As of current scholarship and available publications, Yang Guorong does not appear to directly cite 林安梧 (Lin Anwu) or his concept of 後新儒學 (Post-New Confucianism) in his major works on concrete metaphysics (具體形上學).
1. About 林安梧 (Lin Anwu) and 後新儒學 (Post-New Confucianism)
• Lin Anwu is a Taiwanese philosopher known for his critical and creative reinterpretation of the New Confucian tradition (esp. Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan).
• His “Post-New Confucianism” aims to:
• Go beyond the Mou-Tang system, which Lin sees as too idealistic, essentialist, and Kantian.
• Reconstruct Confucianism in dialogue with postmodernism, phenomenology, and even poststructuralism.
• Explore the existential, political, and ontological limits of Confucian metaphysics.
• Lin is more open to Deleuze, Levinas, Bataille, and other continental thinkers than most traditional New Confucians.
2. Yang Guorong’s Intellectual Horizon
• Yang’s work is firmly grounded in Mainland Chinese philosophy, primarily influenced by:
• Mou Zongsan’s legacy, especially his effort to integrate Confucian moral metaphysics with German philosophy.
• But Yang moves beyond Mou by incorporating Hegel, Heidegger, Whitehead, and a process-oriented, immanently grounded metaphysics.
• Yang remains critical of abstraction, but his criticisms are ontological and historical, not postmodern or deconstructive in Lin Anwu’s sense.
• He does not engage explicitly with Taiwanese post-New Confucian thinkers like Lin, Liu Shuxian (劉述先), or Lee Ming-huei (李明輝), despite overlapping concerns.
3. Why the Lack of Citation?
A few possible reasons:
Philosophical Orientation:
• Yang’s work stays closer to a humanistic, developmental ontology, whereas Lin’s is more critical, ruptural, and deconstructive.
• Lin is willing to destabilize Confucian values and metaphysics; Yang tends to reinterpret and reconstruct them.
Academic Circles & Geo-Cultural Gaps:
• Cross-strait academic exchange between Mainland China and Taiwan, especially in philosophy, has often been limited or fragmented.
• Yang’s citations tend to come from Mainland scholars or globally known Western figures; Taiwanese philosophers, even those in the Confucian lineage, are often under-cited.
In Summary:
No, Yang Guorong does not cite Lin Anwu or his “Post-New Confucianism”, despite potentially fruitful philosophical intersections.
But that absence itself opens a powerful question:
• What would a dialogue between Yang’s concrete metaphysics and Lin’s post-New Confucian critique look like?
• Could Lin’s engagement with poststructuralism and ontological rupture sharpen the limits of Yang’s processual harmonism?
• Could Yang’s ethics of mutual cultivation and historical becoming offer a stabilizing counterpoint to Lin’s more deconstructive gestures?
This is a rich space for future comparative inquiry.
Would you like a speculative synthesis—or dialectical tension—between Yang’s and Lin’s philosophies mapped out?
