Iacscw journal issue 1 winter 2013 by IACSCW

Volume

CO MPA RAT IV E STUDIES

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2013 Winter

CHINA and

THE WEST

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Tu Weiming The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism

Gu Zhengkun A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins

Gao Peiyi 4VSÁX SVMIRXIH SV IQTPS]QIRX SVMIRXIH#

Roger T. Ames & Henry Rosemont, Jr. On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies

Jean Bessiere Fables of China. Frontier Fables, Fables of Radical Exoticism

John G. Blair & Jerusha McCormack Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural Amnesia

GENERAL EDITORS Prof. Gu Zhengkun, Prof. & Dean of Institute of World Literature, Peking University Prof. John G. Blair, Prof. Emeritus, University of Geneva EXECUTIVE EDITORS Prof. Jerusha McCormack, Emeritus, University College Dublin Prof. Ma Shikui, Minzu University of China Prof. Zhang Zheng, Beijing Normal University Comparative Studies of China and the West is an international peerreviewed journal, published and distributed by The International Association for Comparative Studies of China and the West (IACSCW; www. chinaandthewest.org). ISSN 2009-6097(Print) ISSN 2009-6100(Online) ADDRESSES: 79 Waterloo Road, Dublin 4, Ireland. Tel 66 00 592 http://www.chinaandthewest.org Institute of World Literature, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100871, China Tel: 86-10-62754610 +WWS VÀ SNX HGX FQ HQ OLVW SKS"FDWLG

Copyright© The International Association for Comparative Studies of China and the West (IACSCW) All rights reserved. No reprinting or reproduction is allowed without the permission in writing from the IACSCW.

Volume

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C O M PA R ATI V E STUDIES of

CHINA and

THE WEST

中西文化比较研究

Published by the International Association for Comparative Studies of China and the West Dublin & Beijing 出版者：国际中西文化比较协会都柏林·北京

2013 Winter

GENERAL EDITORS Prof. Gu Zhengkun, Prof. & Dean of Institute of World Literature, Peking University guzk@pku.edu.cn Prof. John G. Blair, Prof. Emeritus, University of Geneva jgblair1226@gmail.com

EDITORIAL BOARD Prof. Tu Wei-ming, Harvard University/Peking University Prof. Roger T. Ames, University of Hawaii Prof. Jean Bessiere, Paris III Prof. Tang Yijie, Peking University Prof. Yue Daiyun, Peking University Prof. Riccardo Pozzo, UniversitĂ di Verona Prof. Gao Peiyi, Tsinghua University

EXECUTIVE EDITORS Prof. Jerusha McCormack, Emeritus, University College Dublin ccconsultants@comparativeculturestudies.org Prof. Ma Shikui, Minzu University of China shikuima@163.com Prof. Zhang Zheng, Beijing Normal University zhangzheng@bnu.edu.cn

Introduction to IACSCW â&#x20AC;ŤŕĄ&#x2026;Ý&#x203A;â&#x20AC;Źá&#x2021;&#x2014;ŕź&#x17D;ŕť&#x203A;ß&#x152;Đšŕ˘¨ŕž&#x20AC;ßžŕĄŕŁ&#x201A;

The International Association for Comparative Studies of China and the West (IACSCW) was founded in 2010. Headquartered both at 79 Waterloo Road, Dublin 4, Ireland, and at the Institute of World Literature, Peking University, its primary goal is to promote comparative studies by helping practitioners to learn from each other. The IACSCW is currently co-presided by Professors Gu Zhengkun (China) and John G. Blair (USA). Professor Tu Weiming (Harvard/Peking University) is IACSCWâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s honorary president. The IACSCW Executive Vice President is Dr. Gao Peiyi, distinguished research fellow for Urbanization and Education at Tsinghua University. Its Vice Presidents are Professor Wang Yuechuan from Peking University and Professor Hans-Christian GĂźnther from Freiburg University. The IACSCW has also a list of distinguished scholars as its honorary advisors, including Professor Roger T. Ames, Professor Jean Bessiere (Paris III), Prof. Tang Yijie, Professor Yue Daiyun, and Professor Riccardo Pozzo (UniversitĂ di Verona), etc. IACSCW provides a forum for those trained in a variety of traditional disciplines. It KRSHV WR EULQJ WRJHWKHU LQWHUHVWHG VFKRODUV IURP WKH ÂżHOGV RI OLWHUDWXUH KLVWRU\ OLQJXLVWLFV translation, philosophy, economics, political science, ecology, art and music, . . . the list goes on and on. What they share is a sense that comparing China and the West is important not just to their individual careers but to the collective intellectual enterprise of everyone who is working to help these civilizations understand and communicate with each other. That complex and elusive process requires rethinking the past as well as the present, clarifying small issues as well as large ones. In both China and the West intellectuals have a long history as advisors and counselors to those in power. In particular, they create the cultural understandings that underpin all serious attempts at dialogue across civilizational lines. Right now these matters have become a matter of great importance because the global response to the impending ecological crisis will be decided primarily in and by China and the West. Acting in concert, they have the potential to assure a viable future for humankind. Acting separately in pursuit of â&#x20AC;&#x153;business as usual,â&#x20AC;? they would doom all hopes for a reasonable life for everyone on earth. The responsibility is large; IACSCW will take steps in the positive direction.

ADDRESSES: 79 Waterloo Road, Dublin 4, Ireland. Tel 66 00 592 http://www.chinaandthewest.org Institute of World Literature, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100871, China Tel: 86-10-62754610 +WWS VĂ&#x20AC; SNX HGX FQ HQ OLVW SKS"FDWLG

COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF CHINA AND THE WEST ᇗ༎໛ߌйࢨခࣶ Volume 1 Winter 2013

Contents Confucianism and the World Tu Wei-ming The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism: Implications for China and the World

001

Tang Yijie Confucianism & Constructive Postmodernism

010

Chinese and Western Values Gu Zhengkun A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins: Family – Nation – World

016

Culture and Translation Roger T. Ames & Henry Rosemont, Jr. On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies--With Special Reference to Classical Chinese

Culture and Identity John G. Blair & Jerusha McCormack

025

Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural 033

Amnesia Wang Yuechuan

Building up Cultural Strategy of China as a Great Power through Cultural Innovation

040

Society and Economics Gao Peiyi Profit-oriented or Employment-oriented? A New Topic for the Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Economic Cultures

049

Frank Jacob Social Organization, Secrecy, and Rebellion – Secret 053

Societies in China and Ireland Comparative Literature Jean Bessiere Fables of China. Frontier Fables, Fables of Radical Exoticism: Segalen, Michaux, Butor

058

King-Kok Cheung Two Forms of Solitude: Tao Qian’s Reclusive Ideal and Emerson’s Transcendentalist Vision

062

Li Yongyi Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei

075

Recent Publications in China-West Comparative Studies 015; 061

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism

Tu Weiming

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism: Implications for China and the World By Tu Wei-ming

Harvard University/Peking University

Today virtually all axial-age civilizations are going through their own distinctive forms of transformation in response to the multiple challenges of modernity.1 One of the most crucial questions they face is what wisdom they can offer to reorient the human developmental trajectory of the modern world in light of the growing environmental crisis. China and the Confucian tradition face an especially significant challenge given the size of China’s population and the scale of her current efforts at modernization. A radical rethinking of Confucian humanism began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when China was engulfed in an unprecedented radical social disintegration as the result of foreign invasion and domestic dissension. In the late twentieth century, this reformulation continued in the “New Confucian movement” led by concerned intellectuals, some of whom left mainland China for Taiwan and Hong Kong when communism was established as the ruling ideology in the People’s Republic in 1949. In the last twenty-five years, three leading New Confucian thinkers in Taiwan, mainland China, and Hong Kong independently concluded that the most significant contribution the Confucian tradition can offer the global community is the idea of the “unity of Heaven and Humanity” (tianrenheyi), a unity that Confucians believe also embraces Earth. I have described this vision as an anthropocosmic worldview, in which the human is embedded in the cosmic order, rather than an anthropocentric worldview, in which the human is alienated, either by choice or by default, from the natural world. 2 By identifying the comprehensive unity of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity as a critical contribution to the modern world, these three key figures in New Confucian thought signaled the movement toward both retrieval and reappropriation of Confucian ideas. Speaking as public intellectuals concerned about the direction of the modem world, each of the three key

thinkers articulated this idea of unity in a distinctive way. Qian Mu (1895-1990) of Taiwan characterized the unity as a mutuality between the human heart-mind and the Way of Heaven.3 Tang Junyi (1909-1978) of Hong Kong emphasized “immanent transcendence”: we can apprehend the Mandate of Heaven by understanding our heart-and-mind; thus, the transcendence of Heaven is immanent in the communal and critical selfconsciousness of human beings as a whole.4 Similarly, Feng Youlan (1895-1990) of Beijing rejected his previous commitment to the Marxist notion of struggle and stressed the value of harmony not only in the human world, but also in the relationship between humans and nature.5 Since all three thinkers articulated their final positions toward the end of their lives, the unity of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity sums up the wisdom of these elders in the Sinic world. I would like to suggest that this New Confucian idea of cosmic unity marks an ecological turn of profound importance for China and the world.

An Ecological Turn Qian Mu called this new realization a major breakthrough in his thinking. When his wife and students raised doubts about the novelty of his insight - the idea of unity between Heaven and Humanity is centuries old Qian already in his nineties, emphatically responded that his understanding was not a reiteration of conventional wisdom, but a personal enlightenment, thoroughly original and totally novel.6 His fascination with the idea of mutuality between the human heart-and-mind and the Way of Heaven, and his assertion that this idea is a unique Chinese contribution to the world, attracted the attention of several leading intellectuals in cultural China.7 Tang Junyi, on the other hand, presented his view from a comparative civilizational perspective.

Comparative Studies of China and the West He contrasted Confucian self-cultivation with Greek, Christian, and Buddhist spiritual exercises, and concluded that Confucianism’s commitment to the world combined with its profound reverence for Heaven offered a unique contribution to human flourishing in the modern world. The Confucian worldview, rooted in earth, body, family, and community, is not “adjustment to the world,”8 submission to the status quo, or passive acceptance of the physical, biological, social, and political constraints of the human condition. Rather, it is dictated by an ethic of responsibility informed by a transcendent vision. We do not become “spiritual” by departing from or transcending above our earth, body, family, and community, but by working through them. Indeed, our daily life is not merely secular but a response to a cosmological decree. Since the Mandate of Heaven that enjoins us to take part in the great enterprise of cosmic transformation is implicit in our nature, we are Heaven’s partners. In Tang’s graphic description, the ultimate goal of being human is to enable the “Heavenly virtue” (tiande) to flow through us. His project of reconstructing the secular humanist spirit is, therefore, predicated on an anthropocosmic vision.9 Feng Youlan’s radical reversal of his earlier position is an implicit critique of Mao Zedong’s thoughts on struggle and the human capacity to conquer nature. His return to the philosophy of harmony of Zhang Zai (1020-1077) signaled a departure from his Marxist phase and a representation of Confucian ideas he had People’s Republic of China. The opening lines in Zhang Zai’s “Western Inscription” state: Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.”10

The “Western Inscription” can be regarded as a core Neo-Confucian text in articulating the anthropocosmic vision of the unity of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity. Accordingly, Feng characterizes the highest stage of human self-realization as the embodiment of the “spirit of Heaven and Earth.”11 A significant aspect of Qian, Tang, and Feng’s ecological turn was their effort to retrieve the spiritual resources of the classical and Neo-Confucian heritages. In the sixteenth century, for example, Wang Yangming (1472-1529) offered in his “Inquiry on the Great Learning” an elegant interpretation of Confucian thought, one with rich implications for modern ecological thinking:

Vol. 1 2013 The great man regards Heaven and Earth and the myriad things as one body. He regards the world as one family and the country as one person. As to those who make a cleavage between objects and distinguish between self and others, they are small men. That the great man can regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one body is not because he deliberately wants to do so, but because it is natural to the humane nature of his mind that he do so.12

By emphasizing the “humane nature of the mind” as the reason that the great person can embody the universe in his sensitivity, Wang made the ontological assertion that the ability to strike a sympathetic resonance with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things is a

To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, he offered a series of concrete examples: When we see a child about to fall into the well, we cannot help a feeling of alarm and commiseration. This shows that our humanity (ren ಭ ) forms one body with the child. It may be objected that the child belongs to the same species. Again, when we observe the pitiful cries and frightened appearances of birds and animals about to be slaughtered, we cannot help feeling an "inability to bear" their suffering. This shows that our humanity forms one body with birds and animals. It may be objected that birds and animals are sentient beings as we are. But when we see plants broken and destroyed, we cannot help a feeling of pity. This shows that our humanity forms one body with plants. It may be said that plants are living things as we are. Yet even when we see tiles and stones shattered and crushed, we cannot help a feeling of regret. This shows that our humanity forms one body with tiles and stones.13

These examples clearly indicate that “forming one body” entails not the romantic ideal of unity, but rather a highly differentiated understanding of interconnectedness. Neo-Confucian thinkers like Wang deeply

positions may seem to be a matter of personal style. Yet all three were obviously convinced that their cherished tradition had a message for the emerging global village; they delivered it in the most appropriate way they knew. Their use of a prophetic voice suggests that their Confucian message was addressed not only to a Chinese audience but also to the human community as a whole. They did not wish merely to honor their ancestors but also to show that they cared for the well-being of future generations.

Tu Weiming Were they even conscious of the ecological of the twentieth century, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even mainland China were all marching toward Westernstyle forms of social organization. Modernization was the most powerful ideology in China. By challenging China’s traditional agriculture-based economy, familycentered social structure, and paternalist government, industrialization seemed to seal the fate of Confucianism as no longer relevant to the vital concerns of the contemporary world. 14Perhaps Qian, Tang, and Feng were nostalgic for the kind of “universal brotherhood” or “unity of all things” that Max Weber and others have supposed must disappear in a disenchanted modern world. However, while traces of romantic longing can be seen in their writings, all three discovered a new vitality in the Confucian tradition. In order to appreciate properly what these men accomplished, it will be useful to recall the broad historical context in which they worked.

Holistic Confucian Humanism Prior to the impact of the modern West, Confucian humanism largely defined political ideology, social ethics, and family values in East Asia. Since the East Asian educated elite were all well versed in the Confucian classics, what the three contemporary thinkers advocated as a unique Confucian contribution to the human community was, in fact, a spiritual orientation once widely shared in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. The famous “eight steps” in the first chapter of the Great Learning provide a glimpse of what Confucian humanism purported to be:

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism carefully integrated program of personal self-cultivation, harmonized family life, and well-ordered states. At the heart of this vision is a sense that “home” implies not only the human community, but also the natural world and the larger cosmos. Speaking directly to the above passage, Wm. Theodore de Bary has observed, “Chinese and Confucian culture, traditionally, was about settled communities living on the land, nourishing themselves and the land. It is this natural, organic process that Confucian self-cultivation draws upon for all its analogies and metaphors.”16 He noted that the farmer-poet Wendell Berry made the Confucian point: “[H]ome and family are central, and we cannot hope to do anything about the environment that does not first establish the home - not just the self and family - as the home base for our efforts.” De Bary concluded that: If we have to live in a much larger world, because ecological problems can only be managed on a global scale, the infrastructure between home locality and state (national or international) is also vital. But without home, we have nothing for the infrastructure, much less the superstructure, to rest on. This is the message of Wendell Berry; and also the lesson of Confucian and Chinese history.”17

The human in this worldview is an active participant in the cosmic process with the responsibility of care for the environment. Thus in the classical period of Confucianism we see a holistic humanism expressed in the Great learning. Furthermore, environmental concerns implicit in the Great Learning are explicitly articulated in other core Confucian texts. A statement in the Doctrine of the Mean succinctly captures the essence of this cosmological thinking:

The ancients who wished to illuminate their “illuminating to govern their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their personal lives. Wishing to cultivate their personal lives, they first rectified their hearts and minds. Wishing to rectify their hearts and minds, they first authenticated their intentions.

when intentions are authentic are hearts and minds rectified; only when hearts and minds are rectified are personal lives cultivated; only when personal lives are cultivated are families regulated; only when families are regulated are states governed; only when states are governed is there peace all under Heaven. Therefore, from the Son of Heaven to the common people, all, without exception, must take self-cultivation as the root.15

Only those who are the most sincere [authentic, true, and real] can fully realize their own nature. If they can fully realize their own nature, they can fully realize human nature. If they can fully realize human nature, they can fully realize the nature of things. If they can fully realize the nature of things, they can take part in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth. If they can take part in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can form a trinity with Heaven and Earth.18

Obviously, this idea of the interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and humans was precisely what the three thinkers had in mind in stressing the centrality of the precept of “the unity of Heaven and Humanity,” although for more than a century this idea had been regarded as an archaic irrelevance in cultural China. The excitement of rediscovering this central Confucian precept was a poignant reminder of how much had been lost and how difficult it was to retrieve the elements of the tradition

This holistic vision of a peaceful world rests on a

Comparative Studies of China and the West

Critical Voices for an Ecological Turn: New Confucians and the Earth Charter Both from within the Confucian tradition and from without, critical voices have emerged to criticize the Enlightenment vision of secularization, rationalization, and development at any cost. Even at the height of the May Fourth Movement’s obsession with Westernization as modernization, some of the most original New Confucians had begun to question the individualistic worldview and utilitarian ethics implicit in the Enlightenment project. Two key examples are Xiong Shili (1883-1968), who elaborated a naturalistic philosophy of vitalism, and Liang Shuming (1893-1988), who called for restraint and moderation in using natural resources. Xiong Shili reconfigured Confucian metaphysics through a critical analysis of the basic motifs of the Consciousness-Only school of Buddhism. He insisted that the Confucian idea of the “great transformation” (dahua) is predicated on the participation of the human in cosmic processes, rather than the imposition of human will on nature. He further observed that as a continuously evolving species, human beings are not created apart from nature, but emerge as an integral part of the primordial forces of production and reproduction. The vitality that engenders human creativity is the same energy that gives rise to mountains, rivers, and the whole of the planet. There is consanguinity between humans, Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things of nature. Since his naturalistic vitalism is based on the Book of Change and some Neo-Confucian writings, the ethic of forming one body with nature looms large in his moral idealism.19 Liang Shuming characterized the Confucian ethos as a balance between detachment from and aggression toward nature. Although he conceded that China had to for the sake of national survival, he prophesized that in the long run the Indian spirit of renunciation would prevail.20 While Liang merely hinted at the possibility of alternative visions of human development, his inquiry generated a strong current in reevaluating and revitalizing Confucianism at a time when Westernization dominated the Chinese intellectual scene. The distinctive contributions of these two thinkers are critical to the ecological turn of later Confucianism, Xiong highlights the naturalistic vitalism of the tradition from its classical expression in the Book of Change to its Neo-Confucian articulation in the notion of the fecundity of life (sheng-skeng). Liang maintains that long-term human survival depends on the practice of moderation, a hallmark of Confucian cultivation in attaining balance, harmony, and equilibrium. Thus Xiong and Liang observe that the vitality of natural processes must be

