On Zhang Taiyan's Thoughts Of Moral Principles

This essay is more than a discr~ption of zhang Taiyan 's(Chang T'ai -yen) thoughts of moral princ~ples. Jt is rather a commentaiy of Zhang Taiyan 's scholastic history of rebuilding modem Chinese ethics through the discussion of the transcend of society which is from feudalism to bourgeoisie.As an active revolutionary fronter and well-known conservative scholar, Zhang Taiyan paid lots of attention to the modernization of humanbeing, esp to views of moral principles. So his creativeness and conservativeness in the changing society's ethics privide us a characteristic way of penetrating the history of ethics, changing in modem societyThe essay is divided into four chapters.Chapter I di cusses what his main moral principles are .Zhang Taiyan maintained that the relationship between the political and ethics should go like this set up the moral principle of revolutonary;his attitude towards the nature of human being was that both good and evil were evoltionary. He advocated the freedom and eqality of the human being. It attempts to reveal the relationships among his ethic views.Chapter II recounts how zhang was influenced by the modern western natural sciences and soceial sciences. First, the author tried to compare Zhang's ethic thoughts with Kong Youwei 's, drawing the conclusion that, though Zhang's thoughts reflected pessimistic attitudes to-wards the human being's morality in the future, while in relutionary career he showed rational idea. Analysing it in a detail way ,we found that the dfference between them is that Zhang emphasized more in the history of ethic while Kang stressed the developmentment of the society Zhang's Buddhist classics brought his thoughts to a new level .And his views on national revolution, democracy and revolutionary strategies had affected his moral principles.Chapter III mainly descripted that there were many contraditions in Zhang's moral principles.For instance, he maintained that, the real revolutionist should have at least have the relutionazy moral principles ~f not the consertive and traditional ethics, At the beginning he prorgessed in his thoughts a lot but he set a log in front of the front wheel in his later life. In social life, he faced the reality, while in his dream he can find no way out. That not only reflects the contraditionsof Zhang's thoughts, but also reflects the conflicts of the modern society. Zhang's contraditions were shared by many scholars, such as Kan Youwei,Liang Oichao Yan Fu, Liu Shipei. Their common experience was that they advocted western bourgeoisie ~s' moral principles, but they turned to the feadal ethics in their later years. The reason stands in three ways: (1)the moral principles were judged by modern politics,(2)the cruelty of bourgeoisie was shown in its developvent; (3) half feudalism made a hotbed for them to go back the old ethics.In chapter IV the value and effects of zhang'Is moral principles are expounded. We can see the outline of modern morality by summarizing Zhang~ experien Ce. Zhang'~s thoughts can be helpful for us to know better the industry's effects on the change of morality . The hard choice of the traditional morality or the modem morality is a problem not only to Zhang Taiyan but to China as a whole with a long glorious histoty. This shows the spirit of the human being's struggle for new ethics.