On Chen Lifu’s Reflection Of Confucianism

Refer to Chen Lifu, first came to most people’s mind is, he is Jiang Jieshi’s right-hand man. He followed Jiang Jieshi in his earlier life, also he is a politician prominent of Republic of China, an official theoretician of Kuomintang. He is a famous cultural celebrity unknown. After half a lifetime, he lives far away from the political center, concentrated on the China traditional culture, and become an author committed to explore the renaissance road of China cultural.Chen was born in troubled times, the different background and times have a significant influence on his thought. After C hen reflect on national culture and analysis the western culture, he ventured the opinion that "if seeking to C hinese culture to find a way to solving the crisis of today’s world, then human’s welfare will come true in twenty-first century." he tried to revive Confucianism and national spirit, want to use the Confucian ideal that “being an inner sage so as to rule the outer world” to shaping personality of Chinese, improving today’s society and reviving traditional culture. C hen differentiate and compare people based on doctrine of Confucius and Mencius. He advocated that people should take " gentleman" as the general standard of personality, "Saint" as the highest ideal of personality. By Investigating things to extend knowledge, Bringing up sincerity of thouhgts and rectification of heart to gain morality,Both morality and intelligence bing up self-cultivation and social feats,then we can complete responsibility for life。 As to rule the outer world, Chen who live in modern society keenly aware of the shortcomings of capitalist democracy and the resulting social problems, and he trying to find a solution from the Kong Meng that China ancient Confucian political theory. He hopes modernization Confucius and guide the modern social life effectively by analysis “sublime words with deep meaning”, on the other hand, criticize China counter communism by spread through the Confucian traditional culture.Overall, Chen’s rethink and high praise about the Confucian culture more than transformation, and his idea needs services for political. He use Confucianism to discussed his theory without restraint so his associative thinking often with arbitrary that there are many irrationality places. And he ignoring the contemporary of culture on “create by returning to the origin”, dealing social problems apply too much Confucianism, trying to demonstrate the versatility of traditional China culture and believe C hina culture is superior to western culture, the interpretation of western culture has one-sidedness. But in the process of cultural accommodation in East and West, he take the national culture as the standard which has important significance to develop the value of our own culture. He’s great contribution on unify Taiwan and mainland China that cannot be ignore.