| With the collision of modernized West and conserved China, May Fourth New Culture Movement, holding high the two flags of science and democracy, played an important role of cultural enlightenment when the Chinese nation was faced with a great survival crisis. This has been a hot academic issue under discussion. The development of modern Chinese culture implicated a way of reflection and interpretation of May Fourth New Culture Movement.The introduction part defines the concept of May Fourth New Culture Movement, sets precisely its starting and ending time, and summarizes the previous studies. The multi-facets and multi-meaning of May Fourth New Culture Movement were revealed in the past reflections, which presented much progress in the following topics as, the distinction of May Fourth New Culture Movement and the students’Patriotic Movement, the interpretation of the connotation of the New Culture Movement Enlightenment, the review on the schools of thoughts of the New Culture Movement, and the meaning of tradition in the postmodernism. Through the cultural rush of1980s and the cultural conservatism of1990s, in recent years, the study on May Fourth New Culture Movement has opened up a new period, which is more peaceful and tends to seek integration. During this period, people no longer stick to the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment debates. Instead, with an open cultural mentality, people break the academic paradigm since May Fourth New Culture Movement, and progresses rapidly in response to contemporary issues based on the integrated innovation. However, the vigorous cultural enlightenment of May Fourth New Culture Movement does not meet the public’s expectations, which aims to realize science and democracy. Compared with the Western Enlightenment, what had happened to May Fourth New Culture Movement in the Enlightenment? What kind of special difficulties it had encountered? Therefore, it is still necessary to deepen the subject. This dissertation tries, from a cultural comparative perspective, to show clear the coordinative meaning of enlightenment, to present the traits and difficulties of enlightenment, and to discover a breakout for reflecting and overcoming May Fourth New Culture Movement. Chapter one traces the previous thoughts and problems in the field of cultural comparison before May Fourth New Culture Movement Cultures. May Fourth New Culture Movement, similar to the Western Enlightenment, is a cultural enlightenment movement promoting the modern transformation of Chinese culture. The difference between them lies in that the Enlightenment in China is exogenous, which is a result of collision of the Eastern and Western cultures, and performs a role in the cultural enlightenment from a cultural comparison perspective. During the Westernization Movement,"Chinese essence, Western techniques" is a comparative framework based on the separation of the West and East. After realizing that a strong army is not the essence of Western culture, reformers began to understand westernization from the perspective of political systems. As a result, the question about how to deal with the relationship of West and East assumed the vital importance. Under this circumstance, the East root was challenged and threatened. Although reformers still stuck to the principal of "Chinese essence, Western techniques", actually the content had changed, and tended to get rid of the biases toward the differences between West and East. Yan Fu is the founder of the "discovered" paradigm in May Fourth New Culture Movement the founder of Paradigm, he advocated the natural scientific methods of "Elimination of the false and worship of the truth," and called for a democratic political system of "sacrificing private for public", which is the harbinger of science and democracy. He believed in the theory of evolution and the practical experience, established the basic premises for the New Culturists and the school of thoughy of science. On the May Fourth New Culture Movement Eve, the great cultural gap between Eastern and Western culture is viewed everywhere. In the era of Chinese and Western cultural comparison, relevance is the formation of the "cosmopolitan" tendencies and the radicalization of the idea "change".Chapter two gives a summary and comparative analysis of May Fourth New Culture Movement in the two cultural debates and intellectual trend. From the Westernization Movement, the Reform Movement, the1911Revolution, to the "May4th" New Culture Movement, and strengthen the country level from the objects to change the political system, to the ideological and cultural awareness, for the Oriental culture and Western culture, history and logic Debate available on the double meaning of the premise. From the debate of the East and West, the new centralists and the cultural conservatives agreed on such issues, as they have gradually gained recognition toward science and democracy and understanding on the differences between Western and Eastern culture. However, they had quite different ideas on other problems, such as the judgment of essential differences between West and East, understandings on the old and new cultures, and the future of the world culture. Science and democracy are the tow results of Western Enlightenment. The May Fourth New Culture Movement is trying to, in the absence of appropriate social factors; make the two notions of science and democracy generalized through both the promotion of the response to the national salvation era theme. The May Fourth New Culture Movement deepened their understanding of democracy, emphasized the people’s liberation and affirmed the value and meaning of life. Meanwhile, it held critical ideas toward Chinese traditional ethics, focused on the democratic significance of the cultural enlightenment with nationalism, and viewed the concept of democracy as a value and a tool to enlighten the whole nation. In the absence of modern science, science is more a philosophical. Cultural context is recognized, scientific truth is not only intellectual, but also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Beyond the field of scientific knowledge, expansion and social sciences, and even the universe in all areas of life, it suddenly becomes an all-powerful new idol. Scientific generalization showed a turn from the pursuit of goodness to the pursuit of truth and a strong scientific belief and orientation toward positivism and metaphysics.The Controversy of Science and Metaphysics is a continuation of East-West controversy. It involves not only Chinese and Western relations, but also contemporary issues as Chinese culture and philosophy. It reflects not only the relationship between scientism and humanism in western culture, but also the twist between metaphysics and modernity. The Controversy in the Scientology by the thought of Western positivism, the link between science and philosophy from the start, tries to achieve a scientific philosophy, unity of the universe and life science, specifically as follows:First, science will take the place of experience, trying to re-establish a metaphysical picture of the world; second, the mechanization of human and human in the perspective of