"Moral Education As The Basis Of The Complete Personality"

Cai Yuanpei was one of the advocates and promoters of moral revolution in the period of the Revolution of1911and New Culture Movement. He regarded that the core content of moral revolution was not criticizing feudal ethics, but shaping national sound personality centered on citizen morality. This thesis entitled "Moral education, foundation of complete personality ",focuses on the theoretical foundation, overall framework, main viewpoint, ultimate purpose and historical value and practical significance of Cai Yuanpei’s moral education thought, endeavors to sum up and explore a complete logic system for it, which may provide a new idea for today’s moral education reform and development.The introduction mainly analyzes the subjective and objective reasons for the formation of Cai Yuanpei’s moral education thought. Objectively speaking, his consideration for it was based on profound historical background. He threw himself into education while saving our nationality from peril in modern China.He claimed that education is a career of cultivating personality, and moral education is the basis to cultivate a complete personality. Subjectively speaking, Cai yuanpei has started a long journey of Chinese modern education with his wide view of accommodating Chinese and western and personality style of tempering virtue.The first chapter analyzes the theoritical foundation of Cai Yuanpei’s moral education thought from the two aspects of world outlook and view of life. Drawn from Kant’s dualism philosophy, Schopenhauer’s philosophy of will, Kropotkin’s mutual aid theory and " Great Harmonious society " thought of traditional Confucian, Cai Yuanpei’s world outlook constructed a binary world which can enhance and surpass human moral spirit. Cai Yuanpei’s view of life insists that the ideal of life and the meaning of life is serving for others and the society, and at the same time, he also respected and encouraged the personal pursuit for their own happiness or the realization of self--worth.On this basis, Cai Yuanpei completed the reconstruction of the theoretical premise of his moral education. Through the binary analysis of the world, he layed the solid foundation for the purpose of the ultimate concern of moral education and a realistic path to achieve this purpose. While his interpretation of the relationship between people’s obligations and life rights, people’s material and spiritual life,he provides the operational guidelines for the practice of moral education. The second chapter emphases whole framework of Cai yuanpei’s moral education thought."Moral education as the basis of the complete personality " embodies the consideration the essential of moral education thought of Cai Yuanpei. As the fundamentality of cultivating complete personality, the essence of moral education is to wake up the moral consciousness,and think it the basic mark of healthy and complete personality. Therefore, Cai yuanpei put forward a series of basic requirements for moral education, such as the purpose of education should be integrated with ideal, which endowsthe educated unique spiritual temperament. The content of the education should abide by the principle of "freedom, equality, universal love", and arm them with modern spirit. We should stress moral practice and realized the unity of knowledge and practice. The subject of education is those who should be the educated, the educated should be given full play of their autonomy.The third chapter regards "civic virtue cultivation is the backbone" as the core idea of Cai Yuanpei’s moral education thought. He concerns the degree of reality of personality as the central task of moral education. From the aspect of personal morality, family ethics, social and national moral angles the thesis makes a careful and detailed analysis on Chinese and Western moral resources, and gives a comprehensive explanation of the basic requirements of the citizen moral education during the period of Republic of China.Its purpose is to give citizen realistic character and accomplishment needed in public life. That is to say, we shouldn’t satisfied with our own moral nobleness without considering others, we should fully understand the significance of the country, the rights and obligations of the citizens, and aware of public life principle and the spirit of love.The fourth chapter sums up "Aesthetic education is the completion of moral education "as the tendency and direction of Cai Yuanpei’s moral education thought. Not only did he speak that aesthetic education is the step of moral perfection, but also put forward a distinctive proposition "substituting religion with aesthetic education ". Cai Yuanpei advocated that aesthetic education is he tendency and direction of moral education, which embodies his overall concern of life and transcendent aspirations of personality.The conclusion part is on the historical value and practical significance of Cai Yuanpei’s thought of moral education. I believe that on the basis of the integration of Chinese and Western cultures, Cai Yuanpei constructed a complete system of moral education thought. As We can see, on the one hand, through the reconstruction of the theoretical premise of his moral education, waking up the moral consciousness of subject, and emphasizing the value of the true, the good and the beautiful scales, Cai Yuanpei completes modern transformation of his moral education thought. On the other hand, his moral education thought reflected his concern of life, and regards the reality of human character and transcendence appeal as the indispensable content of complete personality. Today, these insights shined with reason glory are still able to turn into an ideological torch, light up our way forward.