The Concept of Liberty in the Yan Fu’s Works

The article undertakes the analysis of the receptions of liberty in China on a sample of the translation of John Stuart Mill's “On Liberty” by Yan Fu. It is shown that in the Yan Fu' interpretation of liberty undergoes fundamental semantic changes in accordance with the ideological Chinese traditions, in particular with neo-Confucianism. Yan Fu puts collective liberty above the individual one, views the citizen only as part of a united nation. To understand the process of adaptation the new European concept, it is important to bear in mind that the translation and understanding of European thought were conducted within the framework of power relations between China as a colony and Western countries as metropolises. The linguistic aspects of the reception of liberty do not simply reflect the cultural and political realities of China in the late XIX - early XX centuries; it also changes them. Yan Fu tried to combine different types of European and Chinese ideas, in order to change the collective Chinese identity and process the collective memory.