Xueheng School Cultural Thought

XueHeng,or The Critical Review, was an important publication on culture research in the 20-30's of the 20th Century in China. The School of XueHeng, centering on it, played an outstanding role in the culture conservatism in the modem and contemporary China. Members of this school ware a group of people who had their own independent cultural character, cultural and ideological system and their own line of reasoning for culture construction. Their identification and resonance with the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt helped enlarge their cultural horizons and added the color of academic theory.As to the comprehension of the basic concepts of culture, different from advocators of the New Culture Movement and from the perspective of the natural disparity and the two opposite factors of human nature: good and evil, they stressed the necessity of fulfilling morality to train and strive for human nature. Furthermore, the morality of reserving was the core concept of culture. In their opinion, culture changes included the changed and the unchanged. Culture existed in the form of the elegant culture and the popular one. The elegant culture that the class of the gifted and intellectual represented was the main part of culture and coexisted with the popular one and helped it and even the whole culture reach to a higher stage. Their cultural concept characterizes anti-enlightenment and being without evolution. Concerning the thought on education of inheriting and developing culture, against pragmatic education of Duway, they placed emphasis on developing all梤ound education centering on humanism for the sake of developing people's personality in an all-round way, teaching people in accordance with their aptitude for the sake of fully cultivating all potential abilities, uplifting the moral character of every social stratum and reaching the ideal state of development for human civilization. During this course, experts in the field of education should take important responsibilities of improving themselves, advancing the educational level and inheriting and developing human culture. With regard to political culture, they emphasized the rule of virtue, the love for the masses and the importance of administrators as examples. The moralprinciples advocated by them differing from the traditional ones, refers to some thoughts of Confucianism which have been adapted to the ordinary moral value in every society and includes the basic morality and virtues governing the society and ethics in daily life. Anent the thought on academic culture, the School of XueHeng gave prominence to the importance of values of academic research in guiding social development and new culture construction. They insisted on the preciseness and justness for conducting researches, holding a critical attitude towards culture construction and establishing the strict academic criterion. Regarding inheriting and developing the culture, the School of XueHeng placed emphasis on the importance of the class of the gifted and intellectual. They not only provided every stratum with moral norms but also played a leading role in the new culture construction. Consequently, the new culture construction should be the following: the class of the gifted and intellectual make attempts to obtain the principles of values for new culture construction by conducting the independent and just research on culture at all times and in all over the world and then to construct the ideal society and culture through enlightening the masses, that is to say, to flourish the quintessence of the Chinese culture while combining with some new ingredients from other cultures, and to form the Chinese even the world culture of new humanism which is different from the traditional and westernized culture.The features of thoughts on culture of the School of XueHeng lie in its cosmopolitan cultural horizons, right cultural psychology, rational attitude towards culture, the spirit of exploration and probing into the traditional culture when holding high the banner of new humanism. They are of...