The future of the past

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 62, 2010, Pages 47-83

  Zhang, Yongle ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77952244995     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. Technically, Xiandai Zhongguo Sixiang de Xingqi comes in two volumes, each in two parts. But since neither of the volumes has a subtitle indicating what the parts have in common, or why they belong together, it seems simpler to refer, as will be done below, to the whole set as they exist physically, in four volumes, each with its own title.
2. Jin Guantao, one of the leading liberal intellectuals of the 1980s, published a book in 2000 with a title very like that of Wang Hui's work, The Origins of Modem Chinese Thought; the two sharing a concern with the problem of scientism in modern China. Jin's scope, however, is more restricted- his aim is to explain the origins of communist culture in twentieth-century China. Like Hayek, he understands socialism as one of the forms of the misuse of science, and his study implicitly points to the ways in which science is used rightly. In effect, for Jin a Western-style modernity, plus some local reflection, can serve China well. Wang Hui's project would be more ambitious.
3. In the 1980s 'modernization'-xiandaihua- was an everyday word in the academic world, but only a few young scholars in literature used 'modernity, mostly as a synonym for 'modernism', in the wake of Fredric Jameson's seminar at Beijing University in 1985, when he introduced the term by way of contrast with postmodernity. But this usage had little currency until the 1990s.
4. In the book itself, Wang Hui never explicitly sets out this conception, leaving his title open to the misinterpretation that 'rise' signifies a single cumulative ascent, as in the ordinary meaning of the word. It is essentially since its publication that he has clarified the sense in which he used the term. See his 'Preface' to a new edition of Rise, dated January 2007, in Qu Zhengzhihua de Zhengzhi, Beijing 2008, p. 466,
5. and his interview 'Mit Konfuzius in die Zukunft', Die Zeit, 12 June 2009.
6. Shishi indicates the structural conditions of a given historical moment that imply a certain tendency or propensity. The closest Western analogy might be Machiavelli's use offortuna. Like fortuna, shishi offers historical agents possibilities, both chances and limitations. A famous Chinese proverb reads: shishi makes heroes, and heroes make shishi. Compared to concepts like progress, shishi is much more descriptive and non-teleological.
7. It is because the Dao brings renewal day after day that we refer to it as "replete virtue". In its capacity to produce and reproduce (sheng sheng) we call it "change": YiJing, Appended Remarks, 5.
8. Wang Hui's analysis in this part is quite clear and convincing. But he does not spell out why the mystical approach of Han Confucians lost its appeal in the Tang dynasty. Arguably, the rise of Buddhism was an important factor in this decline.
9. As a term, 'Confucianism' does not exist in Chinese, any more than does 'Mohammedanism' in Arabic. The Chinese term is ruxue, or 'study of rituals', while Song 'Neo-Confucianism' is lixue, or 'study of principles'. Contemporary attempts at a Confucian revival, inside and outside the PRC- also often referred to in the West as 'Neo-Confurian'- are xin rujia, or 'new school of rituals'.
10. Yao, Shun and Yu were mythical rulers of pre-historic China. Yu is supposed to have tamed the floods and founded the Xia Dynasty of the pre-Shang period (i.e., before 1700 BC). There is no historical evidence for the dynasty's existence, although archaeological traces of pre-Shang communities dating back to 3000 BC have been found in central China.
11. From birth, every man possesses a certain way of acting of his own, and none needs Confucius to supply him with it. If everyone had to wait for instructions from Confucius before acting, no-one could have become a fully fledged human being in the immemorial times before Confucius'; 'the apostles of benevolence use virtues and rites to govern minds, institutions and justice to bind bodies... the benevolence of which men are the object is their ruin': Fenshu ['A Book for Burning'], 1, 16-18.
12. Under the Han the 'Five Classics' acquired sacred status once they were officially attributed to Confucius. In historical reality, as a leading modern authority notes, 'no recorded tradition prior to 100 BC identifies Confucius as author, editor or compiler of this collection'; indeed, 'most probably Confucius did not compose any texts at all': Michael Nylan, The Five 'Confucian' Classics, New Haven 2001, pp. 6,18. The fierce controversies that divided New Text from Old Text scholars over which versions were genuine and which were forgeries were thus, by contemporary criteria, tilting at philological windmills- though, of course, much like disputes over the Pentateuch in the West, they were no less intellectually and politically crucial in the development of ruxue for that.
13. Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power Yen Fu and the West, Cambridge, MA1964.
14. Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China, Cambridge, MA 1953.
15. The principal protagonist of the debate over Oriental and Occidental cultures was Liang Shuming (1893-1988); the leading figures in the dispute between scientific and metaphysical world-views were Zhang Junmai (1887-1968) and Ding Wenjiang (1887-1936).
16. There could be a number of reasons for his omission. More or less a hermit, Wang Fuzhi was not much known in his own time, and had little influence on the development of Confucian thought before the late Qing era, when he was rediscovered and appropriated as a source of anti-Manchu revolutionary action. Also, epistemologically he was not as heterodox as Huang Zongxi or Gu Yanwu, remaining a Neo-Confucian of onto-cosmological outlook.
17. Kang's draft constitution for the republic of 1913, in which he stipulated that Buddhism should be the state religion of Mongolia and Tibet, and Confucianism in the Han zone, would be an important document in considering these.
18. In Hanfeizi's famous parable: There was a farmer of Song who tilled a field in which there stood the stump of a tree. One day a hare, racing across the field, bumped into the stump, broke its neck and died. Thereupon the farmer laid aside his plough and watched the stump, hoping he would get another hare the same way. But he got no more hares and instead became the laughing stock of Song. Those who think they can take the ways of ancient kings and use them to govern the people of today are doing the same': Hanfeizi, 19, $49, The Five Termites'. Heading the list of termites were scholars 'who adore the ways of early kings, affecting benevolence and righteousness'.
19. The high and mighty use K [moral principles] to blame the lowly. The old use li to blame the young. The exalted use li to blame the downtrodden. Even if they are mistaken, those in control call what they have done proper. If the lowly, the young or the downtrodden use li to resist, even if they are right they are labelled rebels... For those uncountable throngs of people, their only crime is their lowly position. When someone dies under the law, there are those who pity them. Who pities those who die under the sway of li?'
20. See Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology, Cambridge, MA 1984, p. 18.
21. See NLR 41, September-October 2006, pp. 29-45;
22. now in Wang Hui, The End of the Revolution, London and New York 2010, pp. 3-18.
23. See, in English, the eloquent passage in 'Fire at the Castle Gate', NLR 6, November-December 2000, pp. 91-92
24. In his famous open letter to Kang of 1903, Zhang described the Guangxu emperor, to whom Kang still expressed reverent allegiance, as a 'despicable little wretch who cannot so much as tell the difference between a bean and a noodle'. Imprisoned for the scandal of this text, he wrote from jail: 'With our people and our culture in their proper places, I must seek to irradiate their splendour. My will has not yet achieved its end. I am still shackled by the enemy state. Others will follow me to renew the golden flame. If our nation's antiquity and our people's historical record should come to an end in my hands, and the continuance of China's broad and magnificent scholarship be severed, this will be my crime to bear.'