Background
Mou, Zongsan was born in 1908 in Xianen County, Shandong Province, China.
牟宗三
Mou, Zongsan was born in 1908 in Xianen County, Shandong Province, China.
Peking University.
1945-1947, Professor, Central University. Nanjing; 1947-1949, Professor. Nanjing University; 1949-1955, Professor, National Taiwan Normal University.
1955-1960, Professor, Tsinghua University. 1960-1975, Professor, University of Hong Kong. Professor, New Asia Institute of Advanced Chinese Studies.
Hong Kong.
Mou responded to the challenge of Western positivism with a synthesis of idealist neo-Confucian philosophy and German idealism, particularly that of Kant and Hegel. On the Chinese side, he derived inspiration from Mengzi and the later idealists Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming. Mou’s unorthodox reading of Kant expressed his views that the mind is a substance and that individuals have intellectual intuition which actively creates its objects, claims that Kant rejected in the Critique of Pure Reason. Although Mou adapted Kantian themes and doctrines for his own purposes, rather than providing an accurate scholarly reading, he brought engagement and excitement to his overriding philosophical tasks. He wished to justify Western science and democracy, but by showing
that they were grounded transcendentally in human subjectivity, to leave room for the Confucian tradition. In addition to arguing that the Critique of Pure Reason showed how science was possible and that the Critique of Practical Reason showed how democracy was possible, he used his account of Chinese thought to buttress Kant's momentous claim that practical reason has priority over theoretical reason. Although he saw the grounds of subjectivity in our cognitive capacity, the priority of practical reason over theoretical reason carried with it a priority for agency, creativity and morality over cognition and science. This agency, in turn, was captured in the presentation of the subject as a free infinite mind capable of intellectual intuition. The movement from subjective origin to science and democracy was to be accomplished through self-negation and a twofold unfolding of the absolute consciousness, although the precise value of these notions is unclear. In spite of these difficulties, Mou has been a significant interpreter of Kant, first in China and then in Taiwan. His focus on science and democracy recalls Chen Duxiu’s earlier modernizing slogan of ‘Mr Science’ and ‘Mr Democracy’, but for Mou the achievement of these goals required cooperation with traditional Confucian idealism.