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22 R. T. Ames

kind of metaphysics his contemporaries, Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi, found
necessary to incorporate into their very different attempts at systematic philoso-
phy. Indeed, it seems that the spell of German idealism in this respect was so strong
that it affected the very language and sentence structure used by both Mou and
Tang, turning their later writings into a kind of ponderous Hegelian Chinese.
Again, given the explicit mission of the New Confucians to defend the Chinese
cultural tradition captured in the “New Confucian Manifesto” (1958) drawn up by
Zhang Junmai (张君劢 1887–1969), and signed by both Mou and Tang, Lao Sze-
Kwang saw them as promoting a kind of cultural and philosophical nationalism
that he could not endorse.
Like many if not most of these contemporaries, Lao Sze-Kwang was a public
intellectual of the first order, commenting upon the pressing social and political
issues of his time, and wading into the vortex of political controversy whenever he
deemed it necessary and productive. And while Lao in his philosophizing is
certainly inclined to draw heavily upon Confucianism, Kant, and Hegel as well, he
does so as “philosopher Lao Sze-Kwang” rather than as an erstwhile Confucian,
Kantian, or Hegelian. We have seen this above in his critical rejection of a Hegelian
philosophy of culture, and his creative formulation of his own alternative. Of
course, we must also allow that Lao in trying to be a global philosopher in a world
where he was not recognized as such by a “mainstream” professional discipline
that has defined itself in decidedly Western terms paid the price of being largely
ignored. On the other hand, respecting and accepting Lao Sze-Kwang’s own
resistance to being labelled with partisan categories such as “Chinese philoso-
pher” and “New Confucian” that might call his philosophical objectivity and rigor
into question, Cheng Chung-yi quite properly raises an important caveat. We
should not allow Lao’s antipathy to being categorized in such terms to diminish the
appreciation of the singular contribution that Lao has made to Chinese philosophy
broadly, and to Confucianism in particular.
Perhaps the most important lesson that Lao Sze-Kwang taught me person-
ally from his own model of what a philosopher should be, is that I am not a
“Western” philosopher. But even more importantly, given the many prejudices
and “invisibilities” that still prevail in the professional discipline of philoso-
phy, Lao taught me that I am not someone who pretends to be an erstwhile
“philosopher” when such professional colleagues by definition are in fact
really much less. Said more clearly, most professional philosophers today
naively and uncritically present themselves as “philosophers” when in fact, if
they were to acknowledge their own habitual exclusions, would have to call
themselves at the very least “Western philosophers,” if not better yet, “white,
male, Western philosophers.”