Wang Guowei's Theorization of the Human World: A Nonmetaphysical Approach to Will

Abstract This article explores the theorization of the sovereign subject and human will in Wang Guowei's early essays on human nature, reason, and fate, as well as those on traditional Chinese thinkers and modern Western philosophers, written in the first decade of the twentieth century. The article explores this historical moment when many Western philosophical concepts first reached China, a culture with a philosophical tradition that does not seem to emphasize free will. Wang's original essays show that the idea of free will was not alienating to Chinese thinking, and he tried to integrate and confront related ideas in the two traditions to come to terms with a new discursive environment in which people were told they could change the course of history against a history suggesting otherwise. Wang tried to open up a new intellectual horizon by positing his own nonmetaphysical renjian 人間 (the human world) approach to human subjects, who are relational to each other but must also take their own responsibility seriously. This revisiting of a moment in China's philosophical history also reminds us how thinkers dared to offer new interpretations of their own intellectual legacy, in ways that could make fundamental cultural change possible.