What about personal life in modern history and politics in Fu Sinian and China?

Zhang Naidong/Wen As the "Republic of China fever" intensified in the mainland, a group of people hidden by historical writing gradually became the center of the topic. Of course, the "Republic of China fever" is only a trend of thought that reflects reality, and it does not have the purpose of studying the times and people in depth. In this wind, people who are hotly discussed are often recorded through anecdotes or anecdotes. From an optimistic point of view, the continuous attention to a topic in the field of popular culture can lead to the development of this topic from interesting appreciation to the exploration of authenticity and significance. Fu Sinian is an example. This once all-powerful figure in the academic and political circles in the first half of the 20th century was covered in the narrative of Chinese mainland's modern history for a long time, and it didn't surface until the last decade of the last century. In the field of public history, as a foil to other cultural celebrities from the beginning, it has gradually recovered its position as the center of the stage in recent years, and its position has become increasingly prominent. Several influential reading materials, such as Chen Yinque and Fu Sinian, as well as crossing the south and returning to the north, all tell it with great colors. This status evolution process is not unrelated to the pursuit of truth by popular culture itself, but also inseparable from the promotion of relevant academic research. On 20 10, Mr. Xiaojia Ge's posthumous work "Rebuilding Fu Sinian's Academic and Life History" was published in Book City, introducing Wang Fansen's English works on Fu Sinian to Chinese people. In 20 12, the Chinese version of this book was published by Sanlian Bookstore, which comprehensively analyzed Fu Sinian's academic mentality, ideological course and why he became a "dignified generation of scholars", and showed us a triple junction of history in Fu Sinian. This book is born out of the author's doctoral thesis, so it is different from the anecdotal works in the field of public history, and the author intentionally defines it as "not a biography of Fu Sinian's life". For Wang Fansen, Fu Sinian is his research object, not his biography. He tried to put Fu Sinian in the contemporary environment and find the node of Fu Sinian in the academic and ideological network. This is a job of "positioning Fu Sinian". Its task is to describe the ideological context, academic origin and social pulse, reveal the influence of these background factors on Fu's academic orientation, political purport and cultural concept, and explore the mutual matching and conflict between these factors, as well as the reaction of these matching and conflict relations. In Wang Fansen's view, the reason why Fu Sinian can become the Fu Sinian we know, a young leader, an academic leader and a clean political life, lies not in his personal legend, but in the era of "post-tradition", "post-imperial examination" and "post-ancient history debate", and the background of the times is the first key factor to understand Fu Sinian. In the logic of this book, the collapse of traditional ideas and behavior order made Fu Sinian accept new ideas and new cultures and become a peer leader in the Cultural Enlightenment. After the abolition of the imperial examination system, the original elite generation model of "learning to be an official" was challenged, giving a group of scholars, including Fu Sinian, the opportunity to become new social elites; The "ancient history discrimination" movement, which started in the late Qing Dynasty and achieved in Gu Jiegang, completely destroyed the ancient history system under the Confucian classic system, and allowed Fu Sinian to take this opportunity to reinterpret ancient history from an empirical perspective. Therefore, without the space for re-selection of thoughts and behaviors after the collapse of the traditional order, the diversification of social elite orientation after the end of the imperial examination system, and the thorough subversion of China's ancient history by the "ancient history discrimination" movement, Fu Sinian's life and scholarship would not be known to us-he would become an emerging student leader in the New Culture Movement, a manager and political dignitary of the most important cultural institution in China at that time, and a leader in rebuilding the ancient history system. Therefore, it is the overlap of the three "post-"eras caused by history that created Fu Sinian, which is the "triple intersection of history" mentioned earlier. In understanding the historical image of Fu Sinian, the author used a concept of combining culture and politics: the May 4th Youth. The last two chapters of the book are entitled "The Burden of the May 4th Spirit" and "A Late Age of the May 4th Youth" respectively, which explains Fu Sinian's contradictory state between politics and academics as a conflict between ideal and reality formed in his early years. The author thinks that Fu Sinian formed his own academic, cultural and political basic viewpoints during the New Culture Movement and the May 4th Movement. Academically, he advocates the establishment of absolutely objective academic research, emphasizes "learning for academic sake", and then yearns for the establishment of an "academic society" to insulate academics from politics. In terms of cultural concepts, fierce anti-tradition, especially traditional ethical concepts and social conditions, requires the establishment of real social organizations, rather than the aggregation of people, and truly realizes the country's strength at the social level. This fierce anti-traditional tendency and academic rationalism conform to the orientation of the May 4th Movement, so the author calls Fu a "May 4th youth". In the narrative logic of this book, Fu Sinian and Fu Sinian were torn apart by the change of times. As an individual, Fu Sinian can only shed tears in the face of the triple doors of the changing times, the long world, personal will and the trend of the times. Facing the realistic situation, he had to give up his position again and again: take part in political activities, take part in cultural activities that disgusted him with nationalism and "reviving Chinese studies", and write an academic emergency chapter "Outline of Northeast History" that served the realistic politics, and so on. These all belong to the conflict between ideal and reality caused by the change of external environment, which can be called helplessness; Inner doubts about ideals, such as the vacillation of objectivism historiography, the re-understanding of Confucian moral philosophy and the re-evaluation of the relationship between academics and politics, are self-denial of the essence of "May 4th Youth", which made him suffer greatly. This torn state from the inside out made his last ten years in