ABSTRACT
Starting with an introductory section about Confucianism, this chapter provides an overview of the lives and thought of two late 19th/early 20th century Confucian reformers. K’ang Yu-wei (1858–1927) reinterpreted Confucius as prescribing different types of institutions for three different stages in humankind’s development. Arguing that China had reached the second stage, K’ang spoke out for a constitutionalist monarchy and had a brief spell of power during the 1898 reforms. When the latter were terminated by the conservative court faction, K’ang went into exile and founded a constitutionalist reform organization. After China’s republican revolution, K’ang’s constitutional monarchism went out of tune with the times. Nevertheless, K’ang’s vision of the future third stage contained very radical ideas like a democratic world state and the abolition of the family. K’ang’s pupil Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (1873–1929) became a leading journalist and briefly minister under the Republic, thereby frequently changing his ideas: After first following K’ang’s scheme, he then deemphasized it in favour of Social-Darwinism. During the last decade of his life, Liang returned to Confucianism. The spiritual successors of these two reformers were liberals and socialists disposing of Confucianism but K’ang and Liang can also be considered as precursors of New Confucianism.
