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
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.
No student of Chinese history can say that the Chinese are incapable of religious experience, even when judged by the standards of medieval Europe or pious India.
Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and, through it, the chief concern of the Chinese people.
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.
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.
Even the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results.
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.
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.
Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights.
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.
Practically all the prominent leaders of thought in China today are openly agnostics and even atheists.
But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.
Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic.
The sun exactly at noon is exactly [beginning to] go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly [beginning to] die.