Zhang Dongsun (1886--1973): Philosopher, social democrat, and pioneer in the acculturation of Western thought in China.

摘要

This study of Zhang Dongsun seeks to broaden the historiographical perspective on Republican China from one dominated by the Guomindang-CCP rivalry to one that takes account of the diversity of political activism and intellectual activity during those decades. The philosopher Zhang Dongsun was a leader in what has been called "the third force in China," a group of minority parties and groups that rejected the Guomindang military dictatorship in office and the CCP "people's dictatorship" in contention, and offered a democratic, non-Communist alternative of social and political organization. As a professor, journalist, third-party founder and defiant guardian of democratic aspirations, Zhang described a vision of the nation's possibilities that differed dramatically from those of the two opposing parties in its reliance upon mass participation, democratic institutions, and absolute intellectual freedom. The work of these third-force activists during the Nationalist period of China's history illuminates the existence of an urgent and committed search for solutions to China's grave dilemma apart from the GMD/CCP structure, as it reveals the true source of a democratic movement that has since struggled to establish its place in contemporary Chinese society. Zhang Dongsun's unique and enduring contribution to that endeavor was his presentation of the vast corpus of the Western intellectual tradition as a variety of human thought that could be considered separately from its historical context of domination and cultural destruction. In so doing, he made its animating premises of individual freedom and democratic organization accessible to the thinking public as tools of its own intellectual and political liberation, a process that continues today.