What are the ideological emancipation in the history of China?

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the warlord regime resulted in a rare ideological emancipation in China's history, and four thoughts of Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism and Legalism emerged. The * * * feature of this ideological emancipation is that people developed the original-though still very rough-theoretical thinking form of the Chinese nation while sublating the divination culture popular since Shang Dynasty. Lao Ran is a master of early Chinese studies. He sublated the dross of Yin Shang culture (while inheriting the essence of Yin Shang) and developed Taoism which is very close to nature. Confucius and Mozi, on the other hand, sublated the negative part of Laozi's theory, developed Confucianism and Mohism, and paid attention to political practice ("learning to be an official" can not be simply understood as "being an official") and social effectiveness. The part of Confucius' theory that emphasizes human initiative was later abstracted by Mencius ("everything is ready") and Xunzi ("man can conquer nature") and pushed to a very high position (not inferior to the theories of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in modern times). The doctrine of the golden mean in Confucius' theory has been brought into play by the rulers and has become an ideological tool of social management, while the Taoist doctrine founded by Laozi has been gradually accepted by the oppressed social classes through the development of Zhuangzi and has become an ideological weapon against class oppression. These two constitute the main aspects of the unity of opposites in China's later thoughts.

From the Western Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, China's politics and economy migrated from the north to the south. This migration is accompanied by the new liberation of the Chinese nation's thoughts. During the period of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, due to the need of consolidating political power caused by the pressure from the north (Xiongnu invading south), Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty revised the part of primitive Confucianism that emphasized human initiative and primitive democracy by using Dong Zhongshu's thought of "respecting Confucianism alone", making it a theory serving feudal autocracy. At this point, the vitality of Confucianism began to dry up.

After the Eastern Han Dynasty, due to the large-scale war, Confucianism lost its function of supporting social psychology, thus losing its binding force on social ethics. In this general psychological emptiness caused by the decline of Confucianism, metaphysics, which combines the theory of inaction of Laozi and Zhuangzi, has become a social trend of thought. The appearance of metaphysics at that time had dual significance: on the one hand, it gave people new psychological support under the condition of social psychological imbalance. It advocates the destruction of etiquette and the pursuit of nature, which is of enlightenment significance. For example, Bao Jingyan put nature above the gift of imperial power in On No King, which weakened people's attachment to imperial power and strengthened the connection between people and objective nature. On the other hand, because the society at that time did not have the economic conditions for the change of social relations, the chaos caused by the crimes committed by the northern nomadic people going south did not bring new prospects to China at that time, as the Germans and Huns did to Europe. After the great turmoil, society finally passively returned to a world without. The sense of "worthlessness" (Yan He and Wang Bi) reflects the anguish of the literati in this period.

The period of the Three Kingdoms, the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties was a period when the economic center of gravity gradually shifted from north to south, thus separating the economic center of gravity from the political center of gravity. At this time, the political center of gravity is still the north, while the economic center of gravity has moved to the Yangtze River basin. This kind of centrifugation became a foregone conclusion with the opening of the Grand Canal in the Tang and Song Dynasties. During this period, the vast and undeveloped banks of the Yangtze River provided new replication space for the natural economy and feudal social system in the north, which once again aroused the enthusiasm of the Chinese nation to rebuild the social system in Qin and Han Dynasties. This enthusiasm, stimulated by metaphysics and Buddhism introduced into the West, has formed a new and vital social thought.

