What radical thoughts were there during the May 4th Movement?

The May 4th New Culture Movement, as an ideological and cultural movement transforming from tradition to modernity in the history of China thought, has its diversity and complexity in the special historical context. Among them, three representative ideological trends, conservatism, liberalism and radicalism, cut in from different perspectives, constructed their own different discourse rights, and finally influenced the evolution of China Thought and its political value orientation after the May 4th Movement in different ways. However, under these three seemingly different thoughts, it is hidden.

From its direct historical reasons, the New Culture Movement is a criticism of the movement of "respecting Confucius and restoring the ancients" initiated by Yuan Shikai in the cultural field in the early Republic of China. From its long-term historical origin, it inherited China's understanding of western civilization and reflection on Chinese civilization from the emotional standpoint of saving the nation from external pressure in modern times. From the cultural and chemical point of view, this kind of understanding and thinking will inevitably have a sustained and stable traditional value orientation system due to the powerful external force, which also determines the difficulty of its transformation and transformation in the ideological and cultural field. This makes conservatism have its own rationality and value in this specific historical context. "In the context of colonial modernization, when the local cultural value is mainly under the external pressure of western modernity rather than the internal challenge of traditional self-transformation, the driving force of this value change is often limited. Foreign strong western culture can impact the superficial value norms of traditional culture, but it is difficult to touch its deep value principles. Even in the most intense and conscious anti-traditional new culture movement, the stability and historical inertia of this local culture are still obvious. " [1] This colonial context under external forces also gave birth to liberalism such as prudent gradual progress and radicalism such as hurricane short-term. The May 4th New Culture Movement initiated a short and significant ideological enlightenment in China's modern history in the interwoven debate of these three thoughts.

Conservatism takes Oriental Magazine edited by Du Yaquan, National Heritage edited by Huang Kan and Liu and Xue Heng edited by Wu Mi as the main positions, and makes relatively conservative statements at different stages.

In the first stage of the cultural debate between the East and the West (19 15 "New Youth" was founded-191954), Du Yaquan published a series of articles on the cultural differences between the East and the West under his father's pen name, and started a debate with Chen Duxiu. China's inherent civilization can just save the disadvantages of western civilization and help the poor of western civilization. Western civilization is as rich as wine, while ours is as indifferent as water, while western civilization is as beautiful as meat, and our civilization is as tough as vegetables. The poison of wine and meat in China should be treated with water and vegetables. [2] It emphasizes that the difference between Chinese and western cultures is only nature rather than degree, and this difference leads to the so-called "taking Chinese as the medium" precisely because of the differences in social history and geographical environment, that is, one is a so-called "static" society and the other is a so-called "dynamic" society. In response to Du's proposition that the "static" civilization of the East helps the "dynamic" civilization of the West, Li Dazhao advocated "learning from the strengths of western civilization and helping me learn from the strengths of static civilization" and called on young students to go all out to learn from western civilization. Inertia was completely swept away. " Chen Duxiu raised the banner of "science" and "democracy" in this debate, and competed with feudal culture with the spirit of democracy and science. In July 2008, he bluntly advocated that "if you are determined to innovate, you should adopt a new western way, and you don't have to make trouble with any quintessence of China or any nonsense about national conditions." [

In the second stage (after the May 4th Movement in 2009 1965438+), conservatives represented by Zhang put forward the so-called "theory of harmony between the old and the new". Zhang thinks: "Harmony is the essence of social evolution. Society is always evolving, that is, social interests, hopes and emotional hobbies are always harmonious. " [4] He pointed out the evolution of the universe. Everything in the world is a mixture of the old and the new. Therefore, the correct attitude should be "innovation" and "revival" at the same time. "It is more necessary to revive the old things in material aspects than in moral aspects." The reason is that "the old is the new foundation. Without the old, there is no new, and you are not good at preserving the old, so you must not welcome the new". The idea of moral revival has been refuted. He pointed out: "New morality not only occurs with the living conditions and social requirements, but also changes with the changes of material, so when material is innovated, morality will follow, and when material is resurrected, morality will follow." [5] Zhang pointed out that the so-called "migration theory" pointed out that social evolution is not "migration". It is a process from "latent change" to "mutation". A new society is formed after "mutation", and the "new" after mutation is not equal to the old. There is an essential difference between the two. The coexistence of the old and the new exists, but only "* * * exists", not "harmony". Some scholars believe, and the author himself agrees, that this is actually "Westernization in Chinese style", which explains the possibility of harmonious existence between the old culture and the new culture, thus blurring the boundary between the old and the new. Conservatives overemphasize the standard culture while ignoring the leap from quantitative change to qualitative change in the development of things, and also confuse the relationship between "* * * existence" and "integration" in the development of culture.

