Li Zehou and New Confucianism

Abstract

As John Makeham has pointed out in the introductory chapter, there is as yet no consensus as to who is or is not a New Confucian. To most adherents of New Confucianism outside mainland China, Li Zehou, an avowed Marxist or “post-Marxist,” would be the last person to be accorded a place in the New Confucian canon. It is their common perception that Marxists and communists are responsible for destroying the Confucian tradition in China. By a curious twist of fate, Li has been pejoratively called a New Confucian in mainland China in the 1980s and 1990s by those who are probably no less anticommunist but even more anti-Confucian.¹ The mainland Chinese scholars who identify themselves with New Confucianism, or who at least maintain scholarly neutrality toward that school of thought, have generally preferred to avoid the sensitive issue of Confucianism versus communism, and have widened the category to include non-anticommunist philosophers such as Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1895–1990). Even so, many of them are still evasive as to whether Li is a New Confucian.