| The Democratic Revolution lead by Sun Yat-sen was meant to construct a new modern country in traditional China. Sun put his lifetime efforts on exploring the theory of the structure of this modern country. How to awake the people and lead them? In the process of growth and revolutionary practice, he realized the importance of moral education, and raised a series of theories and arguments about moral education. As part of his revolution blueprint, his thoughts on moral education are subordinated to and serve the need of revolution. He tried to take patriotism as the axis and establish a moral utopia with joint efforts of citizens and civil servants. Sun Yat-sen was the builder and torchbearer of this ideal country. This paper tries to use moral education thoughts as bound between Sun Yat-sen and enlightenment, outlines his image as a torchbearer, and then explores the structure of his initiative narrative and the obstacles that it deals with.Chapter one outlines the background of the times and the process of his struggle from edge to center. In Sun’s times when the world was in great change, China was inevitably involved in this change and the traditional political, economic and cultural systems were faced with challenges. In terms of moral education, it cannot be immune to the change since it was attached to the old Confucianism system and served politics, economy and culture. The alteration and revolution of moral education in late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China was launched under this giant background, which has a bright times feature. On the other hand, Sun’s unique growth experience had added distinctive personal label, and his geographic, cultural and educational experiences and his social status decided and confined the details of his moral education thoughts. Although he was born in a marginal group, he was determined to plead for the people and change the poor and weak situation of his country. There was strong cares for morality in his feelings for politics and endeavors on administration. Moral education was part of Sun Yat-sen’s revolution blueprint. He was looking forward to a new world of enlightenment, and began to construct a moral utopia in the vision of a new world country.Chapter two explores the system and construct of Sun Yat-sen’s Moral Utopia, and his role. The political idea that "Great Community" was favored by Sun Yat-sen, whose origin can be traced back to the idea of "Great Unity". As a meta-narrative, "Great Unity" has formulated the narrative pattern of Chinese people during the age of change constantly. Based on their self needs, people blended times factor to explain "Great Unity"; therefore, many new small narratives appeared. Small narratives are the autonomous succession of the goal and theme of meta-narration, however, due to limitation of narrative environment, ability and method and other factors, their narrative process is likely to deviate and cause counteraction to meta-narrative. Similar to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan and "Great Unity" by Kang Youwei, Sun had his own version. He used moral appeal as keynote, served the revolution blueprint and constructed a moral utopia. There are two main classes in this utopia, citizen and civil servant. They are morally unconventional, selfless, regard patriotism as national virtue, cooperate with each other, and make concerted efforts to the prosperity of their country. Sun Yat-sen was the builder and also the torchbearer of his moral utopia. His goal was to make patriotism a worshiped moral creed by everyone within the entire society, the object including citizen and civil servant, and moral education was its main strategy. As for Sun Yat-sen’s narrative which served his revolutionary blueprint, it was not only a consciousness of the meta-narrative of "Great Unity", but also a reactionary. The deviation from reality to ideal indicated that there must be many difficulties in reality for moral utopia.Chapter three aims to explore the process of choosing and reconstructing patriotism as national virtue. As an important pivot point of utopia, the meaning of national virtue not only lied in being advocated by the country and encouraging all the people to follow it as some spirit or slogan, but also more in its effect on defending the national order. The national virtue decided by Sun Yat-sen for his moral utopia was patriotism. He sought historical legitimacy of national virtue from "benevolent government", and hoped it would sustain the virtue system of utopia. In order to change the chaotic situation in which patriotism, loyalty to the throne and dynasty idea were mixed; Sun Yat-sen had a modern construction of traditional patriotism. Taking national view as a foundation, he developed the idea of "home-country" into "nation"; taking the view of the world as the pillar, he developed the idea of "land under heaven" into "world"; taking citizen concept as the core, he developed "subject" into "citizen". Sun hoped that under the appeal of patriotism, patriotic citizens and race would be cultivated, and the goal of revitalizing China would be achieved in the end. As an important issue of national virtue scheme, Sun combined the need of revolution and development and reconstructed "loyalty". He proposed that a distinction should be made between good and bad "loyalty" virtue; got rid of "loyalty to the throne" and stripped the feudal autocratic component of loyalty; succeeded the original