Seeking For Order

Carsun Chang is a famous political activist and public intellectual in the history of ROC, playing an important role in public sphere from 1920's to 1940's. Most of the scholars pay more attention to his writings about Constitutionalism and Democracy Socialism, ignoring his remarks about Neo-Confucian, not understanding his thought about Constitutionalism and view about Scientism in the vein of Chinese thought. This essay is trying to examine Carsun Chang in the tradition of Chinese thought, figuring out the complex process from Late Qing dynasty to ROC period. Carsun Chang is in the period of crisis and rebuilding of spirit order and political order, he noticed that it is a key period to face a critical situation of the relationship between existence and transcendence. He issued a discussion which named "KeXuan lunzhan"(discussion about Scientism and Metaphysics), presenting the crisis of relationship between Scientism and Metaphysics. But he is not a typical dualist, on the contrary, he was influenced by "SongMing Xin(Mind)xue"(宋明心学), regarding "mind" as the highest level of reality to rule science and morality. In the aspect of constitution, Carsun Chang focus on the design of institution, but in fact, he is thinking of the authority of constitution with the rising of nation state. Reading the works of German historical law school, he holds the view that the authority must be connected with the custom and culture of the nation and the faith about the nation state. In the issue of State/Society and the individual, Carsun Chang noticed the rising of market society in the late Qing dynasty, but he just considered it as a space which is only concerned with economical issues and social justice, and the individual and the state should be the major role in creating political order. But some other intellectuals, such like Zhang Dongsun, would think that the new society could integrate all kinds of political forces, checking the government power. Just through this, we can see something special about the argument of Carsun Chang.