(Courtesy of Yin Hai-guang Memorial Foundation)
By June Tsai
When National Taiwan University Press published the complete works of the late thinker Yin Hai-guang in February, many considered it symbolic redress for the university’s past wrongs against Yin—standing by in 1966 when government agents forced him to give up his professorship for political reasons. Perhaps even more importantly, the publication allows a review of the scholar’s legacy to contemporary Taiwan.
“We’d be hard put to come up with another thinker of Yin’s stature whose system of thought developed here, in Taiwan,” Ko Ching-ming, a professor of literature at NTU and one of the editors of Yin’s works, told Taiwan Today Feb. 24.
Some scholars focused on what is known as New Confucianism after the May Fourth Movement, beginning in 1917 in mainland China, challenged traditional Chinese values, Ko said. “But unlike Yin, none of them based their academic careers here, and indeed, in the field of philosophy Taiwan has pretty much presented a blank page.
“Yin’s writings are interwoven with Taiwan’s postwar context, and many of his ideas still resonate today, given the continuing effects of the country’s undemocratic past.”
Yin, who was born in 1919 in mainland China’s Hubei province, studied philosophy during the 1930s and 1940s, and became a faculty member at NTU in August 1949, shortly before the Chiang Kai-shek-led Kuomintang government relocated to Taiwan.
Yin was instrumental in introducing European logical positivism, developed in the early years of the 20th century, to the Chinese-speaking world, according to NTU philosophy professor Lin Cheng-hung, editor-in-chief for the project.
But it was his political choices that made Yin symbolic of a whole generation of liberal-thinking intellectuals who began as supporters of Chiang’s leadership in the war against the communists, but became his most outspoken critics after moving with the government to Taiwan, Lin said.
A staunch advocate of freedom of thought, Yin published articles critical of the KMT’s monolithic rule and propaganda-based education that promoted the Chiang personality cult and recovery of the mainland.
He was a frequent contributor to Free China magazine, founded in 1949 by like-minded Lei Chen, a senior advisor to Chiang from 1950 to 1953. The bimonthly promoted freedom and democracy in Taiwan, as opposed to the oppression seen in communist China, but was later banned, and in 1960 Lei was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sedition.
Yin soon became the target of attacks by other scholars, who accused him of “betraying the nation with words” and “spreading poisonous thoughts against the nation and tradition.” In July 1966, one of his major publications, “Prospects of Chinese Culture,” published in January that year, was banned by the now-defunct Taiwan Garrison Command Headquarters, a security agency, on the grounds that it was “ruinous to social ethics.”
The book applies modern social science concepts and methods to an analysis of Chinese culture from the 19th century on, in an attempt at a science of culture. The book quickly became a hit before it was banned, according to Pan Kuang-che, Academia Sinica associate research fellow, secretary general of the Yin Hai-guang Memorial Foundation and another of the editors of Yin’s collected works.
Soon after the ban, Yin was prevented from lecturing to students; in August, the Ministry of Education offered him a position at the ministry in an attempt to muffle him and cut off his contact with students, Pan said March 3.
That year, Yin was also indirectly forced to renounce his usual claim to a government research subsidy, which had helped cover half of his family’s living expenses. Despite this, he rejected the MOE offer, insisting on distancing himself from all government and academic positions.
“On this hot, stifling island … what the outside world has done to me not only impinged on human rights and the dignity of an academic, but indeed left me no space for response,” Yin wrote in a previously unpublished manuscript included in the NTUP edition. The text details how he was deprived of a career, a stage for his work and even the necessities of life. He died of gastric cancer in Taipei in September 1969, at the age of 50.
“It has taken over four decades for this important local thinker to be published in full,” Pan said. “And the history of the publication of Yin’s writings is a mirror of Taiwan’s socio-political changes.”
The government allowed a collection of his theoretical discussions, “Thought and Method,” to be reprinted after his death, but his political and social commentaries, which had been a source of enlightenment to many in the 1960s, were still off limits. In 1971 these were published in a compilation in Hong Kong, and were sometimes smuggled into Taiwan.
The first locally published collection focusing on Yin’s academic writing appeared in 1979, on the 10th anniversary of his death. Yet even this book suffered censorship, Pan said. For example, an article offering a view on tolerance and freedom different from that of Hu Shih, one of the most influential figures in the May Fourth cultural reform movement, was taken out. According to an editorial note, this was done “under the direction of related agencies.”
In 1990, thanks to the end of martial law and the democratization of Taiwan, a 20-volume edition of Yin’s complete works appeared, with Lin as editor-in-chief. This event catalyzed enthusiasm for the study of Yin’s ideas and efforts to learn more about them.
The NTUP version, in 21 books, is based on the 1990 publication, with the addition of previously unpublished articles, manuscripts and correspondence with leading scholars at home and abroad, including Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, as well as letters to his wife, Hsia Chun-lu.
“Our aim is to make this edition the real complete works, with discrepancies between versions published at different times marked and annotated, formerly abridged sections reinserted, and mistakes corrected,” Pan said.
“We thus get a complete picture of Yin that helps us evaluate him and his legacy in a historical context,” he added.
For instance, reading the related texts together, one can see how Yin’s change from supporting to criticizing Chiang’s leadership was guided by his analytical mind and unswerving belief in the principles of freedom and democracy.
The attitude behind Yin’s decision—going into the truth of the matter and making judgments in light of it—is sorely needed today in debates on issues of public concern, Pan noted.
“We hope the collection will familiarize a general audience with Yin’s way of thinking,” he said, “and help people apply his truth-seeking attitude to everyday life, thus improving local political culture, tainted as it is with such partisan colors.”
The renewed interest in Yin’s work has also brought attention to his former residence, where he did his best to shelter his family from political commotion and personal disappointment. “He put in the garden, planted trees and paid attentive care to the house that at least offered his family a roof,” Pan said.
Today, a stroll through the house and grounds, where Yin lived for 13 years before he died, gives one a feel for the social and intellectual isolation of his later years.
The Yin Hai-guang House is nestled in the southern part of Taipei in a community of houses built during the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945) that later became NTU property. As the residence has remained almost as it was when Yin died, it is a suitable memorial space and now houses an exhibition.
Yin’s students and colleagues remember spirited discussions at Yin’s house over cups of coffee. “He told us, even if politics is bad, it is important to face it,” said Chao Tien-yi, a former NTU lecturer.
Ko compared Yin to Socrates in his lifelong pursuit of truth, relationship with students and death for a cause. “He once said that without thought a man is but a piece of meat, and people can do anything with that meat,” Ko recounted. “I was so shaken by that statement, and the way he said it, that it still affects me today.”
The memory of Yin and his work, and the many other examples of Taiwan’s defiant trend of liberal thinking, were once forcefully blacked out by martial law, Pan said.
“But this history must be brought into the light, because we need these memories to guarantee the sustainability of Taiwan’s freedom, democracy and constitutional rule.”
(Photo by June Tsai)
(This article first appeared in Taiwan Today March 18, 2012.)
No comments:
Post a Comment