Mou Zongsan (牟宗三)
1909-1995 · Modern East Asian Thought · Known
Mou Zongsan was a twentieth-century Confucian who rebuilt the tradition by working through Kant. Kant said human beings cannot have intellectual intuition, a direct grasp of reality itself. Mou said we do have it, and built his system on that reversal: the heart-mind takes part in a creative moral reality that lies inside the world and beyond it at once. Confucianism must grow democracy and science from within.
Signature
The position Mou Zongsan is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain
- Knowledge
- Intuition / Pure Reason
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (18 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (100 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (21 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (96 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly between Unity and Multiplicity (42 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- mildly between Immanence and Transcendence (59 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (71 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- mildly between Illiberalism and Liberalism (45 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- leans Means (80 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (25 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Mou Zongsan refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Virtue
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Intuition / Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Continuous Creation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Process / Becoming
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Wisdom / Consent of the Governed / Benevolence
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Paradox
- Dialectical Sublation
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Family / Nation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?