China and the West

Hu, Shi. Hu Shi wen cun. (Shanghai : Ya dong tu shu guan, 1922).
胡適文存
Ding Zijiang : Hu Shi attempted to treat John Dewey's scientific method as a precondition for resolving China's social and cultural problems. The establishment of a scientific tradition in China was a result of interactions between Hu's psychological need to have a Chinese resource for facing the superior culture of America, and his intellectual need to construct a reformist means for the drastic purpose of Deweyanizing China. Before Hu adopted Dewey's experimentalism, his view of Confucianism and Chinese cultural traditions were by no means negative, since later he began formulating a 'way' to reform them. This 'way' was based on Dewey's scientific method. Hu's discovery of Dewey decisively transformed his previous simple, vague, tentative, but genuinely reformist attitude into a clear and straightforward advocacy of reformist means to westernize China according to the model of modernity and modernization provided by Dewey's early philosophical framework. Because Dewey argued for gradual social and cultural change, Hu wanted China's development to follow this path to avoid the Russian style of revolution. For Dewey, China needed gradual and peaceful reform, not radical and violent revolution, since 'reformation' is a very efficient type of experiment or instrument for socio-political transitions. Hu intended to adopt Dewey's experimentalism to make an 'overall transformation' to Chinese culture, not only for socio-political change, but also for almost all fields of culture, including language, literature, and thought patterns, such as 'the poetry revolution', 'the vernacular movement' and the 'Chinese logic method'.
Hu Shi followed his pragmatic master in seeking an 'ever-enduring process of perfecting' rather than perfection. Accordingly, he said it was requisite for the progress of the present society to uphold natural science and pragmatic philosophy and to abolish superstition and fantasy. Although Hu Shi devoted himself to spreading Dewey's experimentalism, his efforts were not as successful as expected.