In the twentieth century, Hu Shih and Feng Yu-lan were two of the most influential scholars in the field of Chinese studies in general and the history of Chinese phi1osophy in particular. Both of them received traditional Chinese education whi1e they were young and came to columbia University to pursue their graduate studies in philosophy under the instruction of John Dewey. A1thoughthey had remarkable simi1arities in their educational beckgrounds, they were widely different in their approaches to, and interpretation of, Chinese cu1ture. Hu was basically critical towards Chinese tradition and social structure and believed that “whole-hearted Westernization” was the answer to the di1emma that faced China on her way to modernization in the ear1y twentieth century. He contended that all social changes should be based on cultural reforms. Feng Yu-lan, on the other hand, was much more sympathetic to Chinese culture; he defended Chinese tradition on the basis of economic structures. Since China was basically an agricultural society, what was regarded by the intellectuals of the May Fourth period as the “man-eating” (ch’ih-jen) rituals, such as filial piety and loya1ty to the ruler, as far as Feng was concerned, were only natural and reasonable for a society which was also “fami1y-centered.” This paper focuses on the different approaches to the history of Chinese phi1osophy taken by Hu Shih and Feng Yu-lan, and their different “prescriptions” for the “il1nesses"of China.