ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore the migration of Green’s practical philosophy in China and East Asia. As China has begun its modernisation since the late nineteenth century, plenty of Western thoughts and technologies have been introduced to the Chinese. Section one indicates the general reception of Green’s practical philosophy in East Asia. As Nakajima Rikizo and many other Japanese thinkers introduced Green’s thought into Japan for transforming their traditional moral values, Chinese scholars like Yang Changji also thought that Green’s ethical theory is compatible with the traditional Chinese morality and can help the Chinese to adapt to the modern life. Yet, in section two we can see that after the New Cultural movement and the establishment of the Communist China, Chinese scholars in general lost their interest in Green. For the scholars participated in the New Cultural movement advocated individualism and criticised the collectivist features of Green’s thought and the Communists’ materialist ideology was in conflict with Green’s idealist tendency. That said, as Green’s practical philosophy is proposed to respond to the issue of individual alienation and its social impact, China however encountered with different modernity issues and it caused to the change of research interests in Green’s thought. Nevertheless, we can see in section three that there were scholars in Hong Kong and Taiwan still doing research on Green, and they had noticed the central question which Green’s practical philosophy intended to respond to and even employed Green’s thought to develop innovative ideas of ethical and political theories.
