The Practice Of Individualism

The individualism in WuMingshi’s books is the domestication of that in western culture. While assimilating the ideas of western culture, he focused his research on some specific parts of it. In this thesis, with the purpose to highlight the contribution he did in preaching individualism in China, the author investigates the WuMingshi’s writing practice and life experience from the angle of individualism. This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one is an introduction on the origin of WuMingshi’s individualism. Firstly, the writer conducts a detailed study on western individualism. Secondly, she introduces the process of assimilation, spread of individualism over the period from late Ming to Modern China.Chapter two is the analysis of WuMingshi’s assimilation of individualism. Firstly, from the perspective of individual performance, private freedom, human dignity and personal value, the author recalls the role of individualism in the May 4th cultural movement. And secondly, with a further study on WuMingshi’s assimilation of western artistic ideology and western modern literature, the writer conveys the message that Individualism is co-existed with Romanticism and Modernism in his books.Chapter three refers to WuMingshi’s practice of individualism. The author also presents a detailed introduction on his life experience from the aspect of individual performance, private freedom, human dignity, personal value and personal well-being, and concludes that he is a practitioner of individualism.Chapter four discusses WuMingshi’s view of life. He called for subjectivity awareness, private freedom and equality. He stressed the power of independent personality, maintained that each person had the right to self-growth. He believed that personal value was mainly embodied with love and attention shown for others and society.Chapter five analyzes WuMingshi’s aesthetic value. His emphasis on individual performance, sense of emotion and personal psyche contributes to the forming of his own distinctive language style. It shows the same features as that of music, color and philosophy.In Chapter six, we come to "WuMingShu". It is regarded as the practice of his ideal dream and the propaganda of WuMingshi’s own individualism system. The book makes great effort to create a cross culture fusion between western and eastern world. It also puts forward two new concepts Universal "universal philosophy" and Utopian "global farm". Both of them relate the personal freedom development and individual perfection with the advancement of the society.