Between Idealism And Realities

This thesis examines the participation in social activities of Hu Shih and its practical function. This thesis is based on the raw materials including unpublished letters and printed periodicals, attempt to draw four major conclusions. First, Hu Shih’s unique method of study contained the factors of Chinese traditional culture;Second, Hu Shih’s active participation in social activities was consistent with the Pragmatism of Han School of classical philology; Third, the ’Democracy and Freedom’ also consecutive existence in Chinese history; and the last,Hu Shih’s ideology still have positive significance for current society. These conclusions will play an important role in the great rejuvenation of China, and provide reasonable gist from Chinese Traditional Culture. Consulting the previous research, the author figures that the imbalanced studies in present studies of Hu Shih’s works and behaviors and try to study Hu Shih from culture-and-history perspective.This thesis contains five parts. After a short introduction, Chapter Two focuses on nation-building; Chapter Three describes Hu Shih’s opinions in disputes of party organization; Chapter Four will demonstrate a direct link between Hu Shih and struggling for freedom in Taiwan. The purpose of Introduction is to present and analyze the achievements of Hu Shih study in last twenty years. Chapter Two discuss the differences between Hu Shih and the new-born Nanjing National Government in national-building and political construction. Nanjing National Government wanted to build a Kuomintang’s one-party dictatorship. The intellectual, presented by Hu Shih want to pursuit of democracy and freedom. The Third Chapter focuses on Hu Shih struggling against Kuomintang on party organization and political participation. This dispute lasted nearly thirty years and can be divided into two periods: before 1949 and after. In the competition, Foreign country, especially the USA played a major role in it.As a matter of national interest, Washington didn’t accept the national-building leaded by the KMT proceeded smoothly, the USA encourage the KMT to repel the Chinese Communist Party and lead to Chinese chaos. After 1949, as opposition, Hu Shih planned as thoroughly as the objective conditions permitted to expend their living space. But for political security of Taiwan, both of them didn’t take radical measures.Chapter Four discusses the evolution of Hu Shih’s attitude on ’movements of freedom’. As a critical friend of government, Hu Shih realized he could do morethanthe government’ spermitting. Hu Shih decided to announcesome basic principles like maintaining the legitimacy of government, national security, maintain social stability and established public order. Besides these principles, Hu Shih persuaded radical reformers to take moderate methods and announced the value of’negative liberty’ and ’Right of silence’. The most important chapter is the fifth, this part makes a induction from above chapters and try to conclude four major claims which said above. This chapter not only try to build a complete text system,but also conclude Hu Shih’s practical function into four definite targets.This thesis based on the methods of traditional intellectual history to examine the information given by Hu Shih in his documents and behaviors. Using these raw materials, it discusses to find causal relationship between Hu Shih’s words and behaviors. The author also use methods of Journalism to handle some specific examples. In processing raw materials, this thesis have two principles: First, avoid using single evidence. Second,using various evidence which happened in different time to prove one conclusion. To make the conclusion more intuitive and more persuasive, this thesis use tables to examine present study of Hu Shih.