Vol. 1 2013 respected and preserved through restraint. However, neither Xiong nor Liang was able to sustain an argument in favor of a nonanthropocentric, not to mention eco-friendly, ethic. The modernist trajectory was so powerful that Confucian humanism was profoundly reconfigured toward a secular humanism. The rules of the game determining the relevance of Confucianism to China’s modern transformation were changed so remarkably that most attempts to present a Confucian idea for its own sake were ignored outside a small coterie of ivory-tower academicians. Thus the goals of modernization and economic development overrode broader humanistic and communitarian concerns. As Amartya Sen and others have argued, however, it is now clear that the modernization process, used 21

Instead, there is a broader understanding emerging that development must include not only economic indicators but consider human well-being, environmental protection, and spiritual growth as well. To this end, there is a growing awareness in the world community of the need to develop a more comprehensive global ethic for sustainable development.22 This coalesced in the “Earth Charter” that was developed over the last years since the United Nations Earth Summit was held in Rio in 1992.23 An international committee spent three years drafting the charter before its formal release by the Earth Charter Commission at a meeting in Paris in 2000. Hundreds of consultations were held with organizations and individuals throughout the world to ensure that it would be an inclusive people’s charter. The charter sets forth principles of ecological integrity, social justice, democracy, nonviolence, and peace. The Earth Charter enjoins us to “respect Earth and life in all its diversity,” “care for the community of life with understanding, compassion, and love,” and “secure Earth’s bounty and beauty for present and future generations.”24 As the charter puts it, “humanity is part of a vast evolving universe. Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life.” For Confucians, the “community of life” is expressed as consanguinity between the earth and ourselves, because we have evolved from the same vital energy that makes stones, plants, and animals integral parts of the cosmos. We live with reverence and a sense of awe for the fecundity and creativity of nature as we open our eyes to what is near at hand. When measured against these principles of a global ethic for sustainability, a narrowly conceived modernization process such as China’s is inadequate. This critique is an important external counterpoint to

Tu Weiming

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism

modernization within an Enlightenment framework. If China’s modernist project had followed the democratic ideal of building a society that is “just, participatory, sustainable, and peaceful,”25 as formulated in the Earth Charter, it could have had a salutary effect on China’s overall conception of development. A counterfactual exercise is in order. Surely the global issues mentioned in the Earth Charter are far from being resolved in the modern West, but had they been put on the national agenda for discussion in China, the Chinese intellectual ethos could have been much more congenial to the culture of peace and environmental ethics. After all, “eradicating poverty as an ethical, social, and environmental imperative” 26 and promoting human and Confucian ideals. Although “upholding the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive of human dignity, bodily health, and spiritual well-being”27 may appear to be a lofty goal, it is compatible with the Chinese notion of realizing the whole person. Furthermore, “affirming gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development” and “ensuring universal access to education, health care, and economic opportunity” 28 are clearly recognized modern Chinese aspirations. The traditional Confucian sense of economic equality, social conscience, and political responsibility could have been relevant to and important matters. The cost of the secularization of Confucian humanism was high. The single-minded

to wealth and power. As China completely turned her back on her indigenous resources for self-realization, she embarked on a course of action detrimental to her soul and her long-term self-interest.

Confucian Humanism as an Anthropocosmic Vision Qian, Tang, and Feng saw the potential for Confucian humanism to occupy a new niche in comparative civilizational studies. As a partner in the dialogue among civilizations, what message can Confucians deliver to other religious communities and Confucian humanism informed by the anthropocosmic Specifically, can the Confucian self-cultivation philosophy inspire a new constellation of family values, social ethics, political principles, and ecological consciousness that will help cultural China develop a sense of responsibility for the global community, both

resources and broaden the Enlightenment project’s scope

The idea of the unity of Heaven and humanity implies four inseparable dimensions of the human condition: self, community, nature, and Heaven. The full distinctiveness of each enhances, rather than impedes, a harmonious integration of the others. Self as a center of relationships establishes its identity by interacting with community variously understood, from the family to the global village and beyond. A sustainable harmonious relationship between the human species and nature is not merely an abstract ideal, but a concrete guide for practical living. Mutual responsiveness between the human heart-and-mind and the Way of Heaven is the salient features constitute the substance of the New Confucian ecological vision.

Fruitful Interaction between Self and Community Since the community as home must extend to the “global village” and beyond, the self in fruitful interaction with community must transcend not only egoism and parochialism, but also nationalism and anthropocentrism. In practical ethical terms, selfcultivation is crucial to the viability of this holistic humanist vision. Specifically, it involves a process of continuous self-transcendence, always keeping sight of one’s solid ground in earth, body, family, and community. Through self-cultivation, the human heartand-mind “expands in concentric circles that begin with oneself and spread from there to include successively one’s family, one’s face-to-face community, one’s nation, 29

In shifting the center of one’s empathic concern The move from family to community prevents nepotism. The move from community to nation overcomes parochialism, and the move to all humanity counters chauvinistic nationalism. 30 While “[t]he project of becoming fully human involves transcending, sequentially, egoism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism, and chauvinist nationalism,” it cannot 31 If we stop at secular humanism, our arrogant self-sufficiency will undermine our cosmic connectivity and constrain us in an anthropocentric predicament.

A Sustainable Harmonious Relationship between the Human Species and Nature The problem with secular humanism is its selfimposed limitation. Under its influence, our obsession with power and mastery over the environment — to the exclusion of the spiritual and the natural realms — has 5

Comparative Studies of China and the West made us blind to ecological concerns.32 An ecological focus is a necessary corrective to the modernist discourse that has reduced the Confucian worldview to a limited and limiting secular humanism. Confucianism, appropriated by the modernist mindset, has been misused as a justification for authoritarian polity. Only by fully incorporating the religious and naturalist dimensions into New Confucianism can the Confucian worldview avoid the danger of legitimating social engineering, instrumental rationality, linear progression, economic development, and technocratic management at the expense of a holistic, anthropocosmic vision. Indeed, the best way for the Confucians to attain the new is to reanimate the old, so that the digression to secular humanism, under the influence of the modern West, is not a permanent diversion.

Mutual Responsiveness between the Human Heart-and-Mind and the Way of Heaven In the appeal of scientists at the Global Forum Conference in Moscow in 1990 religious and spiritual leaders were challenged to envision the human-Earth relationship in a new light: As scientists, many of us have had profound experiences of awe and reverence before the universe. We understand that what is regarded as sacred is more likely to be treated with care and respect. Our planetary home should be so regarded. Efforts to safeguard and cherish the environment need to be infused with a vision of the sacred.33

Obviously, the ecological question compels all religious traditions to reexamine their presuppositions in regard to the earth. It is not enough that one’s spiritual tradition makes limited adjustments to accommodate the ecological dimension. The need is for none other than the sacralization of nature. This may require a fundamental restructuring of basic theology by requiring the sanctity of the earth as a given. Implicit in the scientists’ appeal is the necessity of a new theology, adding nature as a factor that must enter into, and transform, the traditional understandings of the relationship between God and human beings. For the New Confucians, the critical issue is to underscore the spiritual dimension of the harmony with nature. As Wing-tsit Chan notes in his celebrated Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, “If one word could characterize the entire history of Chinese philosophy, that word would be humanism — not the humanism that denies or slights a Supreme Power, but one that professes the unity of man and Heaven. In this sense, humanism has dominated Chinese thought from the dawn of its history.”34

Vol. 1 2013 The “humanism that professes the unity of man and Heaven” is neither secular nor anthropocentric. While it fully acknowledges that we are embedded in earth, body, family, and community, it never denies that we are in tune with the cosmic order. To infuse our earthly, bodily, familial, and communal existence with a transcendent a basic Confucian practice. In traditional China, under the influence of Confucian thought, Daoist ritual, and folk belief, the imperial court, the capital city, literary private houses were designed according to the “wind and water” (fengshui) principles. While these principles, based on geomancy, can supposedly be manipulated to enhance one’s fortune, they align human designs with the environment by enhancing intimacy with nature. Similarly, Chinese medicine as healing rather than curing and the mental and physical exercises such as the ritual dance of the great ultimate (taijiquan) and various forms of breathing disciplines (qigong) are also based on the mutual responsiveness between nature and humanity.

Self-Knowledge and Cultivation to Complete the Triad Confucians believe that Heaven confers our human nature and that the Way of Heaven is accessible through self-knowledge. They also believe that to understand the Mandate of Heaven we must continuously cultivate ourselves. This is completing the triad of Heaven, Earth, and humans. Nature, as an unending process of transformation rather than a static presence, is a source of inspiration for us to understand Heaven’s dynamism. Book of Change symbolizes. Heaven’s vitality and creativity is incessant: Heaven always proceeds vigorously. The lesson for humans is obvious: we emulate the constancy and sustainability of Heaven’s vitality and creativity by participating in human flourishing through “ceaseless effort of selfstrengthening.”35 The sense of “awe and reverence before the universe” is prompted by our aspiration to respond to the ultimate reality that makes our lives purposeful and meaningful. From either a creationist or an evolutionist perspective, we are indebted to “Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things” for our existence. To repay this debt we cultivate ourselves so as to attain our full humaneness amidst the wonder of existence. Mencius succinctly articulated this human attitude toward Heaven as self-knowledge, service, and steadfastness of purpose: When a man has given full realization lo his heart, he will understand his own nature. A man who knows his own nature will know Heaven. By retaining his heart and nurturing his nature he is serving Heaven. Whether he is going to die

Tu Weiming young or to live to a ripe old age makes no difference to his steadfastness of purpose. It is through awaiting whatever is to proper destiny.36

Self-realization, in an ultimate sense, depends on knowing and serving Heaven. The mutuality of the human heart-and-mind and the Way of Heaven is mediated by cultivating a harmonious relationship with nature. Through such cultivation, humans form a triad with Heaven and Earth and thus fully realize their potential as cosmological as well as anthropological beings. This sense of mutuality achieved through completion of the triad, precludes the imposition of the human will on Heaven and transforms the human desire to conquer nature.

Sustaining the Ecological Turn: The Role of the Public Intellectual poverty, unemployment, and social disintegration as three serious threats to the solidarity of the human community. Globalization intensifies and enhances the felt need for rootedness in primordial ties. Our community, compressed into a “village”, far from being integrated, blatantly exhibits differentiation and outright discrimination.37 For developing societies such as China to appreciate the environmental movements of the developed world, the contradiction between ecological and developmental imperatives will have to be resolved. The ecological advocacy of elegant simplicity is not persuasive if one considers development, in the basic material sense, a necessary condition for survival. Only if China comes to feel a responsibility not just for nation-building but for nature itself can China become a constructive partner on global environmental issues. She could be encouraged to do so if the developed world, especially the United States, demonstrates moral leadership. Without encouragement and reciprocal respect from developed countries, it is unlikely that he will independently embark on such a path. Fortunately, mutually beneficial dialogues on religion and ecology between China and the United States have already begun. The ecological turn, as an alternative vision, is particularly significant in this regard. To make it sustainable and, eventually, consequential in formulating policies, the need for public-spiritedness among intellectuals is urgent. The emergence of a public space in cultural China provides a glimmer of hope. Although full-fledged civil societies in the Chinese cultural universe are found only in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the horizontal communication among public intellectuals in several sectors of society in the People’s Republic

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism has generated a new dynamism unprecedented in as those who are politically concerned, socially engaged, culturally informed, religiously sensitive, and ecologically conscientious, they are readily visible and audible on the political scene. 38 Indeed, public intellectuals in academia, government, mass media, business, and society are articulating a variety of ecological and spiritual messages relevant to China’s quest to join the modern world. The New Confucians the underlying value, or the all-embracing conception”39 that can serve as a standard of inspiration for all concerned citizens of the nation. However, they are strategically positioned to generate new discussions on the ecological way “as macrocosm, overarching unity, and ultimate process”; indeed, as a necessary reference for “the human enterprise in its fullest dimensions, 40

Given the current political climate in China, religion is a particularly delicate matter. Whether religion will play an active role in shaping China’s development strategy is not yet clear. The possibility of a sound environmental ethic depends heavily on the ability of Chinese intellectuals to transcend a narrow nationalism informed by secular humanism and their willingness to take religion seriously in considering human integrity and national security as a way of outlawing superstition, as in the case of the Falungong, has not been effective in dealing with the outpouring of religious sentiments throughout the country. Its technocratic approach to religious issues merely reflects an increasingly unworkable instrumental rationality. Religion as a vibrant social force is widely recognized by public intellectuals in government, academia, business, and the how religious and ecological discourses will converge in China, tolerance of religion often entails sensitivity to ecology. When public intellectuals in China begin to appreciate the profound religious implications of the ecological turn and the importance of retrieving and reappropriating indigenous spiritual resources to develop an environmental ethic, they will be ready to take part in a dialogue among civilizations concerning religion and ecology. In a broader context, for religious and spiritual leaders to play a significant global role in articulating a shared approach to environmental degradation, they must assume the responsibility of public intellectuals themselves. As the Millennium Conference at the United Nations in September of 2000 clearly showed, unless religious and spiritual leaders can rise above their communities of faith to address global issues as public intellectuals, their messages will be misread, 7

Comparative Studies of China and the West distorted, or ignored. China is particularly suspicious of the intentions of religious and spiritual leaders if they are exclusively concerned about the well-being of their own communities. Yet the time is ripe for spiritual and religious leaders outside China to engage Chinese public intellectuals in mutually informative and inspirational conversations on religion and ecology. The New Confucian ecological turn clearly shows that a sustainable human-Earth relationship will depend on the creation of harmonious societies and benevolent governments through the self-cultivation of all members of the human community. At the same time, Confucians insist that being attuned to the changing patterns in nature is essential for harmonizing human relationships, formulating family ethics, and establishing a responsive and responsible government. As Mary Evelyn Tucker notes: “The whole Confucian triad of heaven, earth, and humans rests on a seamless yet dynamic intersection between each of these realms. Without harmony with nature and its myriad changes, human society and government is threatened.”41 Since each person’s selfcultivation is essential for social and political order, the public intellectual is not an elitist, but an active participant in the daily affairs of his or her society. The Confucian idea of the concerned scholar may benefit from the wisdom of a philosopher, the insight of a prophet, the faith of a priest, the compassion of a monk, or the understanding of a guru, but it is the responsibility of the public intellectual that is the most appropriate to the embodiment of this idea. The Confucians remind us that, in order to foster a wholesome worldview and a healthy ecological ethic, we need to combine our aspiration for a harmonious relationship with nature with our concerted effort to build a just society. Public intellectuals in China should impress upon the political leadership that it is in an advantageous position to “promote a culture of tolerance, nonviolence, and peace,”42 as recommended by the Earth Charter. They should recognize that since the Chinese people are well disposed to Mahayana Buddhism and religious Daoism as well as inclusive Confucian humanism, they can appreciate the value of the coexistence of Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things and can “treat all living beings with respect and consideration”43 as an expression of their humanity. Furthermore, as an increasing number of public intellectuals in the academic community have already forcefully articulated their ecological concerns, they should be encouraged to “integrate into formal education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.”44 Many liberal-minded public intellectuals have openly suggested that the major challenge in Chinese political culture is democratization at all levels, which must begin with greater transparency and accountability in governance at the top. As the rule of law, rather than the rule by law, is 8

Vol. 1 2013 widely accepted as the legitimate way to provide access to justice for all, the ideal of “inclusive participation in decision making”45 is no longer unimaginable. New Confucians fully acknowledge that in their march toward modernization in the cause of nation-building, their primary language has been so fundamentally reconstructed that it is no longer a language of faith, but a language of instrumental rationality, economic efficiency, political expediency, and social engineering. They are now recovering from that mistake. Their reanimated anthropocosmic vision may inspire a new worldview and a new ethic. This ecological turn has great significance for China’s spiritual self-definition, for it urges the nation to rediscover its soul. It also has profound implications for the sustainable future of the global community.

Acknowledgments I am indebted to Rosanne Hall, Lucia Huntington, Ron Suteski, and Mary Evelyn Tucker for searching criticisms of and editorial suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay.

For a contemporary discussion on the axial-age civilizations, see Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1986. 2 See Tu Wei-ming, “Embodying the Universe: A Note on Confucian Self-realization,” World & I (August 1989): pp.475-485. 3 Qian Mu’s last essay, “Zhongguo wenhua dui renlei weilai keyou di gongxian” (The Possible Contribution of Chinese Culture to the United News in Taiwan (September26, 1990). It was reprinted, with a lengthy commentary by his widow, Hu Meiqi, Zhongguo Wenhua (Chinese Culture) 4 (August 1991): pp.93-96. 4 For an elaborate discussion on this, see Tang Junyi, Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie (Life Existence and the Spiritual Realms). Taipei: Xuesheng Book Co., 1977, pp. 872-888. 5 Feng Youlan, Zhongguo xiandai zhexueshi (History of Modern Chinese Philosophy). Guangzhou: Guangdong People’s Publishers, 1999, pp. 251-254. 6 See Hu Meiqi’s commentary in Zhongguo Wenhua. 7 For example, Ji Xianlin of Peking University, Li Shengzi of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Cai Shangsi of Fudan University, and a number of other senior scholars all enthusiastically responded Zhonghua Wenhua (Chinese Culture) 10 (August 1994): pp.218-219. 8 Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, trans. Hans H. Gerth. Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1951, p. 235. 9 Tang Junyi, Shengming cuizai yu xinling jingjie, pp. 833-930. 10 Chang Tsai (Zhang Zai), “The Western Inscription,” in Wing-tsit Chan, trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 497. 11 11. Feng Youlan, “Xin yuanren” (New Origins of Humanity) in Zhenyuan liushu (Six Books of Feng Youlan in the 1930s and 1940s). Shanghai: Eastern Chinese Normal University Press, 1996, vol. II, pp. 626-649.

