Relationship Between Culture Conservatism And The May 4~Th New Cultural Spirits

The conservatism aroused in the May Fourth period including the Oriental culture school represented by Liang Qichao, Du Yaquan and Liang Sumin and the Culture review school represented by Wu Mi and Mei Guangdi, are opposed to the new culture mainstream represented by Duxiu Chen and Shi Hu for their different views on Chinese traditional culture. But as for their historical mission of national salvation and survival as well as their efforts in learning western culture, the conservatism has the same orientation to the new culture mainstream and effected positively to the new cultural spirits including patriotism, progress, democracy, scientific. The research is meaningful to reconstruct the history reality, is useful to make clear the outline of the modern culture development which can offer reference to the modernization of culture and the inheritance of the May Fourth new culture spirits.The article probes into the origin, the background and the theories of the cultural conservatism. It uses the May Fourth new cultural spirits as the measures to evaluate the cultural conservatism, the status in the new culture movement, the relationship to the new spirits and its reference effects in modern times.Firstly, the conservatism was aroused under the aspirations of the May Fourth new cultural spirits. The chaos of public order after the failure of the Xinhai revolution which introduced into Western political system, some intellectual preferring tradition began to recall traditional culture."Bring down the Confucianism"and the introduction of the western thoughts made them believe the traditional culture began to deteriorate. With the temporary declination of western world and the emergence of"the East saves the world"theory after the World War ?, some intellectual who could combine western culture and Chinese culture got the conservatism theory, hoping to keep the quintessence of China and to achieve Europeanization.Secondly, as to its function to the new spirits shaping, the cultural conservatism and other schools battled over how to find outlet for Chinese culture, which made up the history view in the May Fourth. The May Fourth cultural conservatism wasn't opposed to democracy and science. It proposed to learn from the West under the premise of criticizing it and reflect on the tradition on the basis of protecting the tradition. It also argued that the traditional culture should be the main part, made the Chinese culture and western culture in harmonious proportion to reconstruct the culture system of Chinese nation. Their devotion showing to tradition, corrected the mainstream of new culture school which overly emphasized the drop between Chinese culture and western culture.Finally,as to its effect on the May Fourth new cultural spirits, the conservatism developed their patriotism to salvationism by Chinese culture, and had strong time responsibility of saving people, the country and the world. To traditional culture, the cultural conservatism was filled with revolutionary ideas in words and deeds. In the aspect of absorbing western theory, they wasn't inferior to the mainstream of new culture at all. They actively promoted individual relieves and proposed to study with scientific ways. Moreover, the concept of openness made the connotations of the May Fourth new culture deepening and broadening. But for their over-protection of the traditional culture, the cultural conservatism also showed some limitation in bringing the new culture spirits into play.In relation to the above analysis, the article reflect the relative questions such as the deficiency of Chinese culture and academic theory in Intercommunication, the relationship between value rationality and instrumental rationality in the process of culture construction and so on.The article is analyzed under the guidance of the historical materialism on the base of the acquirement of the first hand materials and the academic achievements. It unified the historical analysis and logical analysis together to put the conservatism under the background of history and make statement. It compares the cultural conservatism to the liberalism and radicalism for a better cognizance to the theories and characters of cultural conservatism. It combines the theories of history, the theories of philosophy to survey the effect to the May Fourth new culture spirits of the cultural conservatism as well as its modern value.