Background
Liang, Souming was born in 1893 in Beijing.
Liang, Souming was born in 1893 in Beijing.
Studied at Zhili Public Law School and for three years (1913-1916) pursued private study of Consciousness Only Buddhism.
Professor of Indian and Chinese Philosophy, Peking University. Dean of Shandong Reconstruction Institute. Member, National Defence Council.
Founder, Democratic League.
Liang sought a solution to the crisis facing China through reinterpreting the Confucian tradition. In response to the Westernizing programme ot Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi. he argued for the superiority of Eastern values in his major work The Cultures of East and West and their Philosophies. He distinguished three stages of civilization and three corresponding subjective attitudes. In Western civilization people pursued their desires by grasping objects from others and from nature. In Chinese civilization people moderated their desires to achieve an internal balance and an equilibrium with nature and society. Hindu civilization renounced desires. Of the three Liang argued for the superiority of the Chinese culture and philosophy over the limitless greed of the West and the escapist renunciation of India. He thought that the three types would succeed one another, and that in the present world the age Western dominance would give way to Chinese moderation and harmony. Western scientific and democratic achievements would be conserved, but in an altered form. Science would be pursued with a moral psychology of unselfishness rather than with utilitarian aggression. Liang’s work provoked great controversy- 1 encouraged those seeking to reconcile tradition and prosperous stability, but those proposing Western scientific and democratic reform as 3 solution to China’s overwhelming problems were hostile. The hostility was acccentuated by Liangs support of metaphysics in the ‘science versus metaphysics’debates of the 1920s. His books also led to exchanges on the nature of culture, traditi°n and religion., As a first step to realizing the transformation of society, Liang established rural reconstruction institutes in Henan and Shandong. These wou provide the moral education to shape the su jective attitudes necessary for reform. Democracy would be based on rural reconstruction, with tn elite returning to the countryside to work w' local people to solve local problems. The resulting agricultural prosperity would be the basis on which urban industrial prosperity could established. Liang saw China as different frolT1 °ther societies and opposed the imposition of Western democracy without moral reform. He also opposed Marxist class analysis as divisive. He s°ught to lessen social tensions through enlightened local action flowing from moral education. The outbreak of war with Japan brought his exPeriment to an end. In the period after the Second World War Liang was active in politics, proposing a third ■°rce to maintain a united government with the nationalists and Communists. In the 1950s he maintained his viewpoint in spite of many attempts to persuade him to accept Marxist social analysis and to renouce his acceptance of moral attitudes as fundamental to reform. Ironically Liang was linked with his old antagonist Hu Shi as an object of fierce campaigns of denunciation.