Tu Weiming 12

Wang Yangming “Inquiry on the Great Learning,” in Wing-tsit Chan, trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, pp.659. 13 Ibid., 659-660. Since Wang Yangming wished to demonstrate that the mind of the small man can form one body with all things as well, he used “he” rather than “we” in the text. 14 Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and its Modem Fate: A Trilogy Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. 15 The “Text” of The Great Learning. Although I have made a few changes in my translation, it basically follows Wing-tsit Chan’s version. See Wing-tsit Chan trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p.86. 16 Wm. Theodore de Bary, “’Think Globally, Act Locally,’ and the Contested Ground Between,” in Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Berthrong. Cambridge, Mass.: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 1998, p. 32. 17 Ibid., pp. 32-33. 18 Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean), XXII. See Tu Wei-ming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989, 77. This translation is slightly different from Wing-tsit Chan’s version, cited in the book. 19 Xiong Shili, Xin Weishilun (New Theory on Consciousness-Only), reprint. Taipei: Guangwen Publishers, 1962, vol. I, chap. 4, pp. 49-92. 20 Liang Shuming, Dongxi wenhua jiqi zhexue (Eastern and Western Cultures and their Philosophies), reprint. Taipei: Wenxue Publishers, 1979, pp. 200-201. 21 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1999. 22 See Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel, eds., A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. New York: Continuum, 1993. 23 The Earth Charter, http://www.earthcharter.org. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 H u s t o n S m i t h , T h e Wo r l d ’s R e l i g i o n s . S a n F r a n c i s c o : HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p. 182. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., pp. 186-187. 32 See Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990 and Brian Swimme, The Universe Story. From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era - A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. 33 Quoted in Mary Evelyn Tucker, “The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology,” in Steven L. Chase, ed., Doors of Understanding: Conversations on Global Spirituality in Honor of Ewert Cousins. Quincy, Ɋ.: Franciscan Press, 1997, p.111. 34 Wing-tsit Chan, trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 3. 35 The Book of Change, 36 Mencius, VIIA:1. See D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius. Harmondsworth,

The Ecological Turn in New Confucian Humanism the National People’s Congress, he plays a pivotal role in formulating national policies and encourages nongovernmental agencies in raising environmental concerns. For a retrospective look at his own career, see Qu Geping, Mengxiang yu qidai: Zhongguo huanjing baohu de guoqu yu weilai (Dreams and Anticipations: The Past and Future of China’s Environmental Protection). Beijing: China Environmental Science Press, 2000. 39 Wm, Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981, p. 216. 40 Ibid. It should be noted that although de Bary’s main concern here is the Way in the “learning of the mind-and-heart,” the ecological implications are self-evident. 41 Mary Evelyn Tucker, “The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology,” in Chase, ed., Doors of Understanding, p. 120. 42 The Earth Charter. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid, Currently more than a hundred programs (including departments and research centers) focusing on the environment have been developed in China’s institutes of higher learning. While the majority of these programs are primarily concerned with technical engineering issues, quite a few of them have integrated subjects in the social sciences and the humanities in their multidisciplinary approaches to environmental protection. 45 Ibid.

About the author: Tu Wei-ming, IACSCW Honorary President, is Director of Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University and Research Professor at Harvard University. He has taught Chinese intellectual history at Princeton University (1967-71) and University of California at Berkeley (1971-81). He has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981, and was Director of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute from 1996 to 2008. Professor Tu Wei-ming is the primary proponent of the “Third Epoch of Confucian Humanism”. He is the author of numerous publications in Chinese and English, including: Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth; Centrality and Commonality, An Essay on Confucian Religiousness; Humanity and Self-Cultivation; Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation; Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual. was published in Chinese in 2001.

37 Tu Wei-ming, “Global Community as Lived Reality: Exploring Social Resources for Development,” in Social Policy & Social Progress, Special Issue on the Social Summit, Copenhagen, March 6-12, 1995. New York: United Nations, 1996, pp. 47-48. 38 The case of Qu Geping merits special attention. Since the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972, he has been instrumental in developing an infrastructure within the governmental system for dealing with environmental protection in China. As chairman of the Environmental Protection and Resource Conservation Committee of

Comparative Studies of China and the West

Vol. 1 2013

Confucianism & Constructive Postmodernism By Tang Yijie Peking University

I. What Kind of Age Are We in Now? From a world perspective, our current age can possibly be seen as the transition from modern capitalist society beginning with the first, 18th-century, Enlightenment toward a postmodern society of a “second enlightenment.” From a China perspective, our age will be seen as a crucial moment for realizing great national revival in the context of globalization. All in all, for human society, this age represents a precious opportunity to enter a totally new era. Since the 18 th-century Age of Enlightenment, Western capitalism has a history of almost 300 years, during which period the Western world achieved dazzling “modernization.” But now, “modernized society” is suffering from more and more intractable problems. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) proposed that reason should be the watchword of the Enlightenment, but these days “reason” faces its own problems. Originally, “reason” contained two related aspects: “instrumental reason” and “value reason,” both aspects with an extremely important role in advancing human omnipotent” “instrumental reason” outshines humanistic “value reason,” and the latter has become marginalized. As a result, everything becomes an “instrument”: people become instruments for others and the natural world has become an instrument to be used by human beings as

The normal and harmonious relation between man and nature has been severely harmed by man’s unrestrained exploitation, destruction and waste of natural resources. In turn, man’s own survival is threatened by deteriorating natural conditions such as depletion of the ozone layer, poisoned oceans, polluted environment and unbalanced eco-environment. Although the Kyoto Protocol for limiting air pollution was signed in Kyoto, Japan, as early as in December 1997, certain developed countries in the capitalist world set various obstacles on its path. One example is Canada’s recent announcement of its intention to withdraw from the Protocol. This illustrates that the “reason” advocated by the Enlightenment is being changed by some Western leaders into a “non-rational” and utilitarian “tool.”

With the growth of industrialization, a “free market economy” has promoted the huge increase of human wealth, and people have won great material benefit from it. But there is no denying that it has also caused serious polarization between rich and poor (including tensions country-to-country, ethnic group-to-ethnic group, and class-to-class within a country). If the “free market economy” continues to grow like a rapacious monster, without effective supervision, control or restraint, sooner or later it will cause economic crisis and social disturbance. The global financial crisis that first appeared in the USA in 2008 was still ongoing when the debt crisis began to sweep Europe in 2011. According to Professor Paul Kennedy of Yale University, liberalism freed people from the shackles of the pre-marketeconomy age, but it has also put people in danger of 1

Another Enlightenment watchword, “liberation of the individual,” originally targeted religious superstition and vulgar ignorance, encouraging people to be fully aware of their own strength so as to fully deploy their “free” creativity. Today, however, this notion has become an instrument for the domination of others, a tool that imperialist countries in particular use to support their own hegemony and impose their own value systems on other countries and peoples, pushing a universalist doctrine.2 The distorted development of today’s capitalist society has resulted in people no longer in pursuit of “reason,” but indulging themselves in the lust for power and worship of money. Consequently, all groups of people live in pain and mental conflict: ordinary people struggle to survive harsh conditions; intellectuals experience constant guilt because of their inability to end social chaos, their inability to win people’s trust. Politicians exist in a state of self-deception; entrepreneurs wrestle to figure their way around mutually contradictory rules and systems. Regardless of rank or identity it seems that the happy life to which all aspire is out of reach and happiness eludes all. But this is not a problem caused by any individual: rather, it is an unavoidable pain for a society in the throes of a major transitional period. Therefore, it is incumbent on each and every one of us to work hard for the coming of a new age.

Tang Yijie

II. The Rise of Two Trends of Thought in China in the 1990s In the 1990s, there emerged in China’s ideological and cultural circles two ideological trends opposing the concept of “monism.” One trend is “postmodernism,” an idea originating in the West and aiming to deconstruct “modernity.” In the early 1980s, “postmodernism” had already come to China, but it made little impact at the time: by the 1990s however, Chinese scholars were suddenly showing it great interest. Another trend is the “Guoxue tide”—the ardent pursuit of revitalizing traditional Chinese culture. In truth, in the 1980s, China’s thinkers had advocated greater emphasis on traditional Chinese culture, but it did not coalesce into a surge tide until in the 1990s when Guoxue rose quietly in Peking University. What does the rise of these two

Confucianism & Constructive Postmodernism “to care about others” and “to respect differences” (in a postmodern society). In their opinion, when people use their personal “freedom” in ways that diminish the community, they are bound to weaken their own “freedom.” Therefore, it is necessary to reject an abstract concept of freedom in favor of a profound and responsible freedom by bringing in the notions of responsibility and duty and by revealing the inner relation between freedom and duty. In the West, constructive postmodernism is a tiny branch stream with very little influence, but in China it has attracted the attention of a group of scholars who are passionate for national revival. Karl Theodor Jaspers wrote in The Origin and Goal of History: Until today mankind has lived by what happened during the Axial Period, by what was thought and created

In the 1960s, to save human society and cancel out modernity’s concomitant negative impact, the its early period, postmodernism was “deconstructive postmodernism,” posited as a way of dealing with problems produced in the course modern society’s development. The aim was to deconstruct modernity, to oppose monism and advocate pluralism, to shatter all authority and to cast the “authoritativeness” and “dominant nature” of modernity into the shade. But, postmodernism of the deconstructive kind produced neither positive standpoints, nor any designs for a new age. At the turn of the 21st century, “constructive postmodernism,” a concept based on process philosophy, proposed integrating the positive elements of the first Enlightenment with postmodernism and thus called for a “second enlightenment.” For instance, according to Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, “man” should not be taken as the center of everything. Rather, “Man and nature should be regarded as a closely related living community.” 3 According to John B. Cobb, a major founder of process philosophy, Constructive postmodernism takes a critical attitude towards deconstructive postmodernism…we have introduced ecologicalism into postmodernism. In a postmodern age, man and man will co-exist harmoniously, as will man and nature. It is an age which will retain something positive of modernity while transcending dualism, anthropocentrism and male chauvinism, an age that aims to build a postmodern society for the common good. According to process philosophy, if the rallying cry of the first Enlightenment was “to free the self,” then the second enlightenment’s watchword should be

since then it has been the case that recollections and reawakenings of the potentialities of the Axial Period— renaissances—afford a spiritual impetus. Return to this beginning is the ever-recurrent event in China, India and the West.4 In the West, constructive postmodernism is a tiny has attracted the attention of a group of scholars who are passionate for national revival. This is exemplified in the “Guoxue tide” in the late 1990s, when China was experiencing a process of national rejuvenation, and for this the support of a revitalized national culture was essential. In my opinion, it is precisely because traditional Chinese culture (Guoxue) has had over a century of impact from Western culture that Chinese scholars have had the chance for reflecting on our own traditional culture. We have gradually come to realize what of our culture should be promoted, what abandoned and what absorbed. For over one hundred years, Chinese scholars have been trying to absorb and digest “Western learning,” and this most certainly laid the foundation for the transformation of Guoxue in the traditional sense to its modern counterpart. The new or modern Guoxue must be a spiritually significant power for China’s revival as well as for the “peace and development” of human society. It will help China to realize “modernization” in an all-round way, and also to avoid the predicament that Western society currently experiences. In other words, the new Guoxue should stick to the principle of Fanben Kaixin. Only through Fanben (return to the source) are we able to Kaixin (open up new territory). Fanben requires of us a deep understanding

Comparative Studies of China and the West of Guoxue’s essence and insists on the mainstay nature of our own culture, whereas Kaixin requires of us a systematic understanding of the new problems facing China and human society, problems in need of urgent resolution. The two aspects are inseparable: only by digging deeper into the true essence of Guoxue can we open up new territory at the appropriate time. Only by squarely addressing the problems of human society can we better promote and update the essence of Guoxue, so Guoxue will once more be ignited by the Fanben Kaixin principle and contribute to human society. What are the prospects of these two trends of

answer these questions, we must fully investigate the possibility of integrating the two.

III. In the New Historical Period of Chinese Revival and in the Context of Globalization, Traditional Chinese Culture May Well Make an Epochal Contribution to Human Society. China is in the process of national revival, and this must have the support of revitalized national culture. However, in this globalized age, the revitalization of our traditional culture requires us not only to address our own social problems but world problems also. It follows that while developing our traditional culture we must keep in mind that it belongs to both China and the world at large. It requires us not only to pay close attention to the actual development of our own culture but also to incipient tendencies in Western culture. Here the author would like to offer a possible trend for discussion, namely: Could a combination of Guoxue and constructive postmodernism—the former traditional Chinese learning and the latter of Western origin and still in the bud—have something to offer to the healthy and rational

i. “Man and Nature as a Closely Related Living Community” and “Unity of Man and Heaven” According to John B. Cobber, “Today we recognize that man is a part of nature and that we live an ecological community.” This idea, although coming directly from Whitehead, is very similar to a traditional Chinese notion—the unity of Man and Heaven, Heaven implying the laws of nature. As a core traditional Chinese value, it is a mode of thinking that differs from the “man-nature dichotomy” idea that long prevailed in the West. In 1992, 1,575 famous scientists from around the world signed and published a document named “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” Its first line read: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision 12

Vol. 1 2013

no getting away from the fact that the long prevalence of the “man-nature dichotomy” mindset made nature a victim.5 Fortunately, the “unity of Man and Heaven” way of thinking offers us a feasible way towards tackling the destruction of the natural world. As early as 2,500 years ago, Confucius was exhorting people to both “know heaven” and “fear heaven.” The first admonition requires us to learn more about nature and thus consciously use it to improve the welfare of human beings. The second requires us to hold nature Zhu Xi, another great thinker of ancient China, “Heaven is inseparable from man and man from heaven.” What he is telling us is that, after heaven gives birth to man, man and heaven have formed an inseparable relation, one that requires man to embody the laws of heaven and to be responsible for it. As we have seen, in dealing with the relation between man and nature, traditional Chinese philosophy takes a road similar to that of constructive postmodernism. As Léon Vandermeersch put it, “Western humanism that brought the world such a perfect thought as the concept of human rights now faces many challenges from modern society that as yet it has been unable to answer. Why, then, not give some consideration as to whether Confucian thinking might indicate a way forward for the world, for example: respect for nature as proposed in the ‘unity of man and heaven’ concept; and the philanthropic bring to bear the essence of Confucian teaching on current world problems, to examine them afresh from a new perspective.”6 Why does Vandermeersch put Western thought on human rights together with the three concepts from Chirights are very important to us, because man should not be deprived of the right of freedom, and social progress can only be realized with “freedom of thought,” “freedom of speech,” “freedom of belief,” “freedom of movement,” etc. However, the question of how to protect human rights is often subject to interference by external forces, to removal even. This has been the case in China and overseas. Some Western thinkers and politicians widen the concept of human rights to the extent that there are no limits and that man can destroy nature at will. Hence Vandermeersch asserts that there should be some constraints on man’s rights over nature, and to do the concept of their unity. According to Christian belief, God created the world in its complete form and man can do nothing further to it. However, in Vandermeersch’s opinion,

Tang Yijie once God created a complete world, the rest was man’s problem and for man to address. Just as André Gide, the French writer, said, “God proposes and man disposes.” The Confucian view that “all men are brothers” is linked to another traditional Chinese idea, namely “world outlook.” This considers that man’s loftiest ideal is “the world being One” (or the world is in Great Harmony). As is written in The Great Learning, it is important to cultivate one’s moral character, to take good care of one’s family, to run the State well and thence make the whole world peaceful and harmonious. For any country or nation, it is important to consider not just its own interests, but “peace in the world” (i.e. common interests of mankind), which, in my opinion, should be an intrinsic meaning of “human rights.” In other words Western thinking on human rights would do well to look into the traditional thought and culture of other nations (such as China) for valuable elements that could supplement and enrich its own approach, and thereby set human society on a more reasonable path.

ii. Constructive Postmodernism, a Second Enlightenment and Confucian “Renxue” (Learning of Goodness) According to constructive postmodernism, if the watchword of the first Enlightenment was “liberty of the individual,” then those of the second should be “care about others” and “respect for differences.”7 The former can be described as ren (goodness), a core value of the Confucian school. The starting point and basis of ren is “love of family,” but according to Confucius we should not only extend ren to family members but beyond the family too. Similarly, as taught by Mencius, an important successor of Confucius, “Apart from taking good care of the elderly and children of one’s own kin, one should extend concern for the elderly and children of other families.” He also asserted that love for family was a prerequisite for loving others, and loving others a prerequisite for loving all creatures. Mencius’ thought is also in line with the “care about others” line proposed by constructive postmodernism. According to constructive postmodernism scholars, their philosophy is to try to “construct a postmodern world where all living communities get due attention and concern” on the basis of “retaining some positive factors of modernity” (mainly valuable concepts such as “freedom,” “democracy,” “human rights,” as proposed by Western thinkers on the basis of what they call “reason”).8 This can be regarded as a more comprehensive description of “care about others.” In the development of human society, culture always undergoes a process of accumulation, inheritance and creation. A postmodern society must retain the positive factors of modernity such as “freedom,” “democracy,” “human rights,” before

