Enlightenment· Dem Ocracy·Neo-Confucianism: The Historical Expanding Of Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese Cultural Outlook

Zhang Jun-mai is a philosopher and politician who "wanders between academy and politics". Therefore, his exploring process of the question of "where should China go" is effected profoundly and roundly by the Chinese important socio-cultural events happening in the 20th century. It mainly shows as follows: after the May Fourth New Culture movement, the Sept 18th Incident and the establishment of New China, i.e. during 1920s,1930s-1940s and 1950s-1960s, Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese cultural outlook correspondingly changed three turnarounds, with the theme of ideological enlightenment, democratic founding and revival Confucianism. According to this idea, the paper discusses Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese Cultural Outlook by the view of history. Each chapter of this paper is arranged as follows:Chapter one explores Zhang Jun-mai's enlightenment thoughts and the preliminary forming of his Chinese cultural outlook. Early in 1918, in the case of political failure, Zhang Junmai, Tang Guiyan, Jiang Baili and others set up the "Song Community" in Beijing, and they hoped to promote the social atmosphere with lectures. If it contains the seeds of Zhang Junmai's Enlightenment thoughts, then the real maturity and perfection of Zhang Junmai's Enlightenment thoughts is marked by that he was "determined to explore the most fundamental strength of the national founding" after "jumping from social science to Philosophy". Essentially, Zhang Junmai's enlightenment thoughts are the same of Bergson's and Eucken's philosophy, and all belong to the non-rationalism humanism, i.e. the new humanism. It sternly refuted historical materialism at the same time of opposition to scientism and intellectualism. Accordingly, in the political and social institutions, Zhang Junmai's opinion was to implement democratic socialism, and against European free capitalism and Russian Socialism. In this sense, Zhang Junmai established as "the trend of Chinese new culture" with the liberation of knowledge, the liberation of regime, the liberation of economy.Chapter two expounds Zhang Jun-mai's democratic founding ideology and the comprehensive development of his Chinese cultural outlook in the 1930s and 40s. After the Sept 18th Incident, Zhang Jun-mai promoted "state-national standard" in the face of serious national crisis. However, in Zhang Jun-mai's opinion, there are double meanings for the word of "state-nation", i.e., political nationalism and cultural nationalism. Political nationalism is aimed at realizing national dependence and national founding. Therefore, supremacy of national interests is the inevitable requirement, which is implemented in the design of political system as follows: amending it according to the centralized system represented by German and Russia within the old framework of parliamentarism, in order to overcome the drawback of the overweight of parliament power and the underweight of governmental power. The objectives of cultural nationalism are to inspire national confidence, intensify national consciousness, and concentrate national power, and provide the "footstone" of establishing democratic politics and safeguarding basic human rights. Therefore, Zhang Jun-mai brought the freedom spirit which including political freedom into the scope of national character and took it as the basic content of national knowledge and moral. Apparently, this kind of cultural nationalism is equivalent to Yael Tamir's "Liberal Nationalism".Chapter three discusses Zhang Jun-mai's modern Neo-Confucianism and the perfection of his Chinese cultural outlook. "The crisis of world culture" after the World War II and living in exile after leaving the mainland at the beginning of 1949 made Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese cultural outlook transform from nationalism to cosmopolitanism, from centering on politics to centering on culture. This proves that Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese cultural outlook experiences a dialectically positive and negative development process. In brief, the "combination" is mainly manifested in the following two aspects:on the one side, under the new historical conditions, Zhang Jun-mai didn't propose only the slogan of revitalizing "the Neo-Confucianism" as in the period of the debate between science and outlook on life, instead redefined Confucian philosophy, Confucian ethical thoughts and Confucian political thoughts, and elaborated deeply the foundation, approach and precedent of renewing Confucianism, and further established "self-dependent multiform structure" of modern Neo-Confucianism; on the other side, in regard to modernization theory, Zhang Jun-mai didn't rest on criticizing the mode of western modernization and its drawbacks, but put emphasis on digging inherent consistency between tradition and modernity, teasing and analyzing the process of one hundred years of Chinese modernization and its reasons for failure, and illuminating energetically that revitalizing Confucianism is the approach of Chinese modernization.The conclusion section critically summarizes Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese Cultural Outlook by the principle and method of historical materialism. As the Chinese modernization theory, Zhang Jun-mai's Chinese Cultural Outlook has made great contributions to the enlightenment of New Culture Movement, the Chinese National Democratic Founding, and the formation and development of Modern New Confucianism in different times in the 20th Century. In the same time, there are some theoretical deviations in aspects of the concept of social history, the relation of ideological enlightenment and democratic politics, methodology, and so on. This is the fundamental reason why Jun-mai's Chinese Cultural Outlook has not chosen and accepted by the Chinese people and Chinese history.