The Succession And Sublation Of The May Fourth Movement

The New Enlightenment Movement was the continuation and development of the the May Fourth Movement. It was also named as " the New May Fourth Movement" or "the Second New Culture Movement". In1936, Chen Boda published The Philosophy of the National Defense Mobilization and On the New Enlightenment Movement, in which he called out to inherit the May Fourth Movement and arouse the national awakening, and made a call for a enlightenment movement which was echoed by Ai Siqi, Zhang Shenfu, He Ganzhi.Liu Shi, Chen Weishi, Hu sheng, Xia Zhengnong and others from the Cultural circles. The New Enlightenment Movement thus started in Shanghai, Beiping and other places and climaxed on commemoration of the18th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement.Under the urgent situation of the War of Resistance and with the advocates’direct participation in the war, the New Enlightenment Movement only raised the issue but failed to develop into a broad social Ideological revolution in China and did not exert a profound historical influence like the May Fourth Movement did. But in inheriting and transcending on the May Fourth Movement, the New Enlightenment Movement was a component of modern China’s enlightenment thoughts which derived from the same origin as the May Fourth Movement had. This thesis analyses the New Enlightenment Movement’s contributions in inheriting and transcending on the May Fourth Movement from the perspective of the history of thoughts, based on the many studies combing the history of the movement.The text of the thesis has six chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the evolutionary course of the New Enlightenment Movement.and the assessment given by studies and the perspectives and meanings of the studies.The thesis holds that Deng Yanda put forward the concept of "the New Enlightenment Movement" first, but that was just a kind of sporadic shouting and did not cause a movement of momentum. In1936, Chen Boda published The Philosophy of the National Defense Mobilization and On the New Enligh tenment Movement, and his call was echoed by the cultural circles and grew into an ideological and cultural movement of influence.Thus the publishing of Chen Boda’s two articles signaled the formal beginning of the movement. As for the partition of periods.the chapter divides the course from Sep.1936to Jan,1940into4periods as proposition, development, peak and declining. This chapter also analyzes the reasons on the different attitudes held by studies at different times.The second chapter briefly introduces the historical context of the New Enlightenment Movement’s introspection on the May Fourth Movement. The original intention of the New Enlightenment Movement lied in re-raising and introspecting the May Fourth Movement. On one hand, it recongnized its enlightenment value; on the other hand it held that the May Fourth Movement had not been broad enough, profound enough and had been lack of criticism and it put forward the idea of combining democracy advocated by the May Fourth Movement with patriotism, of combining opposing restoring ancient ways and respecting Confucianism with anti-invasion and anti-quisling. The New Enlightenment Movement called for reason and acturaling mass enlightenment. The proposition of the New Enlightenment Movement was related to the arguments about ancient and modern Chinese and Western cultures. Wrong notions on Chinese and Western cultures upset China during the period of the War of Resistance:there was a deviation on the understanding of democracy and science which effected the war of the resistance; there was ideas of wholesale westernization and ruin theory with regards to western modern culture; there was ideas of nihilism, slave ideology as well as standard culture ideology and the KMT initiated the New Life Movement around the idea of respecting Confucianism and returning to rituals. The New Enlightenment Movement went beyond the arguments between radicalism and conservatism about ancient and modern Chinese and Western cultures being advocated as the core social values and put up the slogans of constructing dialectic and integrated new culture, trying to avoid value choices of either Chinese or western, and embodying the spirit of reason and public sentiment in culture construction.The third chapter focuses on the New Enlightenment Movement’s new interpretation of science and democracy. Being different from the " two wheels of vehicles" interpretation of the May Fourth Movement, the New Enlightenment Movement held that democracy was more fundamental than science and emphasized to link science and democracy with reason; Under the situation of national war of resistance, the ideas of the liberation of personality and democracy in the May Fourth Movement developed into a movement aiming at the pursuit of group liberation, national liberation and social liberation with the guideline of materialist dialectics.The fourth chapter explores the New Enlightenment Movement’s transcending on western European enlightenment. the New Enlightenment Movement accepted the baptism of western European enlightenment, exposed the enslavement of imperialism and the old system on Chinese people and generalized enlightenment movement with Chinese way of interpretation; the New Enlightenment Movement emphasized that enlightenment in China should not follow the old western road and should have its own haracteristics in terms of its circumstances, guidelines, leading class and relationships between individual and groups. the New Enlightenment Movement promoted the " academic sinofication" and tried to build up an ideology system, based on" Input civilization" of the the May Fourth Movement, with a blending of Chinese traditional culture and the practical need of the actural society.The fifth chapter analyzes the New Enlightenment Movement’s ideas about the notion of "Beat down Confucianism and Save out Confucius". The movement held that the attacks on Confucianism, though they met the need of the times, were just shallow criticisms and did not transform the traditional culture into engines to modernize Chinese culture value systems. The New Enlightenment Movement called to beat down notions in defence of the feudal autocracy and beat down the feudal ethical codes which impeded liberty of personality; the movement emphasized that, under the circumstances of the war of resistance, Confucianism should be beat but not beat down. To beat confucianism meant focus on opposing the ideas of restoring ancient ways and slave ideology. The New Enlightenment Movement put forward the idea of building up a united front of cultural salvation and specifically analyzing Chinese traditional ideology. This chapter also analyzes the two typical views on Chinese traditional culture represented by Chen Boda and Zhang Shenfu.It holds that Chen Boda tended to reform Confusianism completely with dialectic materialism and Zhang Shenfu tended to construct a cultural integrated ideology by his unique "analytic materialism"The sixth chapter introduces the advocates’ summary of the New Enlightenment Movement. This chapter illustrates that He Ganzhi, Zhang Shenfu, and Chen Weishi summarized the movement from the perspective of historical positioning, cultural reconstruction and new life value, generalized the historic positon of the movement and the summary was also a deep round-up on all the enlightenment movements in China since modern times.