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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
One aspect of the intellectual changes taking place in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the emergence of utilitarian ideas. Although it may be useful to think of modern Chinese thought from the perspective of the emergence of social Darwinism and nationalism, it is significant that the country's most progressive scholars at the turn of thecentury derived their inspiration from utilitarianism. Utilitarianism was accepted as a weapon with which to challenge traditional social, political, and cultural ideas, and to justify social and political reforms.
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2 The term ‘conservatism’ has been used in the study of modern Chinese intellectual history to refer to two distinct political beliefs. First, it refers to the attitude of traditional Chinese intellectual élites who refused to change through learning from the West in the late nineteenth century (e.g., Wright, Mary Clabaugh, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: the T'ung-chih Restoration, Stanford, 1957Google Scholar). Second, it refers to various ideas in the early twentieth century that either preferred a gradualist to a revolutionary approach in social and political change, or expressed the desire to preserve some elements of tradition. (See Furth, Charlotte, ed. The Limit of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, Cambridge, Mass., 1976CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. Benjamin Schwartz, ‘Notes on Conservatism in General and in China in Particular’, and Charlotte Furth, ‘Culture and Politics in Modern Chinese Conservatism’.) In order to avoid confusion, I refer to the former as ‘traditional conservatism’ (this term was used by Gasster, Michael, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911, Seattle, 1969, p. viiGoogle Scholar) and the latter as conservatism.
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8 Yi means ‘right’ or ‘proper’ and is often translated as ‘righteousness’. Li means ‘profit’, ‘utility’, or ‘interest’. In the following discussions, I will use these three English translations interchangeably.
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10 Li means rite, propriety or norm. I capitalize it in order to distinguish it from li as referring to profit, interest, utility. These two words have an identical English pronunciation yet different characters in Chinese.
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22 Both Benjamin Schwartz and A. C. Graham have suggested that the Legalist tendency of pursuing wealth and strength rather than moral ideals entailed elements of modern rationalism and behaviourism. The ‘dynamic goal-oriented nature’ embodied in Legalism, they argued, is indeed almost ‘rationalistic in the Weberian sense of instrumental rationalism’. (Schwartz, , The World of Thought in Ancient China, Cambridge, Mass., 1985, pp. 328, 347Google Scholar; Graham, , Disputers of the Tao, p. 269Google Scholar.)
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27 The English word ‘utilitarianists’ was used by Yen Fu.
28 CYFW, v. 1265.
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41 Ibid.
42 Sen, Amartya and Williams, Bernard ed., Introduction, Utilitarianism and beyond, Cambridge, 1982, p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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44 Ibid., iv. 885.
45 I use ‘either directly or indirectly’ with the difference between ‘act utilitarianism’ and ‘rule utilitarianism’ in mind.
46 CYFW, i. 100–1.
47 Ibid., iv. 858–9; v. 1359.
48 Ibid., v. 1265.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., iii. 631–2.
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53 Yen Fu's praise of Smith's invisible hand theory can be seen in CYFW, v. 1347, 1359, 1395; Yuan-fu (Smith's, Wealth of Nations), ii. 481, 536Google Scholar.
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55 Ibid., i. 14.
56 On Liang's distinction between public and private morality, see Hao, , Liang Ch'ich'ao and Intellectual Transition, pp. 149–54Google Scholar.
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59 Fu, Yen, Yuan-fu (Smith's, Wealth of Nations), i. 76–7Google Scholar.
60 CYFW, v. 1395.
61 CYFW, iii. 623.
62 Ibid., i. 56.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., iii. 623.
65 Ibid., ii. 342.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., 330.
68 Ibid.
69 Pusey, James, China and Charles Darwin, Cambridge, Mass., 1983, p. 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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