ABSTRACT
IN THEIR QUEST FOR NATIONAL SALVATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT, NEW Culture intellectuals stressed the importance of independence. A truly enlightened individual needed to be independent from social and intellectual oppression and subservience. An enlightened person would never consent to an arranged marriage, would never sacrifice his or her own happiness for the sake of the clan, and would never blindly follow a belief system without personal conviction. Independence was also at the base of nationalism. The Chinese nation, New Culture thinkers believed, had to be independent from foreign domination, and free to determine its own political, economic, and cultural systems. Of course, an underlying tension exists between individual independence and national independence. To keep China strong and free from foreign control required a commitment to the nation and a degree of sacrifice by each citizen. Many intellectuals of the 1920s had to face this inherent contradiction, choosing at times to privilege one type of independence over the other.
