Hu Shih
Hu Shih
Hu Shihwas a Chinese philosopher, essayist and diplomat. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China's New Culture Movement, was a president of Peking University, and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He had a wide range of interests such as literature, history, textual criticism,...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth17 December 1891
CountryChina
Grasp the opportunity with both hands to feel really very special as an Indian reading these quotes on the Indian Independence Day. A number of famous and reputed persons have thrown some light on the chapter of Indian Independence. India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border!"
It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood.
On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.
The underlying sickness of human life is an unwillingness to look with open eyes at the condition of the world.
In the year 1915 a series of trivial incidents led some Chinese students in Cornell University to take up the question of reforming the Chinese language.
On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.
The most outstanding characteristic of Eastern civilization is to know contentment, whereas that of Western civilization is not to know contentment. Contented Easterners are satisfied with their simple life and therefore do not seek to increase their material enjoyment... They are satisfied with their present lot and environment and therefore do not want to conquer nature but merely be at home with nature and at peace with their lot.
The rise of the dramas in the thirteenth century, and the rise of the great novels in a later period, together with their frank glorification of love and the joys of life, may be called the Third Renaissance.
The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development.
The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.
Whenever you do something without asking yourself, "Why am I doing this?"-that is meaningless life... . The "why" of life makes it meaningful... . Only when an answer is given is one living life as a man.
Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic.
Historically, there had been many periods of Chinese Renaissance.
After learning the language and culture of the Chinese people, these Jesuits began to establish contacts with the young intellectuals of the country.