Sermon And Pay The Price

The debacle of Qing in the Jiawu Sino-Japanese War, pushed China to the verge of subjugation. The possible future of China became a problem which the patriots had to seriously consider. Being different from the previous or contemporary reformism thinkers who focused on the specific reform programs, Tan Sitong payed more attention to find out the essential crux of the problem of China and the fundamental solution. He integrated the Western academic into the Chinese academic, and estabished the threory of Ren which bases on the formula of "ether-Ren-Tong-equal".Tan's theory of ren takes the idea of tong as a center. Based on the idea of Tong, Tan deeply criticized the absulute monarchy and feudal ethics, proposed the ideal of democracy, and to some extent showed the tendency of revolution.Through the study on the relationship of the theory of Ren and Tan's political practice,this paper argus:on the one hand, the theory of Ren brought the benefit of ideological emancipation to Tan; on the other hand, the theory caused Tan formed a view of practice that requires "focusing on the present moment",which made Tan showing an action status of "submitting to the reality".Based on this "submitting to the reality",Tan could not develop a long-term planning and the steps to achieve goals. This eventually led to Tan's outcome of death. However, Tan'final choice of calling "the bleeding reform" with his death, opened the era of political revolution in the Mordern Chinese History. Therefore, Tan's thoughts and actions were the specific reflect of the trend from reform to revolution in the late Qing Dynasty.