Inheritance, Subversion And Transcendence

The logic starting point and the standard for enlightenment of Lu Xun's severe criticism of our national character, is what he faintly sensed as the "ideal human nature", which can only be displayed through individuals who have "ideal Personality " in the process of modernization.The present thesis tends to probe into the roots and formation of Lu Xun's "ideal Personality " thought through analyzing the concept of his idividual Personality.The author starts from Lu Xun's character, family background and the environment he was brought up, trying to discuss the sources, complexity, the creativity and the implications of his thought. At the same time, the thesis elaborates on Lu Xun's idividual Personality thinking's inheritance, subversion and transcendence of the traditional genglemen's formats by surveying his life experience.Surely there is a process of development and change in Lu Xun's idividual Personality thinking, but when we look at his life as a whole, there is a thread running through it, the core of which is spirit and individuality. The changes and the unchangeable are the traces left by the enlightenment in his whole life.The ultimate aim of elaborating Lu Xun's individual Personality thinking is to delve deeply into the inner thought and real features of modern enlightenment ideas, and the logic of criticizing our national character before Lu Xun. Thus we can show the living force of his idividual Personality thinking in our modern time, and can try to offer a tentative answer to the question of why cannot the traditional ideal of "Inner Sage and Outer King" foster the development of modern democracy. What the present thesis is different from previous studies lies in the fact that it treats Lu Xun's individual character as a process, or as a "matter" as Foucault terms it, rather than using the binary opposition mode of modern/ancient,Chinese/Western,modern/traditional,contribution/limitedness and so on. It tries not only to elaborate on the inner contradictions, but also to find out the inner characteristics of logical integrity through combining different thinking modes.