Abstract

Confucius was a political thinker of profound and far-reaching influence in the history of China. In each period of Chinese history, important representatives and intellectuals from different strata and classes of society offered differing evaluations of Confucius and his theories. During the "May Fourth Movement" [1919 and after], the bourgeois revolutionary party raised the slogan "tear down the shop of Confucius and Sons" and offered some progressive criticism of Confucius and his theories. However, the bourgeoisie could not fulfill completely the historical task of criticizing Confucius and his theories. For this reason, the historical task of correctly and fully evaluating Confucius and his theories had to fall on the shoulders of the Marxist historians and historians of philosophy