Confucianism & Constructive Postmodernism which all living communities get due attention and concern” can be fully displayed. “Respect for differences” can be taken as a different way of expressing the Confucian proposition “the Ways move in parallel and do not interfere with each other.” Different ideological and cultural traditions often have different features. Fortunately, such differences can be meaningful to human society to some extent and are by no means necessarily at odds.9 For example, to allow that the concept of “democracy” proposed by the ditions, is not to deny traditional Chinese thinking such as Minben (people as the root) as also having positive meaning in specific social conditions too. Nor do we deny the “universal value” of our traditional thoughts such as “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” Only by acknowledging that every ideological and cultural tradition has its positive effect on human society can different countries and nations coexist and co-prosper. Absorbing and digesting the strong points of different cultural systems as a means to achieving real comprehension of them is an essential path for the development of culture. Just as Bertrand Russell said, “Many times in the past has it been proved that exchanges between different civilizations made milestones in the development of human civilizations.”10 We should remember that as human beings, we face common problems. We may adopt different ways to tackle those problems but we often come to the same end via different routes. Therefore, “respect others” and “the Ways move in parallel and do not interfere with each other” have equivalent value to us.

iii. Defining “Human” and Examining “Human Rights” from the Standpoint of “Li” ⽬ — a Traditional Chinese Concept The human rights concept is a very important one for modern society. But each ideological and cultural tradition should discuss deeply how to have the concept play a positive role in building a healthy and rational society. As written in Thinking Through Confucius, coauthored by David Hall and Roger Ames, two wellknown American philosophers, “What we need to do is not only study Chinese traditions but also to use them as a cultural resource to enrich and restructure our own. The Confucian school defined ‘man’ from a societal perspective. Can we use it to modify and strengthen the Western mode of society built on li (rites, courtesy, ceremony, etc.) to help 11

This paragraph discusses three issues: One, that 13

Comparative Studies of China and the West the West should not stop at studying China’s thinking and culture, but go on to apply those things so as to “enrich and restructure” its own; Two, the necessity of a societal perspective in traditional Chinese culture; Three, that China’s li contains elements that could well be valuable if brought into the Western concept of human rights. In my opinion, the three issues raised by Hall and Ames are for treating the condition of some of Western philosophical concepts being “insufficiently rooted.” It is precisely because of the great importance attached to man’s right of liberty in modern society (since the first Enlightenment) that human society has developed by leaps and bounds. The right of liberty is a great creative force. That said, the misuse of right of liberty by an individual, a country or a nation can, in certain circumstances, constitute a threat to, suppression or violation of the rights of other individuals, countries or

it from the isolated angle of ‘the individual’” because “humans” have to live and grow up in various relations starting with the moment of birth. It is much like what Karl Marx said in Theses on Feuerbach, “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of social relations.”12 How then are we to handle the complex “social placed on li in dealing with these relations. Although li was a conceptual thing, it did have a restricting power on man’s behavior. As written in The Analects of Confucius: “In practicing the rules of li, harmony is to be prized.” The most important role of li is to promote social harmony as a normalizing power over society. As written in the Book of Rites, “…rulers use li to protect morality and laws to prevent people from committing crimes.” Rulers created li for preventing moral norms being ruined and made laws for keeping social order. As written in “Explaining Government” by Jia Yi of the Former Han Dynasty, “Li is put into practice before people do something wrong whereas law is executed after people do bad things. The role of law is visible whereas the role of li is invisible and hard to perceive.” Another reason that li is greatly valued in our tradition is, as advocated by the Confucian school, the importance of reciprocal relationships among people. As written in the Books of Rites,

brothers are kind to each other; a husband is responsible to wife and wife obedient to husband; the older children are kind to younger siblings and the younger respect the 14

Vol. 1 2013 older; a ruler is benevolent and his subjects are loyal.” That is to say, according to the Confucian school, the moral relation between people should be a relation of rights and corresponding obligations rather than oneChina’s li was created precisely in order to balance the rights and obligations of those social relations. Therefore, in my opinion, is it possible to call premodern China a society under “rule of li of course, is an ideal of the Confucian school. From this one could envisage, in establishing a “convention on human rights” also establishing a “convention on obligations” at the same time, so as to keep a balance between rights and obligations. This would accord with what Hall and Ames believed a possible role for li: “enriching and restructuring” the Western concept of human rights. One might envisage a “convention of obligations” to protect and strengthen a “convention on human rights.” According to John B. Cobb, “Traditional Chinese ideology is very attractive to constructive postmodernism, but we should not just return to it. Instead, our postmodernism should renew itself by serious scientific means and by adjusting itself to the changing society. The pre-modern tradition should absorb the positive factors of the Enlightenment such as concern for and respect of individual rights before it can contribute something to the postmodern society.” 13 This paragraph has great significance for study of our ideology and culture. Traditional or premodern Chinese culture needed to absorb rather than exclude all valuable fruits achieved by modern society since the Enlightenment, such as freedom, democracy, human rights, concepts that embody “concern and respect for individual rights.” In addition, we must work hard to put into practice those positive concepts before we can successfully align traditional or pre-modern Chinese culture with postmodernism and promote the transformation from modern to postmodern society. It is good to note that some Chinese scholars have had extensive contact and satisfactory cooperation with Western scholars of constructive postmodernism. The representative figures of constructive postmodernism have also realized the value of traditional Chinese culture to their research and are absorbing nutrition from it. Similarly, some Chinese scholars have noticed the helping human society out of predicament and are paying close attention to the development of this thought. If an organic synthesis between the widely influential “Guoxue tide” and constructive postmodernism can be achieved, then pioneered deeply in Chinese society and developed further, China could perhaps proceed smoothly to completing the mission of its own “first enlightenment,” realize modernization, and then rather

Tang Yijie rapidly enter a postmodern society marked by a “second enlightenment.” If this does come to pass, the fruits achieved in China’s current cultural revival will be of

In this paper, the author explores the possibility of communication and integration of Western and Chinese cultures. Whether this possibility can become reality hinges mainly on how China’s Guoxue can adapt to healthy social development and whether constructive postmodernism, currently a minor branch of thinking in the West, can become more mainstream and win widespread acceptance. The author stresses that this paper is simply a theoretical foray—a try-out—and would welcome any comments.

Paul Kennedy, “The Form of Capitalism Will Change to Some Extent.” Reference News (Cankaoxiaoxi), March 16, 2009. 2 “Universalism: Some Western scholars and politicians believe that only the values preached by Western empires have “universal value” and that the ideas and cultures of all other nations have no “universal value” to present-day human society except as museum exhibits. Therefore, we must distinguish the issue of “universalism” from that of “universal value.” On this, please refer to the “General Preface” written by Tang Yijie for Zhongguo Ruxue Shi. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011. 3 According to the paper “Whitehead’s Process Philosophy,” “Process philosophy takes environment, resources and human beings as a closely related living community.” Social Sciences Weekly, Shanghai, August 15, 2002. Even the Stoics of Ancient Greece believed “man is part of nature.” (Translator’s back translation due to lack of the original English version of the relevant quotation) 4 Karl Theodor Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History. trans. by Wei Chuxiong, et al. Beijing: Huaxia Publishing House, June 1999, p. 14. 5 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy. trans. by Ma Yuande, Beijing: The Commercial Press, August 1988. On page 91 of completed or nearly completed the dualism of spirit and material that began from Plato and was developed by Christian philosophy for religion related reason… According to Descartes’ system, the spiritual world and the material world are two parallel and independent worlds and the study of one may not involve the other.” 6 Léon Vandermeersch, “The Significance of Ruzang (Confucian Collection) in the World.” Guangming Daily, August 31, 2009. 7 Wang Zhihe, “Postmodernism Calls for a Second Enlightenment,” World Culture Forum. February, 2007. 8 “For the Common Welfare: an Interview with John B. Cobb” (interviewed by Wang Xiaohua), Social Sciences Weekly. Shanghai, June 13, 2002. 9 According to the section “Supreme Harmony” of Correcting Ignorance by Zhang Zai, “Everything has its opposite and the opposite must move against the thing. When the opposite moves against the end must be harmony. ” 10 “Comparison between Chinese and Western Cultures,” in Bertrand Russell’s A Free Man’s Worship. Beijing: Time Literature and Art Press, April 1988. The Chinese translation is slightly changed. 11 Thinking Through Confucius. Beijing: Peking University Press,

Confucianism & Constructive Postmodernism August 2005. 12 Complete Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Vol.3, p. 5. 13 For the Common Welfare: an Interview with John B. Cobb” (interviewed by Wang Xiaohua). Social Sciences Weekly. Shanghai, June 13, 2002.

About the author: Tang Yijie, IACSCW Honorary advisor, is professor at Peking University and director of the Institute of Chinese Philosophy and Culture. He is the chief editor of the ongoing national project, the “Complete Works of Confucianism”. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Peking University in 1951 and received an honorary doctorate from McMaster University of Canada in 1990. As an expert of Confucianism, Taoism and metaphysics of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, he played a leading role in a number of national and international academic institutions, and has been a guest professor at several universities in China and abroad. He is the author of a remarkable number of works on Chinese philosophy and culture. His recent academic interest extends to economic globalization, cultural diversity, global ethic and related cultural issues.

German Edition of Annotated Poems of Mao Zedong (H.-C.Günther & Gu Zhengkun ) Has Just Been Published in Germany In time for the 120th anniversary of the birth of Chairman Mao Zedong a new translation of his poems in German appeared (Bautz: Nordhausen 2013, Poetry, Music and Art, vol. 2). In cooperation with Gu Zhengkun, H.-C. Günther, the German scholar, tried to render Mao’s poems in a poetic way so that the reader might appreciate the poetic quality of the work in another language. Günther has a wide experience in verse translation from various languages. The text is based on the most recent English version by Gu Zhengkun. Beside a preface by the translator it also contains Gu Zhengkun’s long introduction to Mao’s poetry in German translation. The extensive commentary too enlarges on the detailed commentary by Prof. Gu. Thus the book provides by far the most complete and most amply commented version of Mao’s poems available today in any foreign language.

Comparative Studies of China and the West

Vol. 1 2013

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins: Family â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Nation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; World By Gu Zhengkun Prof. & Dean of Institute of World Literature, Peking University

Abstract: This paper maintains that all cultures are legitimate, yet at certain levels, different cultures have corresponding degrees of superiority or inferiority. There are therefore at least eleven criteria to judge whether a culture is superior or not. The paper further maintains that, arising in direct response to their different geographic HQYLURQPHQWV WKH GLIIHUHQW VRFLDO VWUXFWXUHV LQ &KLQD DQG WKH :HVW KDYH D Ă&#x20AC;HVK DQG EORRG FRUUHVSRQGHQFH ZLWK &KLQHVH and Western cultural structures. The author discovers through his studies that the family-like social structure is one of the key factors to explain the traditional Chinese culture, while the interest-group social structure is another key factor to explain the traditional dominant Western culture. The family-like social structure, according to the author, is relatively more acceptable compared with other social structures. The paper tries to prove the point by 1) comparing Chinese and Western values such as obligations and freedom; 2) comparing Chinese and Western political and economic despotism and 3) comparing family-nation vs. state-nation and examination vs. democracy. The paper ends up concluding that human cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highest pursuit is to awaken mankind to realize that we all human beings, as modern genetic research has increasingly convinced us, are actually members of one family. That being the case, the use of the family-oriented values in constructing the future world is inevitably a better choice. Keywords: family-like society; interest- group society;values;worldism

1.Cultures: Superiority or Inferiority? All cultures are legitimate, yet at certain levels, different cultures have different advantages and disadvantages that relatively indicate corresponding degrees of superiority or inferiority. Culture mainly consists of its value, lifestyle, language and writing system, religion, art, political system, knowledge, and technology, etc. But the core of a culture lies in its values, especially the moral values. Some scholars have argued that there is not much difference between culture and civilization, yet most scholars tend to believe that they are different. Although it is a complicated job to define the differences, the main distinction, as the majority of scholars would believe, is this: the concept of culture is more often used to refer to the spiritual achievements, while the concept of civilization the material achievements of human beings. All cultures are legitimate and should be respected. But the same kind of legitimacy does not mean the same degree of excellence. Some aspects of a culture can never be judged superior or inferior. For example, as far as peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aesthetic interest is concerned, it is hard to tell whether the taste for the painting of Leonardo da Vinci or for that of Qi Baishi is artistically better. But relatively speaking, many other aspects of a culture or a culture as a whole can be judged superior or inferior. For example, as regards value, it is quite evident that the advocacy for a spirit of altruism is superior to that of egoism. Or, 16

as regard to apparatus, it is also quite obvious that the technology of electronic computer far excels that of the ancient abacus.

2.The Criteria to Judge Whether a Culture Is Advanced or Not It should be noted that I choose the terms â&#x20AC;&#x153;advancedâ&#x20AC;? to mean relatively superior, and â&#x20AC;&#x153;backwardâ&#x20AC;? to mean relatively inferior. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Backwardâ&#x20AC;? here does not mean bad or something completely negative. The second place winner is â&#x20AC;&#x153;backwardâ&#x20AC;? compared with the champion, but the second place is not so bad. There are many criteria to judge whether a culture is advanced or not. Here, eleven points are listed, emphasizing the spiritual aspects. The material aspects belong to the category of civilization. The criteria to judge whether a civilization is advanced can also be listed, but is omitted here. The eleven criteria are: 1) to see whether a culture can cultivate and edify the quality of kindness in its people. A culture which makes its people tricky (in terms of calculation), mean and bellicose is not a good culture; while a culture which renders its people righteous, honest, serene and modest is surely a good culture. The indicators may include the crime rate and the number of prisoners. The higher the crime rate is, the lower the quality of the culture is, and it is more backward. The lower the crime rate is, the higher

Gu Zhengkun

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins

the quality of the culture is, and it is more advanced. A culture may suffer high crime rate either because its law enforcement organization is too harsh and inhumane, or its public are self-seeking, showing too strong a disposition to committing crimes. Both conclusions suggest that the culture is relatively low in quality.

is backward while the latter is advanced.

2) to see whether a culture attaches importance to man of great craft or man of great virtue. The backward culture merely attaches importance to men of great craft but neglects men of great virtue; while the advanced culture attaches importance to both.

3.The Correspondence between Geographic Environment and Social Structure: China and West

3)to see whether a culture stresses justice or benefit. The culture which merely stresses benefit but overlooks justice is backward; while the culture which

4) to see the complexity of the laws of a culture. The culture is backward when its law system is excessively complex and pays too much attention to benefit; the culture with a law system of moderate complexity is just fine; while the culture whose law system is simple and pays enough attention to virtues is advanced. 5) to see whether the martial spirit of a culture is strong and whether the corresponding military industry is highly developed. The culture with strong martial spirit is backward, while the culture with weak martial spirit is advanced. The culture which worships military force is backward, while the culture which esteems civil cultivation is advanced. 6) to see whether a culture emphasizes freedom or obligation to others. The culture which emphasizes freedom but ignores obligation is backward; while the culture which emphasizes obligation as well as freedom is advanced. 7) to see whether a culture emphasizes egoism or altruism. The former is backward while the latter advanced. A culture that encourages people to be strict with themselves is more acceptable than a culture that encourages people to be strict with others. The former is relatively advanced while the latter is backward. 8) to see whether a culture prefers peace or war. The former is advanced while the latter is backward. 9) to see whether a culture emphasizes benevolence or truthfulness. The culture which emphasizes both benevolence and truthfulness is advanced, while the culture which emphasizes truthfulness to the detriment of benevolence is backward. 10) to see whether a culture emphasizes the force of great mobs or the authority of great sages. The former

11) to see whether the science and technology of a culture contributes to the peaceful development or lead to the confrontation of human society. The former is advanced while the latter is backward.

As long as the earth furnishes the basic conditions for life, subsistence and culture, coming together in part or in entirety, these conditions will interact with and influence each other. They will regulate, adapt to, and reorganize each other, promoting the phenomenon of evolution. Thus, culture and civilization are produced and developed. As regards the driving force for cultural development, I have summarized nine factors, which are omitted in this article. Here, I only want to introduce one of them: the factor of geographic environment. It is an old viewpoint that the geographic environment exerts influence upon the culture of man. Since the explanations of this view are extremely complicated, here I will not cite them point by point. I will only mention my new insights into the matter. To merely emphasize that geographic environments is to decide how geographic environments influence human culture in specific conditions. First, among the many factors of geographic environments, I see three of them â&#x20AC;&#x201D; terrain, climate, and natural resources â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as the primordial factors which are most essential for the development of human culture. Second, according to my research, the influence of environments can be classified into two categories: vertical and horizontal. Generally speaking, human culture as a whole is more horizontal because it exerts strong impact in certain phases of historical development. But viewed from the overall or vertical phases of historical development, the influence is gradually decreasing. That is to say, development of time. The earlier the time is traced back toward antiquity, the stronger the influence of environments is found. The later the time comes toward modern and contemporary periods, the weaker the influence of environments is found. Of course, the ever-decreasing influence of the environment does not mean it will totally disappear eventually. Rather, it just means the degree of the influence is decreasing with a general tendency. Third, more specifically speaking, in the representative birthplaces of both Chinese and Western cultures (like the Central China area, cradle of traditional Chinese culture and the Mediterranean area, cradle of ancient Greco-Roman culture), different 17

Comparative Studies of China and the West geographic environments have brought about different social structures and cultural styles. The terrain, climate, and natural resource in Central China area inevitably encourage and promote the agricultural mode of production and the family-like social structure. And the terrain, climate, and natural resources in Greco-Roman culture — the representative ancestor of modern Western cultures — have unavoidably encouraged and promoted the commercial mode of production and the related social structure of interest-groups (military groups, economic groups and political groups.)

