The Research Into Du Yaquan's Publishing Practices And Philosophy

History is the combination of many fators,the join forces interwoven by many persons and events.History is always closely related to reality.Therefore,the research into the representative persons in the history reflects some historical phenomenon,thus provding significant example for today.Since the late Qing Dynasity,with the invasion of imperialism into China,the ruling of feudal dynasty lasting thousands of years was toppling.Social and national conflicts were unprecedentedly intense.With the abolition of imperial examination,traditional society with officials,farmers,workers,and merchants as the social subjects broke up and Chinese society experienced profound changes.Yan Fu regarded the abolition of imperial examination as "the most important change in thousands of years of history of China".He believed that the importance of abolition of imperial examination was equal to the meaning of "standard character" and "standard carriage wheel distance" in the Qing and Han Dynasity and abolition of feudalism.After the abolition of imperialism examination,the road to the political authority through imperial examination for the traditional officials was blocked and they were forced to find their new social positions,gradually transforming towards modern intellectuals.Du Yaquan was the representative among those traditional officials.Du Yaquan(1873—1933),was an important person in modern publishing and cultural history of China,Since 1900,he went to Shanghai and founded Journal of Ya Quan.In 1904 answering theinvitation of Zhang Yuanji and Xia Ruifang he acted as the dean of physicochemical department of Commercial Press.In December of 1933,he died of illness.He devoted all his life to publishing culture.Du Yaquan contributed greatly to publishing culture of modern China.During his stay in Commercial Press,he not only complied hundreds of books on natural science,becoming the publishing pioneer of modern science,but also hosted The Eastern Miscellany for nearly ten years.He reformed The Eastern Miscellany boldly to make it become one of the most influential periodicals in modern China.These two achievements be attained laid the foundation for his position in modern Publishing history of China.Du Yaquan received traditional Confucian education when he was young.When he was 16 years old,he passed the imperial examination at the county level.Obviously,Confucian ideology and culture would affect Du Yaquan greatly.However,seen from his long publishing career,he acted as an introducer of modern western natural science,which seemed no relationship with his traditional confucian education background.But from the diachronic research into his whole education,social activity and publishing career,it could be found that there were some complex relations between his confucian education and publishing career.Du Yaquan was comparatively conservative in his ideology and culture.He advocated reconciling theory and gradualism at that time.In contrast,he was rather radical in publishing activity,introducing western natural science actively.It seemed contradictory.But all these contradictory thoughts could be attributed to personality of confucian culture,that is in essence,he was attaching importance to the exploration of inherent national spirit,but in practice he stressed modem western science knowledge.Counfucian ideal personality including"self cultivation,family harmony,country management and world peace" and humanistic pragmatism could explain the contradictions between his publishing activity and ideology.The aim of the thesis is to analyze Du Yaquan's publishing philosophy through his deep-rooted confucian culture ideology.The main points of the thesis are as follows:(1)Since Du Yaquan received traditional confucian education why he changed his idea to advocate science especially natural science in his publishing activity?Did the change imply that he abadoned the traditional learning or treated western learning as an instrument of humanistic pragmatism?(2)What was the source of Du Yaquan's reconciling thoughts and its influence on his publishing philosophy?Or whether or not his publishing activity was inherently related to his reconciling thoughts?(3)The debates between Du Yaquan and Chen Duxiu affected The Eastern Miscellany greatly.Du Yaquan headed the opposite tide towards the main thoughts.Was it related to his adhering to confucian personality ideology?How do we evaluate his activity?Does it have any enlightenment on today's publishing activity?The first chapter in this thesis mainly studies Du Yaquan's educational experience and his transformation of the roles he played.Du Yaquan received traditional confucian education,then pursued pragmatic learning,even self-educated western natural knowledge.His educaitional experience had deep effect on the development of his publishing activity and the formation of his publishing philosophy.It was just because of the abolition of imperial examination that Du Yaquan put aside official honors,entered public communication area and finished his transformation from traditional officials to modem intellectuals.The second chapter aims to investigate on Du Yaquan's early publishing activity,starting from his staying in Shanghai and foundation of Journal of Ya Quan to his entering The Commercial Press,during which his early publishing activity went on.His early publishing activity focused on the foundation of journals.He successively founded Journal of Ya Quan,General Journal and China and Western Calculating Paper,etc.Journal of Ya Quan represented the beginning of self-managing of Chinese science periodicals,which was significant in publishing history of science and technology of China General Journal was the development of Journal of Ya Quan.Du Yaquan's early foundation of periodicals ended in failure but accumulated valuable experience for his later publishing practice and also created conditions for his entering of The Commercial Press.During this period Du Yaquan wrote an influential textbook called The First Stage of Literature.The third chapter explores Du Yaquan's publishing activity in The Commercial Press,beginning from the time he acted as the dean of physicochemical department in the press.He compiled hundreds of books on natural science,most of which were textbooks.He also transtlated and introduced some foreign social science works.Except for the publishing of books,his another main contribution to the development of The Commercial Press was his bold reform of The Eastern Miscellany when he served as the editor in chief in The Eastern Miscellany,which laid solid foundation for the rapid development of The Eastern Miscellany.Besides,Du Yaquan also compiled several influential dictionaries of natural science.This period was the mature phase of DuYaquan's publishing philosophy.The fourth chapter in turn delves into Du Yaquan's publishing philosophy with his culture ideology.His publishing philosophy derived from his culture ideology and both were interwoven with each other.Du Yaquan's publishing philosophy was characteristic of traditional confucian traits.Specifically,his publishing philosophy displays three features:first,explicit feature of humanistic pragmatism;second,inherent feature of reconciling,third,the business principles of justiceoutweighing benefits.After the analysis of the relationship between Du Yaquan's publishing philosophy and culture ideology,the chapter evaluates Du Yaquan's publishing philosophy and presents its quality which can be of use for today.The h fifth chapter summarizes Du Yaquan's publishing activity and other social activities and discusses deeply Du Yaquan's cultural ideology.Du Yaquan's culture ideology was based on traditional confucian culture,mixing with some modern western culture,finally forming his unique cultural ideology featured with gentle graduality and moderate reconciling.The chapter also analyzes the debates of Du Yaquan and Chen Duxiu on eastern and western cultures and evaluate objectively Du Yaquan's cultural thoughts.Appendices are the simple combing of chronicle of Du Yaquan's life,works and main papers.In general,the thesis takes Du Yaquan's whole life as its investigation dimension,and concentrates on combing Du Yaquan's publishing practices and his publishing philosophy comprehensively and deeply,intending to find out the inherent relationship between Du Yaquan's publishing philosophy,culture ideology and confucian culture,and trying to evaluate Du Yaquan's culture ideology and publishing philosophy objectively and fairly,putting him in the position he deserves in modern publishing and cultural history of China,and providing essential refrence for today's publishing culture career.