This article is from "Reading" magazine, written by Zhu Shangtong

In 08, Mr. Chen Lemin, a European scholar in China and a member of the Honorary Department of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, passed away, and I forwarded the obituary sent by Mr. Zi Zhongyun to Mr. Han Gang, a scholar of party history, and received an E-mail from Han Gang the next day. He said: "I am not familiar with Mr. Chen Lemin and Mr. Zi Zhongyun, but I have great respect for them. They are true intellectuals in terms of knowledge and personality, and their co-authorship "Cold Eyes to the Ocean" has always been one of the must-read books I assign to my students (I am afraid it has become the swan song of their couple's collaboration?). ）。 Mr. Chen's sudden departure to the west may be transcendent to him, but it leaves the living with grief and eternal nostalgia. There is one more pure soul in heaven, and one less upright scholar in the world. I don't know whether to congratulate Heaven or lament the earth. ”

These words seem to be very ordinary, but they make me realize. This reminds me of Mr. Zhongyun's article "Where is the Bones of a Generation Today" written last year by Mr. Zhongyun, which reviews Xu Baike's book "Those People in the Republic of China". In ancient times, there was a "Jian'an style and bones", which was about the text, and the "generation of wind bones" referred to by Mr. Zhongyun focused on people, which was the "soul" of a kind of scholar. I think that the kind of style that Mr. Zhongyun's article refers to is not also the most appropriate recommendation and commemoration of Mr. Lemin by her fifty-one years of sorrow and happiness!

In China over the past few decades, according to my experience as a biochemistry scholar who has worked in colleges and universities for many years, it is indeed difficult to integrate Chinese and Western ideas and learning, to be independent, not to follow customs, not to be kitsch, not to bend down because of power, interests, favors, and adversity, not to go with the unspoken rules, and to insist on guarding the word "shi". Han Gang's statement that Mr. Chen is "a true intellectual" is from this height, and it is a later generation of party history scholars who remember a European scholar's favorite memory.

Mr. Lemin is both fair and accessible to people, things and knowledge, and takes sincerity as his life, and is awe-inspiring and modest, and consistently is the May Fourth spirit of democracy and science. In a letter to a friend printed at the end of 2005, he and Mr. Zhongyun said: "Looking out from the Burrow ("Fang Guyuan Burrow", Mr. Lemin's house), this society, the world, is constantly worrying, and these worries often flow through the pen. He also said: "I still keep the comparative study of Chinese and Western history and culture in order to deepen the understanding of the Western 'enlightenment' movement on the rejuvenation of a nation through comparison, and those who are in their hearts often feel that our country and our people still need enlightenment." In another article, he said more urgently: "Our country and our people should not forget for a moment the mission left by Mr. De and Mr. Sai, which is the mission and vocation of our whole nation." The year 2005, when he was suffering from uremia and was on four-hour hemodialysis three times a week, had entered his eighth year, and he was still the way to rejuvenate the nation. Paraphrasing Bai Juyi and Yuan Jiushu, we can see that he "walks high and noble, aspires to help both, and always serves the spirit of May Fourth as the Tao, and invents the words as the text". Han Gang said that he "suddenly went west, and he may be detached from him", and he understands Mr. Lemin from the text. Mr. Lemin claimed to be the same as Mr. Hu Cheng, forty and confused, confused but incomprehensible, and hung for thirty years. Wait until

In the middle and late stages of the "Cultural Revolution", once we realized and sought solutions, we naturally shouldered the burden of responsibility of a "real intellectual" for this "constantly worrying" society.

He didn't want to seek detachment and leisure, but he really couldn't let go of our nation. In May 1998, he was admitted to Union Hospital for the fourth time, because he had a bloody fistula on his right wrist after long-term dialysis, he could only write a small block letter, recording Mr. Dongpo's words of "fixing the storm", and the inscription after the words was cloudy: "Dongpo encounters heavy rain, don't listen to the forest beating leaves, chanting and roaring, there is no obstacle to ups and downs, the mountain is obliquely shining, the mood is calm, and the life is like this." In the decade after writing this inscription in the near 70th year, more than a dozen books were published, either focusing on the broad and profound European culture, or pondering the process of China's modernization. After he left, "perhaps detached", Mr. Zhongyun and his daughter Chen Feng checked the bags, manuscripts and notes he left behind, and still published several books; The spring silkworm is not finished, and when Mr. Lemin passes away, he is still unfinished.

