Tan Sitong (1865-1898) was one of the central figures of the ill-fated Hundred days Reform of 1898. His early death by execution prevented him from developing his ideas like his more well-known contemporaries, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, despite his novel reassessment of traditional Chinese philosophy.

This talk examines Tan Sitong's major philosophical text, An Exposition of Ren (仁學) as a coherent philosophical system responding to the crisis of cultural meaning in late Qing China. Confronted by the collapse of the traditional tianxiaguan worldview and the rise of global modernity, Tan reconceptualized ren (humaneness) as the fundamental structure of existence. Identifying ren with tong (continuity or interconnection), he proposed that all beings and cultures participate in a single, dynamic field of relation, one which he described through the scientific language of "ether" (以太). For Tan, tong is not merely an ethical principle but the ontological condition for the possibility of any cultural system. Rituals, doctrines, and social hierarchies are valuable only insofar as they facilitate this continuity; when they obstruct it, they generate moral paralysis and societal decay.

Tan's reinterpretation transforms ren from a Confucian virtue into a cosmological and cultural principle capable of grounding a universal human condition. By asserting that Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity each embody aspects of ren, he reframes self-cultivation as a global, comparative enterprise. His political philosophy emerges as an extension of this metaphysics of continuity: societies thrive when relationships become reciprocal, dialogical, and open to renewal. Through this synthesis, Tan articulates a modern philosophy of humanity that rejects both cultural isolationism and dogmatic universalism. His vision anticipates a cosmopolitan moral order rooted in interconnection, creativity, and the perpetual renewal of ren as the essence of human life.