A Research On The Political Thoughts Of Zhang Taiyan

The era of last years of Qing Dynasty and the early years of Republic of China is akey node for modern China to transform from dynasty politics to republican politics. Aproposition with the times is that what social and political orders should be establishedfor China which was at the intersection of ancient and modern ages. Compared tocontemporary thinkers, Zhang Taiyan’s propositions about equality before the Republicof China seem too abstruse. His specific political insights in the early years of Republicof China were relatively conservative. Zhang’s era faces two theoretical issues. The firstis how to cope with the increasingly ultimate Monarchism since Ming and QingDynasties and the repression of human souls and clamp of spiritual freedoms of theschool of the officialization on Neo Confucianism. In the situation of anomies of socialand moral values, human desires increasingly emerge. It becomes another theme of thetimes that how to construct the value system for peoples’ morality and enlightenment.In order to disentangle the complicated logic of Zhang’s ideology, the paper usesconstruction of an ideal order as the point of penetration to interpret in details hispolitical thinking. From the perspective of the construction of an ideal order, Zhang’spolitical thinking includes both idea norms at the level of political utopia, institutionaldesigns at the real social and political levels, and enlightenments for moral issues at themeaning of traditional Chinese. His thinking about political Utopia and enlightenmentimplies the issue of how to Placing the body and the mind on the spiritual level.Zhang Taiyan resolves the complicated question of power and human nature in hisown way, that is, instrumentally treats the self-evident truth and other authoritativevalues in the field of social life relative to human’s values and voluntary will to avoidabsolute repressions of freedom and self-willingness. On the other hand, Zhang respectsinstrumental value at the practical meaning, namely to serve to restrain evilness of human natures. This thinking way relatively concentrates on Zhang’s thinking aboutnation concepts.For Zhang Taiyan, under the guidance of his equality ideas, he focuses on priorityissue of peoples’ value preferences relative to nation. This is an inevitable value optionfor Zhang who regard freestyle of positive freedom as fundamental orientation. Creativehard-work individually such as academics, arts, and techniques are of more values,because this is the embodiment of peoples’ own spiritual needs and intellectuallyadvanced capabilities.In the national causes, even prominent utilities are also the contradictory product tosatisfy or resist evil and low-level psychological and physical needs of human natures.Thus, as the cooperation of many people, politics should not carry a noble significance.It is only the result of evil human nature, and it is only with empirical values. Politicsand enlightenment are two basic measures of social and political order governance forZhang. Zhang’s basic value orientations for authority is doing-nothing and makingpeople self-oriented of Taoist political and philosophical norms. In his eyes, Zhangproposes that indoctrination besides politics is mainly to enlighten human’s intellects,and to cultivate ordinary peoples’ basic virtues.There are three “presidents” in Zhang’s design of the polyarchy for the Republic ofChina. Legislation, jurisdiction, and academics respectively fulfill their duties. They cannot interfere with each other. Zhang emphasizes the difference between academic logicand political logic and the resulting separations. Naturally speaking, Zhang’s politicalthinking firstly needs to be understood in the tension of that time. His political thoughtsare high-profile Utopia arguments as the name of goodness and powerful weapons tofight back as the name of national politics to dominate individual wills.