Huang Tsung-Hsi

Born Sept. 24, 1610; died Aug. 12, 1695. Chinese scholar.

The son of a high court official, Huang Tsung-hsi fought against the Manchu invaders. After 1649 he devoted himself to scholarly pursuits and wrote several works in philosophy, history, literature, and mathematics. His Treatise on the State (1662) was a critique of absolute monarchy. Huang regarded as intolerable the emperor’s treatment of the state and the people as his own personal property; laws, according to Huang, were to meet the interests of the state and the people. He was the first Chinese author of historical studies of Chinese thought, such as The Philosophical Schools of the Sung and Yüan Epochs and The Works of the Confucians in the Ming Epoch.

Huang’s ideas played a role in the Chinese bourgeois-reformist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.