On Liang Shuming's Ideology Of Ethics-Based Society

Liang Shu-ming's ethic ideology is based on the Chinese traditional culture;His purpose is to rebuild the Chinese traditional ethics,in the vivid words,is to make the Chinese traditional ethics blossoming like a old branch turns green. He believes that the basic structure of Chinese traditional society could be summarized as:ethics-based society. In his opinion,the so-called ethics-based society that based on the ethical relationship between family members is a principle of social organization which has been applied in the whole society. As the basic principle of every social organization,the ethics-based society which is based on the clan, modeled on the family ethics, focused on each others,characterized by the obligation concentration to others,is to make all social organizations and social relationships with nature and features of the family ethics which include the social organization ethicizing,economics ethicizing,politics ethicizing,religious ethicizing and so on. According to the ethical principle that reconstructing Chinese traditional society by the rural development,Liang Shu-ming strive to emphasize that rural development not only is the only way for the revival of traditional culture in China,but also the only way for the Chinese people to contribute their wisdom and spiritual values to the world.The basic disagreement between Liang Shuming's"ethics-based society"ideology and Fei XiaoTong's"differential mode of society"ideology is the different judgments to the Chinese behavioral orientation. Liang considered the chinese to be unselfish,their guidance can be summarized as"other-centered",however,Fei regarded the Chinese as selfish with the guidance of"egoism".Furthermore , The basic disagreement between Liang Shuming's"ethics-based society"ideology and Mao Zedong's"class struggle"theory is the different understanding to the Chinese society's nature and organization. In Liang's view,there is no class differentiation and class antagonism in the traditional society except only the occupational separation;However,Mao emphasized the social existence of class antagonism and class struggle in China. Liang overemphasized the particularity but ignored universality of the Chinese traditional society and culture,but Mao grasped dialectically the universality and particularity and even their unity. Their ideological differences derived from the disagreement of two historical perspectives : historical idealism and historical Materialism.The theory construction practice of Liang's theory is standing on the basis of Chinese traditional culture which is also a reaction to the western culture shock. As if many Patriotic intellectuals,Liang's ideology,behavior and goal is to rescue china from danger and rejuvenate the nation. Above all,a fierce study on the values and limitations of the Liang Shuming's ethical ideology is of significant for our understanding of Chinese traditional social culture and Socialism developments of the advanced culture.