Mou Zongsan's study of Immanuel Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development Mou’s personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant’s philosophy—having translated all three of Kant’s critiques—served as an attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.[1][2]
Following his teacher Xiong Shili, Mou attempted to justify a moral metaphysics.[3] He attempted to do this in large part by critiquing Kantian concepts such as moral nature, moral feeling, intellectual intuition, thing-in-itself, and the division between noumena and phenomena.