In scholarship, including the history of modern China, China studies and Mao studies, scholars focus mainly on Mao Zedong's ideological thought (“Maoism”), his political role in modern China, the Second World War and the Cold War, and the evaluation of Mao's practice of his political thought in China in the mid-20th century. And a common idea shared by most scholars is that Mao's thought is overwhelmingly of Marxist origin, although some minor traces of pre-Marxist Western philosophy can be noticed. Robert Elliott Allinson's book The Philosophical Influences of Mao Zedong: Notations, Reflections and Insights is a cutting-edge study that deviates from the mainstream of Mao Studies. As he makes clear from the outset, the author's purpose “is to focus on the philosophical rather than the political thought of Mao” (p. 1) and to steer the reader to understanding what Mao really thought as a philosophical thinker.

The book has three ground-breaking focuses: the pre-Marxist writings of Mao, particularly Mao's marginal notes on German philosopher Friedrich Paulsen's A System of Ethics; the unique style of Mao's Marxism, particularly Mao's idea of dialectic; and the relevance of the intellectual history of Mao to the history of contemporary China.

Allinson's analysis of Mao's pre-Marxist philosophy is based on the examination of Mao's marginal notes on Paulsen's A System of Ethics, the version Allinson uses being the full text without fragmentary extraction. According to his analysis, Mao's comments on Western philosophers such as Aristotle, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche demonstrate his intellectual reaction to Western philosophy – particularly its ethics – and his appreciation of and reflections on Chinese philosophical traditions. At the same time, Mao was attempting to construct a philosophy of egoism with the resources he absorbed from both Western and Chinese traditions. He agrees with the Western view that each human being is unique and important, and argues for the primacy of individual, the ego and free will. For Mao, there is an inseparable link between egoism and altruism: our moral conscience and behaviour (altruism) stem from our instincts – the desire to preserve one's own life (egoism). Mao's attempt to defend this unusual understanding of the relation between self-interest and morality is astonishing. In contrast to the majority of moral philosophers in both the West and China, e.g. Kant and Mencius as representatives, who magnify the dignity of humanity by emphasizing the irreconcilable conflict between egoism and altruism, Mao attempts to reconcile the conundrum by including altruism in his concept of egoism (p. 42). Instead of focusing on the particular content of Mao's thought or evaluating it from a philosophical perspective, Allinson draws attention to the way of Mao's reasoning on this highly controversial topic and the development of his ethical thought, which demonstrates solid evidence of the influences of both Western and Chinese philosophical traditions. For Allinson, Mao's philosophy of egoism can be considered an “ego-driven version of Confucianism,” a merger of self-interest and classical Confucian moral values.

The second major focus of Allinson's study is the connection between Mao's dialectic concept and the idea of changes (yi) in the Yijing. Dialectic is one of Mao's major later Marxist concepts. In his Marxist work “On Contradiction”, Mao denies Hegel's “negation of negation” – the synthesis in the sequence of the thesis, the antithesis and the synthesis, which is a key element of Hegelian dialectic. Allinson emphasizes the important distinction that, in the Yijing, the complementary opposites are never totally overcome, yet in the Hegelian dialect, the synthesis is the absolute overcoming of the opposites. In the Yijing, the opposites, yin and yang, are opposing and, more importantly, complementary; one cannot exist without the other. Moves or changes of the opposites generate the cosmos; and the changes between the opposites are governed by the principle of harmony. Although the real nature and ultimate goal of changes is harmony, the state of harmony is dynamic. In contrast, the classical Western philosophical idea of opposites is of contradictory opposites that are directly and completely opposing to each other, in an either-or model. Hegel's dialectical theory is based on this Western understanding. These different understandings of opposites lead to different models of development: in the Yijing, development is cyclical and repetitive; in Hegel, development is an ever upward spiral. According to Allinson's analyses, Mao's unique formulation of dialectical thinking, his denial of the negation of negation, is closer to the Yijing model than to the Hegelian dialectic, although Mao does not strictly follow the Yijing. This provides solid ground for Allinson's far-reaching claim that Mao's thought is influenced by both Western and Chinese philosophical traditions and that even his Marxism is also of a unique style that cannot be reduced to a Soviet model of Marxism.

The most inspiring part of Allinson's work is, I believe, the parallel he draws between the revival of Confucianism in contemporary China and Mao's ego-driven version of Confucianism. According to Allinson, China's social changes in the 20th century until today follows the pattern of development in the Yijing rather than the Hegelian dialectical model. The author perceives the return of Confucianism to China as a complementary movement of yin to Deng Xiaoping's capitalism with the disguise of market socialism, which was a complementary response to the breakdown of the pure communist model. This yang movement (“market socialism”) served, in turn, as preparation for the movement to the yin, the moral-centred classical Confucianism. But, the author also detects the tension in perceiving the social changes in contemporary China through the lens of the Yijing: “[t]his new Confucianism represents an innovative product and … an alternation that is not in accord with the Yijing, which is a return to the beginning, but is more in accord with Hegelianism, which is not so much a return as it is an evolution to a new entity” (p. 114). How this tension can be solved is an interesting topic open for exploration.

Although this book is not the first to examine Mao's pre-Marxist philosophical thought, Allinson takes a unique approach, analysing Mao's sophisticated philosophical thought and its development within the context of both Chinese and Western philosophical traditions. It is the first concentrated and sustained study of Mao's marginal notes to Paulsen's A System of Ethics, which constitutes a unique contribution to Mao studies scholarship. Even for readers without such a background, it is fascinating to read the real thought of Mao, a highly controversial figure, through the author's innovative approach and well-grounded analysis.