Cultural Maverick Gu Hongming

Author: Huang Xingtao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1997-01-01
Features: Cultural Maverick Gu Hongming is the first academic monograph to systematically study this historical figure. The book explores the main ideas and activities of Gu Hongming throughout his life, providing a comprehensive and objective elaboration and analysis. The author points out that Gu Hongming was a cultural conservative, but his cultural activities and statements were not entirely "absurd and worthless." The book details and analyzes some of Gu Hongming's views on Chinese and Western civilizations. It also analyzes the reasons behind Gu Hongming's transition from a deeply knowledgeable Western scholar to a proponent of Confucian culture, and his eventual development into an extreme conservative. This includes his exposure to Western Romanticism and intellectual influences, his identity as a Chinese overseas, the cultural conservative environment of Zhang Zhidong's, his dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of Western civilization, and his extremist personality, among other factors. These analyses logically reveal the intellectual origins of this cultural "oddity," making it easier for readers to understand. The book also provides a specific analysis of the characteristics of Gu Hongming's cultural conservative thought, clarifying that he differed from both the late Qing Dynasty's Westernization advocates and Sinicists, as well as from the early Republic of China's Eastern Culturalists and later New Confucians. Additionally, the book offers a more detailed introduction to Gu Hongming's influence in the West, allowing readers to understand this figure, regarded as a "" in China, who was the only scholar from modern China to have a significant impact in the Western world, particularly in Germany.