In it he presented and examined the history of Chinese philosophy from a viewpoint which was very much influenced by the Western philosophical fashions prevalent at the time, which resulted in what Peter J.

In 1935 Feng, on his way to a conference in Prague, stopped briefly in the Soviet Union and was impressed with the radical social changes and cultural ferment.

Lixue was a philosophical position of an important group of twelfth-century neo-Confucianists (including Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi); Feng's book took certain metaphysical notions from their thought and from taoism (such as li and tao), analyzed and developed them in ways that owed much to the Western philosophical tradition, and produced a rationalistic neo-Confucian metaphysics.

Feng's friends tried to persuade him to stay, but he was determined to return; his political views were broadly socialist, and he thus felt optimistic about China's future under its new government.

Once back home, Feng began to study Marxist–Leninist thought, but he soon found that the political situation fell short of his hopes; by the mid-1950s his philosophical approach was being attacked by the authorities.

He was forced to repudiate much of his earlier work, and to rewrite the rest – including his History – in order to fit in with the ideas of the Cultural revolution.