From the perspective of Pan Guangdan's family view of "racial competition", Shen Fu and his wife in Six Chapters of a Floating Life, as symbols of individualism, were naturally negatively evaluated, so they were judged by him as not "the normal state of love life".
Secondly, Pan Guangdan criticized the phenomenon that young people like to read Six Chapters of a Floating Life, which reflects the love supremacy that confuses ideal and reality, and the tendency that marriage lacks scientific attitude.
From Pan Shi's annotations, we can see that he "likes reading Shen Fu's Six Chapters of a Floating Life" and the phenomenon that young people regard such books as the norm and golden rule of love life, and clearly point out that "that's all wet". He advocates a scientific and realistic attitude towards marriage and family, and should not take unrealistic fantasies as a guide to real life.
"Love is supreme" is a new marriage concept popular among young people after the May 4th Movement. Pan Guangdan wrote many articles, reflected on this social trend of thought from the standpoint of social biologists, and criticized this view of marriage as unscientific, irrational and unrealistic. He criticized young people for being keen on the romantic fantasy of the supremacy of love in marriage. "The lasting love praised by young people is mostly intimate so-called romantic love. They believe that this kind of love can last forever, and a truly satisfactory marriage life should always be set off by this kind of love. " [1 16] But this is not the case in real life, which often leads to the disappointment of young people and the tragedy of marriage. He said: "A person will never live in love. It is very common for ordinary young people to fall in love for the first time recently. When they got married, their interest in love gradually decreased or even disappeared, so they thought that their feelings broke down and they had to divorce. This is extremely wrong. " [1 17] Based on physiology and psychology, he publicized the scientific theory of sex and pointed out that "sex is a biological, psychological and social phenomenon." [1 18] Love between two people cannot be separated from social relations and real life forever. Love supremacism takes the illusory ideal divorced from reality as the realistic standard, which is an unscientific attitude. If this concept is applied to society, it will cause all kinds of harm: "If it is applied to thought, it will become all kinds of metaphysical concepts. If it is applied to social reform, its fruit is all kinds of utopia or dogmatism. " [1 19] Therefore, he opposes young people's enthusiasm for romantic books such as Six Chapters of a Floating Life, and opposes taking the romantic marriage of Shen Fu and his wife as a model of real life, which is unrealistic and unscientific.
Thirdly, Pan Guangdan criticized "the advocacy of some scholars", which caused young people to read books such as Six Chapters of a Floating Life and advocated the individualistic view of marriage. These scholars mislead young people with an unscientific attitude.
Pan Guangdan's view of racial competition eugenics has a basic point, that is, the evolutionary competition of human beings is not completely passive dominated by natural fate, and people should not blindly follow the laws of biological evolution, but should have certain subjective initiative. People can use reason and experience to make choices suitable for the evolution of eugenics, so as to establish a marriage and family system that conforms to the principle of eugenics. Those who undertake the responsibility of building a new system and new concept must first master scientific knowledge and methods and assume social responsibilities, especially the responsibility of educating young people. However, "some scholars" preach to young people the individualistic view of marriage represented by Six Chapters of a Floating Life, which is contrary to the scientific spirit and irresponsible to society and young people. In his view, if young people have not experienced the practice of family life and don't understand the real situation of marriage and family, so there is an understandable side to the fantasy of love first, then it is particularly wrong for educators and intellectuals who have experienced the practice of family life and understand the real situation of marriage, have the responsibility to educate and guide young people to treat marriage and family problems with a scientific attitude, and advocate guiding young people's real life with unrealistic fantasies as the criterion.
