Tang Yutong's life profile, the national scholar Tang Yutong

Tang Yutong

Word: Xiyu

Born: June 21, 1893 (Lunar Calendar)-May 2, 1964

Era: Modern Times

Place of Origin: Ancestral Huangmei County, Hubei Province

Brief Commentary: Philosophical Historian, Historian of Buddhism

Biography

Tang Yutong's father, Tang Lin, was born in Huangmei County, Hubei Province. p>

Early in life, he was trained by his family

Tang Yutong, the character Xiyu, was born in Huangmei County, Hubei Province, and his father, Tang Lin, the character Yusan, was admitted to the university in the 16th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1890). Guangxu 23 years, that is, in 1897, the year before the Hundred Days' Reform, Gansu Weiyuan, served quite a political achievement. The following year out of office, has set up in Lanzhou, Beijing, professor. WeiYuan senior PeiJianXiong, ZhangXiPeng, XiangJiu are its and door disciples. Zhang's post-liberation as a librarian in Gansu Province, is the last deceased Weiyuan County, the late Qing dynasty scholar.

Tang Yutong was born on August 4, 1893 (lunar calendar June 23) in Weiyuan, Gansu, with his father in the office of the hair of the school, enlightened by his father taught in the school, received a rigorous traditional education. Weiyuan scholar Yang Xiaoxia is both Tang's total corner of the friendship, but also his classmates. According to Tang's recollection:

Tong young to receive the court training, the early reading of the B Department. My late father, Yu Sangong taught people, although assiduous in the end of their own behavior, and enlightenment of the fool, it is often described in the past to the past behavior to the admonition. Tong Zui long, centered on the Xuan Yuan of learning, residence always love to read the internal canon. He also liked to search for the lineage of ancient thought and the changes of sects. (Tang Yuantong "Han, Wei, Jin, North and South Dynasties Buddhist history" trek)

According to this, we can sort out Tang Yuantong early childhood four main clues:

First, the young Cheng Ting training, inspired by stupidity. It means that Tong Yutong, who was born in a family of officials and eunuchs, received a strict family education since childhood, and began to mold the mental model of traditional culture.

Second, the earnestness of the body to do their own, admonished to the previous words to the line. The focus is on Confucianism's inner moral cultivation of sincerity and righteousness, as well as the enlightenment of the sages and scriptures. This has an intrinsic cause and effect relationship with the idea of the philosophy of science as a medicine to save the country when he was studying in Tsinghua, and also has a logical relationship with the modern cultural conservatism of "Changming the country".

Third, the early reading of B, like to find the ancient thought of the vein. It shows that he received education in history since childhood, and by the Qing Confucian "six scriptures are all history" influence, and "inherited the wind of evidence since the Qianjia", for its in the tide of modern retrofuturism, into the study of history, especially the history of ideas research, the first created the academic foundation.

Fourth, the love of reading the internal canon, sent to the Xuan Yuan of learning. Attracted him to the academic interest in Buddhism, metaphysics, Indian philosophy and other metaphysical open field. Tang's later in the cold and difficult, subtle and difficult to know the field of Buddhism, to create a reputation, no one beyond the achievements, all thanks to this.

Tsinghua Academy

Tang was born at a time when the old and the new were changing, when East met West, and when the new and the old were being taught together. 1895, Ouyang Zhongguang advocated the abolition of the Eight Schools, and in 1896, Zhang Zhidong asked for students to be sent abroad to study. The Qing court ordered the local academies to be changed into higher, intermediate and primary schools, and to study both middle school and western studies. 1898, Liang Qichao submitted a letter to the inspector general's office, requesting an explicit edict to stop the eight-study test post, and to implement the six subjects of the economic system. In the same year, the abolition of the eight stocks, the school rise, since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Chinese intellectuals into the old way has become a historical monument. In this trend of the times, is still young Tang Yutong, although with his father's school, moved from Lanzhou to Beijing, but never again adhere to the tradition of reading the classics to get a job, but also can not adhere to the late Qing Dynasty, the new scholars of the classics to seek the art of governance, the tradition of change and modernization.

Before the 1911 Revolution, Tang Yutong left his father's school and studied at the Shuntian Academy in Beijing, where he began to receive a new education and opened a window to the new world. In the first year of the Republic of China, Tang was admitted to the Tsinghua School, which was exactly when Tang was in his youthful years, and Tsinghua undoubtedly became the breeding ground for his new ideas and the whole concept of culture. Since his enrollment in 1912 and graduation in 1916, Tang studied at Tsinghua for five years, received basic training in Western culture, and imbibed the school spirit of Yale University, which was rigorous, realistic, and conscientious. This not only for its study in the United States, received a master's degree in philosophy laid a solid foundation of linguistics and science, but also for its later academic thinking, method of governance laid a solid foundation.

