Background
Zhang, Shenfu was born in 1893 in Xiaoduokou, Hebei Province.
Zhang, Shenfu was born in 1893 in Xiaoduokou, Hebei Province.
Studied in Paris at the Sorbonne (informally) and in Gottingen, at the Mathematical Institute (informally).
Posts at Guangzhou University, Jinan University, People’s University and University of Peking: 1921, Professor, Qinghua University, Beijing. 1930s, a founder of the Chinese Commu- nist Party. 1946-1948, a leader of the Democratic League.
Zhang Shenfu, who was trained in mathematics and philosophy, was the principal early transmitter and interpreter of Bertrand Russell's philosophy in China. He thus introduced analytical philosophy as a rival to German idealism. Dewey's pragmatism and the philosophy of Bergson. Although the Russellian approach never came to dominate professional philosophy in China, Zhang provided the basis for the studies of Chinese philosophers closest to the main AngloAmerican tradition. In his own work, he attempted to integrate Russell's philosophy with dialectical materialism and in the 1930s became interested in logical positivism. His 1927 translation of the Tractalus Logico-Philosophicus in the journal Philosophical Review introduced Wittgenstein to China. Zhang’s Chinese title for the Tractalus, Treatise on Names and Reason, indicates that the work deals with linguistics and logic. Zhang was also drawn to Russell’s social views, including his attitudes toward feminism and sexual freedom, and to the work of Freud. Zhang had some philosophical influence in the 1930s, but never achieved the great prominence of his younger brother Zhang Dainian. He left academic life for politics. After his role in the Chinese Communist Party as a founder and as chief party representative in France and Germany, Zhang resigned in 1925 on the grounds of personal as well as ideological disputes. In any case, his free, exploratory thought, stressing selfliberation over social organization, came into conflict with Leninist party discipline. As a Communist, he is best known for introducing Zhou Enlai into the Party. Zhang later became a leader of the Democratic League, which sought to find a means of reconciling the Communist Party and the Guomindang to avoid further civil war, but was expelled in 1948.