Philippe Major’s contribution in Confucian Iconoclasm is magisterial. His core argument is that New Confucianism in Republican China was iconoclastic—indeed, “nearly as iconoclastic as the most radical of May Fourth intellectuals” (p. 3). This is significant because the May Fourth movement is often characterized by what Major calls “a radical iconoclastic discourse in which all discursive positions, except that of May Fourth itself, could be depicted as remnants of the feudal past” (p. 13). Ultimately, Major makes a compelling and masterful case for reading New Confucianism as a form of anti-tradition.
To substantiate his argument, Major focuses on two “foundational texts” (p. 3): Liang Shuming’s (梁漱溟) 1921 Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (hereafter Eastern and Western Cultures) and Xiong Shili’s (熊十力) 1932 New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness (hereafter New Treatise). He presents these texts as representing an “alternative iconoclastic tradition” (p. 4) to that of the May Fourth, one that elevates Confucianism and challenges “Eurocentric conceptions of modernity” (p. 4). This is a bold claim, reinforced by the distinct nature of the texts—the former is a philosophy of culture, the latter is an ontology of the mind-universe. Notably, Major does not argue that Eastern and Western Cultures and New Treatise are identical in approach, nor that Liang and Xiong formed a unified alliance of Confucian iconoclasts. Instead, he identifies a “common discursive strategy and project” (p. 23) that both works, despite their significant differences, share.
While Major carefully avoids ascribing a universal character to the May Fourth’s anti-traditional stance—rightly noting that, in their focus on the Confucian family system and the “three bonds” of hierarchy between ruler and minister, father and son, and husband and wife, the movement’s criticism was “limited in scope” (p. 13)—he nonetheless portrays it as a hegemonic discourse. While the dichotomy between claims to universality and the more narrow focus on criticism’s evidentiary basis effectively sharpens his argument, it risks appearing overly rigid. Nevertheless, the dominant nature of May Fourth discourse during Republican China is difficult to dispute. This raises an important question: how could “Confucian iconoclasm” derive authority from a tradition that the May Fourth movement had already dismissed as feudal?
Major’s answer lies in his distinction between “tradition-as-history” and “tradition-as-value” (p. 16), which constitutes the book’s most significant theoretical contribution. By differentiating between these two conceptions, Liang and Xiong reject Confucianism in its historical manifestations as a “deviation” (p. 16), while salvaging values and ideas from the tradition that can be dissociated from past Chinese politics and imperial practices. This effectively creates two Confucianisms: the one rejected by May Fourth intellectuals and the one reconstructed by Liang, Xiong, and others. This latter Confucianism becomes an “antitradition” by selectively retrieving ideas and ideals that are “imagined and lived by a single sage (Confucius)” or by individuals who “directly intuited transhistorical values autonomously and in isolation from tradition” (p. 17). By focusing on tradition-as-value, Liang and Xiong re-discover transhistorical values embedded in the original canonical texts while disregarding the subsequent philological tradition and commentaries. This allows them to claim authority while simultaneously rejecting the burdens of historical continuity, reconstructing Confucianism as essentially emancipatory.
The book is structured in two parts and separated by an interlude. Chapters one and two examine the role of tradition in Eastern and Western Cultures and New Treatise. Chapter one argues that Liang Shuming “strips tradition of its value almost entirely,” retaining only the “ideals and spirits of two geniuses” (p. 29). Major convincingly shows that while Liang relegates “traditions-as-history” to the “dustbin of history,” he nonetheless succeeds in abstracting something of “universal value from the past” (p. 38). Chapter two extends this analysis to the New Treatise, where Major notes that Xiong’s ontology aims to reconstruct the “pure origin” of the “inherent mind or the ancient sage” (p. 80). Once again, tradition is deemed useful only insofar as it serves the goal of “saving China by providing its people with the ethical means to do so” (p. 63), thereby sharing a “common assumption” (p. 63) with the May Fourth movement. Both presume that China not merely needs saving, but that saving it necessitates a top-down transformation of the Chinese people.
The interlude contextualizes the two texts, their intellectual milieu, and their methods and objectives. Chapters three and four then explore how Liang and Xiong position their Confucianism as the “only antitradition capable of fulfilling the emancipatory promise of modernity” (p. 95). Given the nature of Major’s project, both texts manifest a tension between transhistorical insights and historical context, which are carefully managed.
In chapter three, Major demonstrates that Eastern and Western Cultures resolves this tension by locating transhistorical potential within Confucius himself, thereby negating such potential in tradition-as-history, in the May Fourth movement, and in all other traditions. Liang effectively positions himself as the sole figure capable of accessing Confucius’ original meaning without external assistance, such as commentaries. In this process, he becomes the “bridge connecting the shores of heaven and earth” (p. 173). Thus, the Confucianism in his text is presented as orthodox, while all other interpretations are dismissed.
Chapter four applies a similar analysis to Xiong’s New Treatise. Like Liang, Xiong makes a transhistorical claim of “ontological Oneness” (p. 160) to which he alone has access, effectively disconnecting the text from the sociopolitical issues of Republican China. At the same time, by demonstrating that sages and masters from different historical and cultural contexts arrived at the same conclusions independently, Xiong effectively empties tradition of historicity, reinforcing its transhistoricity. New Treatise thus performs a “cleansing of Confucianism from history” (p. 162), wherein history itself is “left undiscussed” (p. 163).
The book is a sophisticated and masterful contribution, yet it is telling that, at the end of the day, Major considers Confucian iconoclasm to have been “ultimately little successful” in their “counter-hegemonic” (p. 182) intent. He attributes this to internal tensions within the texts as well as external factors, including a historical context that was not ready for the revival of an essentially exclusionary Confucian sagehood that elevates the master while excluding others. This raises the question of whether his conclusions extend beyond the Republican period. While Major makes a bold claim, his analysis could have been more ambitious in scope. In particular, further connections to late Qing Confucianism would have strengthened the theoretical foundations of his argument, and an engagement with Confucian thinkers in the Mao era and beyond would have enhanced its relevance to contemporary debates.
Moreover, as Major notes, anti-traditions can be “perfectly suited to serve hegemonic purposes” (p. 166), and a brief connection to the 21st century would have enriched the study. The challenge of negotiating the artificial dichotomy of tradition and modernization is not unique to the May Fourth era but persists through the Mao period, the reform era, and into the present. A deeper discussion of tradition-as-history and tradition-as-value, whose theoretical significance seems immense in this context, would have been highly beneficial. One is tempted to connect this to the weaving of historical master narratives and myth-building in China, where historical writings mask as history but are a major way in which political power and legitimacy are constructed, up to this day. Similarly, Major’s engagement with Alexandre Kojève, Slavoj Žižek, and Judith Butler, while promising, remains underdeveloped. A more extensive discussion of these thinkers could have further broadened the study’s implications.
Finally, Major’s claim that Eastern and Western Cultures argue for reviving rather than inheriting Confucian ideals—“what is of value to the moderns is the ideal of Confucius, not its incomplete manifestations in history” (p. 55)—has intriguing broader implications. This notion resonates beyond China, where parallels can be drawn with the use of history and tradition in non-Chinese contexts, from social media-driven nostalgia to far-right strategies of historical purification. The book’s theoretical contribution seems of particular value for thinking about these issues because who writes history, what for, and how historical evidence is constructed and framed are key issues in all political contexts. Expanding upon these global connections in the conclusion could also have further strengthened the book’s impact.
None of these missed opportunities, however, weaken the analysis or the argument, which are compelling and masterfully constructed, making Major’s book a highly significant and extremely valuable contribution.
