Research On Song Shu's Thoughts

The discrimination between Confucianism and Legist is the focus of Song Shu's thoughts. Song Shu brought forward such discrimination in order to relieve the people's suffering, serve the Reform in late Qing Dynasty by Confucianism which was the bridge to the Western culture and to inherit the tradition of Confucius. He did not only regard Confucianism and Legist as two historical schools, but also treat them as representatives of two opposite political thoughts, on the basis of which, he criticized feudal politics after Han Dynasty in China and gave comments on politics, religions and philosophical schools at all times and in all over the world. Song Shu's thoughts about YANG RU YIN FA(Confucianism on the surface with Legist inside), which mainly criticized the theory of suppressing the people after Han Dynasty and The XULI Politics, had its values, but had its limitation, too. On the cause of the decline of China in Middle Age, Song Shu thought that Autocary Politics resulted from Legist. This is more reasonable than Xia Zengyou, whose opinion was that Autocracy Politics came from Confucianism. Xia's idea was exactly the origin of the striking down Confucianism in May Fourth New Cultural Movement. Zhang Taiyan's calling in question Song Shu's The discrimination between Confucianism and Legist was reasonable, but was not able to give tit for tat.LIU ZI KE ZHAI BEI YI concentrated Song Shu's thoughts on political reform. This book's characteristic was to aim to change the harmful influence of YANG RU YIN FA(Confucianism on the surface with Legist inside) and to relive the people's suffering. That he did not focus on the powerfulness and prosperity of the country was quite different from the most of other political reformers. As he had no full understanding of democracy, despite his opinion on the right of the people, Song Shu didn't realized its political principle.Song Shu's idea on liberation of women was much more sharp than others at that time. Yet, his opinion was only from sympathy. Song Shu misread democracy and thought it was the same as the idea of MIN BEN, which meant, in fact, the people was the root and the basis of the country and should be loved and taken good care of. It was on this basis that Song Shu commented on Chinese traditional culture and western culture. On the question of how to deal with the Chinese and western culture, he suggested a viewpoint of intergrating China and the West, which was guided by the idea of MIN BEN and whose criterion is to accord with the benefits of the maximal percentage of the people.Song Shu's opinion of conciliating Chinese culture and Western culture thought was to revive ancient culture in order to be back to The Three Dynasties ( similar to the situation before Minzhi Reform in Japan), and then to go into Occidental world again. Song Shu who thought that the most important role of education was to relieve the people's suffering, criticized strongly feudal education system, planned educational system in modern society and proposed social education. He made great contribution to modernization of Education Cause in China. His educational theory of conciliate Chinesd culture and Western culture incarnated the idea of promoting politics by education, pushing ahead the knowledge of the people by elite education.