Lecture
LUCIP Colloquium "Datong, the Great Communitas: Kang Youwei, Buddhism, and the Modern Chinese Quest for Social Equality"
- Date
- Tuesday 9 June 2026
- Time
- Location
-
P.J. Veth
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden - Room
- 1.01
The Leiden University Centre of Intercultural Philosophy is pleased to announce a lecture by Dr. Lei Ying, assistant professor of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Amherts College.
Abstract
Datong, the “great communitas,” stands as a clarion call for an egalitarian utopia that has echoed throughout China’s modern transformation and inspired generations of radical intellectuals. This talk focuses on the foundational text behind this call, Datong Shu, or the Book of the Great Communitas, by Kang Youwei (1858–1927), a revisionist Confucian thinker and leading reformer who also held an ardent interest in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Kang’s dream of datong was born of his sustained engagement with the emergent category of “world religions,” an endeavor which both mirrored and rivaled that of the European orientalists in the formation of Religionswissenschaft, the “science of religion.” Behind closed doors, Kang compared Confucianism and Buddhism, eventually developing his most trenchant critique of the Confucian orthodoxy: its innate incompatibility with social equality. The Book of the Great Communitas harnesses Buddhist language to conceptualize a radically egalitarian globe that is free of boundaries and distinctions such as race, class, nation, family, and gender. At the turn of the twentieth century, the utopian vision of datong gained wide traction in the imbrication of the search for an ideal Chinese faith and the surging revolutionary momentum. It attests to the Buddhist contribution to the modern Chinese revolution, a contribution with an enduring legacy in the subsequent decades.
About
Lei Ying is an interdisciplinary scholar of religion and literature, focusing on the interconnection between Buddhism and modern Chinese literary and intellectual history. Her monograph, Our Shared Karma: Buddhism, Literature, and the Modern Chinese Revolution (forthcoming, Harvard University Asia Center, fall 2026), reveals the profoundly Buddhist beginning of the modern Chinese revolution. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University as a Presidential Scholar. She publishes and presents her work in both English and Chinese, dividing her time between New England and Singapore.
All are welcome!