Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the conflicts and dialogue between Western rationalism and the Chinese mind during the May Fourth Period. The categorical differences and basic conflicts between Chinese and modern Western world views and modes of thinking are closely examined here in their historical background and in individual lives. At the same time, the difference between the Philosophy of Life, the major content of the Chinese Counter-Enlightenment, and European Romanticism, the Western Counter-Enlightenment, is examined. ;Through a critical study of the thought of two twentieth-century intellectuals, Liang Shu-ming and Chang Chun-mai, this dissertation attempts to indicate the basic structure, characteristics, and meanings of Chinese Counter-Enlightenment thought. Typological analyses of their thought will show that they represent very different archetypes of an important intellectual movement in China--the Philosophy of Life. ;In Liang's case, we find a remarkable attempt to make a dialogue between Neo-Confucian Life Philosophy and Enlightenment rationalism, and between a world view of becoming and a world view of being. Through a close analysis of Liang's early life and thought, I try to indicate the true spirit and style of the Philosophy of Life. His effort to create a dialogue between Western rationalism and the Chinese tradition penetrated into many fundamental areas--metaphysical, epistemological, methodological, linguistic, psychological, ethical, and socio-political. Liang shared many of the penetrating criticisms of modernity and of Greek and Enlightenment rationalism that had been advanced by the German Expressionists, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Heidegger. ;Chang Chun-mai's significance in this period lay primarily in his effort to combine German Idealism, Bergsonism, and Confucianism to form a criticism of materialism and scientism, approach later followed by many New Confucians and New Humanists. After analyzing the various ingredients in Chang's thought, however, we find that the basic themes derived more from the idealism of Bergson, Eucken, and Kant than from Confucianism. ;In addition to the above assertions, this study tries to indicate that Counter-Enlightenment and Philosophy of Life were important to the popularity of Pragmatism, Marxism, and Revolutionary Romanticism in China, even though these are all famous for their allegedly pro-Enlightenment and iconoclastic positions. ;Finally, this study suggests that the traditional Chinese world view and modes of thinking, which were basically non-Enlightenment, were nevertheless the basis for China's selective absorption of foreign resources