Liang Shuming's Cultural Thoughts And China's Modernization

Liang Shuming, the famous scholar, thinker and social activist in the modern history of China, acted as a pioneer of modern renewed Confucianism. He played an extremely great role in the history of China's modern cultural thoughts. The goal for which Liang Shuming exerted every effort throughout his life was to solve the following two issues: One is concerning life, in other words, what life means to you. The other is regarding society and China, that is to say, in which direction China is to go. With this in view, he worked his heart out to study Chinese as well as foreign culture, conceived the living programme and direction of culture development for all the human being including China, and seeked the road of realizing China's modernization during the course of vitalizing Chinese culture. This dissertation is intended to point out, through studying Liang Shuming's cultural thoughts and analyzing the mistakes he made on the issue of China's modernization, that the road of Confucian modernization which he advocated will get no where. Meanwhile, there is nothing can do but uphold Marxist historical criterion──productive force criterion, only which can push China's people and community forward towards modernization. This dissertation is logically made up of six parts: The first part puts empharis on Liang Shuming's cultural ideology of Buddhism which is based on the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness. Through the analysis of consciousness, he established ontology and episte mology of his own which he later applied as theoretical foundation and method in evaluating the three categories of western, Chinese and Indian culture. Apart from that, Liang Shuming made an essential distinction in nature between Buddhist philosophy and western philosophy. He held the view that the former lies in seeking to know nothing but the later know all. Therefore, Buddhist philosophy and western philosophy are two basically different kinds of philosophy. liang Shuming upheld Buddhist consciousness for the purpose of publicizing intuitionism because he believed that intuition is the only means to help understand the universal noumenon. The second part stresses the relationship between Liang Shuming's cultural thoughts and Bergson's philosophy of life. It was because Bergson's philosophy of life advocated intuitionism while criticizing rationalism and scientific methods that Liang Shuming applied it as the weapon to repudiate scientism. Furthermore, Liang Shuming, with the aid of philosophy of life concerning scientific cognition and utilitarianism and his won discernment of western culture, interrogated the optimistic attitude which scientism holds that science progress is sure to bring about development of human society and culture. It is only one side of Liang's reestablished Confucian metaphysics to invite Bergson's philosophy of life into Confucianism, attempting to compare Chinese and western culture and repudiate scientism. Meanwhile, the other side which is more important, is to unearth the value of Chinese culture, reveal the truth embodied in Confucianism, the core of Chinese traditional culture, and introduce western culture into Chinese culture with the final purpose of demonstrating that Confucian outlook on life is of unique and eternal significance. The third part emphasized on Liang shunming's theory of human nature, which is the fundam -ental part of his ideology on culture and philosophy. Liang stressed several times that he had devouted all his life to the two problems of seeking the truth value of life and finding a way out for China. He attempted to combine the choice of life attitude with the reality and development of Chinese culture, and he tried to solve the problem of realizing the modernization of culture in China by the way of establishing a correct life attitude. Liang Shuming's philosophy of life is the core of his whole system of ideology. In his opinion, among all the things in the world, human being is the most precious one, while the most precious part of human being is his nature. So the purpose of probing into human nature is to understand people correctly. Only through the correct understanding of human nature, can we really understand the truth of nature, society and life, thus can we solve the problem of finding a way out for human life and society. The fourth part give stress to Liang Shuming's ideology constructing "the theory of three-way world culture"with "desire"as its origin. Liang Shuming differentiate the three categories of western, Chinese and Indian culture in accordance with three different directions of "desire", intending to compare the three cultural systems in the West, China and India from the point of human development history, and clearly point out the future orientation of Chinese culture. Liang Shuming affirmed that the near future of world culture is bound to be Chinese culture's rejuvenation. He programmed and revitalized Chinese culture from a far-reaching future plane, instead of discussing China's future within a narrow scope or observing problems from near-sighted attitudes of progmatism, to seek effective recipe for saving the whole human being. The fifth part mainly clarifies the countryside construction movement which Liang Shuming was ergaged in for the realization of Confucian modernization. Liang Shuming stepped into the thick of life, plurged into rural areas and organized countryside construction movement, all of which he practised through his life for one purpose──solving the issues of life and society. It is not hard to find, by generally viewing Liang Shuming's theory and practice of countryside construction, that the countryside construction movement he advocated is in essence a kind of "the third road"──the road of reformism which Chinese intellectuals probe. Owing to Liang Shuming's misunderstanding of China's national conditions and his historical limitations, his theory of countryside construction and all sorts of view won't work and his Confucian modernization is also a kind of illusion. The sixth part theoretically explains that Liang Shuming and China's modernization was in a dilenuna. Liang Shuming's acknowledgement of western culture's victory merely stayed on the surface of historical facts'cognition. Meanwhile, he from beginning to end placed the upholding of Chinese culture at the top of agenda when choosing ultimate value and significance. Therefore, he had been confronted all his life with the dilemma of greeting modernizatoin while refusing it at the deep bottom of his heart, and failed to remove fierce tension of how to choose dualism value existing in the problems of saving the nation and conducting himself. Liang's whole set of theories was unavoidably imbued with insolvable logical contradictions. It also can be observed, from his cultural thoughts, thathow to harmonize "Confucian life"and "modernization"is the right tough cultral task perplexing Liang Shuming throughout his whole life. Viewing generally Liang Shuming's cultural thoughts, we will find out some flaws or even fallacies of this kind or that. However, at the same time we should look at the bright side of the coin, which is of much more significance ──that is ──Liang Shuming had kept enhancing splendid Chinese traditional culture and exploring all on his own with practical-mind instead of blindly worshipping books, superiors, classics and canons. It is from all the above that we can grasp the essence of Liang Shuming's cultural thoughts.