The disillusionment with western civilization caused by the outbreak of World War I further strengthened this standard cultural psychology. Conservatives represented by Liang Liang (Liang Qichao and Liang Shuming) expressed their extraordinary views in the third stage of the debate. Liang Qichao stood on the ruins of post-war civilization in Europe and expressed the feeling that "European society at the end of 19 is gloomy and autumn". Liang Shuming, on the other hand, demonstrated his standard cultural view from the perspective of "philosophy of life". Liang Shuming first assumed that there were three directions for European civilization, three directions for Indian civilization and three directions for China civilization, and then deduced that the future culture was the revival of Chinese culture. We must reject unrealistic Indian culture and oppose the "new culture" that completely adopts western culture. Take China's "suitable second life" as an example. Liang Shuming's philosophy has a strong color of personal idealism, as he himself said: "Since I entered middle school at the age of fourteen, I have an upward heart, which drives me to pursue two questions: one is the question of life, that is, why people are alive; The second is the social problem, that is, the China issue. Where will China go? " [6] The question of life and the question of China are two central propositions in Liang Shuming's philosophy, and Liang himself also focuses on these two issues. "When I was young, I felt the stimulation of the China problem, and I felt deeply about life problems, and I couldn't help myself. Compared with the current China problem, the life problem is much broader and more fundamental. [7] Liang Shuming's philosophical orientation of paying attention to life issues made him think about the China issue at that time from the perspective of ethics rather than politics, and from the perspective of life rather than survival, which greatly influenced Zhang Junmai and other neo-Confucians. Hu Shi criticized Liang Shuming in Reading Mr. Liang Shuming's Works. Accusing him of attributing the differences between the three cultures to rationality, intuition and quantity is to describe the differences shown by any nation in the process of historical development as fundamentally different characteristics among ethnic groups. Hu Shi pointedly pointed out: "We should realize that Mr. Liang is a person who loves to seek quasi-truth, and he is always dominated by his own thoughts. Knowing these two meanings, we can boldly read his books. Then we can hope to understand the "insightful" parts of his book and the parts that are too subjective or arbitrary. " [8] The Xue Heng School actually continued the idea of "Chinese style and western style". "Some people think that the New Culture Movement from the May 4th Movement is the Renaissance in China, but in fact this new culture movement is just the rise of Westernization in China" [9] Wu Mi thinks that the New Culture Movement is ". But at the same time, it rejects the "old Chinese and Western cultures", namely Confucianism, Buddhism, ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and Christianity, which are precisely the essence of Chinese and Western civilizations. Therefore, the enlightenment of the spirit of the new culture movement cannot lead to the occurrence of the real new culture movement.

