A Study On Liang Shuming's Historical Philosophy

Historical Philosophy is people's philosophical speculation into the social historical development and internal derivatives. Although Historical Philosophy was rise until mid-18th century by French thinker Voltaire, there was not lack thought of historical philosophy in ancient China and Western. Limited to a varieties of reasons, the ancient Chinese historical philosophy didn't form a complete theoretical system. With the deepening of cultural exchange, modern western historical philosophy gradually were introduced into China, which was a great benefit for people to build their own system of historical philosophy. However, we explore the historical philosophy is not for purely academic research, but for introspecting Chinese and Chinese social survival, development and future prospects. Under such circumstances, there has important practical significance by analyzing Liang Shuming's historical philosophy.As a modern Neo-Confucian, Liang Shuming's theoretical inquiry aimed at resolving the problem of life and reality. To resolve this problem, depends largely on his precise grasp to the social historical development and internal trends. So, Liang Shuming's few academic contain the thoughts of historical philosophy. Such as Eastern and Western Culture and Philosophy, the Theory of Rural Construction, Chinese cultural rightness, etc. He has a quite superb and exposition for human history from the historical ontology, the historical motivation, the historical power, the historical form, the historical structure, the historical determinism and the historical epistemology.In the historical ontology, Liang reconstructed the life ontology. Based on Confucian tradition, he quoted Bergson's life philosophy to build a new shape on the body. He transformed Bergson's view of life impulse derived all phenomena that the world everything is formed by endless of life, and life is the ancient philosophers traced the fundamental, is the highest generalization of universe, life and society. It is different from Bergson, Liang made new play and extend, thank the universe is.made from life, provided a theoretical foundation for his cultural philosophy.In the historical motivation, Liang put the power of desire. In his opinion, the different of desire show different society, such as western, Chinese and Indian society. It should that desire was made of Liang, but it has profound theoretical origin. In other word, the desire was added by Desire of the ancient Chinese philosophy and Will of the modern western philosophy. Desire not only put the western modern philosophy, but also cast Chinese traditional cultural characteristics, and explore new ideas in the historical development of dynamic problem.In the historical development, Liang built a three-stage theory. How to develop of mankind history, whether there is a specific law? This is the philosophers of historical philosophy have to face the problem. Marxist thank the history have five stage from low to high, primitive society, salve society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society. Based on the power of desire, Liang thinks there is related to the development, evolution of the social history and the individual subject desire, and summarizes the three stages from material needs to spirit pursuits to ultimate concern.In the historical form, Liang advocated cultural patterns. Because of cultural differences, he summarized the mankind history as three types, west, China and India. in essence, is historical view of the cultural forms. In other words, the mankind history showed the different culture. In his opinion, culture is history, history and culture may combined, don't separated. History is cultural history, culture is historical culture.In the social structure, Liang put the ethics-based society. As an ethical society, the basic characteristics of Chinese society is ethical standards, occupational evolve along different paths and almost no religious life. Under the statute of Confucian culture, Chinese people put ethics code as daily conduct, thus dilute the role of the religion to form occupational evolve along different paths and no class antagonism society.In the historical determinism, Liang returned to the genius sages. Who decides the direction of development of human society, the genius of saints, or the general public? On this issue, Liang completely melted the ancient philosophers'the genius history. In his opinion, genius people resulted in the Chinese culture precocious, the Chinese society fold into the second road, sage figure made China as ethics-based characteristics, and only intellectuals can solve the real problem.In the historical epistemology, Liang respected intuitive epistemology. He not only absorbed the intuition, enlightenment of Chinese traditional philosophy, and also drawn Bergson's intuitive epistemology, thinking people have two ways to understand world. Intuitive may recognize self, observing may recognize the outside. But to recognize the cultural life, you can only rely on intuition.In all fairness, Liang made an indelible contribution for the development of Chinese philosophy, but there have some shortcoming in it, which is us re-examine and mining its argument must be noted.