A Critical Biography of Xiao Jiefu

Abstract

Xiao Jiefu (1924–2008) was born in Chengdu. His ancestral place is Jingyan (井研) in Sichuan province. Due to his efforts, traditional Chinese philosophy became established as an academic discipline at Chinese universities in the People’s Republic of China. He was a philosopher and a historian of philosophy. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Wuhan University in 1947. From 1951 to 1955, he served as the director of the Marxist–Leninist Teaching and Research Institute of West China University (Huaxi daxue 华西大学 ) and of Sichuan Medical University, further studied in the advanced theory class of the Central Party School in 1956, engaged in an advanced study in the Department of Philosophy of Peking University in 1957, and was transferred to the Department of Philosophy of Wuhan University in the autumn of the same year. From that time, he taught in this department and served as the director of the Teaching and Research Institute for the History of Chinese Philosophy and was a tutor of doctoral students. He was an internationally renowned scholar, the founder and academic leader of the national key discipline of Chinese philosophy at Wuhan University, and the first director of the academic committee of The Center of Traditional Chinese Cultural Studies of Wuhan University (a key research base of humanities and social sciences of the Ministry of Education). His social part-time jobs included vice president of the Society for the History of Chinese Philosophy; vice president of the Chinese Confucius Institute; academic advisor of the International Association of Confucianism; academic member of the International Association of Daoism; academic advisor of the Chinese Society for Studies on The Book of Changes (Zhouyi 周易) member of the international academic advisory group of the International Society of Chinese Philosophy; and tutor of the Chinese Culture Academy. He engaged in the teaching and research of Chinese philosophy and culture for a long time. He was a famous expert in the philosophy of Wang Fuzhi (王夫之 , 1619–1692) and the early enlightenment of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. He attended or hosted many academic conferences at home and abroad and published more than 100 academic papers in China and abroad. His main works include Blowing Sand Collection (a collection of his articles in 3 volumes), Introduction to Wang Fuzhi’s Philosophy, Sources of Historical Materials for the History of Chinese Philosophy, Development and Change of Enlightenment in the Intellectual History of Ming and Qing Dynasties (co-authored), Critical Biography of Wang Fuzhi (co-authored), and The History of Chinese Philosophy