Editor's Introduction,Part II

Feng Youlan, professor of philosophy at Beijing University, was born in 1895. He is twentieth-century China's foremost philosopher and historian of Chinese philosophy. The present translation is based on part of Feng's Sansong tang zixu (The Hall of Three Pines: A Preface), published by Sanlian shudian in 1984. The author has referred to this work as his "memoirs," but his own introduction explains that the book should also be taken as a preface to the writings of his entire lifetime.