Gan Yang | |
|---|---|
甘陽 | |
| Born | 1952 (age 72–73) Shenyang, Liaoning, China |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Heilongjiang University (B.A., 1982) Peking University (M.A., 1985) University of Chicago |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Political philosophy |
| School or tradition | Neoauthoritarianism Straussianism |
| Institutions | Chinese University of Hong Kong Sun Yat-sen University (2009–present) |
Gan Yang (born 1952;Chinese:甘陽;pinyin:Gān Yáng) is a Chinese political philosopher, "Confucian socialist". He is dean of the Liberal Arts College atSun Yat-sen University, and was formerly professor of political philosophy at theChinese University of Hong Kong.
Born in 1952 inShenyang, Gan was raised inHangzhou, Fujian. Gan was aRed Guard in the early years of theCultural Revolution, but became disillusioned with the movement and was sent to labour in theGreater Khingan Mountains in 1970. He was admitted toHeilongjiang University after the death ofMao Zedong, graduating in 1982. Gan then pursued graduate studies in philosophy atPeking University, where he was a classmate ofLiu Xiaofeng. At Beijing he developed an interest incontinental philosophy, particularly the thought ofMartin Heidegger and theNeo-Kantians.[1] He graduated with a master's degree in 1985 and played an important role in disseminating Western philosophy in China in the late 1980s.[2]
In 1989, Gan enrolled as a PhD student under the Committee of Social Thought at theUniversity of Chicago, but left Chicago ten years later without a doctorate.[3] He was appointed professor of political philosophy at theChinese University of Hong Kong,[4] then moved toSun Yat-sen University as dean of the Liberal Arts College (Boya College) in 2009, where he presided over a general reform of liberal arts at the university onStraussian lines,[5]: 199 [3] emphasising Chinese, Latin, and Ancient Greek classics.[6]
Gan was described in 2013 as "one of the most prominent political philosophers of contemporary China".[7]
In Gan's view, Chinese conservatism should incorporate Mao-era socialist egalitarianism and Deng era market reformism so as to "unify three heritages into a single strand".[5]: 200 This view the political idea of "three heritages", through which theGongyang thinkerDong Zhongshu wrote that "a new king must keep safe the heritage of the two [earlier] kings as a means of maintaining the connection".[5]: 200
Gan contends that since the 1970s, AmericanStraussians have used esotericism to replace the liberal-egalitarian elements of the American ideological creed with classical and aristocratic ideals.[5]: 198 In Gan's view, the deceptive methods used by the United States to justify its2003 invasion of Iraq came from the doctrines of the Straussian school.[5]: 198
Gan criticizes what he deems aspolitical correctness imposed by "tenured radicals" in American university humanities departments.[5]: 198 According to Gan, a trend of hedonistic liberalism had led to the "closing of the American mind".[5]: 198
Gan started his academic career as aliberal[8] and a disciple of WesternEnlightenment philosophy, but, influenced byErnst Cassirer, he began to alter his views in 1987, cautioning that there were Western philosophers who had exposed the limits of reason as a philosophical principle. Gan then adopted a more culturally conservative position, arguing that a return toConfucianism was necessary to counterbalance the negative aspects of modernisation in China.[9] For Gan at this stage of his thinking, freedom at the individual level was a higher concern than democracy and science, the two catchwords of theMay Fourth Movement: Chinese intellectuals had so far "never dared to regard 'the freedom of individuals' as the first principle".[10] He initially supported theChinese democracy movement and the1989 Tiananmen Square protests.[11]
After moving to Chicago in 1989, Gan became increasingly influenced as a student ofAllan Bloom by American conservative philosophy and the thought ofLeo Strauss. In a preface to a Chinese translation of Strauss'sNatural Right and History in 2003, Gan drew on Strauss's thought to argue that the predominant danger of persecution in philosophy was not the persecution of the philosopher by an unphilosophical wider society, but the persecution of the multitude by the philosopher. Modern philosophy has "gone mad", Gan states, and is promoting the continual remaking of politics according to competing philosophical abstractions;[12] in light of the "politicization of philosophy" and the "philosophization of politics",[12] philosophy has become a disease which must be controlled.[13]
In the 1990s, Gan shortly joined the emergingChinese New Left.[14]
After 2000 announced his support for the establishment of a "socialist Confucian republic".[4] According to Gan, the ideal of a Confucian socialist republic is already embodied in the official name of thePeople's Republic of China: the title of "People's Republic" demarcates the country as a socialist republic constituted by workers and peasants and not a capitalist state, while the name "China" itself invokes the Confucian tradition of Chinese civilisation.[15]
Commenting upon China's reform process, Gan has criticised linear models ofeconomic development and suggested that the model ofTownship and Village Enterprises in the Chinese countryside offers an alternative vision of modernity to the Western capitalist world order.[16] While other scholars such asQin Hui dismissed the importance of the TVEs,[8] Gan suggested that by avoiding the pronounced urban–rural divide characteristic ofWestern industrialisation, cooperative forms of industry like the TVEs could effect a more dispersed form of development that would preserve traditional rural industries in China.[17]
Gan has been influenced both by Westernpostmodernists, such asMichel Foucault, and byWestern Marxism, including the thought ofErich Fromm andHerbert Marcuse.[18]
Gan stated: "I am more concerned with how to re-cultivate a healthyconservative mentality and attitude in a post-revolutionary society, a conservative, gradualist reforming way of looking at current issues and social change."[19] Some labelled Gan as part of the Chinese New Left, which he "never truly accepted"[20] and even "resented".[21]
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