meaning of doing one’s best and emphasized the loyalty to the country, to the people and to the work. On this basis, Sun had sublimated the modern meaning of loyalty and realized the modern alteration from traditional loyalty to the throne to patriotism.Chapter four analyses the image of two main classes which include the national and civil servant. In this moral Utopia constructed by Sun Yat-sen, the government should take the responsibility of "protecting people", "educating people" and "cultivating people", especially the duty of "education and cultivation" for people. The targets of Sun’s moral education were citizens and civil servants. For citizens, Sun hoped to model new citizens through modern transformation on context and property of traditional moral education, the transformation on context used patriotism as the axis, emphasizing social morality construction; the transformation on property was focused on enlightenment and democratic reform. For civil servants, Sun endowed them with insightful and supportive ideal roles. After Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, after assuming the office of interim President, Sun had lifted the banner of civil servants, and his ideal of civil servants won a chance to be realized.Chapter five dissects moral utopia’s realistic frustration from the side of political chaos of the republic, and teases out its political logic and essence. Sun Yat-sen had spared his lifetime efforts on moral utopia, but still he could not have escaped this destiny of dilemma. The cause of this difficult situation was theoretical shortcomings even flaws in characters of himself as an advocator and designer, or the intrinsic defects existed in theoretical design, or the apathy of citizens and civil servants towards this propose and design, more of the limits and helplessness given time condition. Since its establishment, the Republic had sunk into a vicious circle of conflict and variation, the logic of republicanism, warlord and party state took their turns on stage. The moral utopia constructed by Sun had disappeared; on the contrary, a new form of autocracy-party state emerged. In Sun’s design, the moral utopia should be a world of Great Community which belonged to everyone. However, Chinese society experienced a rapid change during the Republic period:political reform and revolution aroused constantly and political thoughts from the east and the west collided, mixed and were put into practice. Finally, the moral utopia of Sun Yat-sen walked to the paradox of totalitarianism.Chapter six seeks deep level reason of enlightenment dilemma from levels of Sun Yat-sen’s narrative motivation, process and target. As a torchbearer, Sun once had infinite hopes for his moral utopia, but the obstacles in reality reflected various dilemmas of his moral education thoughts and opinions. The nature of his moral education was a utilitarian choice of revolutionary instrumentalism. Because of the instrumental position of moral education in Sun’s revolutionary blueprint, moral education was just a supplement when revolution motive was not sufficient. Under the influence of utilitarianism, Sun desired to accomplish the task at one stroke, he ignored the digestive ability of the people. The effectiveness of emphasis on patriotism was at discount because of utilitarianism. Sun’s original expectation was that under the national virtue of patriotism, odious bureaucrat-civilian relationship under dynasty politics could be abandoned and citizen and civil servant would walk into the ideal realm hand in hand. Civil servants used their foresight to guide people, while the people bared no foresight. They both did their own duty according to their abilities. However, this "instructive political" educational method leaded by people with foresight was filled with elitism. Because of the distance between elite and the public, the idea that responsibilities of people and civil servants should be divided could not be carried out. At the same time, under the effect of patriotic feelings, in the process of remodeling national morality, the target of remodeling had deviated secretly from the national personality liberation to national independence and liberation. The deviation of the target had caused the dilemma of remodeling. Based on the single dimension of patriotism, the keynote of national personality liberation was squeezed by the country. Finally, the proposition of moral utopia declared its failure.The conclusion part tries to seek some inspiration from the construct and dilemma of Sun Yat-sen’s moral utopia. With the development of history up to today, some goals which were pursued by Sun Yat-sen have already come true, while some need effort as before. As for moral education, it is still a theme for our people who stride forwards modern society. In this sense, we are still at a same time with Sun Yat-sen. As for the relationship between tradition and modern of moral education, Sun Yat-sen’s modern transformation of "loyalty" and other traditional morality is valuable. He had jumped out of the Chinese-substance and western-use pattern, and inherited the outstanding factors on the base of suitable look of traditional moral values. As for the ideality and reality of moral education, it is necessary to maintain balance between the sense of distance and reality, to avoid moral cleanliness. Meanwhile, we have to hold a clear understanding of moral education as for its instrumental and value meaning. |
