On The Philosophy Of History Of Feng Youlan's New Neo-Confucianism

Feng Youlan is a famous philosopher in modern China and also an important figure of the modern Neo-Confucian. Since he officially went on the road of philosophical research in the 1920s, Feng Youlan wrote a large number of philosophical works and created his own system of philosophy as a scholar,so he was a philosopher who made full use of Chinese traditional thinking resources and the Western academic thoughts and showed a strong originality in the history of modern philosophy. As a scholar who threw himself into work actively, Feng Youlan made a deep influence on modern Chinese philosophy. Many of his philosophical works had become important mental resources in the history of modern philosophy. His philosophical thinking not only absorbed a Western modern philosophical concepts and methods with an open mind but also reaffirmed the universal value of traditional Chinese philosophy with an independent attitude.Feng Youlan illustrated the traditional Chinese philosophy, especially the Confucian thoughts comprehensively, deep and naturally and made a significant contribution in the process of the traditional Chinese philosophy switching into modern philosophy. Feng Youlan's philosophy is represented as a kind of pure abstract philosophical speculation, but all his philosophical thoughts have practical standpoint and realistic human care. The most obvious manifestation of the reality of his philosophy is the exploration of the issues of history at all times which makes up his systematic thought of history. Feng Youlan's philosophy of history is a field which is important but must be studied in-depth. Although Feng did not consciously constructed his own system of the philosophy of history, we can see he still made quite impressive and deep thinking in many fundamental issues of the philosophy of history after reviewing his study of the relative issuses of it or the history of philosophy in his system and all his philosophy of history objectively showed a comparatively complete theoretical system. In the new Neo-Confucianism system, Feng Youlan discussed the following key issues of the philosophy of history:the nature of history; the development of history and its form; the power and creation of history; the elements, structures and their relationship of history; persons in the history; understanding of history; value of history,etc. His philosophy of history had its own independence and developed on the basis of the new Neo-Confucianism system and had a deep review of social history.It was also the new development of Chinese traditional philosophy of history in the background in which the Chinese and Western thoughts exchanged in-depth. His philosophy of history was influenced not only by Chinese traditional thoughts, especially the Confucianism in Song and Ming dynasty,but also by modern Western philosophy, particularly the new realism and historical materialism, etc. In the contemporary time,the culture exchange between China and the West is increasingly frequent and the Chinese community must face many outstanding problems in its development, Feng Youlan's philosophy of history expressed a strong sense of temporality and nationality, which is important for us when we review the history, understand of the era and the world. Since the beginning of the new century, in the face of the profound transformation in the world, Chinese philosophy researchers should take their historical missions, focus on the major issues in the process of the reform and opening up and the building of modernization, overview and summarize the new practices, absorb the results of the human civilization boldly and advance the modern conversion of Chinese traditional philosophy. Feng Youlan's philosophy of history not only paid attention to China's history, age and the development of system and other issues but also thought of the real development and its future of Chinese culture.It had strong implications to our clear and accurate positioning of the development of the country and the society in a new era and can also inspire us when we absorb the achievements of Western civilization to promote our own development and master the language power in the process of exchanging between China and the Western countries profoundly.The modern academia study of Feng Youlan's philosophy of history has made some achievements, but it is not sufficient. The existing research involves the relationship between Feng Youlan's philosophy and his philosophy of history and many other aspects of his philosophy of history.They are important as a source of inspiration to our understanding of Feng Youlan's philosophy of history, but overall not objective and rational enough. Therefore, this article will absorb the ever-related research to make a new review of Feng Youlan's philosophy of history.At the same time,this article will make a systematic and deep study and evaluate it objectively in order to promote the academia to understand Feng Youlan's philosophy of history comprehensively and provide a better angle when we fully review the Chinese modern society,its ideology and culture.On the nature and its characteristics of history, Feng Youlan made an important discussion. He divided history into "objective history" and "subjective history".He not only stressed the objectivity of past history but also pointed out although the "subjective history " was impossible to be in conformity with the "objective historical" completely as a result of the historical understanding, but it had important implications. More importantly, he realized that although history had passed by and couldn't be changed, it was "not powerless", the reality was a continuation of the history, the history had its own continuity and consistency and history would have an important effect on reality. On the relationship between history