Chang Tung-sun (1886-), philosopher and political independent, known for his interpretation and teaching of Western philosophy in China. He was an advocate of the constitutionalist theories of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, and became chief editor of the China Times and a leading figure in the science-philosophy debates of 1923. In 1951 he came under Communist censure and was removed from the faculty of Yenching University on which he had served since 1930. A native of Ch'ient'ang, Chekiang, Chang Tung-sun came from a prominent Chekiang family which had produced a long line of scholar-officials. He was born in the Wuhsien (Soochow) district of Kiangsu province and received a solid education in the Chinese classics under the supervision of his elder brother, Chang Erh-t'ien (q.v.). In 1905 Chang Tung-sun went to Japan, where he studied Buddhism and Western philosophy in Tokyo. Little is known about his stay there, but it is possible that he was in contact with Chinese refugee groups which were organized there during the final years of the Ch'ing period to work for constitutional government. Except for that period of study in Japan, Chang never studied or traveled outside China. On his return to China, he was among the students who were granted imperial degrees on the basis of foreign education.

During the early years of the republican period, Chang Tung-sun worked with men and journals that were concerned with Western political and constitutional theories. They were especially interested in the social and educational implications of these theories for China. In 1912 he was editor of the Ta-kung-ho jih-pao [great republican daily news] at Shanghai before going to north China to become an editor of the new publication Yung-yen [justice], published at Tientsin. This magazine—sponsored by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (q.v.), then one of the leading proponents of parliamentary government in China—was then very popular. Its issues of 1913 contained many of Chang Tungsun's discussions. In July 1913, in an article entitled "My View of Confucianism," he supported those prominent scholars who had petitioned the Parliament at Peking to adopt Confucianism as China's state religion. Chang Erh-t'ien, who was a member of the Confucian Association and a regular contributor to the association's magazine, K'ung-chiao-hui tsa-chih [Confucian association magazine] reprinted the article in its September 1913 issue. The next year, many of Chang Tung-sun's articles on constitutional problems appeared in the magazine Cheng-i [righteousness], which was established at Shanghai in January 1914 by Ku Chung-hsiu and others to oppose Yuan Shih-k'ai.

Chang also served as an editor of the magazine Ta Chung-hua [great China], to which Liang Ch'i-ch'ao was a major contributor, and during 1915 he wrote many articles on political theory for Chia-yin tsa-chih [the tiger magazine], which was published by Chang Shih-chao (q.v.) in Tokyo. During these years Chang Tung-sun was also associated with Carsun Chang (Chang Chia-sen, q.v.), with whom he was to have longstanding intellectual and political ties. After the death of Yuan Shih-k'ai in June 1916 and the succession of Li Yuan-hung to the presidency, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao again turned his attention to the affairs of the Progressive party, with which Chang Tung-sun had previously been associated. Liang and some of his associates organized a new group, the so-called Research clique. Liang hoped to use this group so that he could play an influential role in the reconstituted Peking Parliament. Chang Tungsun was both a member of the clique and secretary general of the Parliament. The political leadership of Tuan Ch'i-jui (q.v.) at Peking, however, appeared to be making scant contribution to China's regeneration, and most of the intellectuals in official positions withdrew from the Peking government.

Chang Tung-sun then became the chief editor of the prominent independent daily newspaper, the Shih-shih hsin-pao [China Times) of Shanghai, a position which he retained through the 1920's. Through Hsueh-teng, the literary supplement of the newspaper, Chang played an important role in commenting upon the principal intellectual and social currents of the day. In June 1919 he publicly supported the Peking demonstrations. Later that year he joined with Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and others in organizing the Hsin-hsueh-hui [new learning society], a group devoted to examination of new ideas from Western Europe and Russia which might assist the intellectual and cultural regeneration of China. Chang attempted to introduce some basic concepts of Western philosophy for the benefit of the young Chinese intellectuals. He produced Chinese translations of two philosophical works of Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, which appeared in 1918, and Matter and Memory, published in 1922.

