of the dynamic process of industrialization and scientific-technological development. Significantly, Tang never subscribed to the type of historical speculation that predicted the emergence of a superior, predominantly “Chinese” form of modernity. Liang Shuming kÝ. (1893-1988) had from January 1952, Tang reaffirmed to Liang his decision to stay in Hong Kong: Li, “Tang Junyi shujian xi nian xianyi bu ding,” pp. 119-120.

done this in his widely popular book Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dong Xi wenhua ji gi zhexue) from 1921.9 On the contrary, Tang was convinced that modern societies were irremediably broken to the point where no single, comprehensive doctrine could adequately respond to their inherently ambiguous life-worlds.

Yet Tang was still convinced that members of modern societies needed to maintain, at least in some measure, an affirmative identification with cultural life in order to instill meaning into their own ways of life—even if existing conditions were in turmoil and the given cultural contexts on the brink of disintegration. Otherwise, neither individuals nor collectivities would be able to uphold an authentic self-reassurance. Indeed, authenticity was one of Tang’s major concerns. Under the condition of an irretrievably alienating modernization, an effort of normative “reconstruction” was necessary since authenticity could no longer be understood as a historically given condition. Yet he disagreed with the reactionary forces that propagated a return to imperial political and cultural traditions, a tendency which culminated under the dictatorial rule of Yuan Shikai in the mid-ıgıos. Tang’s stance was also critical toward the so-called movement for a “New Culture,” which began at around the same time. He was highly skeptical about the tendency of “New Culture” proponents to subject the modern plurality of Chinese life-worlds to totalistic forms of scientism. Despite these misgivings, his opposition to the movement remained limited to the intellectual sphere. The political goal of democracy, on the other hand, was not contested by the New Culture Movement or Tang’s modern Confucianism, nor was the basic understanding that the introduction of modern science to China was indispensable.

Overall, Tang’s diagnosis of Chinese modernity was bleak. This was especially true with regard to China’s prolonged failure in catching up with Western nation-states economically, and its inability to establish a robust democratic republic after 191. Reflecting on China’s historical course, Tang faced g While studying at Peking University from 1925 to 1927, Tang attended Liang Shuming’s lectures on the eight stages of pursuing philosophy. After Liang was openly criticized by leftists when he delivered his public lectures, Tang, apparently sharing this criticism, stopped listening to Liang’s talks. What is more, Tang deemed Liang’s intuitionist philosophy too “subjective” and hence unreliable; see Tang, Nianpu, pp. 19, 23. Li Yufang and Zhang Yunjiang indicate that Tang also attended lectures by Liang Shuming on the “Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies,’ but they do not substantiate this finding; see Li et al., “Tang Junyi qi fo gui ru zhi yuanyin chutan,” p. 21. According to the Nianpu, Tang had read Liang’s Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies in 1923; see Tang, Nianpu, p. 15.

the uneasy reality that, except for the communist revolution of 1949, every other political revolution and use of military force had largely failed to produce any political and social stability. He thus drew the following fundamental lesson from China’s continuous failure to establish a new and stable type of political order: Any attempt to implement a totalistic, substantial reintegration of modern society would inevitably come at the cost of traditionalism, dogmatism, authoritarianism, or even totalitarianism. What had to be acknowledged instead was the insight that the justification of institutions, procedures and norms of collective life could no longer rest on claims to a higher, “sacred” truth. Tang was thus well aware of the fact that in global modernity there were both emancipative currents and an ever-looming tendency toward the opposite, namely the totalistic reification of the human beings and their life-worlds. In Tang’s view, modern subjects were indeed in danger of falling victim to their own rebellion against the fetters of traditional societies and ideas. This paradox marks the point of departure for his project to reconstruct Confucianism. It is therefore more to the point to address this reconstruction as “modern” rather than simply as “new.” In fact, Tang hardly ever used the now common label of “new Confucianism” (xin ruxue ifm | xin rujia ri). The designation “modern” is also apt because Tang’s project is consistent with key ideas of the Western philosophical criticism of modernity raised during the

2oth century—whether in the context of philosophies of life, existentialism, philosophical anthropology, or political philosophy.