Yes, due to the absurdity of history, although he was not later than Confucius, he silently wasted the best thirty years of his life. As he himself said, he admired his predecessors' systematic, extensive knowledge and foundation of Chinese and Western cultures, which he could not match. In terms of many aspects of his research, there have been pioneers in the academic field of Chinese thought for more than 100 years, such as Guo Songtao and Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, Hu Shi, Chen Xujing, Zhang Dongsun, Lei Haizong, and more recent thinker Gu Zhun. Mr. Lok Man belongs to the generation of inheritance and transition. He studied Europe, grew up in European thought and the history of European civilization, and his heart was concerned with our traditional culture and modernization, as well as his views on the two heterogeneous cultures of China and the West, and the final point was how our suffering and bumpy nation needed continuous and effective enlightenment. Obviously, these are all issues that have been raised for a hundred years, and some of them have been initially sorted out by the sages, and it is not difficult to deepen them. However, in modern and contemporary China, these issues are all of a special sensitivity, and because they are fixed on one figure, they have been pestered for decades from theory to practice.

The "Cultural Revolution" is over, and China's most promising older generation has withered away, while a few survivors are struggling to show their afterglow, Mr. Le Min immediately pursued the Southwest Associated University and Yannan Park (old) Tsinghua Park...... has written a large number of books and articles that have put forward many new insights into these old issues. Of course, this is first of all due to the abundant nutrition given to him by these sages, but also because the times are different after all. Chen Xujing, Zhang Dongsun and other gentlemen were indeed scholars who stood at the height of the world trend in those days, but most of them did not fully experience the vicissitudes of the Republic in the past few decades. Gu Zhun, a great thinker, has never experienced the biggest new "rise" in the country's reform and opening up 30 years, let alone knows the problems and hidden worries that have arisen in such a "rise". As far as the world is concerned, there have also been a series of unforeseen changes in the past half century, capitalism is no longer the capitalism we understood in the past, and socialism is not at all the socialism of the Stalinist model that we understood and practiced back then.

Times are different, and problems are naturally different. It is true that the previous generation of well-educated people had a deeper Chinese cultural heritage, and after the influence of systematic European wind and rain, they knew well what China's problems were. Mr. Lemin, the transitional generation, also has its own advantages. In particular, they have seen with their own eyes the new democratism that the Chinese people have pinned their hopes on, but just because of their personal cadredom and arbitrariness, they have regressed to utopian and anti-historical fake "socialism" and "communism" for no reason, and engaged in a disastrous 10-year "Cultural Revolution"; Since then, he has experienced the joys and sorrows of reform and opening up and "rise", so he has better understood how difficult it is to truly realize democracy and science in China; Knowing how tenacious the imperial absolutism in the Chinese cultural tradition is, and how the vested interests keep pace with the times to maintain and strengthen the core of the autocracy by filling old wine in new bottles whenever the reform takes a step forward. Mr. Lemin witnessed this qiē, and he could understand better than his predecessors that China is China and Europe is Europe in such a "big history". Of course, these two generations of scholars are good at combining China and the West, tradition and modernity, breaking through the old norms of separating "body" and "use" that have been followed for a century from their own academic and practical practices, and exploring ways to use the essence of Western civilization to transform China, and at the same time integrate the essence of Chinese civilization into world civilization.

What attracted me most about Mr. Lemin's article was the depth of history, that is, the perspective that penetrates history, coupled with the perspective of globalization and the ubiquitous Chinese complex. In his writing, history can also be definitively explained in terms of intellectual, cultural and social development. For example, he said that the transformation of England from a monarchy to a people's sovereignty (including the people's sovereignty of the hypocrite) was finally completed from the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries to the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, step by step, gradually. "Whether it is material civilization, spiritual civilization, or political civilization, it is bound to be a process, and it is not something that can be done all at once." "The Industrial Revolution in Britain was not so much an industrial revolution as a summary of centuries of technological development." He further said of China: "We sometimes build a 'system' at every turn, and the establishment of a 'system' is step-by-step and gradual. What a sense of historical vicissitudes this sentence has!

