A Spiritual Evolutionism: Lü Cheng, Aesthetic Revolution, and the Rise of a Buddhism-Inflected Social Ontology in Modern China
This study examines the early career of the renowned Buddhologist Lü Cheng as an aspiring revolutionary. My findings reveal that Lü’s rhetoric of “aesthetic revolution” both catapulted him into the center of the New Culture Movement and popularized a Buddhist idealism—Yogācāra (consciousness-only sc...
| Published in: | Journal of global buddhism |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[publisher not identified]
2021
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| In: |
Journal of global buddhism
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Lü, Simian 1884-1957
/ Social Darwinism
/ Rejection of
/ Spirituality
/ Evolution
/ Ideals (Aesthetics)
/ Fourth of May movement
/ Yogācāra
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AD Sociology of religion; religious policy BL Buddhism KBM Asia |
| Further subjects: | B
Buddhist soteriology
B Social Philosophy B Yogācāra B evolutionism B Aesthetics B May Fourth New Culture Movement B Anti-realism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Rights Information: | CC BY-NC 4.0 |
| Summary: | This study examines the early career of the renowned Buddhologist Lü Cheng as an aspiring revolutionary. My findings reveal that Lü’s rhetoric of “aesthetic revolution” both catapulted him into the center of the New Culture Movement and popularized a Buddhist idealism—Yogācāra (consciousness-only school)—among thinkers who sought alternatives social theories. Lü aimed to refute social Darwinism and scientific materialism, which portray humans as mechanized individuals bereft of moral agency. He theorized an anti-realist social ontology, i.e., a social oneness grounded in intersubjective resonances, from which subjective interiority and objective exteriority arise. Lü turned to Buddhism to further his revolution. Buddhist soteriology supplied powerful tools for theorizing the social: The doctrine of no-self refuted philosophical solipsism and curtailed individualism; dependent-origination refashioned social evolution as collective spiritual progress. Lü’s spiritual-evolutionism-cum-social-ontology broadens the field of Buddhist philosophy that has a long-standing blind spot on social philosophies developed in the Global South. |
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| ISSN: | 1527-6457 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of global buddhism
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4727558 |