Author ｜
Kevin Ting-kit Yau
Abstract ｜
Recent research realizes that Cai Yuanpei (蔡元培, 1868-1940)’s thoughts on enlightenment in late Qing and his aesthetic education plan in early republican China are correlated. Most of them center at Cai’s reception of Inoue Enryō (1858-1919), whereas there has been rare discussion on Cai’s reception of Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908) and the translation of Principles of Ethics《倫理學原理》. Paulsen is an important German philosopher and educationist. Principles of Ethics was originally a long chapter from his book System of Ethic. In 1907, Cai studied in Germany, assimilating knowledge from European philosophy, aesthetics and psychology. Paulsen passed away in the next year, soon afterwards, Cai started translating Principles of Ethics and then published it at The Commercial Press in September 1909. The paper first evaluates the culture Cai received when he first came to Germany based on this transcultural text, revealing that Paulsen’s thoughts on ethics and ideas towards affect-will provided the vision of counter-reason to Cai. The paper then compares their different points of view on using religion as the way of enlightenment. The paper illustrates that Cai gave an active and unique response to the West in translating counter-reason, and the case could present the agency of intellectuals in thoughts translation. The paper provides a more comprehensive understanding to the formation of Cai’s thought during his studies on the West.
keywords ｜
Cai Yuanpei, Friedrich Paulsen, Principle of Ethics, counter-reason, aesthetic education