In his comments on the marriage and family views of several educational celebrities from 65438 to 0930, he once focused on this issue. His comments originated from a news in Shen Bao, which reported that the Legislative Yuan of the National Government hosted a banquet for all members of the National Education Association. During the dinner, the host asked these educational elites about young people's views on surnames, marriage, family preservation and abolition. The report recorded the answers of eight people, including Cai Yuanpei, Jiang Menglin, Wu Zhihui, Li Shizeng, Zhang, etc. They were all the most prestigious and influential authorities in the education field at that time. However, apart from perfunctory jokes and ambiguities, the answers of these eight people can be roughly divided into two categories: first, they advocate or agree to abolish marriage and family, with Zhong Rongguang and Cai Yuanpei as the main points; Second, it is considered that it is impossible to abolish it immediately due to the limitation of practical conditions, but it will be abolished in the near future. For example, Jiang Menglin said it would be abolished after 50 years, and Li Shizeng said it was an inevitable trend. Pan Guangdan was very dissatisfied with the attitudes and views of these education authorities, so he wrote a commentary sharply criticizing their remarks and pointed out that "this criticism can be applied to other people who are eager for social reform." He criticized these educators for their lack of scientific attitude towards marriage and family issues. It is pointed out that these educational authorities, "in China where young people are concentrated in a few authorities today", are extremely lacking in the sense of social responsibility and the scientific attitude to discuss issues in their public speeches to answer formal questions at formal banquets held by the Legislative Yuan. They replied: "among these many words ... almost no one seems to want to solve social problems by scientific methods." [12 1] He believes that from the perspective of the organic evolution of human society and human experience, marriage and family will always exist in the foreseeable future, and there is no sign of inevitable destruction: "In theory, from the perspective of racial, social and cultural needs, or in fact, from the perspective of the experience gained in western countries, it seems to be the social system of marriage and family. [122] Therefore, in response to Cai Yuanpei's speech advocating abolishing marriage and family and designing an ideal village without marriage and family, he pointed out that Cai's "marriage ideal theory is really wonderful, but it doesn't work, but it is too difficult to integrate with society." [123] He criticized Cai Meier "as the head of the Institute of Social Studies of Academia Sinica, I believe I will never fail to understand this initial sociological wisdom" [124]. Pan Guangdan expressed great disgust at these educational authorities who are responsible for guiding teenagers, advocating the abolition of marriage and family in such an unscientific way, and talking about this important real social problem to the public in an irresponsible and rash way, believing that this is misleading teenagers and endangering society.
As can be seen from the above, whether he criticizes young people who are keen on reading Six Chapters of a Floating Life or "some scholars" (including advocates such as Yu and Lin) who advocate this kind of books and mislead young people, he points out a kind of * * * syndrome, that is, these people lack scientific attitudes and realistic understanding methods on marriage and family issues, which will lead to wrong views on marriage and family. He believes that scientific methods should be used to construct new family concepts and systems conducive to racial competition. So, what is the scientific method? He believes: "From the point of view of words, it is biological evolution; For the purpose of writing, the promotion of ethnic value accounts for more than half; In terms of words, emphasize facts and use frivolous words; As far as practical reform is concerned, we recognize that the old system has considerable value and should be used beneficially. " [125] Take biological evolution as the theory, race as the purpose, respect for facts as the method, and the existing system as the basis-this is the "scientific method" he advocates to understand marriage and family issues.
Then, through this "scientific method", what kind of marriage and family view did he get? He believes that the western concept of confrontation between individuals and groups has formed two extreme forms of individualism "small family theory" and socialism "no family theory" [126], both of which are biased and not conducive to racial competition. In his view, based on the reality in China, we should adopt the family concept of giving consideration to all groups and adopt a compromise family form, that is, a single-line family with the old, the strong and the young, and other adult children live apart but also support their parents. He believes that this is a sociologist's judgment that "looking forward is based on evolutionary facts, but looking back is based on gradual progress" and "not blinded by ideals and prejudice". [127] In fact, it was also a common family form of middle and lower class families at that time. In his view, the eclectic family system has two advantages: it is conducive to "the continuation of racial spirit and lineage", with "biological utility", and it is also conducive to "cultivating compassion and responsibility" and with "social utility". Compared with the old family system in China, it "abandoned the old family form, but did not damage its spirit of promoting love". [128] It can be seen that in family relations, he emphasizes the group interests such as "racial continuity" and "sympathy and responsibility" among family members, rather than personal happiness.
Pan Guangdan's interpretation of the phenomenon of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, through the above analysis of its triple meanings, can be seen that his thinking involves the theoretical basis and basic methods of building family values. In this sense, Pan Guangdan's explanation is more profound than Yu and Yu. In particular, he pointed out that as a cultural person with a sense of social responsibility, he should treat tradition with what purpose and attitude, study social problems, and convey it to society in what way. He pointedly pointed out the shortcomings of intellectuals and ordinary young people's lack of scientific attitude towards marriage and family problems at that time, and advocated understanding family problems with scientific attitude and establishing new family systems and concepts with scientific methods.
