Gao Yihan’s Democratic Enlightenment Of "the New Youth"

“The New Youth”was founded in1915by Chen Duxiu,Gao Yihan was one of theearliest chief editor.“The New Youth”not only provide a battle field against the feudalautocratic political and traditional ethics,but also become the important node in thedevelopment process of his democratic enlightenment.In the period of “The New Youth”,Gao Yihan’s democratic enlightenment is theproduct of the realistic democratic political defeat,and encouragement of the entire“The New Youth”colleagues,as well as the crystallization of Gao Yihan himself meltfrom each other under the penetration of Chinese and western political philosophy. Assame as the period of the other initiators, Gao Yihan’s democratic enlightenmentfollow the route,which make publicly the rights of the "people" as the goal, by settingup the "human" consciousness, cultivating young students.But as one of the fewreceived specialized and professional political theory in the "new youth" group,GaoYihan’s enlightenment show more the doctrinal features.After the overviews of the western human rights, he putted up the equality andfreedom as the basic principles to reconstruct the ideal of human rights. On the onehand,Gao Yihan associated freedom with the rule of law, emphasized the law does notinterfere with spiritual freedom; On the other hand,between liberty and equality,heputted forward a kind of "equality of freedom", an attempt to adjust the balance ofindividuals in achieving freedom rights issue.In the early stage of “The New Youth”,Gao Yihan used conciliatory political theory to realize the equal principle.Later hecontacted and absorbed the Marxist materialist history and economics principle,transferred from the equality of political rights to economic equality, which showed hisperspective of strategic development.Then in order to awake the consciousness ofyouth, to seek effective strength of the political and social change,Gao Yihan providedyouth a organic unity of "the conscious way" cultivation method which is consist of"bravery, ambition, knowledge".Gao Yihan’s democratic enlightenment is not a castlein the air, his ultimate goal is to build a "balance of self-interest and altruistic-interest"society.In such a society, personal interests and social public welfare is not necessarily conflict, the fundamental interests of both is accordance, personal interests can be metthrough the realization of social public welfare, social public welfare can also be underthe satisfied of the implementation, thus to construct the balance between privateinterest and the social public welfare. Regarding to democracy building, he puttedforward three basic idea of modern democracy which should have, namely popularsovereignty,limited country power,and rule of law.He hold the dialectical view of theopposition and unity between state power and individual rights.As for the boundary ofthe state power, he thought the state power cannot get their hands on the person’s spirit,freedom of the will.The state power only need to guarantee individual autonomy,voluntary choice. Besides, Gao Yihan is a determined follower under the rule of law,he believed that the law is as well as nations, which is used to maintain, adjust andprotect the rights of individuals, the rule of law is one of the most distinct symbol ofthe modern democratic countries.In a word, Gao Yihan is one of the most important enlightenment and politicalthinker in the “May Fourth Movement” and “New Culture Movement”,hisunderstanding of the western modern change of political system and ideology,promoted the theoretical level of the whole “New culture movement”;during theself-negation, his response to The Times have perfected and enriched the spirit’sconnotation on thoughts of his own democratic enlightenment; More importantly, hisdemocratic enlightenment of rational radiance, which made him deserve the mostoutstanding of "The New Youth"in the generation of enlightenment thinkers.