Abstract

The Zhanguoce School emerged in 1940 and actively responded to the crisis caused by the Sino-Japanese War. The cultural morphology of Oswald Spengler inspired most of the leading Zhanguoce scholars to reflect on the culture, history, and status quo of China. They believed that China was suffering from a total war with world superpowers and that it was in a new Warring States epoch; they thus advocated radical cultural reform as a necessary condition for victory and invoked Nietzschean philosophy to champion heroism and power. However, He Lin, a philosopher in this school, looked to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte for different theories of cultural reform and history. This article examines He's integration of the philosophies of Hegel and Fichte into his cultural and historical thought. Based on the Hegelian notion of Spirit, He rethought the nature of culture and the relationship between Chinese and Western cultures; he also interpreted history by comparing the historical theories of Hegel and Wang Fuzhi. Furthermore, He investigated individual realization with reference to Fichte and repudiated radical heroism. © 2018 Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.