Background
Ai Siqi was born on March 2, 1910 Yunnan, China.
Statue of Ai Siqi in courtyard of his house in Heshun. In the small tourist town of Heshun in Tengchong County, in western Yunnan Province, China, there is a small museum dedicated to Ai. It is based in his former house, where he lived for two years. It contains pictures, personal items and a statue of him in the yard of the compound.
艾思奇
Ai Siqi was born on March 2, 1910 Yunnan, China.
Ai Siqi studied English and French at a Protestant school and was exposed to Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People and Marxism. He read a great deal of Marxism, including the Communist Manifesto, in Japanese translation. This reading is the root of Ai’s most important works, Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism (歷史唯物主義與辯証唯物主義) and Philosophy for the Masses (大眾哲學) (1948).
After 1949-1966 was a head of the Philosophy Teaching and Research Section and later Vice President of the Central Higher Party School of the Chinese Communist Party. 1955-1966 was a vice president of the Chinese Philosophy Society. Member of the Philosophical and Social Sciences Section of the Chinese Academy of Science.
(Chinese Edition)
(Chinese Edition)
In the disputes about Marxism in the 1930s. he strongly criticized Zhang Dongsun’s neo-Kantian views as well as Ye Qing’s rival heterodox Marxism. He was a main ideological critic of the New Life Movement and the vitalism and philosophy of action of Jiang Jieshi. After Liberation, he presented Mao Zedong's philosophical thought to a wider public and explained many principles of dialectical and historical materialism, while arguing against idealism and metaphysics.