science; third, the shelter of truth for goodness; Fourth, to realize the value of field overstepped through the universal scientific method. When Scientology takes science as a holographic vision of the universe and life, the scientific view of the arbitrariness leads to the emergence of scientific doctrine. Metaphysics and science party had a strong vision of different conscious, and this initiative comes from the profound understanding of the duality of human existence. Although Metaphysics sadly in this debate curtain call, the questions of life and free will they raised are concerned with human ultimate happiness and where a peaceful life can start. With its meaning, it effectively reveals the necessity for any exogenous enlightenment to adhere to its own national character and cultural dimensions. The Controversy of Science and Metaphysics also marked the separation of early Marxism and liberalism. This dissertation analyzes briefly the divergence from the "problem versus doctrine" to "The Controversy of Science and Metaphysics " between early Marxism and liberalism. In the "problem versus doctrine", their argument focuses on problems as the historical and instant functions of doctrine, re-constructed civilization and social revolution, piecemeal evolution and the fundamental transformation, the different understandings of class competition. The experimentalist Hu Shi pursued also showed its own two defects:experimentalism becoming a truth through methodology; experimentalism is good at criticize, but short at building. In the Controversy of Science and Metaphysics, the differences between early Marxism and liberalism mainly lie in the different presupposition of theory:the basis of a distinction between monism and pluralism; the distinction between substance ontology and doubts about the idealism.Chapter three compares the New Culture Movement with the Western Enlightenment. The May Fourth New Culture Movement promoted the Chinese culture’s turning into modern culture, but science and democracy are still our unfinished career, which has a long way to go when compared with the historical trend the Western Enlightenment had shaped. Firstly, by the Western Enlightenment, human rights replace the monarchical power, human-orientation replaces God, science replaces doctrine, we can discover the ego of self through sense May Fourth New Culture Movement in the form of enlightenment through science and democracy Praise and criticism of the feudal morality stand out from the human subjectivity, highlighting people’s rational spirit, with the specific content of the western Enlightenment, which are different. But, actually the person by reason of self-discovery, human is found to be the common goal of both Western and Eastern Enlightenment. Secondly, it reveals the differences. On the one hand, they have different cultural traditions:the West is a combination of ration and Godhood, while the Chinese culture follows the mainstream of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism and has very weak religious consciousness. Differences between the two actually lie in the different presupposition of humanity. On the other hand, the relationships between enlightenment and tradition are different. May Fourth New Culture Movement in the comparison of Chinese and Western culture, the advantages of Western civilization to the pan-cultural comparison of the areas of derivatives from the beginning formed to judge the value of a cover showing the traditional completely negated. In the Western Enlightenment, the relationship between Enlightenment and tradition is regressive. The Western culture does judgment within its own system and with the reason to oppose the monopoly of divinity. Therefore, the Western Enlightenment is the return to the traditional Greek way, and is against the divine domination of monopoly, instead of full negation to tradition. Its anti-tradition did not break the system architecture of Western culture. Thirdly, the Chinese Enlightenment has its own particularity. On the one hand, the exogenous Enlightenment and the cultural nationalism are in highlights. Affected by the spirit of the Enlightenment, May Fourth New Culture Movement marked that Chinese culture’s transformation from modern times to the contemporary age. Meanwhile, the exogenous enlightenment decided that May Forth New Culture Movement would face the tangle of cultural nationality. It also determined that any non-Western culture must confront cultural dimensions of national character Enlightenment in the modern way. This is why the cultural conservatism is not entirely appropriate, but it has profound ideological value. This is a different sense of enlightenment May Fourth New Culture Movement left us. On the other hand, salvation overwhelmed Enlightenment:national position replaced the individual consciousness. The center of the Western Enlightenment, human study, advanced the Enlightenment to human subjectivity level. Meanwhile, May Fourth New Culture Movement of the Enlightenment also noted the personality of the Enlightenment. But because of the survival of the national crisis, there is no access to the same deep level of rationality and freedom to explore the significance of the Enlightenment, just as the Western Enlightenment did. It can only locate science and democracy in such a category. Third, the rational spirit of the Enlightenment shaped the social structure in the West reflected the gradual maturity of civil society. By contrast, China Enlightenment apparently lacks social maturity basis in reality. From a societal perspective, the traditional Chinese family structure and the country’s social structure is not conducive to the formation of civil society. The Chinese civil society has the following characteristics:performance of enlightenment is a cultural awakening; the state plays the main role in the social changes; the development of market economy is still unable to provide a strong secular foundation.Chapter four reflects the May Fourth New Culture Movement in the following two aspects:the arbitrariness of rational enlightenment will inevitably leads to the opposite, which is the paradox of enlightenment; the eternal criticism toward history is the right attitude to treat "the Enlightenment"; early Marxists realize the dual nature of the Enlightenment, and they treat the new culture as a transcendence of both traditional culture and modern culture. It still has an important significance to seek a new road beyond returning to the tradition and ultra-Westernized. Anti-Enlightenment tradition is not the proper meaning of enlightenment. The emergence of non-mainstream thought May Fourth New Culture Movement is a kind protection to the traditional dimensions. May Fourth New Culture Movement is an exogenous enlightenment, and we should learn more ideological nutrients; the scientization of modern Neo-Confucianism and the humanization of Marxist philosophy represent the orientation formed through rational self-reflection and combination of different values, which is the mentality exceeding the May Fourth Enlightenment, and the opportunity to transform the traditional creativity. |
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