Peking University, Dec.21, 2011: The first Yan Fu Academic Forum, held by Department of Philosophy and Peking University (PKU) Taoist Research Center, went on the stage on December18. The forum was hosted by Professor Tang Yijie, who gave a speech about  the hardships of Enlightenment in China.

Prof. Tang giving his speech

In his speech, Professor Tang Yijie talked about the hardships of Enlightenment in China. He noted that Enlightenment in Europe can be characterized encouraging "rational" thinking and eventually leading to the emergence of western democratic systems. But the "Enlightenment thoughts" in the last decades of Ming dynasty can be characterized by releasing "feelings", and the result was that it was repressed by czarism of Qing dynasty. After the Opium War, China's educated people began to learn from the western Enlightenment. And after the Westernization Movement, the Hundred Days Reform, the Revolution of 1911, etc., China's democratic institutions were still hard to be established. Professor Tang emphasized that the Hundred Days Reform and the New Culture Movement differed from each other, yet they did occur successively–"Enlightenment" evoked the determination to "save the nation" which in turn deepened "Enlightenment". He said that from the New Culture Movement and the May 4th Movement till now, the ideological modernization had always been an important task to fulfill in order to accomplish new enlightenment.

He said that if the two major thoughts in 1990s, which were “post-modernism” and “national studies fever”, had been organically combined, perhaps they could have helped China to successfully complete "the first enlightenment" and realize modernization. In this way China may quickly enter the "second enlightenment" marked by “care for others" and "respect for differences".

Yan Fu Academic Forum is held in memory of Yan Fu, the modern Chinese famous Enlightenment thinker and the first President of PKU. Yan Fu Academic Forum plans to invite famous scholars both at home and abroad to give speech every year, so as to expand the humanistic spirit, and promote academic exchanges across Taiwan straits and between China and the global world.

Written by: Shi Hui
Edited by: Liu Lu
Source: PKU News (Chinese)