The Confucian Association And The National Religion Movement In The Early Chinese Republic

The National Religion Movement (as the NRM) which happened in the early Chinese Republic has profound and lasting impact on the field of contemporary ideology. The NRM which accepted the latent flow of Confucian-Renaissance is a movement that aimed at safeguarding and protecting the traditional culture and preventing the invasion of Western Culture. The NRM happened at the very social transformation period in which the advocators, in order to find the suitable path to the cultural development of China in this dramatic unstable period, advocated such movement. The NRM stood on tradition and tried to realize the Confucian contemporary transformation, thus enriched the Confucian and, succeeded to the Song and Min Dynasty Confucian train of thought about "introducing the Buddhism into Confucianism " as well as led to the beginning of the third time Confucian-Renaissance. The NRM forcible advocacy to the tradition directly promoted the occuring of the New Cultural Movement. The two movements constructed a contradiction framework in which there are both cause-effect logic relationship and unity of opposites.In this dissertation, the author mainly studies the Confucian Association in early years of the Chinese Republic and the National Religion Movement advocated by the Confucian Association and analysis the figures of the Confucian Association in detail and, introduces the whole process of the NRM. Also, the author mainly probes the relationship between the figures of Confucian Association and Yuan Shih-k'ai to clarify the relationship between Yuan Shih-k'ai and the NRM as well asthe relationship among the NRM, the New Cultural Movement and the third time Confucian-Renaissance. By doing so, the author tries to reconstruct the history of the Confucian Association in the early Chinese Republic and the NRM.