The Research Of The Moral Revolution During The May Fourth Movement

During May Fourth Movement, advanced intellectuals uses the "democracy" and "science" as arms to inveigh against the traditional ethics and try to build a new morality. They Firstly, this paper study the May Fourth Movement with the marriage and family as the center. Firstly, this paper describes that the advanced intellectuals criticize the traditional morality which mainly on criticism of the old system of marriage and family. The advocates of New Culture Movement discuss the issue of virginity as a breakthrough. They set off a massive "moral revolution" to expose and criticize feudal Confucians ethics. Then they criticized violently the arranged marriage and feudal family system. Secondly, it constructs the new morality. It mainly summarized the basic ideas about that freedom of marriage, equal family relations, the right of inheritance proposed by advanced intellectuals. Finally, it appraises the moral revolution. It affirms its historical significance and points out its limitation. During the May Fourth Movement, intellectuals of liberal bourgeois represented by HuShi, or of petty-bourgeois anarchists and utopian socialists, or of the early Marxist represented by Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, have slammed the legacy feudal ethics. Under the guidance of democracy and science, the intellectuals mainly expose drawbacks of marriage and family from the perspective of individual liberation. With the spread of Marxism, the early communists promote moral revolution to a new stage. They explore the root causes of marriage and family issues, build new morality with the theme of social emancipation.