Zhang Dongsun - Biography

Biography

Travelling to Japan as an overseas student in his youth, Zhang studied the epistemology and ethics of Immanuel Kant, and attempted to reinterpret Confucianism along Kantian lines. He took part in famous debates about the relative merits of "science and metaphysics," allying himself with the then fashionable metaphysics of Henri Bergson. He was equally well-known, however, as an exponent of the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, whom he accompanied on a tour of China in 1920.

A prominent exponent of Chinese liberalism, he became a powerful influence in the China Democratic League in its original incarnation as a non-Communist "third force" grouping opposed to the dictatorship of the Guomindang (Kuomintang or KMT) under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek).

Zhang veered towards acceptance of the inevitability of Communist victory and took government positions after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. However his earlier passionate devotion to intellectual freedom and searching critiques of Marxism made him an object of suspicion, obliging him to live in obscurity and in constant fear of persecution. During the early years of the PRC, he served in the new government as a member of the Central governmental committee, as counsellor at the Ministry of Culture and in various other high-level positions, while also maintaining his position as professor of philosophy at Peking University. However, in 1958, soon after the start of the Anti-Rightist movement, which was aimed at the political control of intellectuals, he lost his professorship and was forced to work as a scavenger in the same university. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he was imprisoned in one of the most infamous "re-education" camps where, after prolonged physical and mental hardship, he would die shortly before the end of this radical political movement.