Background
Zheng, Xin was born in 1905 in Lujiang, Anhui Province, China.
郑昕
Zheng, Xin was born in 1905 in Lujiang, Anhui Province, China.
Nankai University. Berlin University. Germany, and Yale University, USA.
Professor. University of Beijing: Chairman. Department of Philosophy. University of Beijing: Member.
Research Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Science. Vice-Chairman, Chinese Society of Philosophy.
After his studies in Germany and the USA. Zheng brought serious western Kantian scholarship to China under the influence of the neo-Kantian Bruno Bauch. His study of the Critique of Pure Reason, especially in Description of Kantianism (1946). showed a high level of scholarly and philosophical sophistication. In the 1950s, however. the importance of Hegel for Marx’s thinking and the hostility of Engels towards Kant led to a rejection of Kantian studies in favour of work on
Hegel among those able to pursue serious work on German classical philosophy, a shift which undervalued the studies of Kantian philosophers like Zheng. Nevertheless, his work continued to influence his own students at Peking University.
In his cogent 1956 article ‘Liberate idealism' Zheng provided a measured defence of idealism, claiming that many Chinese philosophers were materialist in public and in politics while idealists in private and in academic study. He argued that idealism in history was not a simple error and that systems of idealist thought, containing components of different worth, required scholarly care in their analysis and evaluation. He argued against rejecting idealism as a whole and, on that basis, argued for maintaining the study of idealism in China. Although his views seemed modest, they challenged a methodology adapted from Zhdanov which provided no standpoint from which piecemeal assessment could be made.