Title

Critical Han Learning and Han Learning Criticized: Chang Tai-yen’s Reflections on Kao-cheng Learning and Interpretations of Tai Chen’s Han Learning

Author

Eugene W. Chiu

Genre

Article  

Pages

321-364

Download

Language

Chinese

Key words

Chang Tai-yen, Tai Chen, Kao-cheng Learning, Ideology, World View, Cultural Production, Intellectual Discourse

Abstract

      This essay mainly deals with two problems through the study of Chang Tai-yen(1869-1936), one of the most radical revolutionaries as well as the most prestigious Confucian scholar in the late Ch’ing China. The first concerns how chang understood and interpreted the great Kao-cheng learning master Tai Chen (1724-1777) in terms of perspective of Chang’s role of concluding the last chapter of intellectual heritage of the Ch’ing Empire. The second problem is how Chang, a representative thinker in the “transitional period” (1895-1925) of modern China and the leading Kao-Cheng scholar in the last decades of the nineteen century China, turns the study of Tai Chen into the field of so-called “cultural production”, namely the Tai Chen learning. As it is now known, Tai Chen learning has become one of the major intellectual discourses of our times in the post-Chang Tai-yen period.