Rousseau and the chinese intellectual world (1882-1911) ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le monde intellectuel en Chine (1882-1911)

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Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most important philosophers for the Chinese intellectuals in the 20e century. This study focuses firstly on different groups of society, not only the intellectuals, but also average people and they were inspired by Rousseau. Secondly, the historical materials the author employed are not limited to political commentaries, academic articles, but also included a number of novels, plays or other literary works. In order to provide a complete interpretation of this subject, the author employed especially the imperial exam papers in the late Qing, which is breakthrough of the early studies in the similar subject. Over all speaking, this thesis is an excellent exploration of the themes which author sets but there are still some problems which should be modified for further study, such as content about the complexity of the thinking of Rousseau. The first part of this thesis collects more than two hundred historical documents mentioned Rousseau. By analyzing the historical source according to the time, the authors and the species, the thesis reveals an overall historical course how the Rousseau's ideas spread in the late Qing Dynasty. The second part of the article focuses on the intellectual elite and how they accept and understand Rousseau's thoughts. According to the historical database of this thesis, at late Qing, Liang Qichao is the intellectual who advocated the most the ideas of Rousseau. His attitude towards Rousseau turns from the praise to suspect and finally to criticize, but from the perspective of the history of the human civilization, Liang always holds a "stable" position towards Rousseau. The revolutionary intellectuals elites have an special mode in propagation of Rousseau's thoughts. Their propaganda system is from shallow to deep, covering all sectors of society crowd. Yan fu, although he criticized the political philosophy of Rousseau, also recognized the contribution of Rousseau as educator. The third part deals with the popular literature, literary works, which ...