Fang Keli was a Chinese New Confucian philosopher and a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
22 Facts About Fang Keli
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Fang Keli was best known for his work in New Confucianism and his theories which attempt to fusion Marxism and Chinese culture.
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Fang Keli was born in June 1938 in Xiangtan, Hunan, China.
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Fang Keli's father, Fang Zhuangyou, was a historian and professor at Wuhan University.
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Fang Keli's mother was a chief-leader of Women's Work, at Wuhan University.
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One year prior to his enrollment at Renmin University, the Anti-Rightist campaign began and Fang Keli was disciplined by the Communist Youth League for undisclosed reasons.
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In 1958, Fang Keli was sent to work in rural Beijing where he would partake in hard labor for six months.
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In 1969, Fang Keli was made to enroll in the cadre's school at the People's University in Jiangxi province where he would become an active worker and gain first-hand experience with social reform.
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Fang Keli published his first major work, The Theory of the Unity of Knowing and Doing in Chinese Philosophical History, in 1982.
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In 1986, Fang Keli, then working at Nankai University in Tianjin, helped to found an academic group of over 50 researchers which studied Contemporary New Confucianism, or Contemporary New Ru Learning.
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From 1994 to 2000 Fang Keli served as President of the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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Fang Keli was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2006.
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The 1986 research team would lead Fang Keli to conclude that, as of the May 4th Movement, New Ru Learning, Marxism and Western liberalism were most prominent schools of thought in the nation.
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Fang Keli explained that all ideologies, their predecessors and their successors function within the context of one another.
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Fang Keli championed the idea of critical inheritance, which he developed from the philosophy of his contemporary, Zhang Dainian.
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Fang Keli sought to combine Chinese culture with Marxism and thereby create an improved society.
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Fang Keli did not wish for a revival of Ruism, nor did he want China to be thoroughly Westernized.
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Delving further into Zhang's model of synthetic creation, Fang Keli laid out four tenets for cultural application.
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Lastly, Fang Keli likens the process to eating and digestion: one must combine unlike elements and then convert them into positive energy.
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Fang Keli has taught for over 45 years at various universities.
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Fang Keli cited teaching as his main work, ranking it above even his highly regarded work as a researcher.
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Fang Keli viewed many of his research-related endeavors as ultimately serving to educate the younger generation.