This article is transferred from: University Humanities
Wang Yuanhua: Constantly reflecting
In the more than sixty years that I have been writing, my thinking has undergone three major changes, and all three changes in my thinking have come from my reflections. I use the word "reflection" in the strict sense of the word, which refers to the reflection and review of one's own thoughts.
The first reflection occurred around 1940 during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, when I joined the Party, and with the inducement of reading famous works in the 1940s and with the help of some friends (especially Man Tao), I identified the "Left" dogmatic tendencies that I had formed in order to appear radical.
The second reflection occurred in 1955, when I was isolated and censored for my involvement in the Hu Feng case. This political storm is a torture of the soul, destroying and emptying what I have long believed to be a good and sacred thing. Years later, I summed up the experience in terms of a mental crisis, and it left me feeling a big shock. In this crisis, the values and ethical concepts that have been formed need to be re-recognized and re-evaluated.
The third reflection was relatively long, spanning the entire nineties. The specific opportunity was to write the Preface to the Duyaquan Anthology. I found that Duaquan was not only an enlightener, but also a liberal who advocated moderate and gradual reforms. The misconception that Du Yaquan is an outdated opponent of innovation owes its roots to the sudden changes that have taken place in China's modern history over a long period of time.
Every reform in history for more than a hundred years has ended in failure, which makes it easy to think that the reason for the failure of each reform is that it is not thorough enough, so it generally forms an impatient mentality that is more thorough and better. In such a climate, Du Yaquan is too stable, too heavy, too conservative.
Understanding and Reflection on the "May Fourth" Thought
In the past, the understanding of "May Fourth" was based on a large number of established concepts that had been absorbed over a long period of time, and these established concepts had been deeply rooted in my mind as an unshakable belief. The compilation of the materials read in the past, the interpretation of theories, the writings of history, etc., are almost all written under the guidance of these established ideas.
Therefore, the information I have seen before is limited to the side that is identified by established concepts as reform, progress, and revolution, and the side that is judged to be backward, conservative, and reactionary is mostly published, and even if it is collected in small quantities, it is often subjectively selected and judged, so that people cannot see the whole picture and truth of historical facts.
Whether May Fourth highlighted the idea of true democracy is worth exploring. To a large extent, May Fourth only highlights the high-profile democracy, that is, the democracy of the Great Revolution, while the low-key democracy, that is, the empiric democracy, is quite insufficient, and this will inevitably form the innate deficiency of modern Chinese thought.
After reading and thinking, I put forward four concepts that were popular during the May Fourth period, and it is necessary to re-evaluate them today with a sober re-understanding:
First, the vulgar view of evolution, which rigidly asserts that whatever is new must prevail over the old; second, radicalism, which refers to the tendency to be extreme, fanatical, extreme, and violent, which became the root of the later ultra-left ideological trend; third, utilitarianism, which refers to the purpose of making scholarship lose its independent purpose and serve its own ends other than itself; the fourth is the ethics of intention, that is, to establish in epistemology what to support and what to oppose, that is, we must support whatever the enemy opposes. Whatever the enemy supports, we must oppose, and this has formed that in academic matters, we often do not realistically put the consideration of truth and right and wrong in the first place.
In addition to the emancipation of individuality and the awakening of man, which deserve to be written in the history of Chinese thought, I believe that the most important ideological legacy of May Fourth is: independent thought and free spirit. If the "May Fourth" figures are measured by "independent thought and free spirit," the standards of praise and criticism will be very different, and some figures praised by textbooks and intellectual history will find it difficult to maintain honor and prestige.
The enlightenment mentality since May Fourth (not during May Fourth) needs to be overcome. By enlightenment I mean an excessive trust in human power and the capacity for reason.
The awakening of man, the dignity of man, and the strength of man made mankind come out of the dark Middle Ages. But once the power and the capacity of reason are regarded as omnipotent, and when they are thought to be indestructible and will not be limited by any limitations, and they are absolute, an ideological enlightenment mentality is born.
Often thinking that the truth is in their hands, there is no room for refutation of opposing opinions, and then public opinion is uniform, suppressing different opinions, thinking and condemning, and even transforming human nature. They replace individual emancipation with a sense of community, democracy with centralization, and humanity with violence. In terms of ways of thinking and modes of thinking, they are completely consistent with the ethics of intention, radical emotions, utilitarianism, and vulgar evolutionary views prevailing during the May Fourth period.
Reflections on radicalism
I pondered bitterly and began to explore why the influence of the "Left" trend of thought in China has so long been so long-standing, and so deeply rooted in the minds of many people.
I find that this ultra-left trend of thought is embodied in the anarchist trend of thought that was introduced from the West in the early twentieth century. This is a form of radicalism.
Radicalism was prevalent in China at the time for political reasons. China's social environment is too dark, and the reform movement has failed again and again, making it easy for people to develop an impatient mood. On the other hand, the disintegration of feudal society, the import of Western learning, and traditional culture have faced unprecedented tests and challenges, and there are often some biased views that tend to be extreme on the relationship between Chinese and Western cultures.
Although the fierce anti-tradition did not originate in the "May Fourth" era, it was already revealed in He Xinyin, Li Yan and others in the late Ming Dynasty. But the intermittent anti-traditional tendencies at that time were not enough to form a trend of the times, like the "May Fourth" that had a huge impact on the time and later.
Radical thought actually has two forms of expression, one is to cancel and suppress the true voice of the individual in the name of "the people" and the "sacred" admiration; the other is to use the name of "progress" and the advocating of "seeking innovation" to destroy and destroy the existence of excellent cultural traditions, and at the same time to cancel other voices that they consider to be unreleased, irrational, and not trendy.
No matter how different the two are, it is very consistent to think that the truth is in hand, to force others to obey themselves, to reform and control the minds of others, and to adopt more and more drastic means to achieve their ends.
Biography
Wang Yuanhua is a famous literary theorist, critic and modern writer. Born in 1920 in Wuchang, Hubei Province. He began writing in the 1930s, serving as a member and acting secretary of the Shanghai Underground Cultural Committee of the Communist Party of China, and edited the "Running Current" literary and art series. After liberation, he served as a part-time professor at Aurora University and Fudan University, the editor-in-chief of Shanghai New Literature and Art Publishing House, and the director of literature of the Shanghai Cultural Commission. In 1955, he was implicated in the Hu Feng case. After his rehabilitation in 1981, he served as a member of the first and second disciplinary review groups of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council and the director of the Propaganda Department of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. He died in Shanghai in 2008.
In 1983, he published a collection of essays, "Literary Meditations", which was hailed as one of the important masterpieces of the ideological emancipation movement in the new period. After the 1990s, Wang Yuanhua paid more attention to the ideological foundation and cultural traditions of literature and art and philosophical thought, and published a series of treatises such as "Tradition and Anti-Tradition" (1990), "Qingyuan Night Reading" (1993), and "Qingyuan Recent Thoughts" (1998). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wang Yuanhua edited and published New Enlightenment, the former representing the scholarship and reflection of the new enlightenment he advocated in the 1980s, and the latter embodying his practice of "academic thought and intellectual scholarship".
Source: "Me and the Eighties" by Ma Guochuan; Published: Sanlian Bookstore, 2011 edition