4.The Family-Like Social Structure: the Greatest and Most Ideal Social Structure for Human Beings Arising in direct response to their different geographic environments, the different social structures with Chinese and Western cultural structures. Therefore, the family-like social structure is one of the key factors to explain the traditional mainstream Chinese culture, and the interest-group (military-group) social structure is also one of the key factors to explain the traditional dominant western culture. In other words, the family-like social structure in China has a complex and pervasive connection with traditional Chinese philosophy, politics, economics, ethics, aesthetics, law, architecture, medicine, sport, etiquette, and even military affairs. For instance, the doctrines of Confucianism and Daoism are the necessary outcome of the family-like social structure in China. This holds true even for some doctrines that entered China from outside, like Buddhism (especially the Mahayana branch). The reason why it is widely accepted in traditional Chinese society is that its doctrines profoundly conform to the family-like social structure and the cultural structure of China. Likewise, the interestgroup social structure in the West also has a complex and pervasive connection with Western philosophy, politics, economics, ethics, aesthetics, law, architecture, medicine, sport, etiquette, and even military affairs. For instance, the doctrine of rationalism and the admiration for science and technology are the necessary choice of the Western interest-group social structure. This holds true even for some foreign doctrines, like Christianity, which has its origin in the Middle East. The reason why it is widely accepted in traditional Western society is also that its interest-group social structure and the cultural structure of the West. There is also another viewpoint on which I radically differ from other scholars. Although many scholars have discussed to varying degrees about the matter of the family-like social structure in China, they often see it as a backward social structure and criticize it negatively. I see quite the opposite. According to me, the traditional family-like social structure in ancient China is an extremely great social structure in the ancient world. And 18

Vol. 1 2013 also, among all the social structures of human beings, the family-like social structure is the greatest and most ideal. primitive society as communist society is that it is almost unexceptionally structured in the way of a family.

5.The Family-Like Social Structure: the Most Crucial Factor to Explain Whether a Culture Is Advanced or Backward Of all human relations, kinship is the most intimate. Therefore, in the kinship-based family, there is the most reasonable and natural human relation. Although there are also unavoidable conflicts for benefit, the intimacy, the love and the devotion between family members are undoubtedly unrivaled by any other human relation. Therefore, the values generated within a family are the most natural, reasonable, moral, virtuous and also most ideal. A logical inference is that the family-like social system. Therefore, we can say that the value system derived from the family-like social structure is the most ideal value system, and it is the highest pursuit and ultimate destination of human kind. Such an ideal is more commonly put as “a world family” or “as intimate as a family”. Righteousness and justice can also be achieved to some degree in other kind of human relation. But it is only in the family-like social structure that the maximum degree of righteousness and justice could be obtained, because in light of morality and obligation, every member in the family-like society should recognize other members as his relatives or his family members. In normal cases, the distribution of benefits among relatives or family members is fair. Moreover, the highest authority within a family structure is always held by the parents, the oldest, or the most prestigious. In most cases, compared with other members in the family or the members in other social structure, they show a greater degree of impartiality in dividing property, distributing power, or mediating conflict between family or clan members. It should be noted that with the sophistication of social situations, when the rights and benefits are being distributed within the ever-expanding family-like However, as long as the members acknowledge themselves to belong to the same big family, the advanced values originated from family relationship can be spread and further developed in the society. It is only within the family-like social structure that there is the highest possibility to appear such results as harmony, obedience, rapprochement, collaboration, loyalty, peace, gentility, accommodation, auspiciousness, reconciliation, and moderation. The traditional Chinese society is a typical family-

Gu Zhengkun

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins

structured society, so it necessarily gives birth to the unparalleled value system which comprises such virtues as benevolence, righteousness, politeness, wisdom, honesty, mildness, kindness, humility, frugality, moderation, loyalty, filial piety, incorruptibility, sense of shamefulness, and courage. This value system is not solely established by Confucius. It is the crystallization of various strategies employed by the family-like society of China when it is faced up with such problems as dividing benefits, distributing power, and mediating

On the contrary, the interest-group social structure in the Western world has its characteristics and limitations. In a society controlled by different interest groups and governed by the majority (democracy), justice is determined only by the strength of interest groups. The most powerful (militarily, politically and In the interest-group social structure, different interest groups will invariably stress their different interests, common solution is to acquire ruling status by means of war or election, and then make law to promote or at least the necessary cultural consequence when interests groups

inevitable for such social structure to give birth to the value system which attaches great emphasis to bravery, intelligence, abstinence, righteousness, cautiousness, freedom, democracy, self-reliance, and individualism. It should be admitted that when taken alone, the two great value systems – of China and West-- are both reasonable and nice, because they are both the strategic values the two societies produce in response to their concrete environments. However, if we compare them point by point, there is a difference between good and bad. Above all, among all the value items, the two societies have different emphasis. In the Chinese familylike society, benevolence (or love) is taken as the top priority and all the other values are governed under it. The original meaning of benevolence is: 1) a person and 2) the love. So benevolence means a person and his love. Hence the proverbs like “The widespread love is benevolence” , “A benevolent man loves his fellow men” , and “Benevolence is in man”. Therefore, “benevolence as a basis” is actually “people-oriented” and “love-based”. This is the real idea of Chinese humanism. Benevolence, as the supreme guideline to govern a country is without doubt the most humanitarian principle. It is undoubtedly the most reasonable and ideal principle no matter whether the rulers can thoroughly stick to it or not. It is precisely because the Chinese nation is structured like a big family that this principle can be accentuated in the political system of China. The family is the miniature of the nation; while the nation is the expansion of the family. Therefore, the love between

family members, such as parents, brothers and sisters, naturally evolves or sublimates into the love between the members of the whole society. Thus, it is natural for Confucius to appeals the social members to “love the populace extensively and stick closely to the principle of benevolence”. We now turn to the value system esteemed in the interest-group social structure in the West. The Western world has been dominated by four most important moral values, or the four cardinal virtues like “Wisdom”(Prudence), “Courage (or Fortitude)”, “Temperance”, and “Justice”. The Christian Church later added “faith”, “hope”, and “charity”, expanding the system into “Seven Cardinal Virtues”. Taking any of these virtues alone, each of them is good. However, when they are compared with the traditional values in China as is mentioned above, we have to admit that the values in China are better. For example, in the West, wisdom and courage are always regarded as the most important virtues, thus being prioritized; while in the Chinese culture, the most important values are benevolence and justice. As is mentioned earlier, compared with wisdom and courage -- the most important moral standard in the West, the values of benevolence and love in China when they are extended from family to the whole society are undoubtedly a better moral pursuit for human beings. Of course, the Western virtue of wisdom is also important, but it is desirable only under the guideline of the good will. Besides, courage, without proper restriction, is not desirable. In China, foolhardiness is even derided. In the Daoist doctrine of China, the quality of bravery is dismissed. Laozi has alleged that those who are excessively rash and reckless always end up miserable. In his opinion, “courage, when extended over a reasonable degree, induces death” . Of course, the quality of courage is not altogether excluded from the traditional values of China. It is one of the five qualities in Confucianism, that is, loyalty, filial piety, incorruptibility, sense of shamefulness, and courage. But courage is only desirable when it is based on justice. It should be noted that unlike the Westerners who put courage first or second among the Four Cardinal Virtues, in Confucianism, courage is values in the Christian Church — faith, hope and charity — are good as well, but unfortunately they are by and large not fully emphasized. The “charity” is very similar to Chinese “benevolence”, but it never seems to take the dominance in the Western world. There was even a period when the value of charity was criticized by some conservative Western scholars and it shocks the Chinese mind to hear them say that alms-giving or charitable conduct simply encourage laziness in society. Likewise, in China, altruism is pervasively comes second. When this kind of other-centered principle is compared with the self-centered individualism in the West, it is without doubt superior. Although, at some 19

Comparative Studies of China and the West early stages of China’s reform, in order to conform to the opening-up policy and especially to establish the socialist market economy, some people in the academia of China have taken great pains to propagate the Western traditional Marxists. Their proposal is understandable and acceptable, since it is strategic in that particular period of time. However, if a conscientious intellectual really takes the self-centered moral value as superior to Chinese people should degenerate into a baser species. The traditional Chinese values advocate a world family, peace, and conciliation. According to the moral standard, the strong should be restrained a little bit and the weak be helped a little bit; the aggression should be inhibited and war opposed. On the contrary, in traditional Western values, competition is advocated; the principle of natural selection and survival of the fittest is profusely propagated; and bellicosity has become common. If we compared the two systems of values, it goes without saying that that the traditional Chinese culture at this level is relatively superior. Thus, the traditional Chinese value system — despite some elements in it that call for further refinement and improvement in the new era — is up to now the world’s most advanced value system. Therefore, to some extent, we may conclude that as far as its general orientation is concerned, the moral and value system from the traditional Chinese society is now the most ideal value pursuit and destination for all mankind. As is mentioned above, the reason why Marx that it is almost unexceptionally structured in the way of a family. In such a social structure, members of a big family produce food together, manage the work together, and consume the goods together, without possessing any personal property. The only drawback is that the communist society in the primitive stage, due to its low productivity, is unable to yield ample material wealth. Reasoned in this way, when a society has the enough capacity to produce ample material wealth and make the wealth circulate, mankind should reconsider returning to family-like communism. That is also a social style of a world family and universal prosperity.

6. Case Study: Comparing Chinese and Western Values on Obligations and Freedom The emphasis of Western value system gradually came to the concept of freedom. Almost everyone in the West is familiar with Rousseau’s dramatic line: “Human beings are born free, but everywhere they are in chains.” After Rousseau put forward this concept in his renowned The Social Contract, thousands of scholars cited it without proper analysis. Freedom in today’s world has almost become a sacred creed. The pursuit of freedom itself as an ideal is of course a good thing. However, people tend to forget that ideal is just an ideal. 20

Vol. 1 2013 And as Rousseau asserts that the reality in human life is confined by freedom. If freedom is only emphasized without stating the relevant conditions, it becomes an empty, meaningless and misleading slogan. By relevant conditions I mean certain aspects: For example, how can a society protect its citizens under various circumstances, and how can it ensure the people’s well-being and provide the basic needs for their survival. If a person constantly faces the risk of unemployment, the risk of illness without being able to afford the hospital; or if a person is of average intelligence but is deprived of all opportunities for a better education; or if a person with a big family cannot afford an apartment to live in. So even though he or she has freedom to curse and swear in the streets, to criticize the authorities in the media, what more important than freedom. Of course, some aspects of freedom in association with other values, such as many initiatives regarding human rights in modern Western society, are worth learning from. Traditional Western values take freedom as an end in itself: an abstract individual sort of freedom, while Chinese traditional values emphasize more on obligations in one’s everyday life. Obligations and freedom do not totally contradict each other, but it is very difficult to get them balanced in reality. In other words, man must take on duties and responsibilities, but would rather prefer to indulge in carefree life without any obligations. Rousseau’s proposition is too loose and we can simply understand that man is actually not “born free”. In my opinion, even before people are born they are unable to choose their place and time of birth, and they are destined to be un-free. If he is born in an chance of being lucky all his life, whereas if he is born in a poor and common family, it is likely that hunger and misery will go with him all his life. In rural China, when a child is born, he or she is almost destined to become a farmer; only a small percentage of the rural population may be offered the opportunity not to become a peasant. And a man born in America or the developing countries will obviously share different opportunities, better or worse, in his career. Thus, it is useless to talk about freedom without any specification. People are not born free; they are born without freedom, but are burdened obligations to adjust themselves to the environment they are born into. They are born with necessary obligations imposed by the environment and they must carry out them in their life. For instance, they have to support their parents, obey the elders, care for the young and the old, and they must become so self-reliant as to be able to contribute to their own brothers and sisters’ livelihoods, the essential obligations to be their ubiquitous shackles and always want to indulge in a carefree lifestyle without any responsibilities. In fact, they think of freedom as

Gu Zhengkun

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins

an escape from one’s obligations for the world. True, freedom is a kind of enjoyment, but it is conditional, and conditions are always limitations. It is – I would rather say --- the very limitations that give the true meaning to freedom. Only when we understand this point, can we understand why the ancient Chinese had a set of rituals to regulate their behavior. Each individual’s obligations and duties were systematically regulated. All this sort of things are carefully prescribed in the Chinese li (rites, or the norms of social conduct). People’s exercise of freedom can be carried out only in accordance with the regulations set up in li; it is under such a condition that Western literary works, poetry in particular, singing the praises of shaking off the yoke of freedom, are very much like a naughty and perverted child who desperately tries to obtain everything they like such as toys and food. Yet, only modest obligations and modest freedom are desirable; indulgence in freedom will harm others and lead to one’s self-destruction. Even the beasts and birds of the jungle know that they have to care for their from going to extremes, for extremes are dangerous. If a society over-emphasizes the obligations, it will become too rigid and harsh—intentionally or unintentionally— the basic human rights will be deprived of in one way or another. This is where we should stop to ponder and something we should take into consideration.

7. Ch i n e s e and We s te r n Pol i ti c a l an d Economic Despotism: Coaxial Reverse 0XWXDO ,QÀXHQFH Democratic tendencies in the construction of Western political power systems, whether in the past or at present, are undeniable; yet people tend to overlook a key problem, that is, the tendency of political democratization has not brought the same degree of democratization in the possession of economic wealth; on the contrary, the emphasis on the sanctity of private property, strengthens individual economic dictatorship in the distribution and possession of economic wealth. This has stirred Western society into a very peculiar situation: within the framework of democracy is now embedded an economic dictatorship. The symbiosis of dictatorship and democracy is a yoke structure of complementariness, and co-existence. The superficial political democracy ensures economic despotism rising to a critical value. The democratic nature of economic competition is a cover-up for the tyranny of economic property. Likewise, in traditional China and even modern China, we just see the opposite of the problem. For thousands of years, the Chinese government has authoritarian tendencies on the surface, but this tendency of political despotism did not bring about the same degree of economic monopoly in the possession of economic wealth. On the contrary, the family-like

farming society emphasized on the necessity of the equal-field system. As a result, the superficial political despotism, instead, often contributed to the relative democratization in the distribution of economic wealth. Thus a very peculiar pattern emerges: China and the West developed dual political and economic yoke structures of autocracy and democracy. The symbiosis of autocracy and democracy is reversed in China and the West, yet in both cases autocracy and democracy complement protection, and co-existence. In the contemporary Western political field, though there are still powers of interest groups (such as power of political parties) that have hereditary tendencies, the personal power is now basically nonhereditary because political campaigns break the likelihood of the hereditary form. However, in the contemporary Western economic field, the individual economic autocracy and sanctity of private property are still strengthened. The protection of private property combined with unrestricted free economic competition has led to an economy controlled by a few very natural, despotic bosses (such as those who can hire and fire anybody anytime at will). And thus every employee feels increasingly insecure about the way the world is heading. Therefore, which is the more important issue to be dealt with: the economic monopoly or the freedom of critical problem to be tackled. However, people tend to ignore the existing economic monopoly, and instead only think of the freedom of economic competition. In other words, the freedom of economic competition covers up a key problem: the economic monopoly. During the last three decades, when Chinese scholars who specialized in the study of economics frequently talked about the advantages of Western economic liberalism, they hardly mentioned the despotic nature of Western property ownership behind the veil of economic liberalism. The so-called free economic competition does not mean real freedom. To give an allusion: It is like ordering winner is to survive, the loser dies. This is called survival of the fittest, and it seems very fair and free in nature. However, people easily overlook the fact that Spartacus is considered to be a slave and is forced to risk killing his opponent is itself a great injustice. Letting a man fight against a beast is cruel and unjust. Likewise, we have the rich and the poor compete with one another on the fighting ground of economic competition. It seems to be a fair match, but from the very start it is very unequal because the key problem is that how much start-up capital the poor can afford to participate in that competition. And this is the well-cooked theory of free competition that the Western scholars born out of a privileged and rich class have thought up for us, an form that justifies the great injustices at the root of all 21

Comparative Studies of China and the West the fighting. Though there indeed are some individual economic geniuses who succeed in winning a very large

not the norm. In this kind of economic competition, most members of the society stand a slim chance of wining competition.