Tang occasionally termed his philosophical project “humanistic” (renwen AX) and contended that Chinese humanism would need to “expand” in the future to attain the position of a “world humanism.” The humanistic concern of thinking through modernity entails, first of all, the quest for a “moral self)” i.e. a realization of man’s “moral nature.’ Here, Tang harkened back to Confucian speculations about the individual’s access to the inner moral truth of human nature. In the 2oth century, these speculations had to be critically reassessed under specifically modern conditions. Tang consequently eliminated from his Confucian agenda the vain hope of overcoming the downsides of modernity by making an appeal to individuals to engage in ethical “self-cultivation.” An uncritical belief in self-cultivation would make the individual highly susceptible to Weltanschauungen (world views) and political ideologies that proclaim the omnipotence of an ethical will in the realm of politics. Yet

10 See e.g. Tang’s essay entitled “World humanism and Chinese humanism (Shijie renwenzhuyi yu Zhongguo renwenzhuyi EFÄXERFF BA CE 38)” from 1959; reprinted in Tang, Zhonghua renwen yu dangjin shijie, Vol. 8, p. 44.

the historical course of modernity, according to Tang, is not to be misunderstood as a process of inner-worldly salvation leading to the ethical realization of the good in human society.

Tang was equally skeptical towards reflections on modernity that simply adopt the “Western” perspective, no matter whether they are presented in the fields of social science, philosophy, or social criticism. But his skepticism did not prevent him from conceptualizing modernization as a globally ongoing process characterized by the gradual evolution of traits typically associated with contemporary Western societies. He assumed that over the long run functional and institutional differentiations of spheres of action which were observable in Western societies would emerge on a global scale. This pertained, in particular, to the division of labor in industrial society, and, above all, to the division of spheres of law and morality. Indeed, this assumption is critical to Tang’s universalistic concept of modernity-as-modernization. It forms the basis for his claim that modernization will produce the political form of a constitutional democracy, together with an industrial society. Yet Tang did not ignore particular historical conditions and intellectual traditions—such as those in China—which could shape modernity in different parts of the world. On the contrary, in reconsidering China’s intellectual traditions in the broad sense, he fought against what he perceived to be manifestations of a “Western” colonial hegemony or even cultural imperialism in the spheres of education, science, the liberal arts, and public debate. A number of Tang’s writings from the exile period bear witness to his crusade, as does his affirmative, pan-Asian depiction of post-war Japan as a model for preserving indigenous intellectual and material culture under conditions of rapid modernization (see Chap. 4).

Since the early decades of the 20th century, there have been debates both inside and outside of China about Confucian alternatives to Western models of modernization. In many respects, however, the discussions have reached an impasse: Whereas some observers tend to depict Confucianism as a panacea for all kinds of political and social ills in East Asian and Western societies, others consider it to be a mere vestige of imperial China that lacks any relevance for contemporary discourse on modernity. Tang Junyi’s modern Confucianism proposes a way to overcome this impasse by combining a critical reinterpretation of Confucian thought with a careful assessment of achievements and failures in modern societies. Not only does an in-depth analysis of his project inspire a critical reexamination of key issues in contemporary Confucian discourse such as “Confucian democracy,’ but it is also highly conducive for the discussion of issues that are critical to our understanding of modern China and Confucianism. Among these we find an ever-present concern in modern

Chinese philosophy and politics, namely the question of how to conceptualize the relationship between new “Western” types of political order and indigenous intellectual traditions. Equally significant, Tang’s philosophy yields a thought-provoking approach to understanding the individual’s vulnerability in the context of rapidly modernizing East Asian societies. What is more, by reflecting on exile—an experience with which he was intimately familiar and which marked the lives of many people worldwide in the 20th century—Tang presents a novel perspective on the modern malaise. Here, as well as in other respects, Tang’s own refusal to “Orientalize” his thinking is crucial, because it opens it up to broader philosophical debates.

