梁啓超의 ‘중국적’ 근대 기획

Abstract

Liang qi-chao propelled reforms according to his view that the reform of system through modification is required to survive as a power. As failed his efforts, he decided to make new and young China and began to enlighten people. He believed the strength of the country depended on people’s dignity, which led him to people enlightenment for new citizen campaign. He opposed individualism which may disturb state building, and emphasized the liberty of group and country, admitting the dignity of monarch. He dreamed of the constitutional monarchy and never gave up that. By doing so, he thought the country could exist in the age of the survival of the fittest. Early 20th century, Westernization was the mainstream which could not go upstream in China. Seeing postwar Europe in his own eyes, Liang rejected the way of thinking of Nationalism and supported the society which respected the personality of people. Instead of declaring that Europeans’ dream called scientism or almighty science was failure, he tried supplementing love and beauty to democracy and science, which was his effort to tie spirit and material, East and West, and antiquity and modernityfor eclecticism of compromise and balance. That came to traditional moderation of China, and last he returned to united cosmopolitanism from evolutionary theory and nationalism. It was quite great that Liang influenced the birth of modern China and formation of modernism. Chinese people influenced from him felt primitive themselves and blazed up their passion for saving the country and renovation more strongly. All kind of the conventional fell down themselves in the process of propaganda and introduction of new knowledge and concepts, losing their divine light and non-violable dignity. It was the capability and significance of enlightenment that Liang qi-chao spreaded, He was the one who 'planned modern China'. From a view of Liang, Chinese modernity did not transcend nor fall behind Europe’s. China never borrowed others’ civilization by making its own and never took only the results of the system or ideas born in Europe. China took its own steps forward to modernity. That is, modernity of China was the non-Westernized Chinese-style and 'Chinese' modernity not returning to Confucian conservatism.