One of the most intriguing figures of the Chinese nationalist movement was Zhang Binglin (also known as Zhang Taiyan), whose importance in the period leading up to the Xinhai Revolution was equal to that of Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei, and whose life has figured greatly in the literature on this period. Viren Murthy has now added an insightful study of Zhang as a political philosopher, who through his use of Buddhist and early Daoist philosophy proposed alternatives to the discourse on modernity. Murthy focuses specifically on Zhang's writings in the years just before the Revolution (1906–10), placing Zhang within a global intellectual context and suggesting a continuity of his work to the present day. Murthy succeeds admirably in presenting the intricacies of Zhang's thought, and leaves his audience with a bold argument on a genealogy of intellectual thought from Zhang to the present.

The rich literature on Zhang has been carefully reviewed by Murthy in this study. He himself directs us to those who have influenced this work: Wang Hui in the Chinese tradition and Nishi Junzō and his disciples in the Japanese tradition. Among Western academics, Murthy's work has been influenced by Hao Chang and Young-tsu Wong. Chang's reading of Zhang's Buddhist influences in Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) set the ground stage for Murthy's own interpretations, while Wong's views of Zhang as offering an alternative reading of modernity can be seen in Search for Modern Nationalism: Zhang Binglin and Revolutionary China, 1869–1936 (Oxford University Press, 1989) and, more recently, in Beyond Confucian China: The Rival Discourses of Kang Youwei and Zhang Binglin (New York: Routledge, 2010), a text that nicely supplements the work under review. Murthy has however moved beyond his influences to create his own work.

Murthy has structured this book into five chapters that deal with Zhang's philosophical arguments, and adds a conclusion that links Zhang's critique through to the present. In chapter 1, Murthy positions Zhang within modernist discourse and shows Zhang's reading and reflecting on Japanese and European thinkers through Japanese translation. Murthy argues that Zhang's writings combined contradictory elements—modernity and tradition, revolution and reform and the like—but that he provides us with “a key to understanding the interplay between tradition, nationalism, transnationalism, transcendence and global modernity” (p. 2). In chapter 2, Murthy looks at Zhang's revolution-focused anti-Manchu discourse, contrasting it with Kang Youwei's reformist response to the Qing dynasty. Zhang, however, was not looking forward to modernity, but seeking the essence of Chinese Han civilization. In doing so, he was attempting to both overcome Manchu rule and the evolutionary paradigm that placed the West above Asia during the height of western imperialism. In chapter 3, Murthy examines Zhang's use of Yogocara philosophy and early Daoist concept of “confusion” (huo 惑) in providing “a romantic critique of capitalist modernity” (p. 90). He contrasts Zhang's Buddhism with that of Kang's disciple, Liang Qichao, who was more interested in the religious side of Buddhism. Zhang was engaged in using Buddhist philosophy to construct an alternative system to modernity. The fourth chapter examines Zhang's use of Buddhism in his rejection of evolutionary theory. As Murthy explains, “Although Zhang did not grasp capitalism as the ground of evolutionary history, using Buddhist categories he proposed a totalizing critique of evolution that is both subjective and objective. . . [which suggests] perhaps the starting point towards imagining a different future” (p. 167). In chapter 5, Murthy turns to Zhang's analysis of Zhuangzi's work and the use of the term “equalization” (qi 齊) as a counter to “public principle” (gongli 公理), the term that Chinese modernists salvaged from the Confucian tradition by which to create their own modernity. Murthy reads into this Zhang's attempt to think politically “outside the dominant paradigms” of the day (p. 222).

In the concluding section, Murthy argues for an intellectual continuity from Zhang Taiyan through Lu Xun to Wang Hui. Each of the connections is one of student to teacher. He traces a developing “totalizing critique” (p. 242) to capitalist modernity through creative interpretation of Zhang's religious ideas in the writings of Lu and Wang. The future of this project is on-going, perhaps through works such as this. The success of this section is uncertain: Lu Xun's own evaluation of Zhang has been seriously questioned (see Young-tsu Wong, Search for Modern Nationalism, pp. 143–44), while only the weight of time will determine whether history follows in such a direction as suggested by the author.

To summarize, Viren Murthy has written a specialist study on Zhang Taiyan. This work is informed by debates on modernization and proposes situating Zhang within the broader context of global intellectual framework of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also makes a very strong claim about re-evaluating intellectual genealogy in the modern Chinese tradition.