8. Comparison and Contrast: FamilyNation vs. State-Nation; Examination vs. Democracy While I take notice of the fact that the dominating mode of the farming culture of China inevitably restrains commerce and emphasizes agriculture, and sets great store by peaceful values – living and working in peace and contentment – I also take notice of the fact that the dominating mode of the trade and business culture in the West inevitably suppresses agriculture and emphasizes commerce, and puts an emphasis on aggressive values, advocating military forces and plundering others. In an agricultural-based society, living and working in peace and contentment, will inevitably develop small families into big families, big families into extended families, and then into the establishment of a country, and later into ᇦ ഭ , family-nation, which will inevitably have its corresponding political systems and governments. Similarly, regular mobility and commercial risk will inevitably lead to the disintegration of the primitive family-tribes, and then it will be replaced by interest factions, and at last will foster bigger interest factions, and leads to the formation of a country, the 䛖 ഭ ˄bangguo˅, nation-state, which will inevitably have its corresponding political systems and governments. The family-nation political system embodies the values of clans or tribes. This form of government is incompatible with the Western government based on political party system. Confucius once said: “Gentlemen unite the masses without forming a clique (Party) to pursue selfish interests” , hinting that villains form a clique to pursue selfish interests without uniting the political system in ancient China. In a large family, members will be nurtured by the values of Ren ( ӱ benevolence) and Ai ( ⡡ love) as the guiding principles of behavior. As time goes on, their behavior gradually evolves into a set of ethics and rituals known as the rites. Thus the traditional political system in China is a family-nation system guided by ethics and rites. The family-oriented values under different circumstances will show two characteristics: First, since every member of the society will universally identify themselves with one family and they share ancient genetic relationships, under the government of familynation system guided by ethnics and rites, naturally, they will have a strong sense of equality. Too much sense of 22

Vol. 1 2013 equality in turn makes people prone to a mentality of self-righteousness. And this self-righteous attitude under certain conditions will weaken the cohesive force of the government, and make the government utterly lack cohesion in times of peace. Second, in times of crisis, will show the same high degree of national unity like a big family does. And this will result in a strong nationalism. To prevent such a messy situation, this form of government needs to strengthen its cohesion, to become stronger and legitimate. Moreover, since the government subordinates to the family characteristics, in order to prevent an overconcentration of feudal power, the society must selfregulate itself by the strong moral ethics among its family members (the people). Hence the idea that “since the people are the foundation of the nation, if the people live and work in peace and contentment, the nation will of intellectuals. This is in accord with Mencius’ idea of government for the people ( ≁ ᵜ minben). The idea of government for the people in this respect is a Chinesestyle democracy. It is not organized and implemented by competitive elections but by relying on the higher degree of virtues on the part of the ruling group. The persons of the ruling group must go through a very strict imperial examination to test the capabilities as well as the moral quality of all the candidates. Every citizen of the country has the right to take part in the fair examination. Only those who are both morally intelligently perfect can enjoy the power at the imperial court. One may call this Chinese-style democracy “a government mainly ruled by virtue” ( ᗧѫ᭯փ dezhu zhengti). The traditional political system in the West is a nation-state system armed with religion (God) and laws. It is quite different from the traditional Chinese political system based on family values. The political system of the nation state is the embodiment of the values put forward by its various interest groups. In this form of government, different interest groups reconcile with one another to govern the nation. As time goes on, the values of individualism (individual-orientedness) will gradually form a set of rules and regulations, guiding and protecting the interests of the individuals, this is called the “law”. Hence the traditional Western political system can also be called nation-state that rules by law. The individualoriented values under different circumstances will show different characteristics: in the nation state system, large family structures have long been disintegrated. The sense of family has been weakened, and the members of the society no longer possess a strong sense of belonging to family. Thus, each member now emphasizes his or her autonomy and independency. When this goes to the selfish attitude will again rationalize the competition among the different people. And at last, it becomes legalized. Legalization requires a sound set of regulations to ensure the fairness in competition. Thus, the nation

Gu Zhengkun

A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Values and Their Origins

state is forced to govern by law, rather than by virtue. Meanwhile, the universal competition, in particular the commercial competition, builds up intense interpersonal relation between individuals in the society. The loss of family-oriented values that all members of the society are relatives leads the Westerners to invite the introduction of religion as a substitute for the loss of family-based ethics in order to relieve the tensions coming from the

was the realization of the Confucian value that “The one who is both morally and intelligently superior should be

idea of “brotherhood” is a religious technique to form an artificial bond among the members of any group in the nation state’s society. To a certain extent, it regulates interpersonal relationships. Therefore, it is an inevitable choice for Westerners to appeal to Christianity. To a certain extent, individual-oriented values inevitably form interest groups or factionalism, and encourage the formation of various parties. The competition among individuals reflects the competition between different groups and parties. This sort of competition will cause decentralization of power by contracts. Decentralization by contract aims at protecting various interest groups (including royal interests), while it also limits the royal power. The conflict of interests within the government plays a crucial role in bridging the interests among different nations. The ruling party is in fact not all of the people but just some people, or majority of the people at the best, that is ᑞ (bang, a clique, a party, or parties and groups). The leader of a political party or group could be the leader, president of a government if the party comes into power. The Chinese word ≁ ѫ (minzhu), meant to be the translation for the English term “democracy”, is a mistranslation of the foreign term. Since in Chinese, ≁ (min) means all of the people, ѫ means to rule or to be the leader/master. ≁ ѫ thus means “the people are the ruler” or “ruling by all the people”; it does not correctly mean that the head of the majorities or a certain party having won the election in the West is to be the ruler (president, for example). To rule by all of the people ( ≁ ѫ ) in Chinese sounds very attractive, and few realize that it is self-contradictory both in logic and Chinese wording. The people are in no way to be a ruler. The ruler has to be just one single person or a small group of people. The people or the majority of the people usually are the ruled. Thus the Chinese term ≁ѫ is as ridiculous as saying that “the ruled is the ruler”. In contrast, the family-like government in ancient China had an emperor from one family, but its officials in thousands were mostly from common people through fair examinations; there even was a prime minister who had been a beggar before he went through the imperial exam and turned out a doctor ( 䘋༛ ). I am inclined to think this way of

legacy of the Chinese civilization. He predicted that China would be the core to integrate all of the mankind in the future. He once said: “the unity of the world is a way to avoid human beings’ committing mass-suicide. And now the nation that gets prepared well in this respect is China since it has cultivated its unique way of thinking for more than two thousand years.” Again he argued that: “China has maintained a unity for almost two thousand years and thus is qualified for the leader of the future

All humanity should be members of one family. And modern genetic research has increasingly convinced us that human beings actually are members of one genetic family. If all humanity should be members of one family, the use of the family-oriented values in the society are inevitable a good choice. Contemporary Chinese should embrace the ancient Chinese notion of cosmopolitanism, the so-called worldism. The Chinese should combine the concept of the descendants of the Yan and Huang Emperors, with the story of Adam and Eve, and human genes in the modern science to expand the traditional Chinese view of the all the Chinese nation being members of a family to the view of all human beings being members of a family.

through strict examinations designed to test the moral quality and wisdom of each candidate is superior to Western democracy which as is known, is mainly carried out by voting results coming from various interest parties or groups. The Chinese Imperial Examination System of selecting officials from the common people was performed for about 1300 years in China. The system

At least for now, the world should replace the fractional culture of interest groups with the concept of tian xia yi jia, the world is a family. And going back to the ancient family-like society and the family-oriented values refresh our understanding of Marx’s ideas on primitive communist society. Moreover, communist values and the primitive family-oriented values are

9.Human Culture’s Highest Pursuit (the Highest Form of Culture) and Realization The famous British scholar, Arnold Toynbee had a

unifying the whole world in the future.” He thus further alleges that “in the future it is China rather than European countries that will possibly unify the world.” He also stated that we need not feel surprised that “Nobel prize winners have suggested that if mankind is to survive it must go back 25 centuries in time to tap the wisdom of Confucius.” To y n b e e’s v i e w p o in t i s u n d o u b t ed ly v er y important. And I would further note that the origin of the of the Chinese civilization is actually closely related to the family-like social structure of the ancient Chinese. In accordance with what has been said earlier, a series of values born out of the social structure of the large Chinese family are destined to play an important part in pursuing the highest form of culture in the future.

Comparative Studies of China and the West closely related each other. And the traditional Chinese value system provides the most valuable experiences and serves for human beings returning to the excellent social structure and value system. This excellent social structure and value system can be summarized in three words: familyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;nationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;world. â&#x20AC;ŤÝŞâ&#x20AC;Źá&#x192;§ {â&#x20AC;ŤÝŞâ&#x20AC;ŹÓ&#x152;ŕ§&#x203A;ŕ Şiá&#x192;¸ÖŠ|ÄťŃ¸Ď á&#x2020;ľŕť&#x201D;ŕ˛h {ŕŤ&#x153;á&#x2C6;¸iŕ§&#x17E;ŕŠ&#x2022;|ŕ˛á&#x2020;&#x2C6;Ď ŕ˛Žh 3 {á&#x2021;&#x2014;á&#x201A;Śiâ&#x20AC;Ťŕľ?Ů&#x2026;×&#x192;â&#x20AC;Źá&#x2026;Ť|Äťuŕ˛á&#x2020;&#x2C6;ŕ˛Žá ŕą&#x153;ŕą&#x153;ŕť Őžh á Łŕ˛ŕť ĐŻh á Łŕ˛Žŕť ĐŻh á ŁĎ ŕť ĐŻ {ŕŞ&#x160;á&#x192;&#x153;ŕż&#x2DC;â&#x20AC;Ť×&#x192;Řżâ&#x20AC;Źá &#x160;|ÄťŮ&#x;Ď á&#x2021;Ąâ&#x20AC;ŤŘżâ&#x20AC;Źŕą&#x153;ŕ˛h {ŕ§&#x201A;á&#x2C6;¸â&#x20AC;Ť×&#x192;â&#x20AC;Źŕ°&#x2020;ŕľ?ŕł á&#x2026;ŤÄŞÄťá&#x201A;Żá&#x192;&#x2021;â&#x20AC;ŤŰ&#x2022;â&#x20AC;Źá&#x201E;˝ŕł˛h á&#x2021;&#x2122;gŕ˝ľgŕ§żgÔ&#x2030;gá&#x201A;Żh

Vol. 1 2013 Laozi, Dao De Jing, trans. Gu Zhengkun. Beijing: Peking University Press, 1995. Liu, Baonan,An Annotation to the Confucian Analects. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1990. Lu, Xun, Miscellaneous Essays from Qiejie Pavilions: Second Series. Beijing: Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Literature Publishing House, 1973.

Lu, Xun,A Complete Anthology of Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s New Literature: Novel Second Series. Shanghai: Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House,

Lu, Xun, A Madmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Diary. Beijing: Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Literature Publishing House, 1918. Mencius, Meng Zi. Beijng:Beijing Yanshan Press, 1995.

1663. Also, the ruling of Stitchill baron court in 1698, forbidding the giving of alms or house-room by any in the barony except to â&#x20AC;&#x153;those allenarly that shall be listed.â&#x20AC;? (Cited in: Gunn, 1905, p.135) {ŕŞ&#x160;á&#x192;&#x153; ĐŹ ŕť&#x2014;ŕ¨şâ&#x20AC;Ť !|Ü&#x152;â&#x20AC;Źuá&#x2C6;¸á&#x201E;&#x2020;Äťŕ¤´á&#x2C6;¸áŻ&#x2014;â&#x20AC;ŤŘżâ&#x20AC;ŹŇ&#x160;á&#x2020;˘ ŕ˛?â&#x20AC;ŤŘżâ&#x20AC;ŹŇ&#x160;Ö&#x153;hv {ŕ´&#x2018;ŕś&#x2C6;gŕťźá&#x2C6;¸á&#x2020;ľŰŤ|!uŕŤžŕť&#x20AC;Đ ĐŻ ĐŻâ&#x20AC;ŤÜâ&#x20AC;ŹĐ ŕŠv While selfishness has always been severely attacked by the mainstream of traditional Chinese ideologies, it seems often defended in one way or another in the West as more positive. Naturally if one is over-egocentric, one has to be estranged from other people. In the end, As is known, the idea of â&#x20AC;&#x153;laissez-faireâ&#x20AC;? and the sense of competition based on selfish greediness was highly justified and popularized by Adam Smith, the great Scottish philosopher and economist. See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776, VI, ii: 456).

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, The Social Contract. Amsterdam: MarcMichel Rey, 1762. Sun, Xidan, Annotations to the Rites. rev. Wang Xingxian, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2007 )

Toynbee, Arnold; Daisaku, Ikeda, Forcast the 21st Century. Beijing: International Cultural Publishing Company, 1985, p. 280:

usually considered to begin from 598 AD in the Sui Dynasty till the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1905 with a history of 1307 years. Ç&#x2030;ä&#x2021;Şä&#x2C6;? ĐŹ á&#x2020;&#x20AC;á&#x2022;?Ç&#x160; Ä&#x20AC;á&#x2020;&#x20AC;ŕźżá´ Ë&#x2013;Ô&#x2026;ă&#x2DC;źŐ&#x2C6;ŕĄ&#x2030;á&#x2020;&#x2013;Ë&#x2014;á&#x2020;&#x2013;ă&#x2DC;źŐ&#x2C6;ŕĄ&#x2030;Ô&#x2026;Ç&#x201E;Ä 17 Toynbee, Arnold, Daisaku, Ikeda [1985], Looking Ahead the 21st Century, p. 277 18 ibid.: 278. 19 see Canberra Times, 24, January, 1988. Works Cited Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the wealth of Nations, 1776. Bury, John Bagnell, A History of Freedom of Thought. Changchun: Jilin Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Press, 1999, p.9. Ban, Gu, Han Shu. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2007. Canberra Times, Canberra, Australia, 24, January, 1988. Confucius, Confucian Analects. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2007 Gu, Zhengkun, A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Cultures. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2004 Gunn, Clement B., Records of the Baron Court of Stitchill, Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1905. Han, Yu, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yuan Daoâ&#x20AC;?, in An Annotated Anthology of Han Changli. Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing House, 1988. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Vorlesungen Ăźber die Philosophie der Geschichte, XYZ, 1837. Kong Yinda, Shang Shu. Beijing : Zhonghua Book Company, 1999.

ŕ¸&#x20AC; ŕ¸&#x20AC; ŕ¸&#x20AC; Toynbee/Daisaku,Choose Life. A Dialogue. ed. Richard L. Gage, London: Oxford University Press, 1976. Zhao Yafeng, Deutsche Philosophen. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2008. Zhu, Xi, An Annotation to the Confucian Analects. Jinan: Qilu Publishing House, 1992 1992 Zi, Si, Doctrine of the Mean. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2006. 006

About the author: Gu Zhengkun, IACSCW co-president for China, is Professor of Comparative Culture and Translation at Peking University, director of PKU Institute of World Literature, President of Shakespeare Association of China. He is the author and translator of about 50 books. Among them the best known are A Companion to Masterpieces in World poetry (1990), Lao Tzu: The Book of Tao and Teh (in English, 1993), China and West: Comparative Poetics and Translatology (2003), Linguistic Culturology (2004) and A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Cultures (2007). He has published more than 150 articles either in English or in Chinese. He has been engaged in the comparative study of Chinese and Western cultures for more than 40 years and taught the course â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Culturesâ&#x20AC;? at Peking University for 18 years running, advancing many startling ideas in the

On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies

Henry Rosemont, Junior & Roger T. Ames

On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies ——With Special Reference to Classical Chinese By Roger T. Ames University of Hawaii Henry Rosemont, Jr. Brown University

The Italian statement Traduttore, traditore is unusual in that it serves as its own proof. Not even in other Indo-European languages can the succinct expressiveness of the sentence come through well: “translators are traducers” is probably the best that can be done in English, but it is nowhere as clear in meaning as the original, nor as straightforward. It is our opinion this little example is not an isolated curiosity. Very few sentences in any language can be precisely rendered in any other, in part due to the fact that if our sole concern is with truth conditions there are many different ways to express exactly the same fact even in a single language (“John broke the window; the window was broken by John; what John broke was the window; what John did was break the window; it was the window that John broke; what was broken by John was the window; what John did to the window was break it; it was the window that was broken by John;” and so on). Which of the varied ways of expressing a singular fact a writer or speaker employs will depend on context and intent, and translators must thus be sensitive to both target language. Unfortunately, neither context nor intent are often clear, and hence translators cannot but engage to admit it or not (we will have more to say on this point below). Semantic issues in translation are in all probability even more numerous than syntactic ones. Even within the same family of languages we seldom find precise equivalents for individual lexical items between the object and target languages (Although sharing similar roots, modern English and German nevertheless differ in their epistemological vocabulary, for example, with the kennen/wissen distinction in German having no English counterpart). Both syntactic and semantic problems loom especially large when the languages under consideration are as different as the classical Chinese language of roughly the sixth to the second centuries BCE and modern English. Different translators may well have

different views about the nature of the differences between the two languages, and in our opinion it is thus incumbent upon all translators to inform their readers of what they believe the nature of the languages to be. In addition, we believe it important for translators to proffer their basic notions of the nature of human languages in general: a behaviorist view differs significantly from a generativist one, both of them from a structural approach, and all three from a deconstructionist orientation toward languages. We begin with a brief Chinese, warning readers at the outset that our views are not uncontroversial; there are translators whose work we respect who would disagree with our philosophical approach to matters of translation (and, as we shall also argue, interpretation). It is essential first to point out some differences between speech and writing that we believe are important and must always be kept in mind when the obvious fact that all cultures have spoken languages, but relatively few – until very recently – have had a writing system. Not unrelatedly, there is a sense in which to speak and understand the language of our birth simply by being exposed to it; we do not have to be taught our native tongue unless we have an impediment of some sort. Reading and writing, on the other hand, are not natural; we must learn to master different senses (visual and tactile as opposed to aural and oral) and we must be taught that mastery. Without specific and detailed instruction we remain illiterate. Moreover, we believe all human languages share many features at an abstract – but substantive – level, most importantly syntactic structures, that constrain the way words may be strung together while yet enabling speakers to be able to creatively express their thoughts. We are thus in the generativist camp of linguists, and an example may illustrate wherein our views are grounded. Let us take a sentence such as:

Comparative Studies of China and the West The boy walked up the hill. Now if we are asked to add the adverb slowly to the sentence, there are seven positions in which we might place it: at the beginning or end of the sentence, or in any

But not all of these placements will retain the grammaticality of the sentence: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Slowly the boy walked up the hill The slowly boy walked up the hill The boy slowly walked up the hill The boy walked slowly up the hill The boy walked up slowly the hill The boy walked up the slowly hill

7) The boy walked up the hill slowly

Sentences 1, 3, 4 and 7 are grammatical, but 2, 5

(The short answer is that grammatical structures -(noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase -- must maintain their integrity, and the offending sentences violate it, whereas in 1, 3, 4, and 7 the adverb is placed before, after, or between those phrase structures). Moreover, it is necessary to note that writing is not solely – and at times, not even mainly – a transcription of speech. No indirect discourse is speech transcribed, nor are newspaper headlines, many advertisements, and much else. This feature of language is particularly important with respect to classical Chinese, especially Confucianism, because of the ubiquity, in the Analects, of ᆀ ᴠ feature of all natural (spoken) languages is their capacity to unambiguously express grammatical relations; without this feature of languages the slowly example above would be inexplicable. But classical Chinese does not relations are not unambiguously expressed. An equally important reason for not seeing classical Chinese as a transcription of speech is phonetic. There is very little direct evidence to suggest that basic verbal communication took place through this medium. Nor could there be such, in our view, because the extraordinarily large number of homonyms in the language makes it virtually uninterpretable by ear alone (without the use of binomes). A great many semantically unrelated lexical items have exactly the same phonological realization to be understood aurally, even when tonal distinctions are taken into account. This is not to suggest a complete disconnect between the spoken and written Chinese languages at the various times that the classical texts were being 26

Vol. 1 2013 written and edited. The Book of Poetry obviously was a recording of sounds, and phonetic loan words are found early on in the written record. And perhaps one or two of the disciples of Confucius did place a verbatim quote from the Master into the text that has come down to us. But it remains that wenyan should not be seen as fundamentally a transcription of speech. Originally the classical language had a number of syllabic consonantal endings which are no longer present in the modern language, but even then the number of homonyms was high, with anywhere from two to seven different graphs – with different meanings – pronounced identically. No one will understand a passage from a classical text unless they have read it earlier and can contextualize it. Thus the language of the classical texts was fundamentally like the good little boy: primarily to be seen and not heard. A moment’s reflection on the nature of written English will suggest that it, too, has a visual component above and beyond its being a pronunciation indicator. We must all be pleased that G.B. Shaw’s demand for a purely phonetic alphabet for the spelling of English has never that his made-up word ghoti (enouGH, wOmen, attenTIon), but English spelling often provides semantic no less than – and often more than – phonetic information. If we know what “nation” means, for example, we can make a good guess about across it because of the orthographic parallels between the terms. Yet they are pronounced differently. The same may be said for a whole host of common words in English: photograph/ photography; anxious/anxiety, child/children, and so forth. We also believe that classical Chinese differs from all other languages in another, philosophically important, way that other translators have neglected or ignored. It is more an event-based than a “thing”-based language, more akin to Hebrew than to most members of the IndoEuropean language groupings. We have argued for this claim elsewhere, and will not rehearse it herein, save to make the related claim that the nature of early Chinese language. There is little by way of substance ontology – “being” – to be found in early Chinese thought, but much in the way of events, processes – “becoming.” Many English nouns can be “verbed,” to be sure, but in classical Chinese, virtually every graph can function as noun and verb, and usually as an adjective or adverb as well, which is no more than to say that apart from context the grammatical function of a Chinese term cannot be ascertained. The resultant linguistic dynamism of classical Chinese will thus only be captured at all well in English if verbs take pride of place in translation. Thus instead of “Zizhang asked about government” for ᆀᕥ୿᭯ , we make it “Zizhang asked about governing effectively.”

