| Modern Chinese intellectuals always hesitated between traditional Chinese culture and Western culture in the whole 20th century, making some difficult choices and identifications. This thesis discusses the Irving Babbitt's new humanism and his influence on the journal Critical Review and the intellectuals around it. Considering these intellectuals as a case study, the thesis sets out to explore a kind of specific performance of Chinese intellectuals in a special age when Chinese culture met Western culture. These men had actively participated the Chinese cultural building in 1920s and 1930s.Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) was an outstanding American thinker whose ideas of new humanism had deeply influenced some famous Chinese scholars. Most of them were his students in Harvard. Some of his students represented by Mei Guangdi and Wu Mi started a journal Critical Review to spread his thought and their own ideas after returning to China. The characteristic of this journal is that it employed classical Chinese to translate Western works and write critical essays aiming to oppose New Cultural Movement. However, the prosperous development of New Cultural Movement had become the dominating trend, therefore Critical Review was pushed to the margin of Chinese history as a opposite side to the progressive one. Similarly, Babbitt's challenge to the dominating trends of ethics, morality, aesthetics and philosophy in American society at that time also caused a lot of criticism to him. After 1980s, the opinions of Babbitt and Critical Review were reevaluated, and many of them have shown great foresights.Nowadays Critical Review has received more and more attention from the academic world in Mainland, China, but their relation to Irving Babbitt's newhumanism is still not fully discussed. This thesis explores the relationships between them, showing that Babbitt' s thought encountered a brand-new context in China and his Chinese followers had considerable cultural accomplishments. Critical Review's reception of Babbitt was based on a profound cultural background. The debate caused by his thought in the history of modern Chinese culture is as important as that about New Humanism in the United States. The thesis describes the encounter between Babbitt's humanism and traditional Chinese humanism, and particularly pays attention to the model of East-West cultural exchange they brought forward.The first part mainly concerns the theme of Babbitt's new humanism. Different from Sentimental humanitarianism and Scientific Humanitarianism represented by Rousseau and Bacon, Babbitt's humanism underscores self-discipline, moderation, selection and judgment. There exists a balance between sympathy and selection. Moral responsibility is also one of the keys of his humanism. But all of these principles ultimately require the control of the higher will in its humanistic form. The higher self should inhibit the lower one. In fact, Babbitt's New Humanism is an aristocratic view and the application of humanism will depend on the outstanding persons in a society. In general, the basic principles of new humanism can be concluded to be two points in his cultural outlook. One is that he respected and cherished the cultural tradition not only in the West but also the East, and the other is that he had an attitude of elitism toward cultural education. Actually, Babbitt's humanism can be regarded as a reflective theory, and always tries to balance different factors.The second part describes the intellectuals around Critical Review's reception and spread of Babbitt's humanism, and its specific embodiment in the joumaLThese Chinese students of Babbitt introduced his ideas and also translate some of his articles in Critical Review. However the numbers of these relatedarticles was only eight, and most of them published in the early stage. Critical Review's original plans were not completed. Around Babbitt's ideas, it also introduced other representative people in the New Humanism Movement. Evaluated in general, Critical Review did not give a deep introd...
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