As a prominent intellectual and writer at Shanghai, Chang Tung-sun was also involved in the early efforts to introduce Marxism to China. In the spring of 1920, when Gregory Voitinsky, an agent of the Comintern, arrived in Shanghai to meet with Ch'en Tu-hsiu (q.v.), Ch'en attempted to rally the support of influential men of the city. Chang Tung-sun attended some of the secret discussions which led to the creation of a small Communist organization. He withdrew from the group, however, before the Shanghai Communist nucleus was formed in the summer of 1920. His withdrawal, reportedly because of his refusal to accept the concept of class struggle inherent in the Marxist message, marked the beginning of his protracted debate with the political and ideological proponents of Communism in China. Late in 1920 Bertrand Russell, who was lecturing in China, and Chang Tung-sun both attacked the Marxist analysis of the Chinese situation and argued that only capitalism could achieve China's most urgent need: the development of industry. Ch'en Tu-hsiu at once denounced that view in the December 1920 issue of Hsin eh'ing-nien [new youth], which had then been transferred from Peking to Shanghai to serve as an organ of the new Communist group there. In an article entitled "Discussion on Socialism," Ch'en stated that it was possible for China to achieve industrialization on a socialist basis, free of the ideological and financial constrictions imposed by foreign capitalism.

In 1923 Chang Tung-sun and Ch'en Tu-hsiu again clashed in the course of a more philosophical, if equally inconclusive, controversy. In February 1923 Carsun Chang published in the Tsinghua University Weekly a lecture in which he assailed the growing expression of scientific thought among the intellectuals of China. Aroused by the open attack on scientific method, the eminent geologist V. K. Ting (Ting Wenchiang, q.v.) issued a rebuttal in which he sought to defend the value of science for man's intellectual life and philosophy. The issue ignited a lively science-philosophy debate, which engaged many of the nimblest minds of the day.

Chang Tung-sun, as editor of the influential Shih-shih hsin-pao of Shanghai, placed himself on the side of philosophy. His critical review of the debate, K'o-hsueh yü che-hsueh [science and philosophy], drew arguments from a wide range of contemporary Western philosophers and scientists to demonstrate that the categories of science are not equally applicable to all human experience. He attacked the naive materialism of Wu Chih-hui and Hu Shih (qq.v.) by quoting from Eddington and Einstein, who asserted that earlier concepts of matter, energy, space, and time had been disproved by modern physics. The objects of scientific investigation seemed to be reduced to abstract, mathematical equations. The positivism of V. K. Ting, derived from the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach and the English mathematical statistician Karl Pearson, though considerably more sophisticated than the materialism of Wu Chih-hui and Hu Shih, nevertheless was based, in Chang Tung-sun's view, on an incomplete understanding of the bases of knowledge. Pearson accepted the abstract, ideal, quality of knowledge but failed to see that such acceptance contradicted his theory ofsensational epistemology. Chang Tung-sun dismissed Ch'en Tu-hsiu as being unaware of the philosophical implications either of historical materialism or of his own (Ch'en's) assertions. In conclusion, Chang stated his own view of the relationship of philosophy and science, outlining an epistemology based upon the idealistic nature of scientific knowledge. In his system, which he termed "objective idealism," philosophy held an important place in the world of science. Shortly after this debate, Chang Tung-sun entered the academic community. Following the May Thirtieth Incident of 1925, when many professors and students withdrew from St. John's University in Shanghai, Carsun Chang and Chang Tung-sun obtained funds from Sun Ch'uan-fang (q.v.) to establish a political college at Woosung. For the next five years, Chang Tung-sun served as professor of philosophy and dean of the college of arts at Kuang-hua University and as president of the Chungkuo kung-hsueh [China Institute] at Woosung. He also wrote many articles for China's leading intellectual magazines, including Che-hsueh p"1 inglun [philosophical critique], and published textbooks intended to acquaint Chinese students with the history and contemporary problems of Western thought.

