May 4th Movement Dewey Give Lectures In China And Chinese Intellectual Reaction

John Dewey, the leading representative of Pragmatism, is one of the greatest thinkers in the 20^th century. He is also a famous educator and social actionist. Dewey traveled around China and gave lectures for about two years long from 1919 to 1921. He had delivered lectures for about 200 times, not only including formal academic lectures, but also including short public speeches. The audience could often amount to thousands of people. Dewey's lectures had been translated into Chinese and published in several influential daily newspapers and periodicals of the time, which were very popular with the intellectuals and the public. Some lectures had been collected and published, exerting a profound influence on Chinese society for a long time.About his lectures in China, Dewey has not left any manuscripts or notes, not even the summaries. What has been conserved is the Chinese translation of his lectures. Only a few of them had been collected and published, however, most of them sporadically appeared in the The Morning Post, New Current Affairs, National Daily, etc. This brings many difficulties for scholars, especially foreign scholars, which lead to the scholars' neglect of Dewey's impact on China. I know a book, named John Dewey: Lectures in China, 1919-1920, has been extensively cited by those interested in John Dewey and his influence in China. It contains thirty-three lectures translated back from Chinese into English.John Dewey's visit to China is one of the most important events that occurred during the May Fourth period and therefore has stimulated a good deal of studies both within and without China. These previous works have touched on John Dewey's visit and its impact on Chinese education and other aspects of Chinese society in the May Fourth period. But they mostly examine Dewey's influence in China through his students and fail to present a convincing account of how wide his influence was in China at large. Hence, not much effort has been made to trace the response among the Chinese intellectuals during and after Dewey's visit to China. I think as such the encounter of John Dewey with the Chinese intellectuals should be studied with reference not only to the social and political context of the period, but also to what ideas were actually being communicated between the two sides. For the Chinese intellectuals John Dewey was the best teacher they could find to preach Western democracy and science, and for Dewey China was the ideallaboratory to apply his ideas into practice.Dewey's popularity among the May Fourth intellectuals is based, at least partly, on their discovery of something valuable in his philosophy. With the failure of technological introduction and institutional changes, the renovation of Chinese culture seemed to be the only approach left in the minds of the intellectuals for the grave task of national salvation. They attacked the Chinese tradition of thought on the one hand and introduced ideas from abroad on the other in order to establish a new culture on Chinese soil. Dewey's lecture tour was part of the attempt.Meanwhile John Dewey had his own intent for the lectures he delivered in China, that was, he accepted the suggestion by Hu Shi to take advantage of the lecture tour to formulate a political philosophy from his pragmatist's viewpoint. Dewey's China lectures constituted an important stage in the development of his pragmatism.Some scholar points out that Dewey's views presented in the Chinese translations based on his oral speeches sometimes do not seem to completely accord with those in his own English writings. I think, in some cases, the translations must be incorrect, with some qualifications in the original being possibly left out. Therefore, while their essentials are true, the translations should not be taken too literally as representing Dewey's own views. But here I would rather base my account on the Chinese translations because it was these that were widely read by the Chinese public of the time.The subject of my dissertation is to detail John Dewey's China experience, trace the response of Chinese intellectuals during the May Fourth Period and evaluate the results of his visit in China. My dissertation will be divided into five parts. Part 1 will detail John Dewey's China experience. Part 2 and 3 will trace the influence of his ideas in China, including what Dewey said and how the Chinese intellectuals responded. Part 4 will describe the image of China in Dewey's eyes through his personal correspondence and the articles he wrote for American journals. Part 5 will evaluate the results of Dewey's visit in China.