When we review the ideas and opinions of these conservatives in the New Culture Movement, it is hard to say that they tend to be conservative or opposed to change politically, and follow the tradition or remain unchanged in culture. In fact, they hardly discuss China's problems from a strict political level, and they also show an anti-traditional tendency when dealing with cultural issues. Modern neo-Confucianism put forward the ideas of "returning to the original and creating new ideas" and "building three systems together" Trying to create a "democratic" new orthodoxy and a "scientific" new orthodoxy from Confucian orthodoxy is actually a reinterpretation of Confucianism in a brand-new historical context. However, these conservatives are bound to be dominated by their standard cultural complex, taking the affirmation of tradition as the bottom line of their cultural concepts, thus showing relative conservatism. "These conservative intellectuals are not political conservatives who completely deny the existing social and political order. They are just cultural conservatives or cultural conservatives. What they need is to discuss the value of culture on a purely cultural level, and their conservative attitude towards culture-morality is just a purely cultural attitude. This kind of conflict and confrontation, in the final analysis, is the expression of the conflict between instrumental rationality and value rationality in a specific historical situation. Radicals realize that the development of instrumental rationality is the fundamental driving force of western modernization, but they regard this driving force as the whole of western modern civilization. It is believed that the modernization process of China must be driven by instrumental rationality, while the conservative intellectuals take the maintenance of value as their natural mission. They don't want the development of instrumental rationality, and think that social modernization cannot be separated from value rationality. [10] In this regard, Yu Yingshi once said: "In fact, there was hardly a conservative in the history of China's thought in the 20th century, because no one established a theory. China's tradition should remain unchanged, and all western influences should be rejected. From the so-called Chinese Westernization Theory to China's cultural standard theory, to the total Westernization Theory, and then to Marxism–Leninism, the basic orientation is changing. The only difference is how much, how and at what speed. Therefore, the so-called' radical' is close to the end of total change, sudden change and radical change, but close to gradual change. Slow change leads to conservatism. "[1 1] In the specific historical context of the May 4th Movement, we don't need to be too harsh on conservatism. From the perspective of pure culture, these cultural conservatives, who stay in the traditional position, have made many new interpretations of traditional culture, which have exerted a subtle influence on the so-called modern and contemporary neo-Confucianists who have tried to revive China culture since the May 4th Movement. This new culture is produced under the influence of external forces.

Liberalism has made painstaking efforts to pursue democratic political ideals since it founded Endeavour, Modern Review and New Moon in the 1920s, Independent Review in the 1930s and Independent Review and Observation in the late 1940s. Liberalism, as the most controversial trend of thought in the New Culture Movement, has the most difficulty in fighting for its own right to speak, advocating western civilization. Be criticized by conservatives. Especially after the war, the disadvantages of western civilization were undoubtedly exposed, which made the once vibrant liberalism fall into a more embarrassing situation. It seems that they can't find strong arguments to resist the attacks of conservatives, and they themselves have to turn from full worship of western civilization to a certain degree of reflection. They were attacked by radicalism for advocating personal liberation and gradual political change. Liberalism hobbled forward under the double pressure until it was finally submerged in the radical wave of revolutionary discourse power. However, we can't ignore that liberalism still shows an unusually close relationship with tradition in its series of viewpoints and practices. In dealing with the study of Chinese studies, Hu Shi's doctoral thesis "History of Pre-Qin philosophers" opened up a new field of the study of philosophers. The Outline of China's Philosophical History published by 19 19 is actually a philosophical outline of pre-Qin philosophers. In the process of sorting out the national heritage in the late May 4th Movement, Hu Shi repeatedly claimed that he did not advocate "modern prose" or "ancient prose". On the one hand, he inherited the spirit of doubting the ancients, on the other hand, he accepted the realistic textual research method of ancient prose and got rid of the limitation of believing in the ancients. Combined with Huxley's skepticism and Dewey's empiricism, it provides a set of scientific methods for sorting out national heritage. In China's traditional literary concept, novels belong to "casual books" and cannot be elegant. Hu Shi regards the collation and research of ancient novels as an important content of Chinese studies, and thinks that they are also the theme of academic research, on an equal footing with traditional classics and history. Hu Shi also pointed out: "Temple literature can be studied. Folk novels are equivalent to Gao Wen's classics. " [12] The traditional factors in Hu Shi's outlook on life are also quite remarkable. He emphasized that the individual's "self" depends on the social "self", which is limited and infinite; The ego is dead and the ego is immortal. "My present self bears great responsibility for the infinite past of the immortal self; I also have a great responsibility for the infinite future of the immortal' big self'. I need to think all the time, how should I try to make use of the present' big me' in order to live up to the infinite past of' big me' and not hurt the infinite future of' big me'. " [13] In the article "I", Yi Baisha not only expounded his thoughts but also emphasized that "I" is more important than "I". He believes: "There is the spirit of sacrificing the individual self and the power to create the world self ... so the two complement each other and are not contradictory. From the point of order, there must be me and then the world. In terms of importance, there must be a world without me. If there is me, there is no me, and if there is no me, there is no me. I have nothing to do with this world.