From today's perspective, the eclectic family form proposed by Pan Guangdan is basically applicable to the vast rural areas and some towns in China at that time and thereafter, that is, the pre-modern and incomplete modern society in which social welfare cannot solve the problem of providing for the aged. However, Pan Shi's view of family eugenics also overemphasizes the group interests of racial competition, emphasizes the eugenics of the later generations as the center, and ignores personal happiness and interests. After all, personal happiness and interests are the basic elements of industrialized civil society and the driving force and direction of the development of modern society. As the basic organization between individuals and society, the concept and institutional form of family is the result of the coordination of interests between individuals and groups under specific social conditions. As far as the family is concerned, how to coordinate personal happiness with social harmony and ethnic reproduction should be a process of constant adjustment according to different social conditions.
Conclusion: Comparison of three interpretation methods.
As can be seen from the above, Six Chapters of a Floating Life, an ordinary story of small family life, which was almost forgotten in the traditional era, has gained new vitality due to the changes in the value system and discourse system after the May 4th Movement. Yu Pingbo, Lin Yutang and Pan Guangdan are three representatives who reinterpret the book with new eyes. Because of their differences in value system and discourse system, the book is endowed with different symbolic meanings. From the standpoint of a young man in new literature, Yu Pingbo regarded it as a symbol of "personality liberation" from the perspective of enlightenment, and put it into the enlightenment discourse system of personality liberation-national self-improvement and gave it positive significance. Lin Yutang, on the other hand, takes it as a symbol of "leisure life" from the western perspective from the standpoint of a marginal cultural person in China and the West, and brings it into the discourse system of post-industrialization and nationalism, which also gives it positive significance from another angle. Pan Guangdan, on the other hand, from the standpoint of a sociologist, adopted the scientific method of eugenics as the symbol of "individualism marriage view", and brought it into the family concept system of racial competition and gave it negative significance. The three of them represented enlightenment, Westernism and Scientism, which were quite popular in the New Culture School in the 1920s and 1930s after the May 4th Movement. Their different interpretations of Six Chapters of a Floating Life reflected a folk tradition represented by this book, which had different meanings in the construction of these three modern family concepts, including some characteristics of the continuation and variation of tradition in modern concepts. Let's do a comparative analysis.
First of all, there are two similarities in their explanations:
First of all, they all changed the discourse of Six Chapters of a Floating Life from a new cultural perspective, thus transforming traditional elements into symbols of new concepts.
All three of them were born at the turn of the century, grew up during the May 4th Movement, received new education and participated in the New Culture Movement to varying degrees. They all have the background and ideological influence of the new cultural trend of thought, belong to a new generation of intellectuals, and form a new value system and discourse system completely different from the tradition. Compared with their previous generations of intellectuals, their generation has basically completed the "discourse transformation" from tradition to modernity. In terms of value system, they abandoned the traditional Confucian concept and replaced it with modernist values, such as Yu, Yan's value of advocating individuality and Pan Shiyi's scientific view, which are in line with modern democracy and scientific spirit. From the perspective of discourse system, they all consciously continue the concept of modernity and its expression originated from the West. Enlightenment, western perspective and scientific method all belong to the modern discourse system, which is completely different from China's traditional knowledge pedigree. From the cognitive standpoint, they also broke away from the traditional orientation of cultural "defending morality" and showed deep concern for national rejuvenation, which is also the same complex of intellectuals in the May 4th generation. It is in this new cultural perspective that they reinterpreted Six Chapters of a Floating Life, and the appearance and significance of Six Chapters of a Floating Life suddenly changed because of this "discourse transformation", from several meaningless trivial articles in the old perspective to a valuable new concept symbol.
