近代中国发生的价值观变革, 在观念系统围绕着“天人”、“群己”、“义利” (“理欲”) 等对范畴的争论而展开的过程, 与社会生活中传统的知识阶层向现代型知识分子的转变有密切的关系。晚清社会, 从龚自珍开始, 传统士大夫中的异端、“条约口岸知识分子”、留学生和新式学校出身的知识者, 先后成为价值观变革的主力。随着传统文人集团的分化和价值观念的新陈代谢, 士大夫没落和消失了, 新型的知识分子产生了。

The change of values which occurred in modern China, a course developing ideologically around the controversies on such categories as "Heaven and man, " "group and individual, " and "righteousness and profit" (or "profit a nd desire"), was closely related to a transformation of the traditional learned class into mo dernized intellectuals in social life. From Gong Zizhen onward, who lived in the late per iod of the Qing Dynasty, heretics of traditional scholar-officials, "intellectuals in treaty port cities, " returned students and students in new-type schools, became principal members of value reforms one after another. With a division of traditional men o f letters and a renewal of values, scholar-officials declined and even disappeared, while new-type intellectuals came into being.