 In his treatise on Kant’s philosophy, Jin Yuelin established a clear and insuperable demarcation between synthetic and analytical propositions: if a certain proposition is synthetic, it cannot be at the same time necessary or a priori; and if it is necessary or a priori, it cannot be synthetic (Jin 1996: 46). This difference is clearly of great importance for the elementary framework of Jin’s theory of knowledge. Modern Confucian epistemology criticized a similar division, since ethics and their pragmatic social implications were still at the heart of their theoretical efforts. Feng Youlan also encountered many difficulties related to analytic and universal (synthetic) propositions: on one hand, he did not wish to abandon the universality of the metaphysical statements, because in this way he could express the ideal of every single thing, but, on the other hand, he tried to respond to the attacks against synthetic propositions carried out by the Viennese circle (Jin 1996: 78).