學衡派의 문화관 연구

Abstract

In this paper, I would like to examine the cultural view of the Xueheng School. The Xueheng School published many articles on Chinese and Western cultures, old and new cultures. During the New Culture Movement period, intellectuals recognized that China was underdeveloped because it had ‘old ideas’ and ‘old culture’. Thus, through the re-establishment of ‘thoughts’ and ‘culture’, they tried to look into Chinese society and find the direction in which China should move forward. However, at that time, China had to consider the issue of harmony between Chinese and Western cultures and finding ways to overcome national difficulties. The Xueheng School made its own arguments about various cultural phenomena at the time through 『Xueheng』 magazines published from 1922 to 1933. In particular, they thought that intellectuals at the time had problems with the dichotomy of dividing culture into new culture, old culture, Chinese culture, and Western culture. This is because intellectuals at the time thought that Western culture was a new culture that China should pursue in the future, and that Chinese traditional culture was an old culture that must be abandoned. Thus, the Xueheng School insisted on various opinions by firmly maintaining its own perspective and publishing articles even in the social and cultural environment where the atmosphere of the New Culture Movement was prevalent at the time. Looking at their activities and published articles, it is hard to see them as water poloists who unconditionally opposed the New Culture Movement. Their thoughts and activities have academic value that we should look at. In this paper, I first looked at how the Xueheng School defined the concept of culture and interpreted Chinese culture, Western culture, new culture, and old culture based on this. Ultimately, I tried to examine the characteristics of the culture pursued by the Xueheng School. The Xueheng School viewed culture as a kind of spirit and as having a perfect personality to supervise and develop everything in a balanced manner. Therefore, in order to develop a culture of this nature, it was considered that the essence of Chinese and Western cultures should be taken. They saw that in order to converge Western culture and Chinese culture, Western culture should be transformed to harmonize with Chinese culture. The Xueheng School’s argument was basically intended to take it more carefully so that when Western culture entered China, traditional Chinese culture and rejection did not arise. They especially criticized intellectuals at that time for opposing traditional Chinese culture with democracy and science, and argued that Confucius’ Confucianism never hindered democracy. They also argued that the reasons and philosophy of traditional Chinese culture should be used. Because I thought reason and philosophy could also develop science sufficiently. The Xueheng School’s argument can be highly praised for providing an opportunity to alarm intellectuals who are busy worshiping Western culture and reevaluate the value of traditional culture. The Xueheng School emphasized the essential values of artistry and morality in literature rather than the external values of literature, and insisted on creating a culture suitable for the new Chinese situation based on this. Of course, the idea that they should insist on imitation theory in response to the evolutionary views of intellectuals and add new things based on the old to create a new culture seems to be due to fear of rapid change. If they had actually taken the imitation-based step further and shown creative works to people, we could have trusted their arguments more.