The Vantage Point of Modern Confucianism

To grasp the originality, but also the ambivalence of Tang’s modern Confucianism, discussion should not be limited to his moral reflection, religious thought, and academic philosophy." In the framework of Tang’s thought, it is indispensable to uncover the relation between moral, political, and religious concerns. Toward this end, one may discern three major stages in his

11 Fora compilation of Chinese and English research on Tang Junyi until 2008, see Chen, “Tang Junyi yanjiu gaikuang ji shumu wenxian suoyin.” So far, research on Tang’s philosophy has focused on his metaphysical speculation about human nature and the human spirit’s access to the higher, transcendent realm of “Heaven.” This is somewhat surprising given the fact that, in international philosophical anthropology, the identification of the human being as an animal metaphysicum was by and large abandoned by the mid-2oth century. Tang’s moral philosophy and his religious studies on the Confucian tradition also received considerable attention (for a monographic study see e.g. Kevin Shun Kai Cheng’s thesis: Cheng, Karl Barth and Tang Junyi on the Nature of Ethics and the Realization of Moral Life: A Comparative Study from 1995; in a Chinese version: Zheng, Tang Junyiyu Bate. Yi ge lunlixue de bijiao from 2002). A number of studies have been published on Tang’s final two-volume monograph Life, Existence and the Horizons of the Mind (Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie); see e.g. Liang, Xinling jiu jing yu rensheng zhexue: Tang Junyi xiansheng “Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie” dao du (2006); Shan, Xin tong jiu jing: Tang Junyi zhexue de jingshen kongjian (2001); Steinbauer, Tang Junyis System der neun Horizonte des Geistes (2005); for a recent in-depth article on this topic, see Huang, “Tang Junyi de jingjie gantong lun: Yi ge changsuo lun de xiansuo” (2011). Several monographic studies on Tang that were published in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan provide general surveys of his thought, with Li Du’s Tang Junyi xiansheng de zhexue from 1982 being a pioneering study.

philosophical lifework, which spanned a period of almost five decades.” Prior to his years in exile, which began in 1949, he wrote two monographs dealing with topics of moral philosophy and philosophy of life. He also published a considerable number of articles on Chinese philosophy, art and literature, Western philosophy, and contemporary political and social issues.!? In the second stage, from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Tang concentrated on political philosophy, moral philosophy, philosophy of history, and Chinese humanism, while also developing the theological-metaphysical framework of his Confucianism.” In addition, he addressed a wide range of issues in politics, society, and cultural life. Though he did not comment on contemporary issues as much as Xu Fuguan (it (1903-1982) or Zhang Junmai 5x H (1886- 1969), he continuously engaged in current affairs well into the 1970s by writing articles and giving interviews. The third stage can be roughly dated from the mid-1960s onwards until the end of Tang’s life, when he devoted most of his time to an extensive academic study of Chinese philosophy and a comprehensive metaphysical speculation about the spiritual and moral dimensions of human life.!5

12 This division roughly corresponds to the one presented by Kevin Shun Kai Cheng, with the exception that I place Tang’s seminal study Wenhua yishiyu daode lixing in the second phase as the major work of his political philosophy. However, Cheng seems to overlook the importance of the middle period; see Cheng, Karl Barth and Tang Junyi on the Nature of Ethics and the Realization of Moral Life: A Comparative Study, pp. 487-497. Tang’s own review of stages in his intellectual development appears to be somewhat haphazard. On the one hand, he applied a rationale of personal “spiritual” development; on the other, his evaluative criteria are more academic in nature; see ibid., pp. 500-501.

13 These two monographs are The Establishment of the Moral Self (Daode ziwo zhi jianli) and The Realization of Human Life (Rensheng zhi tiyan), both published in 1944. For research on the early phase of Tang’s work, see e.g. Fan, Tang Junyis Synthese chinesischer und westlicher Philosophie; Lai, Tiyong yu xin xing: dangdai xin ruxue zhexue xin lun, pp. 45-110. For a brief overview, see Huo, “Tang Junyi xiansheng de wenhua zhexue tixi—yi ‘Wenhua yishi yu daode lixing’ yi shu wei zhongxin,” pp. 97-11.