The decline of Confucianism in eastern China has provided a broad market for the spread of various cultures in West Asia and South Asia. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, China first introduced Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism, Manichaeism, Islam and Buddhism. The first few religions were mainly spread among Hu merchants in the western regions, and the Han people took Laozi as their ancestor and began to accept Buddhism. Buddhism, like Christianity, is also a weapon to emancipate the minds of working people in the early days. When Buddhism first entered China (which was an early ideological movement of China to absorb excellent western culture), China was in the process of shifting its economic and cultural center to the south, and Jiangnan was about to enter a development period. The large-scale development of economic space requires the great liberation of people's ideological space, which makes Taoism and Buddhism become the ideological forms that people consciously accepted at the beginning of the great economic reform at that time. Not to mention how much influence the wanton writing styles of Laozi, Zhuangzi and Wang Yang had on people's conservative thoughts at that time, as long as we look at the rich relativistic thinking forms in the study of Laozi and Zhuangzi, it is not difficult to understand the reasons why Taoist thoughts prevailed in this period. However, China's metaphysics is just a fruitless flower, and his metaphysical thought, which can only be broken but not established, is not enough to promote people's ideological liberation at that time. It happened that the introduction of Buddhism added new impetus to the open trend of thought that appeared in the society at that time. The introduction of Buddhism into China not only anesthetized people's minds, but also liberated people's minds. Taking Zen as an example, Nanchan Huineng's "Epiphany Theory" advocates that since enlightenment, everyone can become a Buddha independently without relying on outside help. This is similar to Martin Luther's view that individuals can save themselves by faith in Europe! The only difference is that the dual social structure in Europe (the coexistence of natural economy and commercialized handicraft economy, and the coexistence of secular power and religious power) makes the ideological emancipation movement initiated by Martin Luther have a capitalist future, while China's ideological emancipation has to return to the traditional way of thinking after some twists and turns because it has not been accepted by the new economic system. As for those literati who don't want to "woo", only in the "Peach Blossom Garden" full of Taoist consciousness can they pin their hopes on the ideal of "dancing in the fields and being steadfast" [1].

Since the Tang Dynasty, the evolution of China's traditional way of thinking based on natural economy and small-scale peasant economy has entered a mature stage. At this time, the land development in South China has become increasingly saturated, and the production has changed from extensive management to intensive management. Accordingly, after blending with China's thoughts of Confucianism and Taoism, foreign Buddhism began to take root in China in the "retro movement" advocated by Tang Hanyu, and began to accept Confucian "peace" with Taoism. The commodity economy in the south of Song Dynasty was weak, followed by the rational consciousness in Buddhism and Taoism began to penetrate into Confucianism, which led to the birth of Neo-Confucianism marked by Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties. Zhu is a master of Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties. He believes that "reason" is the origin of all things and is the first. After Zhu pushed "Li" to a worthless position, he also incorporated Confucian social norms into Li. He said: "There is only one reason between universes. ..... Its Zhang is the three cardinal guides and its discipline is the five permanent members, all of which are overwhelmed by the popularization of this principle. " [2] Here, "reason" has become the core content of Confucianism. At the same time, Zhu combined the practice thought of eliminating distractions in Buddhism and Zen with the self-cultivation thought of Confucianism, and put forward the ethical norm of "eliminating people and wanting to preserve righteousness" [3]. In this way, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism were seamlessly integrated in Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties.

Similar to Hegel's theory of compromising autocratic society and cultivating revolutionary consciousness, the process of China's social ideological emancipation after Zhu is similar to that after Hegel, but it is a low-level evolution.

Lu Jiuyuan was the first person to transform Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism. He sublated Zhu Cheng's philosophy's external recognition of Confucian norms, which is similar to the sublation of Zhongnan Zen in China Buddhism to Beichan, and directly put forward that "mind is reason". [4] This proposition was pushed to the peak by Wang Shouren: he simply put forward the proposition of "nothing outside the heart" [5]-similar to the western Descartes' proposition of "I think, therefore I am". The philosophical value of this proposition lies in that it moves the "reason" of Song Confucianism from the outside to people's hearts, that is, people can grasp it based on their own knowledge and understanding, rather than passively adapting to external norms. In this way, people's understanding is liberated from the realistic Confucian ethics, making it possible for people to make independent judgments. This is the flower of progressive thought that grows in the soil of Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism.

Similar to the consequences of two kinds of students cultivated by Hegel's thought-one is young hegelians who talks about "criticism" and the other is young Marx who pursues practice-Wang Gen, a disciple of Wang Shouren, brought the teacher's "reason" back to reality from his heart and put forward the proposition that "learning is the Tao" [6]; Li Zhi is even more extreme, shouting that "dressing and eating is the principle of human relations", [7] emphasizing the liberation of personality: "A man is born for his own use, not waiting for Confucius." [8] The most significant thing is that Li Zhi put forward that "everything in the world is born in two, not in one" [9]: he clearly expressed his ontological dualism in his essay On Couples, similar to Kant's "antinomy" proposition; Unfortunately, Li Zhi's cross-generational thought has not been favored by scholars for a long time, just as between Kant and Hegel, China people prefer the latter.