But it is precisely because of this "discourse transformation" that the original intention of this book was misunderstood and distorted in their interpretation. A close look at their cognitive thinking dismembers the original meaning system of the book from a new cultural perspective, extracts some elements from it, and endows the new concept with symbolic meaning-personality liberation, leisure life or individualistic marriage view. Although this symbolic meaning has some overlap or seeming with the original text, it has also changed in nature because this element has been removed from the meaning system of the original text and added with some new meanings. After this "deterioration", it has been docked with new concept symbols and then placed in their respective new concept systems. But the tradition at this time is not the original tradition, but it is precisely because of the partial death of its original life that it is given a new life, which is a paradoxical fate that tradition continues in modern concepts. In this way, a tradition has gone through the process of element extraction-discourse transformation-deterioration-becoming a symbol of a new concept-and finally being brought into the new concept system. -This is their interpretation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, which provides us with a road map of how traditional elements can be revived and continued in modern ideas. In other words, tradition exists in modern concepts in the form of "variation". It should be said that in the construction of modern concepts, such a traditional way of continuation is quite common and has been followed in today's cultural construction. However, people who follow this method rarely follow it, so they often mistake the "deteriorated" tradition for the original tradition, thus causing some misunderstandings without knowing it, drawing some specious and rash conclusions and causing unnecessary disputes. Therefore, it is important to "mutate" the traditional factors. Yu, Lin and Pan provide us with examples for comparison and investigation.
Secondly, they all regard the folk tradition represented by Six Chapters of a Floating Life as the internal resource to construct new ideas, so that the modern family concept is rooted in the national tradition.
As new cultural figures in the May 4th Movement, their basic knowledge of constructing new ideas mainly comes from modern knowledge in the West. As for traditional culture, according to our previous general knowledge, they naturally have a resolute "anti-traditional" tendency consistent with the May 4th Movement. However, from their interpretation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, we can see that they are not anti-traditional or anti-all-traditional. At least one tradition represented by Six Chapters of a Floating Life obviously does not belong to the "opposition" in their new concept construction, but is an internal cultural resource (Pan Shi's "opposition" is also a "protection" component). In fact, in their traditional cultural reserves, although there is a line of orthodox Confucianism that has been included in the ranks of the "opposition", there is also a line of folk traditions that used to be heretical and subordinate, and it is this latter line that they are close to, tolerant of, even use and appreciate, and become their knowledge resources for building new ideas.
It was no accident that they met Six Chapters of a Floating Life. It can be seen from a large number of words left by them that they all have a strong interest in folk traditional culture and have read many books on this subject. Yu Pingbo first published Six Chapters of a Floating Life, and later devoted his life to the secular novel A Dream of Red Mansions. Obviously, folk culture has become his shelter. Lin Yutang, a foreign scholar, is regarded as the essence of China culture with the "enlightenment" of Meng Jiangnv's story and the special introduction of folk culture. Unofficial history's novels are often quoted in his speeches, which shows his preference for folk culture. Pan Guangdan, who sticks to the scientific standpoint, criticizes young people for reading books such as Six Chapters of a Floating Life, but takes unofficial history in Ming and Qing Dynasties as the starting material for psychological research, and quotes more than 100 kinds of old note novels in Annotation on Sexual Psychology [129], which shows his familiarity and accumulation of folk culture. All these show that the three of them have a common interest in folk culture, which is an important knowledge resource for them to construct new ideas. It is the excavation and utilization of folk cultural resources that enable them to find modern ideas in tradition and continue to take root in national culture. Throughout the cultural circles from the May 4th Movement to the 1930s and 1940s, there was a craze for folk culture. Many famous scholars took folk culture as their research materials, such as the textual research of the biography of awakening the world by Hu Shi, the biography of Liu Bie by China scholar Chen, and even the popularity of the interpretation and textual research of A Dream of Red Mansions, which showed that this period was new.
After the May 4th Movement, new intellectuals turned from "interpreting classics" to "interpreting customs", which was an important academic turn in the academic history of China. This turn has its own reasons. Because the folk cultural tradition based on secular life is closer to human nature and is interlinked with modern cultural spirit. Therefore, after Confucianism, which fetters human nature, has been abandoned, folk culture, as its opposite, has become the lifeblood of modernity and national culture, and it is logical for new cultural people to use it as an internal knowledge resource to construct new concepts and new cultures. Therefore, the May 4th intellectuals were labeled as "anti-traditional" by later generations. In a sense, it is a misjudgment to think that only orthodox Confucianism is a tradition. In fact, they have helped and continued the folk cultural traditions that were in a lower position in the past. It can be seen that in the construction of modern new culture and new concepts, in addition to the external main knowledge resource of western culture, folk cultural tradition should be another internal cultural resource that cannot be ignored, although its position is slightly inferior. People ignored this point in the past. As for the elements in this folk tradition, which elements are interlinked with modern concepts and what influence they have on the construction of China's modern concepts, this is a subject worthy of in-depth investigation.