He said that one of the great achievements of Hegel's philosophy of history was to uncover the surface of historical experience and bring to the surface the "history of the spirit", which is indeed the wisdom and profundity of the philosopher. This spiritual world, he thought, "is the spirit of freedom and democracy that originated from the two Greek civilizations, passed through the Roman Christian civilization, to the Anglo-Saxon positivist and empirical philosophy, and then derived into the 'Anglo-American tradition'." On the European continent, it was classical

The 'civilized tradition' and the experience of the United Kingdom, through the climax of the Enlightenment, converged into modern democratic ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, and republicanism. It is no exaggeration to say that in the nineteenth century liberal thought and democratic institutions encompassed Europa and North America, forming what I would call 'the Atlantic system of culture (or civilization, or thought'. And I think that it can be summed up as "liberalism". It is not a theory first, it is not first thought out of the mind a priori by some "elite", it is purely born from experience. In other words, there is "freedom" first, and then it develops into "ism".

Since the 19th century, the spirit of democratic reform has spread across national boundaries to the whole world. If you look at the world today, no matter what kind of social system it is, no matter what stage it is in, how antagonistic the relations between states are, how irrational, fierce and fanatical the conflicts between religions and sects are, who can openly reject freedom and democracy as the sacred and rational spirit of mankind? Of course, there will still be true and false, false and false, in today's world.

In short, he concludes that the "European spirit" or Western civilization is the rational path of the development of human society, which in essence points out the "direction of world history". Mr. De and Mr. Sai Er, who were put forward during the May Fourth period, are highly refined to the "European spirit", and what "European wind and beautiful rain" reaches, condensed and condensed, is "democracy and science". This is the path that mankind has taken since the fifteenth century through rational scientific thinking and practice, and this path can be said to be vividly remembered in the "history of the spirit".

When we talk about Europe in the 20th century, we cannot talk about European "integration" without it. Mr. Lemin believes that this is a great innovation of Europeans, and it is a major innovation in Europe's transition from idealism to empiricism in the 20th century, and it should not be underestimated. This ideal can be traced back centuries to the Roman Empire, and now the "European Union" has to go back in time every time it wants to pass an important document. It is impossible for Africa and Asia to form an alliance of so many countries with independence, sovereignty, freedom, equality, human rights, constitutionalism, and rule of law, which have been formed for a long time, and they all consider themselves to be Europeans, and there is a cohesive effect of feelings, and their union is not only a government act, but also has its own origin in culture.

The European values of freedom and humanitarianism are indeed deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and can be seen from another example. Why did Eastern Europe undergo drastic changes in 1989 before the collapse of the Soviet Union? On the one hand, the Soviet Union was too busy to take care of itself, lost its ability to control, and the autocratic government of Eastern Europe was unpopular; On the other hand, despite being under the control of the Soviet Union for a long time and indoctrinating with ideology for so many years, I am sorry, the brains of Eastern Europeans are still the brains of European civilization (but the further east they go, the weaker they become), and the tide of people has washed down the Berlin Wall, which shows the depth of the influence of the European spirit. So Europe is not only a political, economic Europe, but first and foremost a Europe with a specific history and culture. Some even believe that the experience of the "European Union" is a "prototype" of a "world government" in the distant future. It shows that the EU does leave room for imagination.

Mr. Lemin has received a more systematic traditional cultural education in his family, primary and secondary schools, and his cultivation of Chinese culture is also a leader in his generation. I don't understand painting, I just think it's quite bookish; His handwriting, showing off on the outside and being sharp in the middle, is really understanding and can really write. I have a few letters from him in hand, all of which are small and meticulous. In 1998, due to uremia, he was instantly dizzy and unconscious during dialysis, and after his recovery, he painted a page of a picture album full of grass and flowers, the only one is chrysanthemums (fragrant grass full of garden), and another small poem was inscribed:

Yong Lao encouraged himself

The retort has been broken, and the condition is now old and decrepit.

Fu Ji only writes about it, and there is spare time to make ink.

The square inch contains the heaven and the earth, and the gods are immortals.

