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Zhang Shenfu - China's First Popularizer of Russell's Philosophy and Mathematical Logic, 1920s

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2021

Abstract

Zhang Shenfu (張申府, 1893-1986), originally called Songnian 崧年, was an important Chinese intellectual, who greatly contributed to propagation of Western science, analytical philosophy and dialectical materialism in 1920s and 1930s China. As an important member of the May Fourth intellectual elite, he took part in shaping of the left-oriented intellectual movement at Peking University.

As a close colleague of Li Dazhao, Zhang was a senior member of the Communist movement in Beijing and a cofounder of the CPC (Communist Party of China). Having been a notoriously outspoken and prolific writer, and later also as an important member of the first modern department of philosophy at Qinghua University (between 1929 and 1936), Zhang played a key role in the process of dissemination and establishment of modern Western philosophy in Republican China.