On Mao Zedong’s Thoughts About Logic

Mao Zedong emphasizes logic in his whole life, and logical thinking is an important aspect of Mao Zedong’s thoughts. Studying on the logic thought of Mao Zedong can provide a new perspective for people to understand the process of the Chinese logic development in the twentieth Century. At the same time, the research can provide reference and inspiration for the logic teaching and research in reality.Mao Zedong emphasizes the study of logical knowledge, "A System of Logic", "Logic", "Abstract of logic" is one part of it. In the process of learning logic, Mao Zedong has experienced a process of development on understanding logic. In his early years, he fully affirmed the function of formal logic. In Yan’an, due to the influences of erroneous views in academic circles occurred in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong made a few deviation on logical understanding, putting the formal logic and metaphysics equally together to criticize. After the founding of new China, the logic thought of Mao Zedong at that time outdistanced the understanding of most scholars in the domestic academic circles. He clearly affirmed the scientific status of formal logic, and admitted that it was an independent subject which belongs to different knowledge, contrasting the dialectics.After the founding of China, Mao Zedong’s logical thoughts embodied in fully affirming the social and cultural values of the logic. This is mainly embodied in two aspects as follows: first, actively participate and practical guide the logical discussion in fifty or sixty years, occurred in academic circles of our country. In this process, Mao Zedong not only actively participated in the discussion, but also emphasized on the strategy, encouraging the academic to solve people’s different understanding through the way of the contention of a hundred schools of thought. Second, on different occasions, in different ways, Mao Zedong called on people to learn logic, including student and cadres. He called on people to learn logic, at the same time, used the written articles and files to illustrate how to use logic. After the founding of the nation, Mao Zedong promoted the popularization and application of the logical knowledge, putting the spread and development of the western logic in modern China into a new history stage.To inherit and develop the Chinese traditional thought about names and argumentation, is another side of Mao Zedong’s logical thinking. He inherited the Chinese tradition of the thought about names and argumentation in resolving name, in-depth and theoretically analyzed name, mainly reflected in the interpretation of the concept of Mao Zedong. China ancient thought about names and argumentation summarizes some problems that should be noticed in the process of their debating, such as to comply with the law of contradiction. In the new historical conditions, Mao Zedong combined with the particular subject of written articles and files, expounded that people should comply with the logic in the process of writing, and can not violate the relevant rules and requirements of the proposed logic. Metaphor is a very important form of reasoning which are summed up in Chinese traditional thought about names and argumentation. In the process of reasoning and practice, Mao Zedong gives the use of metaphor full attention, thus, his reasoning is also fully vivid and persuasive.