and tradition, he made tradition a positive significance.He believed that the tradition was a kind of creation of a new spirit in the history and it was involved in the construction of the history and in which the national spirit lay. In a sense, the tradition which was the subjective creation of mental spirit and the history which was made up of by the objective things constituted the history of a nation,this kind of view of tradition was a new understanding of the nature of history. Feng Youlan's thoughts on the nature and characteristics of history was built on the stance of the Neo-Confucianism.He sought to unify history and philosophy and believed the history was a organism which was penetrated by "Li" and it developed from the ancient to the present age. Feng Youlan's review on the nature and characteristics of history is a critique to various historical and cultural nihilism that fully negates traditional Chinese history and culture. Feng Youlan insisted the continuity and consistency of history and carried forward the vitality of Chinese history and culture, this kind of stance showed his efforts to maintain and develop the Confucian culture.It is a stance of the modern Neo-Confucianism and reflects a distinctive characteristic that his philosophy of history combines the post-gold and practical care together.Feng Youlan's concept of the development of history synthesized Chinese traditional philosophy of changing and the progressive view of history, aborbed modern concepts of the historical development, especially some of the factors of historical materialism, and used the basic structure of his new Neo-Confucianism. In his view, Wu Ji and Tai Ji was the opposite poles. Wu Ji was a chaotic state and Tai Ji was extremely clear.From Wu Ji to Tai Ji was from a extremely chaotic state to a extremely clear state, it was also a step forward in the process.The field between the above two state was the so-called real world, which was in the development of the two poles, was obviously progressive. Therefore, the social and historical development was also progressive. Feng Youlan was profoundly influenced by the historical materialism in discussing the progress of history concretly, which was highlighted by the fundamental ideas that used the transformation of the production methods to explain social progress. However, from his stance in which he regarded dialectic as a connection of loop and progress, we can see there are significant differences between Feng's thought and the materialist conception of history. Feng Youlan's concept of historical development is not just a theoretical explanation and logical construction, its purpose is also to implement China's idea of "old bang,new life" and the national reconstruction plan in order to explain how China makes progress from traditional society to modern society, specifying the road of revitalization. The strong practical color of Feng's "new Neo-Confucianism" and patriotic feelings are expressed brilliantly.In historical dynamics, Feng Youlan developed from the desire-power theory of the 1920s to the new-Neo-Confucianism power theory. In the period of desire-power theory, he believed the historical power was the will of the people to survive and pursue happiness. In the 1930s and 1940s, due to the influence of historical materialism, he brought economic factors into his consideration,pointing out that the progress of instruments of production was the power of historical progress; the society developed from family-oriented mode to society-oriented mode because of the progress of the instruments of production. The theory of the new Neo-Confucianism was the correction and deepening of early desire-power theory. This correction and deepening was not only influenced by the development of his philosophy, but also influenced by the times.On the structure of history, Feng Youlan's basic idea was that history,as a system, contains economy, moral art,literary and many other parts.In the above parts, economy was the base of the so-called historical change and development, the development of history mainly refered to the development of producing methods and economic system, and so on, which influenced the development of politics, moral and cultural development of a society. If you experienced some kind of economic system, you would experience the same kind of social and culture system,such as the "family-oriented" culture and the" society-oriented"cultural. In the history of human society, apart from class culture, as an important part of culture, art and literature had their own characteristics,China should not imitate other ethnic groups completely. Every kind of human society needed the moral, therefore, morality, especially its basic and core, could and should maintain its independence and stability. If basic moral didn't maintain independence and stability, the society couldn't become into a society, let alone a certain kind of society. For a race, culture was a sign of its national identity, the culture of various ethnic groups has its own core section.If the core section couldn't maintain independence, the nation couldn't be regarded as a nation. Feng Youlan's manifestations of historical structure reflected his valuable conscience and thought for his motherland when he regarded himself as a philosopher. However, Feng's opinions about the historical structure are somewhat biased, which is performed in stressing the moral factors in history too much, and paying attention to politics its historical changes not enough, and so on.Feng Youlan's theory of historical figures was based on the new Neo-Confucianism. He believed people were the soul of history, the history could only be people's history. The reason that people were the soul of history was that people had awareness, that was, people understood the nature of his activities, thus consciously participated in the