Chapter 26 introspection

Feng Youlan's autobiography "Preface to Sansongtang" written in his later years reflected on his lifelong study and life, his achievements and blemishes.Although some people think that his self-criticism is not profound, and he lacks a deeper exposure to his own character flaws, but at the same time, he is affirmed that his attitude is quite sincere. Feng Youlan summed up the second half of her life in this way: "After liberation", I also wrote some things, the main content of which was confession.The first is a confession of the few books I wrote in the forties. Feng Youlan talked about his "History of Chinese Philosophy", and believed that his book had two major weaknesses: "First, the teaching of Buddhism is too superficial. Although it is arranged one by one, it lacks internal connections. This is because I have no knowledge of Buddhism. I have learned a lot, so I can’t explain it thoroughly. There are so many Buddhist materials, and it cannot be fully understood in a few years. Second, the explanation of the Ming and Qing Dynasties is too brief, and people like Wang Fuzhi are only briefly mentioned in the book.”

In 1973, the movement to criticize Lin during the "Cultural Revolution" turned to criticize Confucius.Feng Youlan took the initiative to write two articles criticizing Lin Piao and Confucius, which were published in Peking University Journal.Soon "Guangming Daily" reprinted.These two articles were also forwarded to Mao Zedong by Xie Jingyi.Reflecting on this behavior in his later years, he quoted the phrase "rhetoric establishes sincerity" from "Book of Changes" in "San Song Tang Preface" and wrote: "If you don't have real opinions or have them and hide them, and just echo the temporarily popular opinions in order to get a certain aspect of flattery, this is hypocrisy. This is called sensationalism... My thinking at the time was really utterly utterly utterly useless. The intention of seeking truth from facts, but with the heart of grandstanding, is not to establish sincerity but to establish hypocrisy.”