Mulberry elm is late, and the grass is full of garden.

Painting chrysanthemums, and using mulberry elm to night, is intended to be outside the painting, not at all "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence" leisurely. This poem and painting can very well express his state of mind during his illness and his foundation in Chinese studies.

Mr. Lemin said that in the 90s of the 20th century, he found that he had an irresolvable contradiction between emotion (traditional Chinese culture) and rationality (for the development of human society). He asked himself:

"Am I a 'national nihilist'? The answer was 'No'. I have a great affection for our traditions, especially when there is a conflict between tradition and modern civilization, and my feelings are often on the side of tradition. But intellectually, I can't honestly admit that China's traditional culture, or that China's 'cultural tradition' does not prescribe science and democracy; It did not lead to modernization, this is a historical fact. ”

He thinks that it is easy to fall into the practical view of "useful" or "useless" in evaluating culture today, because modernization is a major national event, it is easy and relatively natural to take whether it can lead to "modernization" as the only yardstick, so he insists that Chinese tradition can lead to "modernization" to prove that it is "useful"; Or, starting from "national self-esteem", it is insisted that the concept of modernization is inherent in China, and even that it has long existed in traditional Chinese culture

The genes of "market economy" and "democratic, law-based, and rule-based" are opposed to the view that modernization originated from the West, and we think that in this way we can justify ourselves with peace of mind.

Mr. Lemin believes that "the essence of traditional Chinese culture does not lie in whether it can be linked to modernization, but in the spiritual power and value of its connotation." "Chinese traditional culture is vast and subtle, engraved with traces of the vicissitudes of a long history; Its profound and far-reaching philosophy, unique aesthetic value and certain moral sentiments that can be inherited abstractly are all valuable spiritual wealth. For intellectuals, it also represents some excellent cultural literacy, and whether a scholar has this literacy or not is very different. But when it comes to modernization and the future of humanity, our cultural traditions are powerless.

Mr. Lemin agreed with Professor Pang Pu and Mr. Li Shenzhi that "traditional culture" and "cultural tradition" are two related but distinct concepts, and made further analysis.

More specific, for example, our ancient cultural relics, literature, paintings, history, etc. are all "traditional culture". "Cultural tradition" is a kind of political or moral "Taoism" formed on the basis of these cultures, mainly "political culture". What are the characteristics of this "cultural tradition"? In short, it is "authoritarianism" from the top down and "subjectism" from the bottom up. The problem lies in this kind of political culture, which has been precipitated by thousands of years of feudal autocracy, and political culture can often determine a social form.

China's history is different from that of the West, and before the middle of the eighteenth century, China's productive forces and production relations have never undergone breakthrough changes, let alone changed the cultural traditions that are compatible with the feudal patriarchal autocratic society. The West is changing century by century, and China is a self-cycle of dynasties, outside of the changes in the world, in a state of stagnation. In a word, it is impossible for the Chinese empire to produce its own modern and modern history from its own soil. Until the encounter with the West in the middle of the eighteenth century, Chinese society, including the state of human thought, remained in antiquity. Mr. Feng Youlan said the most wonderful: "In China's modern history, the so-called distinction between East and West is actually the difference between ancient and modern. Focusing on middle schools, the meaning of Western studies is actually based on the ancient to interpret the present; Focusing on Western learning, the meaning of the middle school is actually to interpret the past from the present. "At the moment when China and the West meet, China represents the past, while the West represents the present. It was only in the process of encountering and clashing with the West and absorbing Western civilization that China made the transition to modern and modern history. Kang Youwei understands this truth, he said in the "Book of the Emperor": "If the earth is not cleared, Taixi will not come, although the rate of the next thousand years will not change." Mr. Lemin went on to say:

"From the perspective of the general trend of the world, the 'Pacific Ocean' belongs to the side affected by the 'Atlantic Ocean'; such an assertion is not just a casual statement, but from the perspective of the history of the development of human civilization, it can be understood by opening the map and looking at it." Mr. Pi Mingju gave a lecture at the Southwest Associated University and said that we must conscientiously study Chinese history, otherwise we will not know why China is great, and we must conscientiously study world history, otherwise we will not know why China is backward. This is all determined by historical and cultural facts, and there are no emotional factors such as "praise and disapproval". Academic and theoretical matters must be calm and based on historical and realistic facts. Mr. Lemin quoted Mr. Guangyuan as saying: "It is possible to compromise politically, but theoretically it is impossible to compromise. This is what he followed all his life.

