New confucianism and chinese democratization : the thought and predicament of Zhang Junmai

This article probes Zhang Junmai's New Confucian political thought that evolved over time in different contexts. My argument is briefly as follows. Despite his early traditional Chinese education, Zhang came to Confucian philosophy via a Western route, his New Confucian political thought being a mix of "New Song Learning," German idealism, constitutionalism, and democratic socialism (or variably state socialism). Though already known as a New Confucian of the first generation during the Republican era, Zhang's major works on Confucianism did not appear until the contemporary PRC period. His views on Chinese culture and politics changed over time and space. An advocate of cultural assimilation and synthesis, Zhang considered Western learning essential for a renewal of Confucianism and a reconstruction of Chinese culture. But in the end, he was, consciously or unconsciously, entrapped in a predicament. On one level, he profoundly appreciated the strengths of modem Western thought and political institutions. Yet, on another, he insisted on Chinese culture being the core, or the foundation on which to build Western learning and institutions, thus unwittingly succumbing to the familiar ti-yong (spiritual essence-material function) dichotomy. For all his attempts, he failed also to reconcile, theoretically or practically, the claims of inner sagehood with those of the outer world, or the Lebenswelt. The project of making the new outer king out of inner sagehood was a forlorn hope, in spite of the availability of modem political thought, modern science, and new forms of economic and political organizations. Its failure demonstrated with a rare clarity that the New Confucians had neither the power nor the resources to change the outer realm of the sociopolitical order to fulfill Confucian moral goals. In this, they fared no better than their Song-Ming predecessors. In the twilight of his life, out of politics and living in exile in the United States, Zhang could only maintain that Confucianism was an important intellectual resource for Chinese democratization and modernization; he was left with many questions unanswered. Notwithstanding his striving, he found no escape from the kind of predicament on which Thomas Metzger has written.