14 His major works from his middle period include the two-volume monograph Cultural Consciousness and Moral Reason (Wenhua yishi yu daode lixing; the manuscript was written between 1947 and 1952; see Tang, Nianpu, pp. 67, 69, 119) and several volumes of collected essays and articles: The Reconstruction of the Humanistic Spirit (Renwen jingshen zhi chongjian) and The Development of the Chinese Humanistic Spirit (Zhongguo renwen Jjingshen zhi fazhan) are particularly significant. At the beginning of his exile, Tang published The Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture (Zhongguo wenhua zhi jingshen jiazhi), a monograph that marks the transition from the first to the second period.

15 These are the monograph series On the Sources of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue yuan lun) and the two-volume monograph Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie.

It was during the middle period that Tang developed his understanding of modern Confucianism in terms of political thought. This effort rested on his conviction that the course of modernity might be influenced by those afflicted by it, even though modern societies appeared to organize collective life hermetically. For Tang, there was still room for normative reflection and practical interventions in the modern world, provided that individuals were able to attain a thorough understanding of the process of modernity. The modern world, in other words, was still a political reality.

Most interpreters exclusively apply the label “philosophy” to Tang’s work, without addressing its framework as “theological.” However, Tang systematically developed the notions of “Confucian religiosity” to a degree that justifies the use of the label “theological” in this context. Some scholars actually qualify Tang’s “philosophy” by highlighting the religious aspects of his thought. Shun Kai Kevin Cheng, for example, concludes that “[t]his (i.e. Tang’s philosophy— TF) can be considered as a fully incarnational philosophy where the decree of Heaven is fully incarnated within the nature of each and every human being.” It goes without saying that the word “theology” is used in the present study in the broad sense of the word. This is common nowadays in encyclopedias of theology, with “theology” in the narrow sense denoting the monotheistic religions. When Tang outlined the theological framework of modern Confucianism in the late 1940s and 1950s, he may have felt that the term “theology” (shenxue 4P) was linked too closely to Christian theology. Be that as it may, he conceived of an inclusive concept of philosophy to absorb theological-metaphysical elements, referring to this framework variously as “philosophical,” “metaphysical,” or “religious.”

Tang summarized the far-reaching infusion of modern Confucianism with theological elements as a “philosophical faith” (zhexue de xinyang AFH {8 {M) (see Chap. 5). His project is therefore “modern,” not only in the sense of a philosophical reaction to the global impact of modernity, but also in a much more ambitious sense insofar as it aims to delineate a philosophicaltheological foundation of social modernity in (a future) China. To be sure, Tang recognized the secularized, “disenchanted” form of modernity. Nonetheless, he still identified modernity as the historical stage at which Confucian ideas of individual self-fulfillment, and hence freedom, can be realized to an unprecedented degree. In effect, he maintained that modern forms of collective life are to be understood as preconditions for the individual’s striving for self-realization. Faced with socioeconomic, political, and cultural alienation, individuals can, according to a Hegelian figure in Tang’s thought, overcome (aufheben) the antithesis between their goal of self-fulfillment and the “outer” forms of alienation. In order to come to terms with the modern experience of alienation, they must analyze its historical formation and then discern how alienation and emancipation are interrelated. This very reflection is to be seen as an endeavor that actually befits the individual's self-fulfillment. The latter does not require, if we are to follow Tang, a comprehensive remediation of alienation in modernity, nor should it be understood as a purely theoretical endeavor. Rather, Tang proposes to closely interweave normative reflection on the modern world and the quest for individual self-fulfillment. In this vein, Tang conceptualizes “inner sagehood” as the human being’s immediate realization of the absolute or “Heaven” (tian R). As Tang claims, the communion with “Heaven” instantaneously lifts the individual’s mind above its own limits. This ephemeral state of mind involves the cognitive act of “innate knowing”

(liang zhi AAN), whereby the human mind gains intuitive access to the highest truth or principle. This is the broad perspective of Tang’s tenacious effort to reconstruct modern subjectivity on the basis of a Confucian civil theology.!® He accordingly linked the notion of self-fulfillment with certain Confucian traditions and categorized it as a Confucian type of “religiosity” (zongjiaoxing 7X

ALE) (see Chap. 5). Besides, Tang’s civil-theological understanding of “innate knowing’ is clearly set apart from reinterpretations of “innate knowing” from the Republican period. He indeed refrained from harkening back to these earlier reinterpretations and their critics.!”

