以“未来”否定“现代”:一战与五四新文化运动多歧性的形成
作者简介:周月峰,华中师范大学中国近代史研究所副教授(湖北武汉 430079)
摘要: 以往有关新文化运动的研究,多注意其在五四学生运动影响下的转变,而忽视了欧战的深远影响。自清末至民初,中国人以西为新,视彼时西方现代文明为中国之未来,前期新文化运动即以此为目标。第一次世界大战的爆发部分改变了这一思想态势,时人认为原本被模仿的现代文明即将被淘汰,取而代之的是一个崭新的未来文明,并视之为新的“过渡时代”。“未来”总体混沌而未知,但又被认为超越甚至否定现代文明,思想界也随之出现“现代”负面整体化的倾向。正因此,时人以“未来”之名,部分消解了现代文明的正当性,同时一定程度上解救了被认为与现代文明对立的中国传统文明及其他被压抑的思想资源。西方现代文明、中国传统文明、预想中的未来文明,多元互歧、互渗互竞,角逐于五四思想界,形成了新文化运动的多歧性。
The Modernity Denied by the Future: The First World War and the Making of the Hybridity of May Fourth New Culture Movement
- Available Online:
2020-03-01
Abstract: Scholars have paid much attention to the influence that the May Fourth Movement rather than the First World War, has exerted on the New culture Movement. Since the Late Qing and early Republican period, most Chinese saw the West society as the new/the future of their own country, which is the aim of the New Culture Movement at its first phase. However, the outbreak of the First World War partly changed this trend, and Chinese elites considered the civilization of the brand new future in place of the Western civilization which they once took as exemplar has recently gone to the bankruptcy. And they considered their time as the contemporary. The future is almost complex and unknown to them, however, the future is considered as transcendence, even as a denial to the modern civilization. Following this trend, a new tendency, that took the modernity whole as negative symbol in the circle of thinkers, was formed. As a result, the contemporary partly denied the legitimacy of modernity in the name of future. At the same time, to some degree, this rescued the Chinese tradition which was once thought as the opposite of modernity and also other being depressed intellectual resources. The Western modern civilization, the Chinese traditional civilization and the future civilization in mind, which existed, competed, interrelated and eventually fought with each other in the milieu of the intellectual circle in May Fourth Movement, and then formed the hybridity of New Culture Movement.