Tang Junyi: Confucian Philosophy and the Challenge of Modernity

Tang Junyi’s modern Confucianism ranks among the most ambitious philosophical projects in 20th century China. In Tang Junyi: Confucian Philosophy and the Challenge of Modernity, Thomas Froehlich examines Tang Junyi’s intellectual reaction to a time of cataclysmic change marked by two Chinese revolutions (1911 and 1949), two world wars, the Cold War period, rapid modernization in East Asia, and the experience of exile.

The present study fundamentally questions widespread interpretations that depict modern Confucianism as essentially traditionalist and nationalistic. Thomas Froehlich shows that Tang Junyi actually challenges such interpretations with an insightful understanding of the modern individual’s vulnerability, as well as a groundbreaking reinterpretation of Confucianism as the civil-theological foundation for liberal democracy in China.