Modernity against modernity: Wang hui's critical history of chinese thought

Modern Intellectual History

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 137-165

  Murthy, Viren ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85009535685     PISSN: 14792443     EISSN: 14792451     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S147924430500065X     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi (The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought), 4 vols. (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2004) 4: 1492. This and all other translations of this work are my own.
2. Wang Hui, The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2004), 1: 3.
3. Joseph Fewsmith, China Since Tiananmen: The Politics of Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 8.
4. Joel Thoraval, “Conscience historique et imaginaire sociale,” Espirit 303 (February 2004), 171-83.
5. Ogata Ko, “Gendai Chugoku jiyushugi,” (Modern Chinese Liberalism), in Chugoku 21 (China 21) 29 (2005), 87-109, 88.
6. Fewsmith, China Since Tiananmen, 102
7. For a sample of Yu Yingshi'swork see Lishirenwu yu wenhuaweiji (Taibei: Sanmin Zongjing Xiao, 1995). For a detailed essay about Yu Yingshi's scholarship in relations to politics see Michael Quirin, “Yu Yingshi, das Politische und die Politik,” Minima Sinica: Zeitschrift zum chinesischen Geist 1 (1994), 27-69.
8. “Questions and Answers about Modernity,” cited in Joseph Fewsmith, China Since Tiananmen, 118.
9. Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987) 85-6. Benjamin Schwartz's comment is also helpful: “The order that the li (rituals) ought to bind together is not simply a ceremonial order-it is a sociopolitical order in the full sense of the term, involving hierarchies, authority and power.” Benjamin Schwartz, TheWorld of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 68.
10. There is a growing consensus that one cannot use the term “feudalism” to describe early China. For a detailed essay that shows why the term is inappropriate see Li Feng, “'Feudalism’ andWestern Zhou China: A Criticism” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 63 (June 2003), 115-44.
11. The “propensity of the times” was a concept used during the Warring States to attack Confucian assertions about the efficaciousness of certain principles.
12. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 58.
13. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 57.
14. The period from AD 907 to AD 960, between the Tang and the Song.
15. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 106. These ideas are all linked to the Kyoto School scholar Miyazaki Ishisata's early essay on the Song dynasty, which Wang cites in Chinese. “Dongyang de Jinshi” (”The East Asian Early Modern”), in Riben xuezhe yanjiu zhongguoshi lunzhu xuanyi, 8 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 1.
16. Wang Hui, “Weibo yu Zhongguoxiandaixing wenti” (Weber and the Problem of Chinese Modernity), in idem, Wang Hui zixuanji (Guilin: Guangxi shifandaxue chubanshe, 1997).
17. Jinshi is theChinese pronunciation of the Japanese character couplet kinsei,whichJapanese historians use to refer to the early modern.
18. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 111
19. Frederic Jameson, Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London and New York: Verso, 2002), 13.
20. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 248-9.
21. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 67.
22. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 110.
23. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 111-12. Note also, “The establishment of the concept of the heavenly principle indicates that morality must be based on an apriori principle& It is not a specific system, rituals, and music and morality, but an abstract and all pervasive “principle” that forms the source of morality and its highest standard.” Rise of Modern Chinese Thought., 209.
24. Chen Lai, Songminglixue (Song andMing Neo-Confucianism) (Liaoning: Liaoningjiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), 2. There is now a cottage industry of studies about Song Confucianism but, unlikeWang's, most studies, such as Chen Lai's, analyze concepts at an abstract level and do not have as their aim historical analysis.
25. Wang explains Dong Zhongshu's attempt to link heaven to political institutions: “Heaven and earth and yin and yang express a hierarchical relationship of the cosmos. The relationship between the ruler and the minister and the relationship between the ruler and the people correspond to this hierarchical order.” (Wang Hui, Rise ofModern Chinese Thought, 160-61), 1.
26. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 67.
27. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 4: 1485
28. Cited in Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 1: 741, fromKang Youwei zhenglunji, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghuashuju, 1981), 1: 301
29. Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).
30. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 762.
31. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 737.
32. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 748.
33. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 749.
34. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 760.
35. Wang notes that Kang combined the discourse of geometry and the Confucian visions of the cosmos. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 762-3.
36. Wang Hui, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 2: 53.
37. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 3: 1023.
38. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 3: 940-1.
39. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 3: 840.
40. Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 2.
41. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 3: 1061; Duara, Culture, Power and the State, 3.
42. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 2: 826.
43. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, California University Press, 1991), 56.
44. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, 55.
45. See Mizoguchi Yuzo, Zhongguo qianxiandai sixiang de yanbian, trans. by Suo Jieran and Gong Yi (Beijing: Zhonghuashuju, 1997).
46. Wang Hui, China's New Order, trans. Theodore Huters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 150.
47. Nishi Junzo, Chosaku Shu (Collected Works), 3 vols. (Tokyo, Uchiyama shoten, 1995), 2: 203.
48. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 4: 1474. Wang then refers to the following passage from Hannah Arendt: “Individual appropriation of wealth will in the long run respect private property no more than socialization of the accumulation process. It is not an invention of Karl Marx but actually in the very nature of this society itself that privacy in every sense can only hinder the development of social “productivity” and that considerations of private ownership therefore should be overruled in favor of the everincreasing process of social wealth.” Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 67.
49. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 4: 1485.
50. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 4: 1485.
51. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 4: 1475. This is a controversial issueandIwill not go into the various debates about China, capitalism, and socialism. However,Wang's main aim is to highlight the structural similarities between state socialism and capitalism. For example, in both cases workers are “freed” from the means of production and in both cases individuals are subject to an abstract social logic. On this point,Wang's theory could be theoretically buttressed byMoishe Postone's Time, Labor and Social Domination (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).
52. Here Wang echoes Prasenjit Duara's point: “In the early 20th century, regimes changed with amazing rapidity in the political landscape of China as well, at both the central and regional levels. But in North China, one of the most important aspects of state strengthening-the ability to penetrate and absorb the resources of local society-continued more or less uninterrupted during the entire period.” Duara, Culture, Power and the State, 3.
53. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 4: 1399.
54. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in idem, Later Political Writings, ed. Terrell Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 32.
55. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 3: 1049; idem, Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, 1: 458.
56. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 1033; idem, Rise ofModernChinese Thought, 444.
57. Wang Hui, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de xingqi, 3: 1103.
58. This is a topic that goes beyond the scope of this essay. I deal with this topic in my forthcoming dissertation “The Myriad Things Emerge from Confusion: Religion and Radicalism in Zhang Taiyan's Political Philosophy” (University of Chicago).
59. James Daly, Deals and Ideals: Two Concepts of Enlightenment (London: Greenwich Exchange, 2000).
60. Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy:Mysticism, Sexual Difference and the Demands ofHistory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
61. For a discussion of the concept of reflexivity in relation to Marxism see Moishe Postone's Time, Labor and Social Domination (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).