Background
Jin, Yuelin was born in 1896 in Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
金岳霖
Jin, Yuelin was born in 1896 in Changsha, Hunan Province, China.
Studied at Qinghua University, Beijing, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University (PhD in Politics) and, England, Germany and France. /nfls;T. H. Green, Bertrand Russell. G. E. Moore, and the neo-Confucian tradition.
Professor, Qinghua University. Founder, Department of Philosophy, Qinghua University. Professor, Southwest Associated University.
Professor and Head of Department, University of Peking. Deputy Head. Department of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Chairman, Chinese Society of Logic.
Jin was China's most famous contemporary logician. After a decade of advanced study in the USA, England, Germany and France, Jin returned to Qinghua University to teach the history of European political thought under the influence of T. H. Green. In private study he read widely in logic and contemporary philosophy. His reading of Russell and other logicians led to his own logical work, initially expressed in his book Logic (1935). His tightly reasoned, symbolically expressed formal arguments would have been impressive anywhere, but were especially remarkable in a country without a tradition of formal logic. Jin had precursors also influenced by Western logic, but he far outstripped them in establishing rigorous, original logical studies as a feature of Chinese intellectual life. His students over many years were trained to the same high standards of careful argument.
Jin developed a system of metaphysics to complement his logical studies. The system, inspired in part by Green’s criticism of Hume, rigorously deployed concepts drawn from neoConfucian philosophy and displayed the constructive originality characterisitic of his logic. Jin built up his account of the structure of reality from the interrelationship of his central concepts of dao, shi and neng. Although it would be difficult to ascribe priority to any one of the concepts, the modal notion of possibility might be considered the most distinctive feature of his system. Without possibility there would be no differentiation of individuals in terms of their form and there would be no logical room for the dao to govern processes of the natural world and to guide action in the practical world.
Jin carried his distinction between the changing and various and a common stable set of interrelated concepts from his metaphysics into the theory of knowledge. He never accepted Russell’s phenomenalism and was influenced by G. E. Moore's common-sense realism. Jin was a realist who believed in the existence of the natural world independent of our knowledge, but his realism was not an invitation to scepticism. He saw knowledge as a developing process which could reach the natural world and grasp i,s meaning. Jin’s many students have carried on his work in logic and philosophy.