These truths are clear, and the reason why China has always lagged behind others is also clear about the inexorable complex shared by Chinese intellectuals, that is, it needs enlightenment, it needs democracy and science, and it needs to transform its own culture and system that cannot adapt to "modernization" and globalization. Since Zhang Zhidong proposed that "middle school is the body, Western learning is for use", and the body and the two are separated, it has been more than a century, and after careful consideration, China has always honestly acted in accordance with Zhang Zhijun's "eight-character motto", and rarely derailed. A hundred years ago, Yan Fu said early that middle schools have the body of middle schools and the use of middle schools; Western learning has the body of Western learning, and the use of Western learning, "body" and "use" are inseparable. Both democracy and science are imported products to China, and they can only be "transplanted" and "grafted", and since they are "transplanted" and "grafted", they are bound to have all kinds of unadaptability and unnaturalness in a considerable historical period, that is, there are many unexpected problems and difficulties.

Mr. Lemin said that these are ordinary principles, but it is necessary to explain them categorically, write them down, and use reason to overcome the aforementioned contradiction between feelings and reason, as well as to overcome the feelings of ultra-nationalism. Mr. Lemin made it clear: "I once agreed that 'the 21st century is the Chinese century', that it is the century of 'Eastern culture' or 'Chinese culture', and that one day the crisis of Western culture will depend on 'Eastern culture' to 'send' and so on." However, these ideas did not stay in my mind for long, and I quickly rejected them. ”

Mr. Lemin believes that in order to understand Europe and the world, Marx's theory must not be bypassed, and Marx's theory is the culmination of the wealth of Western culture. Since Marx's politics and economics are fundamentally opposed to the capitalist social system, Marxism is often regarded as the doctrine of proletarian revolution and dictatorship. However, there is one point that is often overlooked, that is, Marx and Engels maximized and embraced the core of traditional European civilization in terms of philosophical concepts, namely humanism and freedom. Thus they saw the humanistic outlook of communism as a "commonwealth of free men." Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "commonwealth of free men" seem contradictory, but they are unified in Marx's ideas, the former as the means to the latter. Marx pursued a happy world without class freedom, so communism is the broadest humanism. The difference is that Marxism advocates the realization of this goal through the proletarian revolution.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the world has undergone changes that are very different from those of the 19th century, and some of the radical arguments that Marx came up with based on the situation and thinking at that time could not be adapted to the new shape. The influence of Marxism has declined markedly in the era of the industrial revolution and the information revolution. The current reality in Europe or the West is, to put it bluntly, that the capitalist world is even less proletarian revolutionary than it was at the beginning of the last century, when Bernstein revised Marxism. Although crises are constantly occurring in the West, no matter how severe and acute the crises are, even if they can cause a "whirlpool" of great storms, they will no longer be able to trigger a "proletarian revolution."

Mr. Lok Min said that Marx, in his essay "The Future Results of Great Britain's Rule in India," said that Britain had to accomplish a dual task in India. The first task is devastating, destroying the old and outdated system. The second is to build a new system based on Western material civilization on the basis of destroying the old system. This article was written in 1853, after the defeat of the European Revolution of 1848. Marx was honestly a "Westernist", and the reality he saw before him was that the Western bourgeoisie was creating a new world, as is made clear in the three passages of the Communist Manifesto quoted below.

The opening sentence of the Communist Manifesto: "A ghost, the specter of communism, hovers in Europe", a famous phrase full of revolutionary poetry that has been recited for more than 100 years. However, what Mr. Lemin values most is the following paragraphs:

The bourgeoisie, by opening up the world market, has made the production and consumption of a country cosmopolitan...... The self-sufficiency and self-isolation of localities and nations in the past has been replaced by intercourse and interdependence among all ethnic groups. This is true of the production of matter, and so is the production of spirit. The spiritual products of all nations have become the property of the public. The one-sidedness and limitations of the nation became increasingly impossible, and so ...... A kind of literature of the world was formed.

