A COMPARISON OF THE APPROACHES TO CONSTRUCTING THE "MORAL SUBJECT" IN ZHANG TAIYAN AND LIANG SHUMING

Abstract

In the process of Chinese philosophy's modernization, both Zhang Taiyan and Liang Shuming were pioneering figures who reconstructed the theoretical framework of the "moral subject" in Chinese philosophy by drawing on different theoretical resources. Zhang Taiyan employed Yogācāra (Consciousness-Only) Buddhism to deconstruct traditional Confucian ritual ethics. He put forward the moral proposition of "relying on oneself rather than on others," critiqued the externality of moral authority through the concept of "provisional designation" (prajñapti), and emphasized that individual consciousness and self-awareness constitute the true source of moral practice. Liang Shuming, by contrast, took traditional Chinese Confucianism as his foundation and integrated Bergson's philosophy of life with the Yogācāra doctrine of the "three valid means of knowledge" (pramāṇa) to reconstruct an epistemology of "intuition and benevolence" (ren). In doing so, he grounded Confucian ethics in the philosophical intuition of life itself. Although both thinkers stressed the self-awareness of the moral subject, Zhang Taiyan's approach is distinguished by its critical and transcendent character, while Liang Shuming's emphasizes practicality and ethical commitment, advocating the reconstruction of social order. This dynamic of Buddhist deconstruction and Confucian reconstruction reveals how, in the modernization of Chinese philosophy, scholars constructed different conceptions of the "moral subject" through their divergent philosophical commitments.