The Two Basic Threads in the Early Period of Contemporary Chinese Thought

Abstract

In studying the intricately woven history of ideological development, one must possess insight to be able to detect the basic threads that run through it and follow their rise and fall, and to understand them from a philosophical angle. After the start of the New Culture Movement around 1919, there was an ostensible reanimation of the ideological world comparable to pre-Qin times, when "a hundred schools of thought contended." A multitude of philosophical schools and trends appeared in a crisscrossing and fast-changing pattern, making it difficult to trace the basic threads of the period. We were able to do this, however, and discovered two basic interweaving threads that marked contemporary Chinese thought before Marxism became dominant in China. The first was evolutionism, which evolved in China in five different forms; the second was Chinese humanitarianism, as opposed to the humanitarianism of the Western bourgeoisie in its various stages of development.