In addition to the above sex, the three of them have two different interpretations of Six Chapters of a Floating Life because of their different backgrounds, educational background, knowledge structure, social roles, values and personal hobbies:
First of all, the three of them have different cognitive differences on the symbolic meaning of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, which is because of their different values and family views.
The three of them have formed a relatively mature new family view when reading Six Chapters of a Floating Life, but their value cores are different, thus forming different horizons. When reading this book from different perspectives, they will extract different contents to symbolize it and give it different meanings. Thus, the same text presents them with three different images: in Yu Pingbo's case, it is an example of "personality extension", in Lin Yutang's case, it is a "leisurely life", and in Pan Guangdan's case, it is a specimen of the opposition between "ethnic survival" and "individualistic family view". From their different interpretations of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, we can see that the symbolic significance of tradition in their modern concept construction is determined by their value core and cognitive vision. After this "horizon" filtering, the traditional original text has changed in meaning. It can be seen that the difference in their interpretation and cognition of this tradition is not because of the text itself that carries traditional information, but because of their different horizons. Therefore, it is the key to understand how tradition continues in modern concepts and the structure of cognitive horizon-filter net.
Secondly, the three have different ways of understanding, which leads to different variations in the symbolic meaning of Six Chapters of a Floating Life.
Yu Pingbo's promotion of Six Chapters of a Floating Life is intended to publicize the May 4th Enlightenment spirit of "personality liberation", so when he saw this book, he lamented that it was "a wonderful propaganda article". He consciously compared this book with the symbol of "personality liberation" based on enlightenment, and expounded and publicized it. However, this comparative clause confuses the difference between Shen Fu's dependent "personality extension" and his concept of personality liberation based on modern human rights consciousness, thus blurring the core of human rights consciousness of the new concept of personality liberation. Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life aims to show the "advantages" of China culture to westerners. He introduced this book to westerners, calling it a model of China people's "leisure life" centered on the west. Although this interpretation is very suitable for Americans caught in the busy life of industrialization and sold back to China, it is misplaced in the context. Pan Guangdan's quotation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life is based on scientism and is regarded as a model of individualistic family view harmful to "racial competition". However, his interpretation also emphasizes scientific rationality, which leads to a weak sense of humanistic care and ignores personal interests and feelings. Although their enlightenment approach, western perspective and scientific method have made some valuable explorations on the symbolic meaning of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, there are still three defects: simple comparison, misplaced context and biased instrumental rationality, which represent the gains and losses of these three approaches to tradition. These three kinds of reasoning methods were popular cultural cognitive methods at that time, and their influence on the continuation, gains and losses of tradition also deserves our further study.
Today, it has been 200 years since Shen Fu wrote Six Chapters of a Floating Life with tears, and decades since Yu, Lin and Pan interpreted Six Chapters of a Floating Life. After being forgotten in Chinese mainland for decades, Six Chapters of a Floating Life has been popular again in recent ten years. According to the author's preliminary statistics, from 1980 to 2003, the book has been reprinted in more than 40 editions in publishing houses all over the country [130], which can be regarded as the second hot print after the May 4th Movement. If the mainstream of the May 4th Movement is mainly in line with the symbolic meaning of Yu Pingbo's "personality liberation" enlightenment, then considering the fact that Lin Yutang's books were also printed at the same time, the interpretation of Lin's "leisure life" seems to be more suitable for China people who are trapped in the busy life of industrial civilization. Obviously, compared with the China people Lin Yutang faced at that time, the situation of China people today has undergone fundamental changes. The dislocation of the context at that time seems right today. It can be seen that the tradition existing in the concept of later generations will change its meaning with the passage of time. No matter the text or the interpretation of the text, it will only have a specific meaning in a specific context. However, the tradition that has been carried on in later generations' ideas only has the significance of the times in people's context and interpretation at that time. Tradition can only be revived as a new symbol of meaning with the help of this change of context. In the past, the tradition continued its life through the later deduction of "variation", and its meaning will change with the change of context. Therefore, it can be said that the tradition in the concept of later generations only lives in the current interpretation, and its significance depends on the subject, context and mechanism of interpretation.