ABSTRACT
From Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全) to Kang Youwei (康有为) and Liang Qichao (梁启超), and further to Sun Yat-sen (孙中山), and finally to Li Dazhao (李大钊), social ideals in early modern China experienced a long-lasting change process from the utopian to the scientific. This chapter argues that Li Dazhao is one of those who decisively strove for a significant epochal change in social ideals in early modern China. Li’s social ideal was focused on the liberation of mankind. On the basis of the mutual transformation of mind and material, social change and development should be united with the development of mankind, and a politics based on supervision of the people would be changed into a politics based on management of materials. The outline of his social ideal was the principle that unites humanism and socialism. Concretely, it included a fourfold aspect: “democratic politics,” “the unity of individual freedom and public solidarity,” “cosmopolitanism,” and “the system concerning women.” The basic spirit and principle of this social ideal were still a major inspiration for the Chinese socialistic modernization of the present and for the dialogue between civilizations and cultural globalization in the 21st century.
