Hu Shih, Chinese Ideological History

Hu Shih is a very important scholar in the History of modern Chinese academics. His research area is very wide, but research on the history of Chinese thought (history of philosophy) is the most important part of his research in his academic career. From his research we can see his thinking on social issues at that time and his attempt to resolve the problems.This article will begin with Hu Shih's life and background, and then reveal the problems he felt and analyze his guiding ideology in research of the history of Chinese thought. The guiding ideology is merged with Dewey's pragmatism and Hu Shih's academic attitude on the re-evaluation of old Chinese academic thought. Under this guiding ideology, he studied the methodology of the thinkers and schools in Chinese history, the idea of evolution in the history of Chinese thought, ideology and the factors of freedom, democracy, scientific in the Chinese thought. In addition, he also paid attention to some of the repressed heresy. There are both experimental methodology in China, that is bold assumptions, carefully verify, and methods of logical analysis, comparative study (including the comparison between the thinkers or schools of thought, also including comparison between Chinese and foreign) in his research.Finally, based on the overall analysis, the author made the following evaluation about Hu Shih's research on the history of Chinese thought (history of philosophy):In recognition of his contribution in bibliography, historical materials, we also should to see that he did not strictly comply with his request in research; in recognition of his scientific research methods which materials as a starting point, we should also note that he had the subjective performance in the research process; we should affirm his achievement of capturing the key subjects of the history of thought, that is the relationship between thought and society, but we also should see that he did not analyze the nature of social relations in the study; we should affirm his worldwide vision, but we also should see far-fetched in his study.