With the new conceptualization of Confucian religiosity, Tang’s civil theology dissociates itself from the politico-religious tradition of Confucian cults in

16 “Civil theology” will be used in the present study as a technical term for the analysis of Tang’s modern Confucianism. Even though he did not use the term “civil theology” to designate his brand of Confucianism, it is nonetheless useful for our purposes. On the different uses of the term as a self-referential marker and as an analytical concept in the Western context, see Sandoz, “The Civil Theology of Liberal Democracy: Locke and His Predecessors,” p. 2.

17 Inan article on the philosophy of Dai Zhen Sj (Dai Dongyuan RA; 1723-1777) from 1927, Hu Shi #H (1891-1962) deplored the “recent” tendency in China to return to the philosophy of Lu Jiuyuan BLY (Lu Xiangshan EX 1h; 139-1192) and Wang Yangming =F) (1472-1529) and their “philosophy of liang zhi” Hu’s criticism was clearly leveled against Zhang Junmai and Liang Shuming; see Hu, Dai Dongyuan de zhexue, p- 140; on Liang Shuming’s interest in intuitionist philosophy (in Confucianism and in Henri Bergson’s vitalist philosophy), see Alitto, The Last Confucian. Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity, pp. 98-101. Before Hu Shi, it was Yan Fu |i 4 (1853- 1921) who had sharply criticized Chinese intuitionist philosophy, and Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming in particular, as an obstacle to scientific progress in China; see Kurtz, The Discovery of Chinese Logic, pp. 155-156. After 1949, Zhang Junmai attempted to interpret liang zhi in terms of philosophical rationalism; see e.g. Chang (Zhang Junmai), “Is there no Epistemological Background for the Chinese Philosophy of Reason?” pp. 130, 136-137.

the late imperial period and from ill-fated attempts to install a Confucian state religion in early republican China. What it shares with the ideas of proponents of a Confucian state religion, such as Chen Huanzhang BRI Æ (1880-1933), Yan Fu, or Liang Qichao MUGE (1873-1929) who were active in the years 1912 and 1913, is the intention to tie “Confucianism” to the normative foundations of the republic. Yet Tang’s notion of Confucian religiosity did not lend itself to a concept of republican “state religion” (guo jiao MX) that tended to contradict the constitutional principle of religious freedom. It also was neither amenable to a religious reverence of the figure of Confucius (as in “Kong jiao” 4), nor, finally, to a dogmatism that hypostatized Confucianism as an authoritative religious teaching (as in “Ru jiao” {iii #1) 18

In fact, Tang did not assume that the truth of moral intuition (liang zhi) could be institutionalized, either in terms of religion or politics. He instead endorsed a view that highlights the religious and political elusiveness of absolute truth claims based on intuition. Due to this rejection of dogmatism, Tang’s civil theology accords with the transcendental type of civil theology.!? “Transcendental” refers to the conviction that “secular ends can never really become sacred.’?° The sacred, accordingly, is not considered to be substantially immanent to particular politico-religious institutions and practices. David Apter’s observation that “what there is of the sacred in Western secular government is the framework itself”?! also pertains to Tang’s civil theology. The latter can thus be distinguished from the immanent type of civil theology, which “in its more archaic forms,” seems closely related to what David Apter calls the theocratic system.?? Unsurprisingly, Tang rejected the idea that the government should implement a civil theology through direct legal means. The enforcement of the Confucian-based civil theology by the government would have to be restricted to the institutionalization of religious tolerance. This orientation towards constitutional provisions for religious freedom shows that Tang’s Confucian civil theology concurs with liberal forms of civil or political theology. Specifically, it fundamentally accepts two major shifts in the history of Western political thought:

18 _Foraconcise overview of the different stages of controversies in China about Confucianism as a state religion during the first two decades of the 20th century, see: Kobayashi, “Some Political Aspects of the Problem of Confucian State Religion.”

19 For a definition of this type of civil theology, see Davis, “The Civil Theology of Inou Tetsujirö, p. 3.

20 This is David Apter’s phrase (see his “Political Religion in the New States,” p. 67; here quoted from Davis, ibid.).