Abstract

For a long time now there have been different interpretations of the philosophical category "one divides into two." The debate that took place in scholarly circles in 1964 over "one divides into two" and "two combine into one" began with the question of how to interpret this category. At first this was a very lively and widespread scholarly debate. But later, because those "authorities on theory" who had at that time taken over the reigns of intellectual leadership within the Party created contemporary superstitions that inhibited thought, the tone and boundaries of this debate became arbitrarily fixed and circumscribed so that this scholarly question became a political issue resulting in the criticism and trial of comrades such as Yang Xianzhen and the premature death of this debate. Today, in accordance with the spirit of the Third Session of the Eleventh Congress of the Central Committee of the Party, with an attitude of really searching for the truth, we must undertake a new and correct evaluation of this debate. Politically, we must overturn the false charges which were wrongly leveled at Comrade Yang Xianzhen and others, and intellectually, we must uphold the policy of "let a hundred schools contend, let a hundred flowers bloom." We must encourage the free discussion of different points of view, and we must avoid issuing hasty conclusions. All of us comrades who participated in this debate should accept the valuable experience and lessons learned from it. We want the debate on this question to truly become a widespread intellectual debate which will once again develop and move forward healthily. In this article I would simply like to talk about a few of my own views concerning the problem of how to correctly interpret "one divides into two."