After Li Zhi, there appeared an ideological trend of attaching importance to the combination of cultivation and practice in China. Its representative figures are Huang Zongxi, Gu and Wang Fuzhi, three great thinkers in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and their theories are characterized by emphasizing "practical application". Probably the painful lesson of Song and Ming's subjugation. Scholars after the Ming and Qing Dynasties are no longer confined to explaining the world, but bravely engaged in the struggle for political change: Huang and Gu are both important figures in the "revival society" aimed at opposing eunuchs, and Wang Fuzhi is a brave general who led troops against the Qing Dynasty. The scholar's practice-oriented style of study brought China's ideological emancipation movement to a new stage.

Even if it is improved, it will inevitably touch the external authoritative world. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China literati held high the banner of ideological emancipation and launched a comprehensive and lasting impact on the old culture from different aspects. This process is roughly divided into three stages.

The first stage is a theoretical reform based on the rational thought in Neo-Confucianism of Song and Ming Dynasties and the egalitarianism in Laozi and Zhuangzi's thought. The former is represented by Zeng Guofan, Zhang Zhidong and Li Hongzhang, while the latter is represented by Hong Xiuquan. The former tries to make China realize the transformation of modern industry without touching the old system. The latter tried to overthrow the old system and establish an egalitarian ideal kingdom on the premise of retaining small farmers. Significantly, Hong Xiuquan combined China farmers' primitive equality thought with Christianity's equality thought, which indicated that China people once again began to pay attention to absorbing ideological nourishment from western culture after learning western Buddhism. Hong Xiuquan mobilized the enthusiasm of farmers in southern China to average their fields and established a huge peasant regime. However, it was difficult for farmers in China at that time to understand the significance of contemporary commodity economy, so they had great prejudice against the principles of commodity economy. For them, the commodity economy is the murder of westerners and the usury exploitation of domestic chaebols. No wonder people in China at that time never felt the commodity economy in the field of production. What they feel more is the commercial economy confined to the circulation field, and the commercial economy often makes profiteers who are not engaged in production rich and makes producers, especially small producers, bankrupt. Therefore, people in China often confuse "commodity economy" with "commercial economy" and confuse commodity producers with "profiteers". As a result, the traditional China people hindered the development of commodity economy at the same time. By the same token, while traditional China people are engaged in commodity economy, it is also easy to slide into commercial economy.

What really opened the eyes of China people was the western colonial imperialism with fire and sword. They used cannons to open the door to the East of China, which brought great evil to the people of China. At the same time, they also imported the mode of commodity production into China. This makes the mode of commodity production covered with a layer of bloody clothes. This horrible packaging gives traditional China people a further illusion that the commodity economy is colonialism and imperialism. This misunderstanding makes it difficult for China people oppressed by western powers to accept the choice of transition from national economy to commodity economy and then to market economy. On the contrary, many appalling crimes committed by westerners in the East have made China people love the resource allocation principle of "loss is greater than supply" in their national culture, and understand the socialist thought that was later introduced to China according to this principle. This cognitive deviation was not fundamentally corrected until the 14th National Congress of 1992.

The failure of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Westernization Movement made China's national ideological emancipation movement enter the second stage since Ming and Qing Dynasties. The fiasco in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 gave China scholars the experience of losing their power and humiliating their country again after the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty, and they were forced to reflect again. China scholars have painfully realized that rejecting foreign ideas and locking up the country cannot save themselves. Since then, the Chinese nation's ideological emancipation process has begun to face the world, hoping to seek new forces for China's liberation from the West. This process was divided into two routes from the beginning: one was to learn from the western material means to strengthen the feudal regime; The second is to learn western material and cultural means and change the feudal society. The former is represented by the modern reformists headed by Emperor Guangxu, while the latter is represented by the modern democrats represented by Sun Yat-sen. The struggle between the two sides was finally defeated by Yuan Shikai's restoration. Fortunately, Yuan Shikai's feudal restoration was only a flash in the pan for 83 days. Since then, the Chinese nation has made another leap in the process of ideological emancipation, which is characterized by the combination of western progressive ideas and China's reality. This combination marks the maturity of the ideological emancipation movement of the Chinese nation.