In the autumn of 1930, Chang moved to Peiping to become professor of philosophy at Yenching University, where he was to remain for the rest of his teaching career. From 1931 until 1933, he served as chairman of the department of philosophy, after which he returned to teaching and writing. He also served as an adviser to the fellows and scholars of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Chang Tung-sun's long-standing interest in Western philosophy was reflected in the courses he offered at Yenching. In addition to introductory courses on ethics and on the history and problems of Western thought, Chang conducted advanced courses on Plato, Hobbes and Locke, Berkeley, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Bergson, and contemporary philosophers. He occasionally offered courses on the history of materialism, language and thought, and the philosophy of history (Comte, Hegel, Marx, Croce, Rickert, and others) . During the 1 934-35 academic year Chang first offered work in Oriental thought— a course on Chinese political and social philosophies. He later added courses on Confucianism, Taoism, and Neo-Confucianism. In 1936 he published a paper entitled "Sino-Western Philosophical Differences as Seen through the Structure of Language" in the Tung-fang tsa-chih [eastern miscellany].

By the time he joined the Yenching faculty in 1930, Chang Tung-sun had begun to expound his revised epistemological synthesis. He now termed the basis of his thought "epistemological pluralism." According to Chang, the most difficult theme in the history of Western thought, yet the most compelling, has been the attempt to discover the nature and content of knowledge. The fundamental problem of epistemology has been the origin of the seeming orderliness of knowledge. The realist holds that order exists in things and that it is the task of the mind to discover that order. The idealist maintains that this order does not exist in things but is superimposed on things by categories of the mind. Chang Tung-sun found neither of these explanations to be wholly adequate. Chang then set forth an epistemological system in which the basic elements of knowledge were four: order, category, postulate, and concept. In human experience these four are interdependent; by combination they produce what Kant termed phenomena. It is important to note that, although they are interdependent, each has its own source and cannot be reduced to any one or combination of the others. Thus we have "epistemological pluralism." For the inspiration for his new theory of knowledge, Chang Tung-sun gave credit to the American C. I. Lewis, especially his work, Mind and the World Order (1929). In the final development of his own system, Chang acknowledged his broad eclecticism. He recognized that eclecticism was "not a term of the highest honor in philosophy." Despite this cautionary note, he continued, "I confess that I still prefer to call myself eclectic because in category, I have generally followed Kant; in postulate, I followed Professor Lewis; and in order, Eddington and Whitehead. But taken from the view of the arrangement of these parts into an integrated system, my thesis is no less original." In the next few years, Chang attempted to refine this philosophy. His paper on "Thought, Language, and Culture" appeared in Chinese in the journal She-hui-hsueh chieh [sociological world] in 1938. An English translation of that paper, prepared by Li An-che and entitled "A Chinese Philosopher's Theory of Knowledge," appeared in The Yenching Journal of Social Sciences in January 1939.

