Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contens
- About Liang Shuming and Fundamentals of Chinese Culture
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to This Translation
- Liang’s Preface
- Chapter One Introduction
- Chapter Two “Family” to Chinese People
- Chapter Three Westerners Living as a Group
- Chapter Four Chinese People’s Lack of Group-Centered Life
- Chapter Five China as an Ethics-Oriented Society
- Chapter Six Morality as Religion
- Chapter Seven Rationality – A Human Characteristic
- Chapter Eight Class Divisions and Professional Distinction
- Chapter Nine China: A Nation or Not?
- Chapter Ten Governance and Times of Peace and Prosperity
- Chapter Eleven A Cycle of Times of Peace and Prosperity
- Chapter Twelve Human Cultural Precocity
- Chapter Thirteen China after Cultural Precocity
- Chapter Fourteen Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Liang’s Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contens
- About Liang Shuming and Fundamentals of Chinese Culture
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to This Translation
- Liang’s Preface
- Chapter One Introduction
- Chapter Two “Family” to Chinese People
- Chapter Three Westerners Living as a Group
- Chapter Four Chinese People’s Lack of Group-Centered Life
- Chapter Five China as an Ethics-Oriented Society
- Chapter Six Morality as Religion
- Chapter Seven Rationality – A Human Characteristic
- Chapter Eight Class Divisions and Professional Distinction
- Chapter Nine China: A Nation or Not?
- Chapter Ten Governance and Times of Peace and Prosperity
- Chapter Eleven A Cycle of Times of Peace and Prosperity
- Chapter Twelve Human Cultural Precocity
- Chapter Thirteen China after Cultural Precocity
- Chapter Fourteen Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This is my fourth book, following the completion of such works as Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (1920-1921), The Final Consciousness of the Chinese National Liberation Movement (1929-1931), and Rural Reconstruction Theory (1932-1936). During the spring of 1941, I gave a two-month series of specialist lectures at Guangxi University, and during the next spring, I set out to write the book in Guilin, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China. By 1944, I had finished six successive chapters totaling about 80,000 Chinese characters, but I stopped in the middle of writing when Guilin was invaded by the Japanese. After China's victory, I promoted domestic peace throughout China and could afford no time to do any actual writing. In November 1946, I returned from Nanjing to Beibei, a district in China's southwest Chongqing City, where I resumed my writing; meanwhile, I was also delivering some lectures. The original manuscripts I had prepared in Guilin, however, only served as the raw material, which had to be reorganized and restructured. But now (i.e., June 1949), the whole book has been finished at last, after a struggle of nine years’ duration from the beginning to the end.
In these four books, which have been written successively, it has become essential to restate certain ideas. This is because certain issues under discussion are basically related to each other or are simply different versions of the same issue. Moreover, my thought continues to derive from the same tradition, and though there might be a difference in the maturity of these ideas, my philosophy is fundamentally unchanged. Indeed, as the fourth book is connected to the third, there is a closer relationship between these books. As a result, if you have managed to read the third book, you can better understand the key points in the fourth book. The third book, Rural Reconstruction Theory , once entitled The Future of the Chinese Nation , consists of two parts. Part I is concerned with gaining an understanding of the problems in China and Part II with finding solutions to the problems in China. To resolve a problem, efforts must be made to understand it. Problems in China arise out of the international exchanges over the last hundred years, as Western influence and Western culture spread to the East.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Fundamentals of Chinese Culture , pp. 19 - 24Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021