Henry Rosemont, Junior & Roger T. Ames There are several implications of our several views on the unique nature of the classical Chinese language that go beyond issues of translation. If they can be sustained, for example, it will follow that the written well the grammatical patterns of the spoken language of the time; our guess would be that the use of binomes has a very long history, even though both graphs in any uttered binomial expression would seldom be transcribed together. Another implication is that it would be folly to replace the Chinese written graphs with an alphabetic system more geared to representing sounds, for the number of distinct sounds in modern Chinese is relatively small, and there is no easy way to represent the tonal of relatively little moment, for many sounds have over thirty different graphs associated with them even when the tones are taken into account: yi has 41, for example, shi has 32, zhi 31, and so on. Still a third implication of our views on the contrasting nature of English and classical Chinese may be generalized for all translation work: it is not possible to translate a text from one language to another without an interpretation of it. In our own case we link the de-emphasis on nouns in classical Chinese with the absence of the concept of substance or essence in classical Chinese thought. In the same way, if events are linguistically center stage, then relational persons rather than individual selves will make up the dramatis personae in ethics. Aesthetic expressiveness (not alone in literature) may place a higher value on nuance and ambiguity than on precision. Turning now to issues of semantics facing translators, it has long been lamented that many terms of import in one language have no close lexical equivalent in others, necessitating the use of lengthier locutions in the target language that can either multiply or eliminate a nuance or ambiguity intended in the original. Here it becomes clear that interpretation affects translation right from the beginning. In classical Chinese, to take an important philosophical illustration, there is no single lexical equivalent for the English word “moral.” Most translators from the Chinese have not attended to this fact – or stretched some graph or another to make it come out as “moral” in parts of the translation – and the consequence has been that most Western philosophers have refused to take Chinese thinkers seriously as philosophers, for if, say, Confucius was indeed concerned with morals, why doesn’t he take up problems of choice negative golden rule perhaps, where are moral principles to be found in the Analects unaware of the issues surrounding freedom in moral dilemmas arise when principles

On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies distinction between the public and the private realms of

These are serious questions, for it would be very difficult to think of moral issues apart from the related concepts here placed in italics. But none of those terms has a lexical equivalent in classical Chinese, nor for the other terms necessary to engage in moral discourse in contemporary English: liberty, right/wrong, rational, objective/subjective, even ought. But rather than attribute simple-mindedness or extreme naïveté to Confucius, we might posit that he has a different vocabulary for describing, analyzing and evaluating human conduct, conceptually grounded in different presuppositions about the world and the place of human beings in it than have been standard in Western thought for many centuries. The 15+ English terms listed above constitute what we call a “concept-cluster,” centered on the concept moral. Early Confucian writings deployed a different concept-cluster for describing, analyzing and evaluating human conduct, centered on the concept of ӱ ren, and including such concepts as ᗳ xin, ᆍ xiao, ᗧ de, ؑ xin, ੋᆀ junzi, ⸕ zhi, ሿ Ӫ xiaoren, 㗙 yi, 䃐 cheng, and ⽬ li, plus a few others. All of these terms are polysemous in English, and hence when translating them we must not look solely at each Chinese graph in isolation, but rather see it in relation or easily into the concept-cluster for morals, but they do mesh with each other, a meshing which all translators should be sensitive to while engaged in their work. Our notion of concept-clusters, and the importance of the notion for translation, can be seen more clearly by considering other examples. In Chaucerian England the concept-cluster employed in the description, analysis and evaluation of human conduct centered in honour, which was discussed using terms like villein, shent, liegeful, sake, varlet, boon, soke, sooth, chivalric, gentil, and sinne. Some of these terms are still vaguely familiar to English speakers, but their meanings have shifted, (gentil/ gentle, sinne/sin), or we use them without knowing what they mean (sake), still others we skip over quickly when reading Robin Hood or King Arthur (varlet, boon), and still others have no meaning at all for us (soke, shent). We find another concept-cluster in ancient Greece, wherein moral philosophy dealt largely with the cultivation of virtues (aretai), especially in the philosophy of Aristotle, who used related terms in his account like eidos, dike, logos, akrasia, phronesis, eudemonia, agathos, nous, psuche, eros, and related terms. In ancient India the concept-cluster employed in 27

Comparative Studies of China and the West the several strands of Hindu thought and in Buddhism revolved around the concept of dharma, and included varna, moksha, samadhi, samsara, skhandas, nirvana, dukkha, bodhi, (an)atman, yog, and of course karma. What all of these examples illustrate, we believe – and they could be multiplied tenfold -- is that the idea of concept-clusters is a great aid to translating and understanding texts written against conceptual backgrounds that differ from our own, and can provide a means of giving the “other” their otherness without making them either wholly other, or, equally mischievous, more simple-minded versions of ourselves. The careful reader will probably have noted that we have used “term” and “concept” almost interchangeably herein. Of course the two morphemes have different meanings, but it is fundamental to our position as philosopher-translators that a concept not be imputed to the authors and editors of foreign texts unless there is a specific lexical entry denoting that concept in the text itself. To do otherwise – assuming Confucius had the concept of “morals” in anything like the sense that contemporary speakers of English do – is to either rob the Master of his distinctiveness, or make him appear simple-minded, guaranteeing that the translators will not capture well the lessons he has to teach us today. But that is not the end of it. It is methodologically dangerous to assume that writers in foreign languages had ideas just like us when they don’t have words just like us to express them. What purely textual evidence could be adduced to suggest that Confucius had the Did the author(s) of the Daodejing have a concept of “freedom of the Bhagavad-Gita had a concept of ӱ ren Philosophers have drawn linguistic and epistemological swords on this issue for some time. To some, our position will seem to be “unfair to babies,” making the point that we are willing to attribute concepts to infants before they have the words to express them. And it must be allowed that at times it is legitimate to assume that a single concept might indeed have been held by the author of a text if the translation runs more coherently. But it is the idea of concept-clusters that can stop the morphemes of other languages from becoming insistence on pointing out the lack of a lexical equivalent for “morals” in classical Chinese lies in the fact that none of the other terms associated with “morals” in contemporary English will be found in the texts either. It has been this problem of translation as interpretation and the importance of thinking in terms of concept-clusters that has driven our happy collaboration in retranslating the Chinese classics. Our starting 28

Vol. 1 2013 point has been that, without sufficient concern for the parameter of the interpretive context set by conceptclusters, translators in the process of introducing Confucianism into the Western academy have willy-nilly overwritten its key philosophical vocabulary and terms of art with the values of an Abrahamic religiousness not its own, thereby reducing Confucianism in the eyes of many to a necessarily anemic, second-rate form of Christianity. Witness the standard formula of translations: tian ཙ is “Heaven,” li ⿞ is “ritual,” yi 㗙 is “righteousness,” dao 䚃 is “the Way,” ren ӱ is “benevolence,” de ᗧ is “virtue,” xiao ᆍ li ⨶ is “principle,” and so on. In sum, such a vocabulary cluster conjures forth a pre-established, single-ordered and divinely sanctioned cosmos guided by the hand of a righteous God that ought to inspire human faith and compliance. There have been subsequent efforts by some scholars to rescue an uprooted and transplanted Confucianism from this Christian soil. But the result has often been to reconstruct its ideas and values through the prism of an Orientalism that would ostensibly save the integrity of Confucianism by dismissing its profoundly religious dimensions, and in so doing, reduce it to a kind of secular humanism. Or perhaps worse, in interpreting Confucianism’s inclusive and provisional approach to philosophical understanding as unstructured and indeterminate, reduce its holistic sensibilities to mysticism and the occult. The consequence, then, of this overtly Christianized and then Orientalized reading of the Confucian vocabulary has located the study of this tradition within Western seats of higher learning in religion and area studies departments rather than as a proper part of the philosophy curriculum, and has relegated translations of the Confucian texts to the new age and suspect “Eastern Religions” corners of our bookstores. In attempting to provide a more nuanced explanation of these same Confucian terms, the twentieth century Confucian scholar Qian Mu 䥒ぶ is adamant that this vocabulary expressing the unique and complex Confucianism vision of a moral life simply has no counterpart in other languages. Qian Mu’s point in making this claim is not to argue for cultural purism and incommensurability; on the contrary, he would allow that with sufficient exposition, the Confucian world can be “appreciated” in important degree by those from without. Qian Mu’s claim is on behalf of the uniqueness and the value of a tradition that has defined its terms of art through the lived experience of its people over millennia, and anticipates the real difficulty we must face in attempting to capture its complex and organically related vocabulary in other languages without substantial

Some earnest interpreters of this Confucian

Henry Rosemont, Junior & Roger T. Ames tradition who are as committed to the enduring value of Confucian philosophy as Qian Mu was, disagree fundamentally with his claims about the difficulty of translation. The erudite scholar Zhang Longxi ᕥ 䲶 ⓚ , for example, states with confidence that while we will never find strict identify among cultures, we can find “equivalency:” Linguistic and cultural differences between China and the West are obvious, that is, in the etymological sense of “standing in the way” (ob viam) like obstacles, and it is the task of translation to clear the way for understanding and communication by discovering equivalent formulations underneath the changing surface of differences. What makes the formulation of such equivalents possible is an acknowledged sameness in thinking among cultures: Against such an overemphasis on difference and cultural uniqueness . . . I would like to argue for the basic translatability of languages and cultures. . . . Only when we acknowledge different peoples and nations as equal in their ability to think, to express, to communicate, and to create values, we may then rid ourselves of ethnocentric biases . . . We would insist that respect for interpretive context is integral to the project of translation, and would contest the resistance among such scholars to sanction the thick cultural generalizations being made by Qian Mu that we believe are necessary if we are to respect the rich differences that obtain among traditions and if we are to avoid as best we can an impoverishing cultural reductionism. We would argue that the canopy of an always emerging cultural vocabulary is itself rooted in and grows out of a deep and relatively stable soil of unannounced assumptions sedimented over generations into the language, the customs, and the life forms of a living tradition. And further, we would argue that to fail to acknowledge the fundamental character of cultural difference as an erstwhile safeguard against the sins of either “essentialism” or “relativism” is not itself innocent. Indeed, ironically, this antagonism to cultural generalizations leads to the uncritical essentializing of one’s own contingent cultural assumptions and to the insinuating of them into one’s interpretations of the ways of thinking and living of other traditions. What separates we self-confessed cultural pluralists (rather than “purists”) from Zhang are what we take to be several troubling implications of his basic assumptions about how the translation between and among cultural traditions is to be carried out. To begin with, one might argue that the bugbear of “essentialism” that properly worries Zhang is itself, like any strict philosophical notion of “universalism,” largely a culturally specific

On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies deformation. Indeed, universalism is closely associated with “the transcendental pretense” described above as a fallacy pervasive in the pre-Darwinian Western philosophical narrative that is immediately aligned with what John Dewey has called “the philosophical fallacy.” After all, we can only “essentialize” (rather than analogize) if we are predisposed to believe there are such things as “essences,” a way of thinking about things that did not recommend itself to the formative thinkers of classical China. Essentialism itself arises from familiar classical Greek assumptions about ontology as “the science of being,” and from the application of strict identity as the principle of individuation. It is this notion of “essences” that grounds Platonic idealism and the Aristotelian doctrine of species (eidos) as natural kinds. Again, Zhang’s claim about peoples and cultures being “equal” in their ability to think is intended to be inclusive and liberating and respectful, and while such assurances might be so for some, such an assertion is anything but innocuous. Why would we assume to allow that other traditions have culturally specific modalities of thinking is to claim that such traditions do not know how to think, unless we ourselves believe that in fact there is only one way of thinking, and that this way of thinking—that is, our The uncritical assumption that other cultures must think the same way as we do is for us the very definition of essentialism and ethnocentrism. We would argue that it is precisely the recognition and appreciation of the degree of difference obtaining among cultures in living and thinking that properly motivates cultural translation in the arguing that there are culturally contingent modalities of thinking can be pluralistic rather than relativistic, and can be accommodating rather than condescending. At the very least, if comparative studies are to provide us with the mutual enrichment that they promise, we must strive with imagination to take other cultures on their own terms and appreciate fully the differences that obtain among them. It is to this end that we have suggested above that different cultures have fundamentally different concept-clusters and ways of thinking about becoming consummate as a human being. And acknowledging what Alfred North Whitehead has described as “the perils of abstraction,” we would argue that the kind of rich aesthetic harmony achieved when we are able to find the proper balance between concreteness and abstraction, between unique detail and a productive coherence, requires that we exercise our imagination in identifying and respecting the differences among cultures; without the possibilities made available to us by these protean differences, we are left with a lifeless and insipid sameness. Thirdly, much of Zhang’s exasperation seems to arise from interpreters such as Arthur Wright and Jacque 29

Comparative Studies of China and the West Gernet (and us too) who in allowing for “fundamentally distinct ways of thinking and speaking” would claim (using Zhang’s language) that the difference between the Chinese and Western cultures is “the ability, or lack of it, to express abstract ideas.” For Zhang, those who would allow for alternative modalities of thinking that place a different degree of emphasis on the functional value of abstraction are guilty of a clear debasement of the Chinese language and culture: The Chinese language, as seen in this formulation, objects, a language bogged down in matter and unable to rise above the ground of materiality and literality toward any spiritual height. The judgment is thus not on Chinese translation of particular foreign words and concepts, but on the very nature and ability of the Chinese language as a whole. Here on our reading of Zhang, he is buying into two dualistic assumptions common to a tradition grounded in Greek ontology. First, in disallowing “distinct ways of thinking and speaking” he is locating cultural differences in the “content” and “objects” of thought rather than in its subjective instrument, as though thinking and what is thought about are somehow distinct, and that some definition of the human “mind” is not only an inclusive universal, but is also what is most distinctively and most valuably human. The implication of this distinction is that modes of thinking are essentially separable from the content of thinking by virtue of some pre-cultural faculties of the human mind and some a priori categories that structure it. Such mind/body and theory/praxis dualism has never been a distraction in a Chinese correlative yin-yang cosmology in which mind/ body (shenxin 䓛 ᗳ ) and theory/praxis (zhixing ⸕ 㹼 ) have been taken to be collaborative, coterminous, and mutually entailing aspects of experience. Indeed, the continuity and wholeness of experience is defined in terms of “forming” and “functioning” (tiyong 億 biantong 䆺䙊 )— ⭘ cosmological assumptions that preclude any strictly dualistic categories. A corollary assumption implicit in Zhang’s critique, again itself profoundly dualistic, is that the theoretical and spiritual idealities entertained by this essentialized conception of mind are superior to practical efficacy in our everyday experience, and that entertaining these abstractions elevates us closer to the mind of God. Such abstraction as the work of intellection is experience, providing us with a quality of knowledge uncontaminated by the changing world whence these abstractions arise, and from a Confucian perspective, to which they perhaps ought to owe their allegiance. Indeed Zhang is endorsing the superiority and the arrogance of a 30

Vol. 1 2013 preoccupied by abstractions—a tradition that assumes its interpretation of the human experience is more noble and spiritual than one that pursues practical wisdom and the alternative spiritual and religiousness sensibilities produced therefrom. At the end of the day, the irony is that Zhang is affirming for Confucian philosophy precisely the longlived and hobbling fallacy that many twentieth and twenty-first century Western philosophers have been struggling to put to rest within our own narrative. As players in the internal critique raging within Western philosophy today, contemporary philosophers are attempting to reverse the gravity of theoretical ascent, and to reinstate what had been left behind. Indeed, the recent compensatory turn in Western philosophy toward applied ethics, virtue ethics, particularism, care ethics, pragmatic ethics, and so on, not to mention fresh attention being paid to somaticity and the emotions, is directed at rehabilitating the wholeness of the lived experience and at reestablishing an appropriate balance between the abstract and the concrete by reinstating the singular value of practical wisdom. But we are not done. Fourthly, Zhang Longxi is eliding an important distinction we might borrow from Saussure between langue (language) and parole (speech), between the evolved, theoretical and conceptual structure of a language system that is shaped by an aggregating intelligence over millennia and that makes speech possible, and the application of any natural language in the individual utterances we make. We pluralists need this distinction to galvanize our claim that the Chinese language has not developed and does not have available to it either a concept or a term that can be used to capture the Abrahamic notion of “God,” while at the same time allowing us to insist that the same Chinese language has all of the semantic and syntactic resources necessary to give a fair account of such an idea. What we are saying about this absence in the langue of the Chinese language is precisely what Qian Mu is quite properly saying about the want of a Western vocabulary to adequately speak Confucianism: you cannot say “li ⿞ ” in English or German although you can say lots about it. Finally, Zhang in disqualifying our claim of disparity in the relative value that different cultures invest in abstract conceptualizations inadvertently saves Confucianism from what we would take to be an entirely appropriate critique. It precludes what we would accept as a salutary criticism of the limits of Confucianism made by many scholars late and soon, Western and Chinese alike, the philosopher Bertrand Russell and the sociologist Jin Yaoji 䠁㘰ส (Ambrose King) being prominent among them. In these pages we want to join these scholars in advocating for a revitalized Confucian moral philosophy adequate to the complexities of the modern world that complements its traditional emphasis

