Mr. Liang Shuming (1893-1988), formerly known as Huanding, styled as Shouming, also styled as Shuming, was later known as Shuming.Born in Beijing, his ancestral home is Guilin, Guangxi. He graduated from Shuntian Middle School and then taught himself.One of the early representatives of modern Chinese thinkers, professors, social activists, and modern New Confucianism. He taught at the Philosophy Department of Peking University from 1917 to 1924, and engaged in rural construction activities from 1930 to 1937. During the Anti-Japanese War in the 1940s, he worked for national affairs and sought domestic unity.His major works include: Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophy, Rural Construction Theory, Essentials of Chinese Culture, Human Heart and Life, etc.Guy Salvatore Alitto, who received a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1975, is currently a professor of history at the University of Chicago.Author of "The Last Confucianism", "Ten Years of Rural Construction in Nanjing", "Worldwide Anti-Modern Thought Trends", etc.Yidan Academy is a non-profit non-governmental public welfare organization dedicated to learning, recognizing and popularizing China's excellent traditional culture. In December 2000, young students from capital universities including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Minzu University of China, Beijing Normal University, and Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences participated in the establishment in Beijing.It is mainly committed to promoting traditional culture, invigorating national spirit, improving social atmosphere, purifying individual souls, popularizing basic Chinese, and promoting Chinese ideas.

Eating well, sleeping well, walking well, talking well, this is called "respect".Respect means not stealing, not presumptuous.Respect is in the heart.Respect means neither chasing objects nor relics.From respect to prudence, to enter independence, this is also the learning of Mr. Wu.If you chase things, you will lose your mind, and if you keep all your belongings, you will lose your mind.It's just that you can see your mind when you see things, but your mind doesn't follow things. Liang Shuming said: Man is not small, but miserable; misery is subject to himself (control and subjection are one).Smallness is the most erroneous view.When did you transcend selfishness, when did you transcend insignificance.Who is invincible?is life.What is overcome?is matter.Life is the heart, and it is the expression of the heart in the things, and it is the struggle between the mind and the things.History (the history of the universe) has always been a struggle between the heart and the object, performed countless times, step by step, conquering the object, relying on the object, and utilizing the object.Only when we deeply understand ourselves and have a way with ourselves can we avoid and surpass unwiseness and inferiority. ——This is the deepest knowledge, and the highest is the great ability or skill.However, it is not known to Western scientists who blindly pursue things.Economic life disperses people's minds and unites people's bodies.Politics forms group confrontation and divides frontiers and borders.Today's world problems are shaped by Western culture.The only way to avoid the destruction of mankind is to turn to Chinese culture.The current situation of China's problem is the result of blindly learning from the West.In order to ease the deadlock and achieve unification, we must correct the two mistakes of demarcation and use of force, and the starting point is to transcend the two major barriers of the world.Anxiety and covetousness reveal the humbleness of human beings; salivation with envy reveals the ugliness of human beings; being impatient, troubled and sorrowful reveals the uselessness of human beings.Learning is about solving problems, and true learning is about solving your own problems.

Eating well, sleeping well, walking well, talking well, this is called "respect".Respect means not stealing, not presumptuous.Respect is in the heart.Respect means neither chasing objects nor relics.From respect to prudence, to enter independence, this is also the learning of Mr. Wu.If you chase things, you will lose your mind, and if you keep all your belongings, you will lose your mind.It's just that you can see your mind when you see things, but your mind doesn't follow things. Guy S. Alitto, a professor at the University of Chicago, is the author of The Last Confucian—Liang Shuming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity.In order to confirm the facts, Ai revised the book's inaccuracies and details. In August 1980, he came to China to interview Mr. Liang Shuming, and had more than ten long talks.

During the conversation, Liang discussed the cultural characteristics and representative figures of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, involving many political and cultural celebrities (Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Chiang Kai-shek, Kang Youwei, Zhang Taiyan, Hu Shi, Feng Youlan...), and reviewed Mr. The important activities in his life (teaching at Peking University, engaging in the rural construction movement, creating the Democratic League...) are rich in content, so it can be used as an important reference for understanding and studying Mr. Liang Shuming's thoughts and activities and modern Chinese social life.

In 1993, the interview was sorted out, and about 40,000 words of it were excerpted into the eighth volume of "The Complete Works of Liang Shuming".Later, under the guidance of Mr. Liang Peikuan, the eldest son of the Liang family, the "Yidan Xuetang Library" in Beijing sorted out the full text based on the audio tapes.For the specific finishing process and relevant information, please refer to the "Sorting Instructions" attached to this book and the "Postscript" written by Mr. Liang Peikuan. This publication is the full-text version organized by "Yidan Xuetang Library".In order to help readers understand Mr. Liang Shuming's thoughts, this book specially extracts relevant expositions from "The Complete Works of Liang Shuming: A Collection of Thoughts and Understanding" (Volume 8, 1993), and puts them at the beginning of the corresponding part of the main text for comparison. The evaluation of relevant personnel and the author's important viewpoints are extracted and placed at the mouth of the corresponding original text for emphasis.At the same time, during the editing process, the explanatory texts added by the collator were marked in italics; the inconsistent translations of the whole book, such as the names of people and places in the preface of Professor Ai Kai, were standardized and unified; , time, and numbers have been treated consistently. For example, the year of the AD is written in Arabic numerals, and the Chinese calendar (such as "the seventeenth year of the Republic of China") retains Chinese numbers.

The content of this book is published in full for the first time, and it is a complete supplement to the content of the eighth volume of "The Complete Works of Liang Shuming".