Academic "behind The" Thinking "

As an important research works, An Introduction to Qing Dynasty's Scholarship (abbreviated to Introduction in the following text) opened the hallway to the tradition of modem scholarship. Scholars have already gotten the common understanding over this book that it lays much more importance on 'personal ideas' in stead of 'the historical facts'. Four kinds of different interpretations about the Introduction's intent to the relationship between Ku Wen (ancient style prose 古文) and Jinwen (the New Texts 今文) were formed from the original text to its deep meanings in these years: first, it lays importance on the scientific principle of Ku Wen scholars; second, on both the principles of 'scholarship for scholarship's sake' of Ku Wen and 'scholarship for practicality's sake' of Jinwen; third, the two are inconsistent, and we can take the changes of the Liang Qichao's identity as the reason; the last, on Jinwen. Though these four are all somewhat reasonable, they do not find the deep-seated practical reasons of the contradiction yet, and thus cannot discover the deep meanings. In this dissertation, the aythor tries to find the deep thoughts of the Introduction through the examination of the text, the context of times and Liang Qichao's mentality.It is not difficult to find the conclusion that the Introduction lays much more importance on 'personal ideas' in stead of 'the historical facts', and this conclusion interprets Liang Qichao's intent of 'emancipating the mind'. The exaggeration of anti-Xun words and the deliberately misuse of the word 'legitimacy' can make the original intent of 'commending Jinwen secretly', and presents Liang Qichao's warmly attitude upon the idea of Jinwen scholar's 'scholarship for practicality's sake'. So, we can get the conclusion that 'emancipating the mind' and 'scholarship for practicality's sake' is the deep-seated means of the Introduction, and the means is also closely related to Liang Qichao's dream of 'scholarship for saving the nation'. And this can be proved by the context of times of the prosperity of scholarship history's writing, mind changes in 1920s and the articles of Selected Writings on European Traveling (欧游心影录节录) and The Foreword to Gaizao. The prosperity of scholarship history's writing reflects the characteristic of 'reviving scholarship for the purpose of saving China' and Liang Qichao's great changes in his mind in 1920s made him adopt the strategy of 'New Polities', these two are the reasons why Liang Qichao take scholarship as a carrier to express the "deep meaning with pithy remarks". And the Selected Writings on European Traveling and The Fore-word to Gaizao can also directly explain the practical intent of the Introduction. At last, the author further proves the conclusion through the comparison of different attitudes towards Jinwen and Ku-wen in his three words on qing dynasty's scholarship history written in different periods.