Research On Hsu Fu-kuan Political Thought

Hsu Fu-kuan was a distinguished scholar that active between science and politics with his own colors in the 20th century in China.His political life reached to the pinnacle when he served in Kuomintang government as deputy general secretary of the Joint Secretariat of the Party,government and army,and became a member of the senior staff heavily relied upon by Chiang Kai-shek.But he in the end turned himself from politics into academics because of his thorough disappointment to the corrupt and autocratic KMT.In his whole life,he took great care for the fate of Chinese nation,and committed to the integration of traditional culture and democratic politics,so that he carried on the profound analysis and critique of the Chinese and Western political culture,proposed the comprehensive political-cultural innovation theory.Researches at home and abroadon Hsu Fu-kuan mainly focus on his New Confucianism,while his theory on the comprehensive political-cultural innovation lacks in-depth and sufficient exposition.On the base of existing researches,adopting the research methods of document study,historical analysis,philosophic analysis and comparative analysis,this paper discusses the connotation and the content of Hsu Fu-kuan,s political thought in the light ofthe Marxist theory.The paper,according to the basic theory of politics,aims toconstruct a logical system of Hsu Fu-kuan's political thought,and to probe into the content,the chief distinction,the theoreticalsignificance,practical enlightenment and the theoretical weakness of his thought.By his classical explanation of the "sense of urgency",Hsu Fu-kuan pointed out that it is the "sense of urgency" that marks the transformation of Chinese traditional culture into humanism,which contains the humanistic awakening of ancient Chinese,taking morality and reason as the main elements.He made in-depth research and analysis on pre-Qin Confucian political thought,and pointed that the rule of virtue,populism and political protest spirit constituted the core values of pre-Qin Confucian thought.However,in reality of the imperial history,due to the destruction of the prime minister system and the serious lack of legal thought,Confucianism that had political protest spirit could not be developed,but reached a compromise with the autocratic political system.Hsu Fu-kuan separatedpre-Qin Confucian political thought from the deterioratedConfucian political thought in the author:itarianperiod,and this separation is the key prerequisite and the indispensable first step for his comprehensive political-cultural innovation.Hsu Fu-kuan dug for the essence of the democracy and the rule of law in Western political culture,and at the same time,he criticized the contradiction between freedom and equality,class and historical limitation and the drawbacks of individualism in Western political culture.He pointed out that the establishment of Western democratic politics lacksa solid thought and spiritual foundation of the "moral consciousness" from politicians and citizens.He opposed the polarization of society,and he opposed the rich and the powerful competing with the common people for profit.He believed that equality and distributive justice are the basis and necessary endurance for the real human freedom.All of these,plus his criticism against capitalism malpractice,reveals that he was deeply influenced by Marxism.Hsu Fu-kuan strongly opposed the construction of modern China through overall Westernization.He advocated that the Western political culture needs to be differentiated and identified,so as to take the essence and discard the dross.This opinion is the necessary condition for his comprehensive political-cultural innovation theory.Based on these,Hsu Fu-kuan believed that China must learn and absorb the essence of democracy and rule of law in Western political culture,and make it into a creative fusion with the essence of pre-Qin Confixcian political thought;while Confucian humanism can bring about moral and spiritual connotation to the modern democracy,so as to remedy the defects of Western democratic liberalism.Thus,he advocated an integration of ideological essence of Confucian thought as the rule of virtue,populism and political protest spirit with Western ideological spirit of democracy and rule of law,by way of a comprehensive innovation to create a new Chinese political culture.Comprehensive political-cultural innovation is the conclusion as well as the core of Hsu Fu-kuan's political thought.Hsu Fu-kuan was concerned about China's real politics and made attempts to rebuild the Confucian politicalprinciple.He based himself on the liberal stand to maintain the traditional culture and strove to seek the comprehensive innovation of tradition and freedom,which was his most original contribution to that era.After all,Hsu Fu-kuan failed to escape from the limitations of idealism,class,history and time.In essence,what he maintained was the idealist tradition of Confucianmoralstandard and natural mind,while the moral reason and the moral value that based on historical idealism could not possibly truly reveal the nature and laws of political thought.What he represented was the special interests of the scholar class and intellectuals,which decided that the position of the peasantry class could not be found in his value idea.Owing to the limitations of history and time,his conception and elaboration on the comprehensive political-cultural innovationcould not take the guidance of Marxism,nor couldthis kind of comprehensive innovation theory be helpful to China's democratic politics.For our continuous building up,in the guidance of Marxism,the socialist political-cultural system with Chinese characteristics,to absorb and to borrow the reasonable part of Hsu Fu-kuan's political thought has an important theoretical and practical significance.