Qian Mu Literature Summary

Mr. Qian-mu (钱穆, 1895-1990), styled binsi, was a famouse Chinese historian with national compassion and sense of anxiety in the 20th century. He had worked hard in the field of Chinese study with special methods and contributions. His literature study is valuable although it has not yet been given enough insight for some special reasons.This article tries to give a brief insight into Qian-mu's literature study on the base of some introductions to its importances during his academic career in the preface. Qian-mu tried to put his cultural ontology and philosophic theory of life (人生) into his literature study, so as to actively revalue the modernization of Chinese literature during the 20th century and help bringing out a revival of Chinese literature and culture in their future developments. In fact, this article mainly contains three parts, which has been divided out following the above basic academic thread. Author's guideline running through this article is to richen the studies of Qian-mu''s academics in such an unnoticeable facet.In part 1, the cultural life ontology (文化生命本体论) has been treated as the theoretic foundation of his characteristic idea upon Chinese literature, which has been named Xin-xue (心学) by Qian-mu . First, he gave a special explanation to culture with cognition of life (生命). He excellently articulated various conceptions such as life and hart, into a healthy and vivid theory of culture in a holistic way. He described the life-pattern in ancient China and compared it with that of western culture. In his view, western culture is an extroversive and commercial civilization with a notion of life (人生) built up on materiality, while Chinese culture is an introversive and agricultural civilization with a notion of life built up on morality. According to this comparison, he viewed Chinese literature as a special type that tended to discribe the inner world of life in a hart-based way. He stated with emphasis that there were some fundamental differences between Chinese and western cultural notions of life, which determined that Chinese literature had its particularity so that it should not been studied totally according to western literature theories which had been considered as universalistic truths in a long time. Secondly, he paid special attentions to the humanist tasks of Chinese literature using his cultural ontology and philosophic theory of life. He cataloged those tasks into "wen-yi-da-xin " (文 以达心) which was discussed as well as divided into "yi-wen-chuan-xin " (以文传心) and "yi-xin-hui-xin " (以心会心). In his opinion, "yi-wen-chuan-xin " connected to demands for writing while "yi-xin-hui-xin " for appreciation. As a conclusion, the spirit ofshi-shi (诗史 精神) was regarded as the highest dimension of the humanist tasks discussed above. Thirdly, Qian-mu creatively combed some different connections between " gong-xiang" (共相) and " bie-xiang" (别相). According to his analysis, almost all the life descriptions in Chinese literature had cored the common morality emphasized by Confucians, and as a reasonable result, artistic interests and techniques had been united into life and moral education with a highest dimension called "Tao" (道. Totally saying, Qian-mu's theory was quite dialectic and creative, so that bis discussions upon the history of Chinese literature coordinately gained both an ontological foundation and a wide-connecting sight. Qian-mu's discusses on some important questions in the historic process of Chinese literature are briefly summarized in part 2. This article reviews his profound analysis infive facets. First, he stated that his opinion upon the self-realization of fine literature during Wei-Jin (魏晋) dynasties was most important and creative in his literature studies. As we know, natural interests for fine literature appeared with both a breakdown of politics and a rise of Taoism since the end of Han (汉) dynasty. Qian-mu's particular work is that he treated the self-realization of fine literature as a motive evaluation from Wei-Jin to Sui-Ta...