In 1916, Tang completed his studies at Tsinghua with honors, and at the same time was admitted to study in the United States at government expense, but he was unable to do so because of an eye disease, and ultimately stayed on to teach Chinese language and serve as editor-in-chief of the school magazine, Tsinghua Weekly. The fact that he was admitted to the U.S. at government expense and stayed on to teach Chinese language shows that Tang was a leader in line with the spirit of Tsinghua, as well as his deep foundation in Chinese studies. All of this is evidenced by a series of articles published in the Tsinghua Weekly during his time at Tsinghua. However, Tsinghua is not Yale, let alone Harvard, and Tang Yutong is, after all, a Chinese intellectual who was nurtured by traditional culture and forged his cultural prototype. Although he could not stick to the imperial examination to enter the civil service, half of the Analects of Confucius to rule the world mode of thinking, but it is also impossible to change the accumulation of national culture in the deeper layers of his psyche. At this time, the Western cultural knowledge that he diligently draws on can only be a supplement and correction of the shortcomings of the national culture. In other words, at this time, he basically did not break through the fence of using the Chinese body and the West. Even later, he was never like the liberal Hu Shi, radical Chen Xu Jing first-class Westernization and intend to break with the tradition, but the realization of his traditional cultural transformation of the idea to become more complete and dense.

From a series of articles published during his time at Tsinghua, Tang introduced and elaborated on Western culture, such as philosophy, biology, and the concept of social evolution, which was much talked about by the intellectual community at the time, but more notably elaborated on his academic ideas of science to save the country. On the basis of the traditional education of "receiving training from the court at an early age", he began to form his conservative cultural concepts of "promoting the knowledge of the country and integrating the new knowledge". Of course, this also coincides with the time trend of using national essence to stimulate the caste and enhance national morality.

In his youth, Tang had the same contemptuous attitude towards the Song and Ming philosophies when he first entered Beijing. Mr. Science, in particular, there is a reluctance to work with the hostility. However, he soon put "self-improvement and self-victory", "salvation and survival" of the hope of "China's 4,000 years of true culture and true spirit" of "the whip to the near" of "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the" and "the". The hope of "saving the country" was placed on "the true culture and spirit of China in the past four thousand years", i.e., the science of science. First of all, he wrote a long essay entitled "Tanyan Yan of the Science", which was published in Tsinghua Weekly, expounding Wang and Zhu, and expressing the social concept of revitalizing the national science and firming up the spirit, so as to save the spirit of weakness, which is the basis of China's crisis and demise. In addition, he also published many essays in Tsinghua Weekly, such as "The Utility of Theory", "The New Theory of Immortality", "The Psychology of Plants", "Pleasure and Pain", "Talking about Helping", "Talking about Food and Clothing", and "Lone Widow Sobbing", a factual report of a similar fictional style, as well as four reviews of foreign literary works, which, to the best of his understanding of Western culture, unfolded the Chinese and Western cultures and showed how the Chinese and Western cultures were different. He also wrote four reviews of foreign literary works. All of these articles express his admiration for the Cheng-Zhu theory, and show the conservative tendency of attaching importance to the spiritual civilization of the East and the cultivation of inner reasoning, which is the first stage of the development of his cultural concepts. In the same year, Wu Mi graduated from the same school as Tang Yutong and stayed on at Tsinghua at the same time as Tang. In 1917, Wu Mi and Ching-Tsing were both studying in the U.S. under the Geng Zi Reparations Program. In 1917, they both studied in the United States under the Gengzai Indemnity. It was from this year that Tang Yutong began to receive a real education in Western culture.

Tang studied at Harvard for two years, and in 1920 he joined the Harvard Graduate School, where he was completely immersed in the quiet sea of philosophical thinking. The disciplines involved Western philosophy and Indian philosophy. As analyzed by Professor Daiyun Le, Mei Guangdi, Wu Mi, and Hu Xianliang, who originally studied at Northwestern University in Chicago and the University of Virginia as well as Berkeley University in California, admired the reputation of Professor Irving Babbit and transferred to Harvard one after another, taking Babbit as their teacher. It was not that Paik had shaped their thinking, but that the embryonic form of their long-established ideas had acquired *** knowledge with Paik's new humanism, and thus **** the same choice of Paik. Tang Yutong was also attracted by Paik's new humanism, and systematically accepted Paik's humanistic ideology of "sympathy plus choice" based on personal moral perfection, and was influenced by Paik's emphasis on Buddhist studies, and treated both Sanskrit and Pali, which were necessary for the study of the history of Buddhism. During his studies at the Institute, Tang studied hard, learned from the East and the West, and looked at the present and the past, with excellent grades, completed his studies ahead of schedule, and was awarded a master's degree in philosophy in 1922, with his Tsinghua and Harvard classmates, and later became the first generation of scholars in China to systematically receive training in modern sciences and formally imbued with knowledge of Western culture. He and Wu Mi, Chen Yinkei known as the "Harvard Three" is also due to this.

