13 Facts About Gan Yang

Gan Yang is dean of the Liberal Arts College at Sun Yat-sen University, and was formerly professor of political philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Gan Yang was admitted to Heilongjiang University after the death of Mao Zedong, graduating in 1982.

Gan Yang then pursued graduate studies in philosophy at Peking University, where he was a classmate of Liu Xiaofeng.

Gan Yang graduated with a master's degree in 1985 and played an important role in disseminating Western philosophy in China in the late 1980s.

In 1989, Gan Yang enrolled as a PhD student under the Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago, but left Chicago ten years later without a doctorate.

Gan Yang was appointed professor of political philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, then moved to Sun Yat-sen University as dean of the Liberal Arts College in 2009, where he presided over a general reform of liberal arts at the university on Straussian lines, emphasising Chinese, Latin, and Ancient Greek classics.

Gan Yang was described in 2013 as "one of the most prominent political philosophers of contemporary China".

Gan Yang contends that since the 1970s, American Straussians have used esotericism to replace the liberal-egalitarian elements of the American ideological creed with classical and aristocratic ideals.

Gan Yang criticizes what he deems as political correctness imposed by "tenured radicals" in American university humanities departments.

Gan Yang started his academic career as a liberal and a disciple of Western Enlightenment philosophy, but, influenced by Ernst Cassirer, he began to alter his views in 1987, cautioning that there were Western philosophers who had exposed the limits of reason as a philosophical principle.

Gan Yang then adopted a more culturally conservative position, arguing that a return to Confucianism was necessary to counterbalance the negative aspects of modernisation in China.

Gan Yang initially supported the Chinese democracy movement and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Gan Yang has been influenced both by Western postmodernists, such as Michel Foucault, and by Western Marxism, including the thought of Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse.