Research On Hu Shih's Ideas On Freedom Of Speech

Hu Shih's thoughts on the liberty of speech are constituted systematically and provide enlightenments to both academic researches and practice. However, due to the veil of political ideology and the lack of comprehensive research, the precious historic treasures of his thoughts are being misunderstood or even neglected today. Therefore, revolving around the topic and based on reading the immense materials, this dissertation reaches out to detailed historical records, combs across the information to build the thinking skeleton and abstracts key points of ideas in order to analyze and demonstrate Hu Shih's thoughts on the liberty of speech in a manner that features objectiveness, comprehensiveness and profoundness. The dissertation aims to complete the historical memories, construct blank-filling researches on the virgin land of the topic, and as a reference of ideas, promote China's contemporary political civilization.This dissertation consists of the prolegomenon and the main paper. The prolegomenon explains the research motives, reviews the related researches and introduces the methodology of this paper. The main paper consists of five chapters which are further categorized as four parts.The first chapter reviews one by one the important newspapers and periodicals that Hu Shih compiled or participated—Jingye Xunbao, New Youth, The Endeavor, The Crescent, Independent Review and Free China. Judged generally by his practice of free press, Hu Shih was basically a political-engaged intellectual who pursued"supervision over political parties".The second and third chapters are the pillar stones of the research, providing a panorama of Hu Shih's thoughts on liberty of speech. The two chapters analyze Hu Shih's basic ideas respectively on the two subjects: why speech should be free and how speech can be free. The first subject refers to the values of free speech, and is completed in three levels, namely, personal character development, human rights protection and constitutional democracy. The second subject focuses on the practical approaches of free speech and is further supported by three ideas:"earning"the freedom,"responsible"freedom and"tolerant"freedom. The two chapters demonstrate that Hu Shih's thoughts are both comprehensive and insightful; further, he praticed what he believed, which built a reputation of"unity of practice and thoughts"which itself has become part of the spiritual resource.The fourth chapter probes into the formation of Hu Shih's thoughts of free speech and explains how Hu Shih generated and developed his thoughts. The chapter analyzes the reasons in three aspects: family factor, education effects and the influence of friends. The chapter also refers to the gradual and subtle influence of the regional culture. If we are to analyze and understand his practice and basic theories, we should consider fully the above mentioned factors rather than focusing on only one.The fifth chapter starts from the perspective of political culture and based on comparative analysis to position Hu Shih's free speech thoughts in the historical coordinate. Horizontally speaking, Hu Shih is at the hinge among his contemporaries; historically speaking, Hu Shih was not the first advocator as Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, nor demonstrated keen insights on some individual questions as Chu Anping and Yin Haiguang. However, as for the systematic organizing and the rationality of the thinking, Hu Shih obviously towers above them. Therefore, Hu Shih has been a peak in Chinese history of free speech.The dissertation quotes immensely the first-hand information and consulted a wide range of second-hand materials; it emphasizes"seeking points from historical facts", namely, the narration of every event and the reference to every idea are based on the solid evidence in the history.