Crisis, Reformation & Reconstruction

Liang Qichao plays a key role in the modern history of Chinese ethical reformation. As an enlightenment thinker, Liang's moral thought bears an obvious characteristic of transition, which means the amalgamation of the old and the new, the combination of complexity and variability. As an individual, Liang's moral thought experienced a process of evolution and development, which can be regarded as the representation of moral evolution in modern China. The evolution of Liang's moral thought can be outlined by four keywords—transitional time, crisis, reformation and reconstruction. The characteristic of China in transitional time can be defined through three perspectives: essentially, it is the confliction and conversion between tradition and modernity; superficially, it appears to be the ethnical crisis and confliction between Chinese and western culture; from the perspective of thought, this characteristic is displayed by an overlapping consensus between salvation (from ethnical destroy) and enlightenment. These above-mentioned features of modern China result in a trio of moral crisis — a crisis of Chinese traditional morality crushed by western modern morality; a crisis of moral skepticism caused by the anti-continuance in a transitional time; and a crisis of value rationality overwhelmed by instrumental rationality. Crisis makes reformation necessary. Liang called for a moral revolution to eliminate the moral crisis. However, such a moral revolution is confined by the time then and actually is endowed with the responsibility of releasing the kinetic energy for Chinese modernization. Therefore, either the attempts to introduce western modern morality critically, or to construct a genealogy of public morality, which aims at extending the traditional moral resource, all fail to override the moral crisis. Moral revolution also aims at moral reconstruction. Liang's conception of moral reconstruction, shaped by the temporary culture and his personality, also possesses an obvious characteristic of transitional stage. Liang expounds a plan of mutual replenishing of tradition and modernization for moral reconstruction. He designs an ideal society which is a merciful one based on the fully display of individual personality. This dissertation...