The bourgeoisie, due to the rapid improvement of the means of production, and the extreme convenience of transportation, swept a qiē nation and even the most barbarous nation into civilization. …… It compels a qiē nation - if they do not want to perish - to adopt a bourgeois way of life; It forces them to impose a civilized system on their own, that is, to become bourgeoisie. In a word, it creates a world for itself in its own image.

The bourgeoisie subjugated the countryside to the domination of the cities. It created huge cities, greatly increased the urban population compared to the rural population, and thus freed a large part of the population from the ignorance of rural life. Just as it subordinated the countryside to the cities, it subordinated the uncivilized and semi-civilized countries to the civilized nations, the peasant nations to the bourgeois nations, and the East to the West.

Mr. Lemin thinks that by reading these words repeatedly and patiently, Ma and En are not only writing about the situation in the mid-nineteenth century, but also about "globalization" that is on their lips today. Marx saw the irrepressible power of economic factors to drive world development, and on the other hand, he saw that this trend would inevitably bring about new social inequalities. Marx knew that these developments led by the West would inevitably lead the uncivilized to civilization, the countryside to the cities, and the East to the West. Marx, as a great thinker recognized by the world in the nineteenth century, was aware of the contradiction between development and equality in his thought, and his attitude towards the Paris Commune was also a reflection of this contradiction.

For example, he pointed out that Marx's theory "lasted until the end of the 19th century, and was always developing and innovating, and it was full of vitality." However, the course or destiny of Marxism in the 20th century has been very treacherous due to the interference of the actual government, and it has been used by politicians to promote their own intentions in its name, so it has been used, distorted, divided and transformed; So much so that it has to bear the responsibility for causing all kinds of evil in its name. Marx's doctrine was supposed to be open, developing, and able to accommodate and absorb something valuable. But for a long time it was blocked, along with his vast number of unpublished manuscripts containing profound ideological content. There is probably no one in history who has been so artificially manipulated and ridiculed as Marx and his doctrines."

In a long letter to me dated August 16, 2008, Mr. Lemin talked about the study of Marx. He said that he was not a "political scholar", but a "scholar", with a different angle. He tends to see Marx as a member of the history of Western thought, and that Marx is "one family", not the only one. In the sixties, he once attended Premier Zhou's reception of foreign guests, and Premier Zhou suddenly said to the Chinese in the audience that they should study Aquinas well, but why? Zhou didn't say. It wasn't until the 80s that I looked for it and read it, and found that Aquinas had partially stripped the understanding of "man" from "God". "From there, I followed the path of Kant and Marx's 'man is the end, not the means', and I later understood that the understanding of man is an indispensable line of understanding in the history of Western thought. From this, I consciously opened my eyes, this is the nineties, the years have passed, and it is possible to die at the end of the day. ”

The deceased is gone, and Mr. Lemin has left with his unfulfilled wish that "Mr. De and Mr. Sai should not be forgotten for a moment". After his death, I have always felt that today, scholars and mentors who have a comprehensive and systematic understanding of China and the West, and a comprehensive and systematic understanding of China and the West, have really gone one less than one. For China's deep-seated academic plan, I can't help but worry about it.

According to Mr. Zi Zhongyun, scholars like Fei Xiaotong already feel that there is a gap with his teacher Pan Guangdan, and not only in terms of learning. Chen Lemin and Mr. Zi Zhongyun, who were later than Fei Xiaotong, also said that there was an irreparable gap between them and their predecessors Chen Xujing, Lei Haizong, Zhang Dongsun, Feng Youlan and others, and also said that their generation had been in the sea, although they could not reach it, they still knew where to look at it. These are truth-seeking and honest words. Now go one less and come down, who does it depend on for survival?

In this regard, Sister Zhongyun said, I look forward to the early emergence of an environment in which knowledge and feelings are no longer fettered, and that several contemporary talented, knowledgeable, and aspiring young people will be able to pitch freely and give full play before their edges are rounded.

Brother Lemin quoted Ding'an poem: "Falling red is not a ruthless thing, turning into spring mud is more protective of flowers", which implies expectations for the future. It is my sincere hope that we will live in a brighter and brighter sunshine.