He Lin

He Lin the twentieth-century Chinese idealist philosopher (1902-1992) and translator (1902-1992) who was known as one of the leading new idealists of his generation and who did much to introduce German classical philosophy to China. He is remembered both for his own philosophical writings and for his influential translations of Hegel and other European thinkers.

Early Life and Education

He Lin was born in 1902 in Jintang, Sichuan province, into a family of some means and scholarly inclination. He showed early intellectual promise and was sent to study in the United States and then in Germany, where he immersed himself in the idealist tradition of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and above all Hegel. His European years gave him a thorough command of the texts and the language of German philosophy.

After completing his studies abroad he returned to China and began a long academic career, teaching at Peking University and other leading institutions. He became one of the foremost interpreters of Western idealism in China and a vigorous participant in the philosophical debates of the 1930s. His combination of linguistic competence and philosophical sympathy made him a distinctive voice.

His intellectual formation in the European idealist tradition set him apart from colleagues who oriented themselves toward pragmatism, logical analysis or Marxism. He argued that idealism offered resources that Chinese thinkers needed if they were to engage the modern world without surrendering their own tradition.

New Idealism

He Lin's philosophy, which he called the new idealism, drew both on the German idealist tradition and on the Confucian heritage of China. He held that mind or spirit is the fundamental reality and that the world of nature and history is the self-realisation of spirit in time. This position he took to be a modern restatement of the deepest insight of the Confucian tradition.

He sought to reconcile the metaphysical claims of idealism with the moral and social concerns of Chinese thought, arguing that the idealist doctrine of the development of spirit could illuminate the course of Chinese history and culture. He wrote extensively on the philosophy of culture and on the task of cultural reconstruction in a time of national crisis.

His idealism was criticised by contemporaries who regarded it as abstract or politically problematic, but he defended it as a necessary corrective to the materialism and utilitarianism that he believed were eroding the moral foundations of society. He saw in the life of the mind a resource for resistance to the pressures of the age.

Translations and Interpretation of Hegel

He Lin is perhaps best known for his work as a translator and interpreter of Hegel. He produced Chinese renderings of major Hegelian texts, including the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, and his translations were widely used and long remained standard. Their accuracy and their philosophical intelligence set a high standard for the translation of German philosophy into Chinese.

He also wrote substantial interpretive studies of Hegel's thought, explicating the difficult dialectical system for a Chinese readership and drawing connections between Hegelian and Chinese philosophical concerns. His commentaries helped to make the concept of dialectic intelligible to a generation of Chinese students, even as they engaged critically with its political appropriations.

Beyond Hegel he wrote on and translated from Kant, Fichte and other figures in the idealist tradition, and he contributed to the understanding of Kierkegaard and of existentialism in China. His translation work was integral to his philosophy, not a mere adjunct to it, since he held that careful reading and rendering of great texts is itself a form of philosophical activity.

Career and Later Years

He Lin's academic career was long and distinguished, and he trained many students in philosophy and in the study of Western thought. He served as a professor and, at times, as an administrator, and he was known as a formidable teacher and a generous mentor. His lectures on Hegel were remembered for years by those who attended them.

Like many intellectuals of his generation, he lived through severe political upheaval. In the 1950s he was criticised for his idealist and liberal views and was compelled to modify his public positions, though he continued to teach and write. His later years were spent in relative quiet, and some of his philosophical work was published only after his death.

He died in 1992 in Beijing at the age of ninety. In the years since, his translations and his philosophical essays have been collected and reissued, and his standing as one of the most important Chinese interpreters of Western idealism has been reaffirmed.

Influence and Legacy

He Lin's translations of Hegel shaped the reading of that philosopher in China for decades and remain part of the standard equipment of Chinese students of German philosophy. His interpretive essays helped to establish the vocabulary in which Hegelian and idealist ideas are discussed in Chinese, and his influence persists in the work of scholars who came after him.

His own idealist philosophy stimulated debate about the possibility of a modern Chinese metaphysics that would neither imitate nor reject the Western tradition. Although his system never became dominant, it represented a serious attempt to unite the idealist inheritance with Chinese concerns, and it invited later thinkers to take the idealist option seriously.

He is remembered as a scholar of unusual philosophical range and linguistic skill, and as a defender of the life of the mind under adverse conditions. His career illustrates both the promise and the difficulties of philosophical work in twentieth-century China.

See also

• Hegelianism
• Idealism
• Chinese philosophy
• German idealism