Background
Junyi Tang was born in 1909 in Yibin, Sichuan, China.
唐君毅
Junyi Tang was born in 1909 in Yibin, Sichuan, China.
Using a method derived from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Junyi Tang ordered and assessed human moral experience as autonomous spiritual development. His approach was hostile both to materialism in metaphysics and to utilitarianism in ethics. His phenomenology encompassed postHegelian European developments, including Nietzschean thought, scholarly and aesthetic moral sensibility, and human ideals derived from Hindu mysticism and Chinese Confucianism. Between the origin of morality in individual instinct and its final realization, Junyi Tang discerned several stages in the development of the moral self, each with its own characteristics. The study of spirit, morality and the self were for him aspects of the same developmental investigation. At each stage Junyi Tang presented an ideal representation of the person attaining that stage. The perfect person, again presented in an ideal description, was the ultimate goal of his system, and his Hegelian-Confucian syncretism emerged with his choice of a Confucian ideal, displaying the virtue of humanity, as the culmination of his Hegelian journey. Through his examination of the structure and development of human subjectivity, Junyi Tangoffered a Western metaphysical underpinning for the idealist Confucian tradition. His account of the self and spirit also attempted to provide a transcendental basis for science, the humanities and religion. In his later writings he followed Hegel in shifting attention from the individual self to a broader concern for culture. He was concerned to explore the values of Chinese culture, but also to understand the plurality of cultures in a way allowing coexistence. The culmination of Tang’s work was a major history of Chinese philosophy.