Ai Siqi

Ai Siqi the twentieth-century Chinese philosopher (1910-1966) who was one of the most influential popularisers of Marxist philosophy in China and whose writings on dialectical materialism shaped the philosophical education of a generation. He combined philosophical exposition with a strong practical and political concern.

Early Life and Formation

Ai Siqi was born in 1910 in Tengchong, Yunnan province, in the southwest of China, into a family of modest circumstances. He showed intellectual promise as a young man and studied in Japan, where he encountered Marxist theory and the philosophy of science, and where he began to develop the materialist outlook that guided the rest of his life.

He returned to China in the early 1930s and became active in left-wing intellectual circles in Shanghai and later in the revolutionary base areas. He joined the Communist Party and combined philosophical writing with political work, arguing that philosophy must serve the cause of social change rather than remain an academic pursuit. His popular essays of these years won him a wide readership.

His experience of the national crisis and of the struggle for social transformation convinced him of the need for a philosophy that would be intelligible to ordinary people and directly relevant to their concerns. This conviction determined the character of all his later work.

Popularising Dialectical Materialism

Ai Siqi's enduring contribution was his work as an expositor of Marxist philosophy. His book The Philosophy of the Masses, published in the mid-1930s, presented dialectical materialism in a plain style accessible to readers without formal training, and it became one of the most widely read philosophical books in China. Its successive editions and adaptations reached millions of readers.

He expounded the materialist understanding of nature and history, the doctrine of contradiction, and the theory of knowledge as the reflection of reality in consciousness, always seeking to show how these abstract ideas bore upon practical life. His gift for illustration and his clear prose made difficult doctrines available to those who had been excluded from higher education.

In addition to his popular work he wrote systematic studies of dialectical and historical materialism, and he engaged with questions of logic, the philosophy of science and the relation between theory and practice. He was among the most productive philosophical writers of his generation.

Philosophy and Practice

A central theme of Ai Siqi's thought was the unity of theory and practice. He argued that philosophical knowledge is not an end in itself but a guide to action, and that ideas must be tested in the practical life of society. This pragmatic understanding of philosophy led him to write on method and on the conduct of inquiry as well as on metaphysics.

He developed a distinctive account of the transformation of knowledge through practice, holding that theory arises from practice, is tested in practice, and returns to practice as a guide. He applied this framework to questions of education, culture and social organisation, and his writings were used in the training of cadres and students.

His emphasis on practice gave his philosophy an activist tone and connected it to the wider tradition of Chinese thought that values the union of knowledge and action. He sought to show that materialist philosophy, far from being a foreign import alien to Chinese concerns, answered to enduring Chinese questions about the relation of thought to life.

Career and Later Years

After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, Ai Siqi held significant positions in the cultural and educational establishment and his writings became required reading in schools and universities. He edited philosophical journals and worked to shape the curriculum of philosophical education in the new state, exerting an influence that extended far beyond the academy.

His later career was increasingly troubled by political conflict. He became embroiled in the ideological controversies of the 1950s and 1960s and was criticised for positions that were deemed to deviate from the dominant line. The pressures of these disputes damaged his health and his standing.

He died in 1966, at the beginning of a period of intense political turmoil, in circumstances that reflected the dangers facing intellectuals in that era. His reputation was later rehabilitated, and his popular works continued to be reprinted.

Influence and Legacy

Ai Siqi's influence on the dissemination of Marxist philosophy in China was immense. His popular writings introduced dialectical materialism to a vast audience and established a vocabulary and a set of arguments that became part of the common intellectual culture of the People's Republic. For decades his books were among the chief means by which Chinese readers encountered systematic philosophy.

His conception of philosophy as a guide to practice and as a common possession of the people rather than the preserve of specialists gave his work a distinctive democratic character. Later critics have questioned aspects of his exposition, but his effectiveness as a communicator is generally acknowledged even by those who disagree with his conclusions.

He is remembered as the foremost populariser of Marxist philosophy in twentieth-century China, a writer whose clarity and directness made an abstract tradition accessible to millions. His life also stands as a cautionary example of the difficulties that confronted philosophers whose public role became entangled with political power.

See also

• Marxist philosophy
• Dialectical materialism
• Mao Zedong
• Chinese philosophy