This article aims to trace how the German philosopher Rudolf Eucken was received in modern Chinese thought circles, and to examine the influence his neo-idealism philosophy had on the formation of contemporary neo-confucianism. Eucken gained explosive popularity among East Asian intellectuals at the time by suggesting a basis for each individual to stand as a personal being in a situation where Western material civilization based on social evolutionism had reached a dead end. In the case of Chinese intellectual circles, even though ZhangJunMai actively promoted Eucken’s thought and used it as the main nutrient for the formation of his own thought, the relationship between his thought and Eucken’s thought has not yet been properly illuminated. In fact, through productive dialogue with Eucken, ZhangJunMai was able to explore the commonalities and ideological origins of Eastern and Western spiritual cultures, and to ground the Chinese outlook on life in a modern direction of self-discovery and establishment of subjectivity. In addition, ZhangJunMai established a logic that could harmonize life and science based on Eucken’s outlook on life at the time, and built a logic that could expand the category of the self from the self to humanity through Eucken’s spiritual life. In this respect, the background that allowed ZhangJunMai to give modern values t o the spiritual culture represented by traditional confucianism was partly influenced by Eucken thought.