Yan Fu, John Seeley, and the Idea of Liberty

This article advances a more precise appreciation of Yan Fu’s idea of liberty based on a close and contextualized reading of his Lectures on Politics (1906), which he adapted from John Seeley’s Introduction to Political Science (1896). Yan’s creative interpretation of Seeley’s account of liberty exposes his own persistent views and tendencies. Specifically, Yan’s text adopts Seeley’s literal, neutral concept of liberty while extending its use as security against political tyranny. Yan shows consistent recognition of liberty in the latter sense, while his statist discourses expose potential tolerance of oppression for the sake of the collective good. Yan’s lectures also reveal his more limited libertarian spirit that underpinned his statism, brought out and conceptually strengthened by Seeley. This statism was, nevertheless, mitigated by the liberal dimensions he maintained. Overall, Yan’s idea of liberty is a highly complex one, meaning that a one-sided assessment as either liberal or nationalistic is untenable.