a state of "a mass of contradictions", so the author defined his second half of life as "the failure of a May 4th youth". The so-called "failure of the May 4th youth" is not so much an individual phenomenon as a group fate. Since the 1950s, the generation that upholds the cultural concept and artistic spirit of the May 4th Movement has gradually faded out of the historical stage, and the anti-tradition and scientism, once a symbol of the May 4th Movement, have also disappeared. As far as the macro environment is concerned, it is the result that politics dominates everything and social reconstruction is relatively ineffective; From the specific environment, it is the change of the theme of the times brought about by the Japanese invasion that made the May 4th generation bow to nationalism. From a personal point of view, the disconnection between the anti-tradition and scientism thought put forward by the May 4th intellectuals and the reality of China is an important reason why their ideals are difficult to expand. In fact, the failure of the May 4th generation in reality is an indisputable fact. From the value point of view, this kind of failure is happy or sad, and people have different opinions. If we focus on Fu Sinian personally instead of making a historical evaluation of an era, then what we see is the tragedy of an idealist: the contradiction between academic ideal and political reality, the contradiction between the individual's distinctive anti-traditional position and the social strategy of flaunting tradition and promoting nationalism, and the self-contradiction caused by introspection of academic thoughts and cultural concepts, which makes his life in the last ten years torn apart all the time. However, Fu's character is persistent and naive-sometimes it is as reckless as heaven, and the inner pain can be imagined. Perhaps the problem is attributed to the fact that the times are too heavy, and individuals can only maintain a mixed mood. This book not only analyzes Fu Sinian's life from such a macro perspective of the times, but also outlines some "small environments" for us to determine Fu Sinian's life trajectory. Academically, he studied Confucian classics under the guidance of his grandfather in his childhood and adolescence, which laid the foundation for him to skillfully use various materials in his future research on ancient history and ancient scholarship. As the president of Peking University, Cai Yuanpei provided a space for speeches and debates for various academic trends of thought, which enabled traditional learning and new learning to coexist, gave him a deep foundation of old learning and a sensitive concept of modern learning, and pointed out the direction for his conscious choice of courses when studying in Europe in the future. The prevalence of scientism during the New Culture Movement made him feel close to the research orientation of objective certainty, which was also in line with his early training in textual research in the Qing Dynasty, and could also be related to the positivist research methods he accepted in the future. After returning to China, the outflow of ouchi archives and the excavation of Yin Ruins enabled him to combine the empirical methods he came into contact with when studying abroad with these materials closest to the historical scene, and consciously collect historical materials and carry out academic practice of "historical materials"; The academic research on the nation-state he received while studying abroad enabled him to put forward his own views from the national perspective when discussing the ancient history of China. These interrelated concrete factors constitute Fu Sinian's academic course. The author weaves Fu Sinian's world with the background of the times as the warp and the specific environment as the weft. If biographical works take deification as pleasure, this book emphasizes the orientation of personal life tension under the background of the times, which is undoubtedly disenchanting the increasingly bizarre legends. The main materials that can be used to rebuild the personal world are not anecdotes, but Fu's letters, notes, comments, papers, various files about Fu and other credible documents. This intentional choice of materials also makes the author's exposition relatively objective, and this research position comes from the methodology of "historical materials" advocated by Fu Sinian. To some extent, it can be said that the research method advocated by Fu Sinian makes it possible to study him. Exploring historical background to explain people's ideological, academic or political choices is exactly what the author is good at. As the tutor of the author's doctoral thesis, Yu Yingshi emphasized the role of "internal logic" in explaining the academic transformation during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which may also have a certain influence on the author. No matter from the academic standpoint or the general reader's standpoint, it is more acceptable to emphasize the background factors of provability and practicality and attach importance to the role of the internal development logic of academics and thoughts on individuals than to "decrypt" life insights or guesses from the personal experiences of characters. But this rigorous academic writing will inevitably have regrets. The so-called "trustworthy people are not cute", the author emphasizes the credibility of materials, so he has to give up some materials that can reflect Fu Sinian's "cute" side. The author is also aware of this. When explaining the change from the old school camp to the new culture camp, on the one hand, he cautiously pointed out that "it is difficult to explain the change because of the lack of historical materials", on the other hand, he quoted an anecdote in the form of footnotes to speculate on Fu's change, guessing that he might have been slapped for cleaning a spittoon for Huang Kan, which led him to part ways with the old school. The author is obviously not sure about the role of the slap in the face, but in my opinion, it may be the key to Fu Sinian's ideological transformation. Although a slap in the face is not the decisive factor, in Peking University, where old and new ideas are hotly debated, Fu Sinian may have been swinging between the old and new cultures. Huang Kan's slap in the face became the final thrust for him to turn to a new culture. From the character point of view, he is a more emotional person, which is recognized by people who have had contacts with him, and his childish character is also reflected in various anecdotes. "Ruthlessness is not necessarily a true hero". Fu Sinian's true nature makes him not only an academic or cultural symbol in the coordinates of an era. Of course, the theme of "China's modern history and personal life in politics" forced the author to give up these materials expressing Fu Sinian's personality, but they have been widely spread with public history works.