After the failure of Yuan Shikai's restoration, two forces representing the future appeared in China: the feudal forces of warlords and the democratic forces of China. The two sides waged a life-and-death struggle for different political ideas. This struggle has undergone a qualitative change in 19 19: after the October Revolution in the Soviet Union, socialist ideas landed in China. Following this historical trend, Sun Yat-sen promoted the New Three People's Principles, which greatly aroused the people's enthusiasm for democracy and nationalism in China. The people sided with the Democrats, who won the Northern Expedition.

However, unlike the early capitalist democrats in the west, the China democrats at that time belonged to different ideological systems: one was the ideological system combining the democratic thoughts of western capitalism with the reality of bureaucratic capital in China, and the other was the ideological system combining the socialist thoughts of the west with the revolutionary demands of poor farmers and workers in China. Their political representatives are the Kuomintang headed by Chiang Kai-shek and the * * * production party headed by Mao Zedong. After the end of the Northern Valve, China began to see the process of foreign ideas taking root and sprouting in China in the struggle between the two forces. On the one hand, Chiang Kai-shek realized the old Three People's Principles abandoned by Sun Yat-sen in the way used by orientals. Mao Zedong also realized the socialism advocated by Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu in the May 4th Movement in the way that China people are used to. As a result, western socialist ideology won in China. In the meantime, after the failure of the 1927 revolution, the * * * production party was forced to make a 25,000-mile long March from 1934 to 1935, and further emancipated its mind through painful experiences, and finally explored a socialist revolutionary thought with China characteristics, namely Mao Zedong Thought. 1949 China * * * production party led the whole country to defeat the Kuomintang.

After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the people of China began to experience the greatest stage in the process of ideological emancipation of the Chinese nation. At this stage, the people of China passed the "What is socialism? How to build socialism? " Understanding and exploring, the socialist ideological system has changed from theory and movement to an open and dynamic political and economic system.

At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was difficult for the vast number of individual farmers in China to understand the scientific core of socialism with the rational thinking used by westerners, and it was also difficult to understand the theory that "socialism" was essentially to ensure the socialization of human society, especially in the field of means of production. Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism theory, designed a social model of "free man association" to accommodate the social ownership that will appear in the future. However, all this has been deformed in the huge magnetic field of China's traditional culture. We abolished private ownership, but kept state-owned ownership for a long time, and regarded state-owned ownership as the highest form of public ownership, which cannot be changed. We understand "big industry" characterized by expanded reproduction as an ideal form of "socialized" economy. In China's traditional mindset, the socialist idea of eliminating exploitation is misinterpreted as the vision of small farmers "making up for the shortage and hurting more". In short, it is difficult for most people in China to associate socialism with commodity economy and its advanced form, that is, market economy. On the contrary, many people think that market economy is an economic form incompatible with socialism. This cognitive bias was pushed to the extreme during the Cultural Revolution. At that time, the so-called "Liu Deng route" was actually the road of enriching the country pursued by those who advocated the socialist commodity economy in China's production party today. During the "Cultural Revolution", due to the interweaving of traditional prejudice and "Left" prejudice, quite a few people fell into a misunderstanding of socialism. While criticizing the commodity economy, they made the whole national economy return to the absolute egalitarian social system of "making up more and making up less". During the Cultural Revolution, the thought of "abandoning saints and wisdom" in Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts evolved into persecution of intellectuals and a large-scale reform movement; The Confucian concept of loyalty to the monarch became an activity of expressing loyalty to hundreds of millions of people throughout the country during the Cultural Revolution. At that time, as the "tail of capitalism", all the economic activities in the circulation field were cut off, consumer goods were evenly distributed, and all the rest were given to the state, so that China's economy almost came to the brink of collapse, and China once again pulled away from the world.

1978, Deng Xiaoping summed up the positive and negative historical experience of China's socialist exploration, held high the banner of ideological emancipation at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party, broke through the ideological framework of "two whatevers", insisted that "practice is the only criterion for testing truth", and reminded people of the question of "what is socialism and how to build it" with fearless political courage. After 20 years of success, 20 were finally formed.