The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu ILinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Sun, Yat-sen, 1866-1925. San min zhu yi
Sun Yat-sen said, “Besides reviving our ancient Chinese morality, we must
also revive our wisdom and ability.... If today we want to revive our
national spirit, we must revive not only the morality which is proper to
us, but we must revive also our own knowledge.”(85) He goes on to say that
the peculiar excellence of the ancient Chinese knowledge lay in the field
of political philosophy, and states that the Chinese political philosophy
surpassed the Western, at least in clearness.
He quotes _The Great Learning_ for the summation, in a few words, of the
highlights of this ancient Chinese social knowledge: “Investigate into
things, attain the utmost knowledge, make the thoughts sincere, rectify
the heart, cultivate the person, regulate the family, govern the country
rightly, pacify the world.”(86) This is, as we have seen, what may be
called the Confucian doctrine of ideological control. Sun Yat-sen lavished
praise upon it. “Such a theory, so detailed, minute, and progressive, was
neither discovered nor spoken of by any foreign political philosopher. It
is a peculiar intellectual treasure pertaining to our political
philosophy, which we must preserve.”(87) The endorsement is doubly
significant. In the first place, it demonstrates the fact that Sun Yat-sen
thought of himself as a rebuilder and not as a destroyer of the ancient
Chinese culture, and the traditional methods of organization and control.
In the second place, it points out that his Chinese background was most
clear to him, and that he was in his own mind the transmitter of the
Chinese heritage.
In speaking of Chinese excellence in the field of the social science, Sun
Yat-sen did not confine his discussion to any one time. Whenever he
referred to a political theory, he mentioned its Chinese origin if it were
one of those known to Chinese antiquity: anarchism, communism, democracy.
He never attacked Chinese intellectual knowledge for being what it was,
but only for what it omitted: physical science.(88) He was undoubtedly
more conservative than many of his contemporaries, who were actually
hostile to the inheritance.
The summary of Sun Yat-sen’s beliefs and position in respect to the
ancient intellectual knowledge is so well given by Tai Chi-tao that any
other statement would almost have to verge on paraphrase. Tai Chi-tao
wrote:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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