Fang Keli

From 1994 to 2000 Fang served as President of the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2006.

In 1989, Jiang Qing, a controversial Confucian thinker, published an article in which he identified the failure to revive Confucianism as China's greatest problem. He suggested that “Confucianism should replace Marxism, be restored to its lofty historical status, and become the orthodox thought representing the life and spirit of the Chinese nation.”

The 1986 research team would lead Fang to conclude that, as of the May 4th Movement, New Ru Learning, Marxism and Western liberalism were most prominent schools of thought in the nation. This equivocation of New Ru Learning and Marxism pushed the former to an elevated status in the public eye, despite Fang's protests. Contrary to the public clamor for New Ru Learning, Fang saw ruxue as a fundamentally feudal ideology—though he still believed there was historical and cultural value to be derived from it. He explained that all ideologies, their predecessors and their successors function within the context of one another. In this way all ideas retain a level of relevance.

Fang published his first major work, The Theory of the Unity of Knowing and Doing in Chinese Philosophical History, in 1982. It was one of the first books concerning Chinese philosophy to be published after the Cultural Revolution.

Fang’s interests were broad through the early 1980s, a time which saw the scholar making contributions in such topics as the distinction between Chinese concepts of “Tao” and “Qi.”

The latter half of the 1980s, continuing into the 1990s marked a new phase in which ruxue began to receive consideration as a means of “sinicizing” Marxism in China. In 1986, Fang, then working at Nankai University in Tianjin, helped to found an academic group of over 50 researchers which studied Contemporary New Confucianism, or Contemporary New Ru Learning (Dangdai xin ruxue). This undertaking would span a decade's time, making it the most costly and extensive humanities project ever sponsored by China's Ministry of Education.

In 1958, Fang was sent to work in rural Beijing where he would partake in hard labor for six months. In July 1962, he graduated from Renmin University's philosophy department. Then, between 1964 and 1965, Fang participated in the Four Clean-ups of the Socialist Education Movement. In 1969, Fang was made to enroll in the cadre's school at the People's University in Jiangxi province where he would become an active worker and gain first-hand experience with social reform.

Fang Keli (Chinese: 方克立; 28 June 1938 – 21 April 2020) was a Chinese New Confucian philosopher and a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He was best known for his work in New Confucianism and his theories which attempt to fusion Marxism and Chinese culture.

Fang Keli was born in June 1938 in Xiangtan, Hunan, China. His father, Fang Zhuangyou [fr], was a historian and professor at Wuhan University. His mother was a chief-leader of Women's Work, also at Wuhan University. Fang said that, “[he] was, naturally, influenced by [his] family’s tradition both intellectually and culturally. But growing up [Fang] was influenced more greatly by the historical period, the collective life in school and the education [he] got from the Communist Party and [his] teachers.”