Hu Shi and his Deweyan reconstruction of Chinese history

China's major concern during the turn of this century was its position in the modern world. In search of an answer, the May 4th generation, which came into maturity during the second decade of this century, turned inward on its own cultural tradition and outward toward the modern West. This dissertation, in an effort to understand the mind, work and activity of that generation, follows the intellectual path travelled by one of its leaders, Hu Shi, by way of analyzing his published works on the subject of intellectual history, most of which appeared between 1917 and 1937.; Deeply influenced by John Dewey's Instrumentalism and the ethos of the Progressive Era when he was a student in America (1911-1917), Hu Shi tried to find a solution for China's plight by combining the Deweyan philosophy with the usable elements within the Chinese tradition. In the field of intellectual history, this synthesis took the form of evolutionism, secularism, and contextualism. Evolutionism refers to the dynamic process of change in human thinking which has its origin in the biologically adaptive behavior of man, as opposed to the traditional view of history as static and fixed. Secularism concerns the abandonment of traditional subject matters, which focused on the activities of an exclusive ruling class, by shifting historians' attention to the daily activities of ordinary people. Contextualism calls for the emancipation of historiography from the constraint of traditional methodologies, forms, styles, and sources of information by allying the study of history with social sciences, and by borrowing methods, data and approaches from sociology, anthropology, economics and archaeology.; The Introduction of this dissertation gives a brief intellectual biography of Hu Shi based on the three stages of his education: his early training at home and the village school; his high school education in Shanghai, and his college education in America. Parts I, II, and III discuss the development of the three components of Hu's theory of history: evolutionism, secularism, and contextualism, with emphasis on how he created an entirely new historical approach by synthesizing the Deweyan wisdom with the usable past of China. Part IV, "Hu Shih Reconsidered," summarizes how Hu contributed to modern Chinese intellectual history by creating a new paradigm, and examines his limitations, which were characteristic of his time, and were shared by John Dewey in his theories as well.