Academician Yu-sheng Lin passed away in the United States on November 22, 2022. He was 88 years old.

Dr. Lin was an internationally renowned thinker, specializing in Chinese intellectual history, and was a student of such notable thinkers as Yin Haiguang, Friedrich A. Hayek, and Edward Shils. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Social Thought from the University of Chicago in 1970, Dr. Lin joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became Professor Emeritus in 2004. From 2006, he served as member of the Academic Advisory Committee and as Correspondent Researcher of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica.

Dr. Lin’s outstanding accomplishments include authoring The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness, which put forth groundbreaking ideas about the May Fourth Movement. Dr. Lin proposed that the Movement was deeply influenced by Confucianism. His unique perspectives were unprecedented and explained the relation between modernization and Chinese tradition, which also established him as a thinker in modern intellectual history.

Dr. Lin was devoted to researching Western Liberalism and was among one of the earliest scholars in Taiwan to promote the concept of civil society. He was also the chief editor of Key Concepts for Citizens in Civil Society.

Dr. Lin has authored numerous books and visited various universities as a visiting scholar or lecturer. These include National Taiwan University, Peking University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, the City University of Hong Kong, and Fudan University. Dr. Lin was elected Academia Sinica Academician in 1994.