AUC PHILOLOGICA
AUC PHILOLOGICA

AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.

The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, EBSCO, and ERIH PLUS.

AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2021 No 3 (2021), 9–27

Traverses Between Cognitive Consonance and Existential Crisis: Notes on Jiang Menglin’s Pragmatist Notion of Rensheng Guan and His Views on Suicide from 1919

Jan Vrhovski

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2022.1
published online: 15. 02. 2022

abstract

The article explores Jiang Menglin’s philosophy of life and his notion of rensheng guan (“view on life”) in the period between his studies in the USA and the year of the May Fourth events in 1919. In the first part, the paper traces the origins of Jiang’s idea back to the then-prevalent version of pragmatism propagated by John Dewey and other pragmatist thinkers gathered at Columbia University, while in the subsequent parts it aims to illuminate the later developments of Jiang’s own version of pragmatism in the context of the May Fourth intellectual discourse. While the article aims at presenting a positive outline of Jiang’s philosophy, it also endeavours to expose its less explicit aspects through its apophatic (exposition by negation or denial) expositions in Jiang’s writings from the period. Finally, it focuses on Jiang’s contributions to the debate on suicide that developed after Lin Deyang’s suicide in November 1919.

keywords: rensheng guan; Jiang Menglin; pragmatism; May Fourth Movement; suicide

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