In addition to his professorial and philosophical concerns, Chang Tung-sun continued to take an active interest in contemporary Chinese politics. In 1930, while still at Shanghai, he had announced in the pages of the Shih-shih hsin-pao his new political concept of "national socialism" and proposed the organization of a national socialist party to bring democratic government to China. In 1931 he discussed the matter with his old friend Carsun Chang at Peiping. In the following year the two men gathered a number of professors, students, and former members of the Progressive party and the Research clique into a society to prepare for the organization of a new political party and, at the same time, launched a new magazine, Tsai-sheng [national renaissance] . In 1934 that group held a national meeting and formally announced the inauguration of the National Socialist party. (The confusing and unhappy similarity of the name of the new party to that of the party led by Adolf Hitler in Germany was accidental.) In the years after 1934 Chang Tung-sun was both a prominent member of the new party and a frequent contributor to its magazine, the Tsai-sheng. In that forum, and in other journals and newspapers, Chang analyzed contemporary problems. In a philosophical controversy of the early 1930's he again placed himself in opposition to the Marxists, and in 1934 he edited a volume of essays in refutation of dialectical materialism, Wei-wu pien-cheng-fa lun-chan [discussion on dialectical materialism]. Yeh Ch'ing (Jen Chohsuan, q.v.) responded by publishing articles supporting Marxism. Chang also drew attention to the growing Japanese threat to north China and supported the stand of the National Salvation Association (see Shen Chun-ju). When the Japanese took over Peiping in 1937, the president of Yenching University, J. Leighton Stuart, decided to keep the institution open and to attempt to prevent an open break with the Japanese authorities. In January 1941, Stuart met with a representative faculty group to discuss university policy "in view of possible developments." Chang Tung-sun was one of the five professors present. On 8 December 1941, a Monday, the "possible developments" were realized. During the eight o'clock classes, Japanese military police surrounded the Yenching campus and ordered separate meetings of the students, the Chinese faculty, and the Western faculty. Eight Chinese faculty members and some twenty students were arrested immediately. Chang Tung-sun, who was known for his anti-Japanese stand, was among the first arrested. In June 1942, Y. P. Mei (Mei Yipao, q.v.), Chang's former colleague in the philosophy department at Yenching, wrote from Chungking: "these Chinese colleagues have been kept in military prisons and, because of their uncompromising attitude, tasted the Japanese third degree. . . . The effect of the patriotic and righteous stand which they have taken with imminent danger to themselves ... is nothing short of being electric." Following the Japanese surrender and the reopening of Yenching University at Peiping, Chang Tung-sun returned to his post in the philosophy department. He also lectured occasionally at Peking University. In four works published in 1946 and 1947, Chang concentrated on political and social, rather than philosophical, problems. In these writings he evidenced increased respect for the Marxist historical perspective and attempted to interpret its relevance to Chinese society, thought, and culture. Nonetheless, Chang remained highly critical of intellectual orthodoxies and, like many other independent Chinese intellectuals, found himself uncommitted to either the Kuomintang or the Chinese Communist party.

Chang Tung-sun also resumed his political activities. As an important figure in the China Democratic League, he was a member of the four-man delegation from that organization at the Political Consultative Conference in January 1946, which attempted to resolve the differences separating the Nationalists and Communists and to prevent civil war in China. The other China Democratic League delegates were Carsun Chang, Chang Lan, and Lo Lung-chi. Chang served as secretary general of the league in 1946 and 1947. Within the Social Democratic party, a group formed by union of the former National Socialist party with the Democratic Constitutionalist party, Chang Tung-sun broke with Carsun Chang in December 1946 and organized a reformist group which opposed participation in the National Assembly.

Following the Communist occupation of Peiping early in 1949, Chang Tung-sun remained in that city and took part in preparing for the establishment of a new central government. In the summer of that year he served as a member of the preparatory committee for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. After the organization of the new government, he was appointed to membership on the Central People's Government Council.

In the autumn of 1951, Chang Tung-sun's continued independence brought him into conflict with Communist plans for the ideological mobilization of the Chinese academic community. On 26 November 1951 Chang presented a discussion of "The Problems of the Reform of the Colleges and Departments of Regular Universities." During the Communist-sponsored political reform which developed that winter, three of Yenching's leading faculty members were singled out for public criticism. They were Chang Tung-sun, then the chairman of the department of philosophy; T. C. Chao (Chao Tzu-ch'en, q.v.), the director of the school of religion; and Lu Chih-wei (q.v.), the president of the university. In February 1952 Chang was brought before joint student-faculty meetings at Yenching for self-examination and discussion. On 29 February he came before an all-Yenching meeting of teachers, students, staff members, and workers for further self-criticism. Chang then was removed from his academic and government positions and lost his national prestige.

Chang Tung-sun was a short man, but he commanded the lecture platform with the keenness of his mind and the skill of his rhetoric. Responding to the demand of young Chinese intellectuals for Western knowledge, Chang brought to the China of the first half of the twentieth century a better understanding of the historical development and contemporary perspectives of Western philosophy. Two of his three sons, Chang Tsung-sui and Chang Tsung-ping, studied and taught in the United States. The former was trained as a biologist and the latter as a physicist. The third, Chang Tsung-kung, studied sociology, but marriage and politics kept him from studying abroad. All were in China in 1965.