In this article I provide a short overview of the discourse surrounding the First World War in modern Chinese intellectual history and philosophy. Often rather straightforwardly identified as an event which served as a catalyst for a renewed sense of cultural nationalism

I explore some of the complexity of the way in which different Chinese thinkers responded to the Great War. This event played a crucial role in their attempts to think through the consequences of global modernity and the introduction of new epistemic categories such as "science" (kexue) and "philosophy"(zhexue) in modern China.