Radicalism takes New Youth, founded by Chen Duxiu, as its main position. Because of its transcendence in the later period of the New Culture Movement, it finally won the leadership of China's ideological and political field after the May 4th Movement with overwhelming revolutionary discourse power. Yu-sheng Lin once pointed out that the May 4th Movement was full of strong anti-traditionalism. However, when analyzing Chen Duxiu's overall anti-tradition, we have to admit that "Chen Duxiu affirmed that the positive value of Confucianism is the lowest common denominator of all moral systems, so he did not explicitly admit that some components of Confucianism do not have their integrity. Although this contradiction logically destroyed his whole argument against Confucian holism, Chen Duxiu never seemed to notice it. Even if he did, it is impossible for him to face up to this point because ideology and culture are dominant in his thoughts as a way to solve problems. In the final analysis, his common sense can't compare with the power of casting his deep-rooted China cultural tradition. [15] On the issue of Confucianism, Chen Duxiu said: "Confucius is one of the quintessences of China, which has had the greatest influence on social psychology and politicians for thousands of years, and was a famous product of society at that time. This is something we absolutely should admit. But our research today is a question of whether Confucianism can be implemented in this world. " [16] He also said: "In fact, the essence of Confucius is the ancestor of Confucianism, and he organized a systematic ethical theory. Religion and metaphysics are not strong points. Although its ethical theory is not feasible today, it is a name in the feudal era of patriarchal society. However, people still dominate today's mind and think that the improvement of civilization is a big obstacle. " [17] On the issue of outlook on life, Chen Duxiu advocated that "individuals are to society as cells are to the human body", "life is alive, individuals are impermanent, and society is real" [18] In his view, "real life is an eternal life left by individuals in society. It is a big problem in life. " [19] Li Dazhao also expressed his own views on the issues of individual and society, "big ego" and "small ego": "We can absolutely unify its (small ego) relativity with its (big ego), control its color with its emptiness, and control its differences with its equivalence, so we can take the cause of the universe as our own business and the youth of the universe as our own business. Some scholars even think that radicalism finally chose Marx, and socialism is also the mapping of utopian ideals derived from traditional culture. Yun pointed out: "Socialism is not produced in theory, but in fact; It is not produced by intelligence, but by emotion. [2 1] Zhang Hao, an American scholar, also pointed out in the article "Criticism and affirmation of the May 4th Movement": "As far as thinking is concerned, the May 4th Movement is indeed a contradictory era. On the surface, it emphasizes science and advocates rationality, but in fact it is an era of boiling blood and emotional agitation; On the surface, the May Fourth Movement is modeled on the Western Enlightenment, but in essence it has a strong romantic color. " [22] For the May 4th intellectuals, the charm of socialism first lies in its equal and harmonious moral values, not its economic progress and efficiency. After experiencing the disillusionment of western civilization, the intellectuals of the May 4th Movement began to seek the "third civilization" in order to obtain a world outlook with the unity of reason and value. Socialism is undoubtedly to its taste. Enlightenment intellectuals who initiated the ethical revolution, after experiencing the disillusionment of western civilization, returned to ethics to seek value resources. They not only expounded western socialism with moral rationality, but also reiterated China's value ideal. The ideological trend of ethical socialism in the late May 4th Movement not only broadened the idealistic resources in China's traditional thought, but also promoted the utopian spirit with lofty goals. " [23]

To sum up, the author thinks that the three major ideological trends of conservatism, liberalism and radicalism in the May 4th New Culture Movement all contain traditional cultural factors to some extent. The May 4th New Culture Movement is not a fierce all-round anti-traditional movement as some scholars think. On the contrary, they can never get rid of the profound influence of traditional culture. The reason why they show a radical, conservative or moderate attitude is precisely based on their respective thinking about China from different angles and their different value orientations towards western civilization. It goes without saying that the May 4th Movement developed and strengthened the two concepts of "revolution" and "democracy", but it was irrational and romantic because it was inevitably mixed with traditional factors, which made the whole thought after the May 4th Movement show a more and more radical trend. At the beginning of the May 4th Movement, the possibility of dialogue between multicultural orientations was completely lost. As Thomas Harding, an American anthropologist, said, "When a culture is forced to change by external forces, this change will only reach the degree and effect of not changing its basic structure and characteristics."