A New Theory of the Old Country

In 1922, Tang Yutong returned to China. At that time, the dispute between old and new cultures, Chinese and western cultures, issues and doctrines, science and metaphysics was deepening, and academics were immersed in ancient history, looking for or creating historical bases for their own views. Liang Shuming's East-West Culture and Its Philosophy was released at the end of the previous year, and set off a furious debate on how to rebuild Chinese culture ***. The Xueheng magazine, founded by the Xueheng school, was first published in January of that year. Aiming at the New Culture Movement, which only cared about the survival of political entities, ignored the extinction of traditional culture, and attempted to replace the Chinese tradition with modern Western culture, they labeled the academic purpose of "discussing academics, expounding and seeking the truth, promoting and clarifying the history of the country, and melting the new knowledge, and carrying out the duties of criticism with a neutral and correct vision, without bias and without any political party, and without excitement and followers", and they were in agreement with Hu Shi as the representative of the New Culture Movement. Ouyang Jingwu, in July of the same year, started a heated debate with the New Culture Movement represented by Hu Shi. In July of the same year, Ouyang Jingwu in the Jinling Scripture Office, a river huan Jingsha based on the founding of the Chinas College, for the modern Buddhism of the boom, played a role in promoting the role of the fuel.

Tang Yutong is in such an academic atmosphere, not only wearing a master's degree, but more importantly, hostage to Western culture, specifically, mainly the new humanism of the White Bird's weapon, and a deep and solid foundation of Buddhist studies, on the stage of modern Chinese academics, but also on the rostrum of China's new style of education. He was invited by Mei Guangdi, Wu Mi, first taught at the Southeast University in Nanjing, and then at Nankai University in Tianjin, Nanjing Central University (formerly Southeast University), as a professor of Philosophy Department, Department Chair, before and after nine years or so.

As far as we know, there are only two articles published by Tang Yutong directly for the discussion of Chinese and Western cultures. One is "The Conflict and Reconciliation of Cultures," published in January 1943 in the Academic Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 2, and the other is "The Conflict and Reconciliation of Cultures," published in Harvard University. The other is Tang's "Commentary on Recent Cultural Studies," published in Zhonghua Xinbao shortly after his return to China from Harvard and reproduced in full in the headline of the twelfth issue of Xueheng, published in December 1922, in which Tang's "Clash of Cultures and Reconciliation" was published.

It can be said that Tang's scholarly path is a three-pronged one of lecturing, writing, and translating:

First, he taught the History of Chinese Buddhism on the university platform;

Second, he translated Western and Indian philosophy;

Third, he began to write the History of Chinese Buddhism at the same time.

Tong immediately put his humanistic ideas into academic practice. He not only introduced Western learning into the field of old learning, promoting the modern transformation of traditional culture, but also, and more importantly, used Western learning as a barrier to tradition, in order to preserve Chinese culture and promote the spirit of the nation. If Tsinghua is the cradle of Tang's cultural concepts, Harvard is the oar to help him grow, and after his return to China, Tang Yutong, who systematically expressed his humanistic cultural concepts, is undoubtedly the fish that leaps through the Dragon Gate and the petrel that fights against the long sky.

To sum up, Mr. Tang received a systematic traditional education at an early age, implanted with the words and deeds of the past sages, as well as the sentiment of worrying about the country and the people. After the age of twenty, he received a new education in Tsinghua, which not only did not cut him off from the tradition, but also strengthened his feelings towards the traditional culture. Facing the challenge of modern western civilization, he tried to protect the tradition with the wing of western learning, and gradually formed the idea of saving the country with the science of introspection and firmness of spirit. It was also this idea that made him and his comrades choose the modern conservative master neo-humanist Paik Bidet. The cultivation of foreign cultures in the past five years has also found a homeland for his nationalist idea of cultural salvation. The moral and ethical philosophy of Confucianism, the humanism of Bibidi's "sympathy plus choice", and the cultural recognition of the purification of the theory of "Changming the country's past and melting new knowledge". This theory was gradually systematized into a system of cultural integration and a method of comprehensive thesis, factual analysis, traditional verification, and scientific comparison in more than twenty years after his return to China, with a view to discussing the present and the past, complementing the Chinese and Western cultures, and benefiting from the reforms and gains. At the same time, he was influenced by Bibidi and Moore, chose Chinese Buddhism as the object of study, studied Sanskrit and Pali diligently, and put forward the ideas of sympathetic and silent response, heartfelt experience, and extensive search and refinement of the history of Buddhism, which created an unprecedented and unsurpassed achievement in the study of the history of Chinese Buddhism.

He had a deep understanding of tradition, but not the slightest trace of old-fashioned scholarly habits. He was one of the three great American students at Harvard, but he did not show any of the fashionable scholarly manners. Therefore, in the tide of the East-West controversy, he was as united as one, neither taking the West as his ancestor to make some fashionable articles on political and social thoughts, nor taking his own race as the best, and regarding tradition as a single system that cannot be changed. He eloquent historical facts, articulated due to the cultural transformation of the concept of leather loss and benefit, and the emergence of a new army, while showing his "independent" personality and academic thinking. 1920s to 1940s is the era of great changes in Chinese academia, but also the golden age of Tang Yuantong's academic thinking.