scholarly journals Perilous Life Views: Suicide, Morality and the Rise of the Individual in May Fourth China

1970 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Rune Svarverud
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The May Fourth Movement

Individualism, imported as an intellectual current from the West, entered the Chinese discourse during late imperial times in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The early Chinese interpretation and representation of individualism was closely related to ideas of China’s national survival in what was perceived as a Darwinian battle for survival between nations. During the May Fourth Movement starting in 1919, individualism for many prominent intellectuals took on new perspectives, interpreting the individual as an ultimate end of political and social life. With the introduction of Marxist thought and the rise of socialism as a political movement individualism was, however, again in China attached to collective interests related to society at large, to nation and to the world community of socialism. The aim of this article is to focus on interpretations of the individual, on the morality and the social responsibilities of the individual, in a Chinese debate on suicide around the May Fourth Movement in 1919. By focussing on the debate on the rights and wrongs of suicide, I hope to be able to show how notions of the individual and his or her relationship to family and society at this time carried connotations from the early forms of individualism in China as well as bearing witness of the growing interest in the social theories of Marxism to become so prominent in the decades to come. I intend to show that the May Fourth period contains different interpretations of the individual and individual morality and that these interpretations may be attached to different generations of intellectuals in China at this time. My interpretation of this debate will show that individualism was a very strong current among student intellectuals in China around 1919. That current was, however, short-lived as the teacher generation of intellectuals during the May Fourth, prominently concerned with collective social and political questions, dominated the period to come when Socialism gained momentum as the main intellectual current in the 1920s and ’30s.

Middle County Radicalism: The May Fourth Movement in Hangzhou

1994 ◽  
Vol 140 ◽  
pp. 903-925 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-hsin Yeh
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
Education Abroad ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
Revolutionary History ◽  
The May Fourth Movement

The May Fourth Movement of 1919 occupies a special position in scholars’ consideration of modern China as a result of the convergence of two sets of historical constructions. In China, according to official textbooks explaining the rise of the People's Republic that were first promulgated by the new socialist state in the 1950s, 1919 was identified as the very moment of origin when cultural iconoclasm was joined to a political activism of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle: the watershed affecting the flow of all subsequent revolutionary history. In the West, as presented in Chow Tse-tsung's highly influential 1964 volume, May Fourth was singled out as the time of patriotic awakening reached as a result of intellectual exposure to such Western liberal values as science, democracy, liberty and individualism. The May Fourth Movement has since been characterized variously as a response to Western liberal influence; as a product of education abroad in Japan, Europe or America; as an awakening to the call of international Bolshevism; and as an evaluative rejection of traditional Confucianism as the primary source of authority. Whether liberal or revolutionary, these intellectual developments were then seen as the inspiration for a unified national political movement that spread outward from Beijing and Shanghai into the provinces.

The Power of Position: Beijing University, Intellectuals and Chinese Political Culture 1898–1929. By Timothy B. Weston. [Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2004. xiv+325 pp. $60.00; £39.95. ISBN 0-520-23767-6.]

2004 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 841-843
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Elman
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
New Culture Movement ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
The University ◽  
Chinese Political Culture ◽  
The May Fourth Movement

Timothy Weston's study of Beijing University (hereafter, “Beida”) spotlights how modern Chinese intellectuals positioned themselves politically and socially in the early 20th century. Weston relies on the Beida archives, dailies, journals, and many other sources, to make four contributions. First, Beida's early history shows how literati humanists repositioned themselves during a period of great uncertainty. New style intellectuals had influence because they mastered Western and classical learning. Secondly, Beida's complex history did not break sharply with the past. Earlier accounts of the May Fourth movement obscure the efforts of intellectuals since 1898 to redefine their role. Weston suggests that May Fourth amplified a continuing progression of new and old ways of doing things. Thirdly, political tensions emerged when the university increasingly radicalized after 1911. No more than 20 per cent of Beida students were involved in the New Culture movement. A strong conservative undertow continually challenged radical agendas. Often we hear only the voices of the latter. Finally, Weston assesses Beida's history in light of how the May Fourth movement played out in different locations. In the 1920s, Shanghai replaced Beijing as the leading venue for urban China's cultural and intellectual leaders. Beijing increasingly lost status under warlordism, and the Nationalist shift of the capital to Nanjing refocused Chinese intellectual life on the Chang (Yangtze) delta.

scholarly journals Innovative or Rather Traditional? Confucianising Tragedy in May Fourth China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letizia Fusini
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discussion ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
The May Fourth Movement

A key aspect of the May Fourth Movement was the critical discussion of Western tragedy. While the interest in tragedy was sparked by the assumption that China lacked an analogous genre, its interpretation and adaptation to the Chinese context suggests that a traditional ‘indigenous’ filter was applied to define its supposed ‘modernity’. Through cross-comparing Chinese conceptions of beiju 悲剧 in the May Fourth era and traditional Chinese views of bei 悲, this paper will seek to show that the Chinese reception of tragedy was informed by the rejuvenation of traditional ideas rather than the introduction of purely ‘Western’ theories.

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