The Study Of The Relationship Between Sun Yet-Sen’s Three People’s Principles And The Cultures Of China And The West

Sun Yat-sen is a pioneer of Chinese revolution as well as a great ideologist. As an ideologist, his main contribution is his Three People’s Principles(henceforth Principles), the establishment of which stems, on the one hand, from the summarization of his revolutionary experiences during the decades and, on the other hand, the idea resources in both China and the west. As he describes, “the Chinese revolution as I conceive is armed by ideology that originates from the traditional thought of my own country, the theories and lessons of the Europe, as well as my original view.” Therefore, the author thinks that the studies of Sun Yat-sen should emphasize on his Principles rather than his revolutionary career. However, even the researches of the Principles are fruitful in the academic world, there is still much space for broadening and deepening. The turning from the late 19 th century to the early 20 th is an era when China was undergoing some intertwinement of historical renewal, cultural conflict as well as ideological transformation. Having set his determination to lead China out of this eddy, Sun Yat-sen appeared, above all, as an ideological mentor of his time. Thus we need to have a close look at his Principles from a philosophical and culturological point of view in order to appropriate evaluate the magnificence of his thoughts and revolutionary undertaking.It is based on the above consideration and the relatively meager studies of this aspect that I set the domain of discourse on the relationship between the Principles and the cultures of China and the west.The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part I mainly sketch the predicament of Chinese culture brought about by the invasion of western powers, and illustrate the uniqueness of the predicament by comparing it with similar debate of Chinese and western culture in some other eastern states. I also illustrate the significance of the Principles and his view of Chinese and western culture both in China and the globe by examining various thinkers in early modern China. The second part—the main body of this paper—includes three chapters, in which I discuss the influence of the two cultures on his three aspects of the Principles: nationalism,civil rights and livelihood. Here I specifies the respective development of the three principles, and try to give a systematic investigation and theoretical analysis of the relationship between Chinese and western culture and the Principles. The paper closes in the third part by evaluating the Principles from a philosophical and culturologicalpoint of view. The author thinks that Sun Yat-sen has a very open mind as regards his ideology, and it is because of this openness that his Principles shows its theoretical charm of systematicity and unique Chinese feature. As the greatest ideology of his time, the Principles offered solutions to problems regarding nationality, civil rights and people’s livelihood that exerted long-lasting benefit. However, due to some misunderstanding of certain aspects of the two cultures, there are some points in his Principles that are worth of discussion, which leaves space for further advancement of the solutions to the problems of Chinese society.