Hu Shi's Literary View Under The Influence Of Pragmatism

It is an important period for Hu Shi's literature thoughts becoming mature from 1915 to 1916 and during this time, the understandings of literature beauty, the vernacular theory and the theory of literature evolution which are three important components of Hu's literature thoughts, all have undergone significant variations. Before that, Hu's attitudes toward literature beauty were dialectic and he thought it was better to obtain "aesthetic feelings" and "practical use", "beautifully to read" and "clearly to understand" in a work while after that his understandings of it were pure and paranoid and he thought "clearly to understand" was the only standard of literature beauty also the highest standard. Before that, he paid little attention to the vernacular literature and he was not highly judge to it while after that he devoted enormous enthusiasms and praised it as a "living text". He also refined the vernacular literature to a high degree of "the authentic Chinese literature". Before that, he failed to construct his "literature evolution" even though he had knew the evolution from the book Evolution and Ethics in 1905 while after that he completed it and carefully combed out the evolutionary path of Chinese literary language tools, style and literary works.It was because Hu began to believe in philosophy of pragmatism and regarded it as his actions and researches'guideline that his literary thoughts experienced a variation. Specifically, under the influence of pragmatism value "practical is truth" complete Organon and emphasis of the evolution theory of gradual "seek instant benefits, not quick success", Hu turned his literary thoughts promptly and finally he formed the final maturity and launched a "literary revolution" successfully, impelling Chinese literature to march from classical toward modern, which are pragmatism's great significance to Hu's literary thoughts and to Chinese modern literature.Hu's attitude towards philosophy of pragmatism was quite practical, and his belief in philosophy of pragmatism was a rational choice rather than a completely emotionally accept, which had resulted in split between emotion and rational in literature level, and contradiction between fresh reading experience and understanding of literature in theory deduction. He confined to pragmatism, failed to go beyond his earlier literary thoughts and gradually was behind the trend of Chinese literature development. As a result, the embarrassment between the influence of pragmatism on Hu and Chinese modern literature is really obvious.