construction, development and progress of history. However, people in the history had four different states of morals because of their different abilities of uderstanding:the natural state, the utilitarian state, the moral state and the universe state.The society and people's life changed when people's states developed from a low elevation to a high elevation and at the same time the history develops forward. Although different people might have different state, the universe state was the highest target for people to reach. Feng Youlan believed the development of history was the development of human, the progress of history was the progress of people's moral level. Feng Youlan,adhering to the basic spirit of Neo-Confucianism,insisted on the moral freedom and equality that were the heritage of Chinese traditional philosophy.The flavor of Feng Youlan's philosophy of history was to a large extent humanitarian. However, his thoughts on historical figures paid less attention to political freedom and democracy,which were partly behind the times. If Feng Youlan could absorb the nutrition of Chinese traditional philosophy and modern Western philosophy comprehensively and make exploration on political freedom and democracy with Chinese characteristics, his theoretical contribution would be bigger than he had done. To his subjective point of view, Feng Youlan was intended to highlight the decisive significance of morals in people's creation of history, which embodied a tendency of moral idealism of the Confucian. Taking into account the objective effect of his consideration, however, Feng Youlan's idea displayed an intention of scientism. His theory about historical figures showes that there are a conflict between scientism and humanism.On the subject and object of historical understanding, in 1920s, Feng Youlan regarded the historian as the understanding of the historyand historical events as the object and did'nt have a clear understanding the relationship between the subject and the object. In the period of the construction of the new Neo-Confucianism, he proposed the people with the ability of understanding were the subject of the understanding of history and the best subjects of historical understanding were the people who were in universe state and the ability to reflect was the key for people to become the subject of the understanding of history. Accordingly, in this period, the objects of historical understanding were a series of historical events in the sense of material form,they were not an series of events which were unrelated to each other.They were the events which had their own life and were connected together with "Li". The very historical events were the object of historical understanding.Only this kind of object could be understood by the subject of historical understanding. There are clear historical epistemology in Feng Youlan's new Neo-Confucianism. In his view, the subjects who have the ability of reflection can understand the history through understanding the vital "Li" of the object of historical understanding, which is essential to understand the basic morals in history.Feng Youlan's new Neo-Confucianism reflected the harmonious thinking characteristics which existed in Chinese traditional philosophy.It is a combination of the Neo-realism in the Western philosophy and the thought of Li being displayed in everything in Song and Ming dynasty and at the same time turned Chinese traditional Confucian into modern Confucian. In the first half of the twentieth century,Western thoughts and Chinese traditional culture are in violent collision with each other, Feng Youlan made deep, contemporary and rational thinking of social history, mainly the social history of China. His thoughts were built on the basis of Chinese traditional thinking resources and were also done on the modern Western achievements of philosophy and showed a characteristic of connecting Chinese and Western philosophy together. However, essentially speaking, the core content and themes of Feng Youlan's philosophy of history exhibited an obvious Chinese characteristic and the modern Western philosophy's influence was displayed in the ways and means of thinking. Feng Youlan's philosophy of history is a kind of thinking and answering of relative issues of philosophy in the field of new Neo-Confucianism. Feng Youlan's new Neo-Confucianism absorbed the nutrition of Neo-Confucianism,but he was not satisfied with Neo-Confucianism's lacking of the necessary "vacancy " of philosophy.So he used the logic analysis method from the stance of the new realis to modify the "Li" of Neo-Confucianism in order to make it have the characteristic of "vacancy". These characteristics of thinking and academic aspirations had a significant impact on the philosophy of history of new science of the new Neo-Confucianism. On the other hand, Feng Youlan tried to explain why the West became strong and China became weak. Therefore,he introduced some thoughts of the materialist conception into his thinking of the philosophy of the history in the new Neo-Confucianism. We can see that the new Neo-Confucianism made progress in Feng Youlan's time comparing to the traditional philosophy of history and it also made great contribution to solving real problems of the contemporary China. However, precisely because he was conducting an innovative exploration and at the same time he didn't made reasonable consolidation of relative thinking resources, his philosophy of history showed a degree of contradiction and limitations. In the sense of developing contemporary Chinese philosophy, Feng Youlan's contribution provided a wealth of resources full of evocationand its limitations gave a warning to the successors who take up relevant research. Feng Youlan's contributions and limitations gave a positive value to the construction and development of contemporary Chinese philosophy of history.