On Translation & Interpretation in Comparative Studies

Henry Rosemont, Junior & Roger T. Ames upon family feeling as both the entry point and the substance of moral competence with a more robust framework of regulative ideals directed at preempting the all too frequent misuse of intimate relationships that gives rise to nepotism, cronyism, and other forms of social and political corruption. Just as intimacy needs the restraining complement of integrity, concrete family feelings require the guiding complement of some form of more general ideals. This same argument against Zhang Longxi in favor of articulating an interpretive context might be summarized this way. We would contend that the only thing more dangerous than striving to make the responsible cultural generalizations that provide interpretive context is failing to make them. Generalizations do not have to preclude appreciating the richness and complexity of always evolving cultural traditions; in fact, it is generalizations that locate and inform specific cultural details and provide otherwise sketchy historical developments with the thickness of their content. There is no alternative in making cultural comparisons to an open, hermeneutical approach that is ready to modify always provisional generalizations with the new information that additional detail yields as it is interpreted within the grid of generalizations. Recently, and specifically in reference to the classical Chinese language, the distinguished sinologist Angus Graham concludes that in reporting on the eventful flow of qi cosmology, “the sentence structure of Classical Chinese places us in a world of process

we have consistently advocated a holistic, narrative understanding as being more revealing of underlying cultural assumptions than merely an atemporal and essentializing analytical approach. How can we address this gap between our Wittgenstein is insightful in suggesting that “the limits of our language are the limits of our world,” then perhaps we need more language. By developing a nuanced understanding of a classical Greek vocabulary—logos, nous, phusis, kosmos, eidos, alethea, and so on—we are able to get behind Descartes and in degree, read classical Greek texts on their own terms, and in a more sophisticated way. By generating and appropriating a glossary of key philosophical terms around which the Chinese texts are woven, we will be better able to locate these seminal texts in their own intellectual landscape. Philosophical interpreters must sensitize the student of Chinese philosophy to the ambient uncommon assumptions reflected in concept clusters that have made the Chinese philosophical narrative so different from our own. It is these assumptions that inform the

philosophical vocabulary and set parameters on their meanings. Are these generic assumptions essential and we can venture to make cultural comparisons without a hermeneutical sensibility that guards against the perils of cultural reductionism. A failure of interpreters to be self-conscious and to take fair account of their own Gadamarian “prejudices” with the excuse that they are relying on some “objective” lexicon that, were the truth be known, is itself heavily colored with cultural biases, is to betray their readers not once, but twice. Just as each generation selects and carries over earlier thinkers to reshape them in their own image, each generation reconfigures the classical canons of world philosophy to its own needs. We too are inescapably people of a time and place. This self-consciousness is not to distort the Chinese philosophical tradition, but to endorse its fundamental premises.

Some of the material in this essay is taken from the introduction and appendices to our The Analects of Confucius; A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. 2 We specify these dates because there is no general agreement on when and/or where to use the term “classical” as opposed to “archaic,” or “ancient” when referring to the language in which the classical texts were written, often referred to by the Chinese as “literary Chinese”: ᮷ 䀰 wen yan). 3 Christoph Harbsmeier – who disagrees with our position – has written a lengthy essay outlining the several views prevalent among sinologists on the nature of the Chinese language(s). The essay is in Volume 7, Part 1, of Science and Civilisation in China, by Joseph Needham and Christoph Harbsmeier. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 4 For a more complete analysis of these points see Henry Rosemont, Jr. & Huston Smith, Is There a Universal Grammar of Religion & LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Co., 2008, especially the second chapter. 5 See, for example, Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica. Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Co., 1966 (reprint). 6 On the importance of the term “aesthetic” as we employ it for understanding Chinese thought, See David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius. Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1987. 7 Jerry Dennerline, Qian Mu and the World of Seven Mansions. New Haven: Yale University Press,1988, p. 9. 8 Zhang Longxi , “Translating Cultures: China and the West.” Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches. Edited by Karl-Heinz Pohl. Leiden: Brill, 1999, p. 43. 9 Zhang Longxi (1999), p. 46. 10 In making its case for the importance of difference to an achieved harmony, the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals Duke Zhao 20 uses the examples of cooking, music, and an evolving cultural genealogy: The Marquis of Qi had returned from the hunt, and was being attended by Master Yan at the Chuan pavilion when Ju of Liangqiu galloped up to them. The Marquis said, “Only Ju is in “All that Ju does is agree with you.” said Master Yan.

Comparative Studies of China and the West

asked the Marquis. “There is indeed.” replied Master Yan. “Harmony is like making congee. One uses water, fire, vinegar, sauce, salt, and plum to cook fish and meat, and burns firewood and stalks as fuel for the cooking process. The cook blends these ingredients harmoniously to and where it is too concentrated, he dilutes it with water. When you partake of this congee, Sir, it lifts your spirits. The relationship between ruler and minister is another case in point. Where the ruler considers something right and yet there is something wrong about it, the minister should point out what is wrong as a way of achieving what is right. Where the ruler considers something wrong and yet there is something right about it, the minister should point out what is right as a way of setting aside what is wrong. In such a way governing will be equitable without violating ritual propriety and the common people will not be contentious. Thus the Book of Songs says: There is indeed harmoniously blended congee; The kitchen has already been cautioned to bring out a balanced and even taste. And those above and below will be free of contention. the five notes to lift their spirits and to achieve success in their governing. Music functions similarly to flavoring. There is one field of sound; the two kinds of music: martial and civil; the three kinds of songs: airs of the states, odes, and hymns; the four quarters from which materials are gathered for making instruments; the five note pentatonic scale; the six pitch pipes; the seven sounds, the winds of the eight directions, and the nine ballads—all of which complement each other. There are the distinctions between clear and turbid, small and great, short and long, quick and slow, plaintive and joyous, hard and soft, delayed and rapid, high and low, beginning and ending, and intimate and distant—all of which augment each other. You listen to these, Sir, and it lifts your spirits, which in turn enables you to excel harmoniously. Hence the Book of Songs says, “There are no imperfections in the sound of excellence.” Now Ju is not acting in this way. Whatever you say is right, Ju also says is right; whatever you say is wrong, Ju also says is wrong. keep playing the same note on your lutes, who would want to listen to They were drinking wine and enjoying themselves when the Marquis observed, “If from ancient times there had been no death, what “If from ancient times there had been no death,” ventured Master Yan, “there would be the joy of the ancients, and what would this territory, then came the Jice clan, followed by Youfeng Boling, the had been no death, there would be the joy of the Shuangjiu clan, and I 11 Zhang Longxi (1999), p. 44. Actually, in Ames and Rosemont (1998) pp. 39-43 and Appendix II, an argument is made that the written literary language is uniquely abstract in the sense that semantic overload contributes to a kind of productive vagueness requiring disambiguation on the part of the reader. 12 Zhang Longxi (1999), p. 45. 13 For examples of care ethics, see the work of Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, Nel Noddings, Caring. Second edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

Vol. 1 2013 University of California Press, 2003, Margaret Walker (editor), Mother Time. Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, and the works mentioned in Joan C. Tronto, “Care Ethics: Moving Forward.” Hypatia, Volume 14, Number 1 Winter (1999), among others. Similarly, there is also an attempt to reinstate the fundamental importance of context in recent work in Pragmatist ethics: for example Todd Lekan, Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003 and Steven Fesmire, John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. For moral particularism, see Brad Hooker and Margaret Little (editors), Moral Particularism. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. Most recently Richard Shusterman in Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 and Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life. New York: Routledge, 1997, and in many of his other books has argued for an educated and elegant somaticity as integral to the cultivation of the consummate life. Robert C. Solomon over a distinguished career led the discipline in arguing for and promoting literacy in the philosophy of the emotions. 14 We are “borrowing” this distinction from Saussure because we do not want to endorse the kind of structuralism that would allow for any severe separation between langue and parole, instead siding with the sentiments of Mikhail Bakhtin who would see these two dimensions of language as mutually shaping and evolving in their always dialectical relationship. Utterances gradually change the structure of language, makes possible. Angus Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature. Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1990, p. 408. 15

About the authors: Roger T. Ames, IACSCW honorary advisor, is Professor of Philosophy and Head of Asian Studies Development Program at University of Hawaii, chief editor for the journal Eastern and Western Philosophy. Canadian by origin, he has been educated in the USA, Japan, Taiwan and England with his doctorate coming from SOAS in London. For many years he has spearheaded an effort to rethink Chinese Studies in the West based on taking China on its own terms. His books, frequently with collaborators like Henry Rosemont, Jr, or the late David Hall, include comparative philosophical studies and new translations of classical texts. Henry Rosemont, Jr. is currently George B. and Willam Reeves Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He has taught the Analects in classes, seminars, workshops and institutes both in the United States and China over the course of 40 years. He is the author of A Chinese Mirror (1991), The Forthcoming Radical Confucianism (1998), The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (2009), A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects (2013) and more than fifty articles in scholarly journals and anthologies. He is the editor of the Monograph Series for the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the editor of Frontiers of Philosophy in China (FPC).

John G. Blair & Jerusha McCormack

Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural Amnesia

Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural Amnesia By John G. Blair, Prof. Emeritus, University of Geneva Jerusha McCormack, Emeritus University College Dublin Abstract: Amnesia can affect cultures as well as individuals with a disease condition that involves loss of memory, a sense of where one belongs. Its effects on cultures are devastating, particularly at the present time when the climate crisis threatens to end conditions on earth favorable to human life. Only extensive cooperation between China and the West might save humanity as a whole. To promote this process, we want to show how China and the West can study each other in a spirit of mutual understanding and acceptance. Comparative civilization studies explore these two civilizations as they develop along their largely separate trajectories over three thousand years or more. Everyone starts out with an ethnocentric view of the world as centered on their kind. But an educated view understands that, GHVSLWH PDQ\ GLIIHUHQFHV HDFK ZD\ RI OLIH VHHNV ZD\V RI KHOSLQJ LWV SHRSOH Ă&#x20AC;RXULVK :KHQ \RXQJ SHRSOH FDQ VHH WKHLU role as building on the past achievements of their ancestors, they have a much better chance to contribute to a shared IXWXUH GHVSLWH WRGD\ÂśVÂ˛DQG WRPRUURZÂśVÂ˛GLIÂżFXOW FRQGLWLRQV Keywords: cultural amnesia; ethnocentrism; comparative culture studies; climate crisis

Cultural amnesia prevails in both China and the West, though for different reasons in each case. Amnesia is a medical condition of forgetting, in which oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personal history and hence oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense of a place in the world is lost, usually through some sort of trauma or by degeneration as under Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Disease. Cultural amnesia takes place when present-day people lose track of their multiple connections with what came before them. In cultural perspective, trauma is not at all necessary, as we can see by examining the evolution of Western cultures in recent years. The slow acid of modernity processes has eaten away at the foundations of cultural memory to the extent that many if not most young people in the Western world today no longer think it important to know much about where their way of life came from. They often resist studying the Western heritage either because they think that their personal variant of it subsumes all the rest or because they think the past is over and done with. They are wrong on both counts, as they will learn to their sorrow if they persist. In China the situation is different, given the profound revolutions and radical shifts of policy that have impinged on growing up in China in the last decades. Some observers a decade ago thought they could discern five experiential generations in the PRC since 1949.1 If so, they may now need to add a sixth or even seventh to make sense of the younger generations who are still in school or in their young adulthood. In the

life was strenuously rejected a â&#x20AC;&#x153;feudal.â&#x20AC;? In more recent time, elements of tradition have been reanimated but in a selective way that suited the purposes of those in power. In the cases of both China and the West young people growing up today have little sense of the traditions behind them and many see no particular reason why they should acquire such knowledge. This is the condition we call cultural amnesia. Without appropriate remedies this disease condition threatens the survival of our world as we know it. The shortsightedness that goes with cultural amnesia invites people to think that the present and the immediate future are the only time frames that count. But in somber fact the very success of the human enterprise up to now threatens the possibility of our children and grandchildren to experience reasonable conditions for life on earth. The human race now amounts to 7,000,000 individuals and counting. Our collective industrial processes are poisoning the earth and destroying the conditions that our lives depend on. Recovering a sense of where we humans are coming from is one indispensable step toward motivating collaborative action to salvage our collective chances for a future.2 As a result, comparisons involving China and the West have a particular relevance now. No one in the West has escaped some awareness that China is now â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and will continue to be â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a major factor in the world of the 21st century. In addition, the Chinese world is so different that not even the most benighted Westerner can pretend that Western notions suffice as a basis for 33

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understanding what goes on there. On the other side, China has been studying the West attentively for some time now, learning how wealth can be created but not learning enough about how to avoid the major problems that all too often accompany Western-style modernity processes.3 A teacher’s work against cultural amnesia may never end, but sometimes a fresh approach offers fresh hope. The strategy introduced here was developed in China for students with good English and a felt need to understand the Western world. It is now spreading slowly to Western countries where the motivation for studying China is growing noticeably.4 For students to begin to understand a distant world requires that they be able to compare it with what they already know by experience. That means learning to look at their own way of life as if from the outside – comparatively – and historically – to understand where it ethnocentrism see themselves and their own kind as central. Ethnocentrism is the universal human tendency to see one’s own kind at the center of things. In order for comparative studies to begin, we need to move beyond it. Our approach starts by comparing maps of the world from different parts of the world. In each case, the nation involved places itself in the center of things. School children then grow up internalizing the world map they see on the classroom walls. They soon forget that maps are maps, i.e., cultural artifacts. They come to believe that the world looks like their map. Example: it is hard to get Americans to believe that Mexico is notably larger than Alaska because their traditional Mercator projection maps disproportionately exaggerate all land areas closer to the poles.

Traditional US map of the world

Note the major differences in the two maps given above. They illustrate how American and Chinese children literally do grow up with different worldviews in their minds. No two-dimensional map can capture the global fact that there is no center on earth, distortions it introduces: two-thirds of the map area is given over to the Northern Hemisphere and Greenland, here depicted as larger than South America is in fact one-eighth its size. Happily the more recent map used in most US schools, following the so-called Gall-Peters Projection, is less skewed.5 Since all humans believe themselves to be at the center of the world, the only viable premise for encouraging dialogue across the distances is to formulate a kind of cultural Golden Rule. We ask others to take our culture seriously by offering to take theirs with equal seriousness. That opens the way to what at least initially must be non-judgmental studies of very different ways of life. Occasionally observers express reservations about exposing students to a pluralistic view of the world precisely because it acknowledges there to be more than one legitimate way for a civilization to be organized. They ask: at the end of such an exposure will students

went to school many years ago in the USA, he met in

Standard Chinese map of the world

That seemed remarkable to him because that beverage was forbidden in his house. He hastened to report these new facts to his mother. She, a doctor’s daughter and a conscientious parent (as she remained till her death in 2010 at age 102), remained inflexibly convinced that Coca-Cola was not good for children. So he was still not allowed Coca-Cola. What he had earlier thought to be a rule of the world turned out to be a rule of his house. It was Blair’s first encounter with what we now call

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Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural Amnesia

comparative culture studies. The rules of home remained as such: no longer universal principles but home rules – our family’s way of living. Similarly, in comparative culture studies, recognizing the legitimacy of others does not change who one is or where one comes from. With rare exceptions, humans continue all their lives to see the world through the lenses they acquired in the process of growing up in their home culture. But awareness of cultural difference opens the door to respecting the fact that others look at the world differently. The enemy is not ethnocentrism, a human universal, but the unthinking ethnocentrism that would deny legitimacy to any other way of life. Some may seek to escape ethnocentrism by adopting a “cosmopolitan” view of the world, one that seems to be anchored in no particular culture. This goal may seem plausible within Western presumptions that would like to see in “rationality” a timeless and placeless tool for discovering universal truths. On critical inspection, however, this orientation turns out to be only a more sophisticated form of Western ethnocentrism. We believe it makes better sense to acknowledge cultural differences as primary. Difference can then become a basis for dialogue and accommodation once both sides give up claims to universality. The proposed assault on cultural amnesia, by means of a comparative culture course, combines elements from Western Civilization studies and Chinese studies. Its fundamental intellectual approach is drawn from anthropology. It also draws inspiration from World History as practiced in the Western world,6 though it focuses not on the world as a whole but on two major civilizations. In our experience, it is actually easier to study two civilizations rather than just one, because attention automatically goes to those elements that help compare and contrast these two. Although one can never cover all aspects of either term of the comparison, it helps to acknowledge also that no culture study can ever be complete. Civilizations are always more complex than anything we can ever say about them. This comparative course at least allows us to call attention to

primary perceptions focus on cultural differences in kind. Changes over time are acknowledged by dividing each domain into “traditional” and “modern” segments. In order to avoid imposing ethnocentrically Western ideas but as the process of seriously calling traditional beliefs as gaining momentum as of the 16th century, but in China the parallel process begins only in the second half of the 19th century. In each case the core traditions that began to be challenged were radically different to begin with. Small wonder that “modernity” turns out to imply quite different characteristics in these two culture worlds. Thus approaching two major and long-lived civilizations encourages a focus on their most basic and enduring orientations, different as they may be. Though it is hazardous to focus on a single image to epitomize a whole civilization, here are two images that call attention to some characteristics that play a large part in Western and Chinese Civilizations, both traditional and modern.

Ming Dynasty Symbol

that illuminates both of them. The sourcebook we have prepared for this use is entitled WCwCC: Western Civilization with Chinese Comparisons, now in its third edition from Fudan University Press. The course materials consist of short excerpts, mostly from major thinkers from the last 3000 years or so, arranged not chronologically but thematically according to cultural domains (such as health, family, governance, worldview). In this way, the

Two Greek Wrestlers in Agon

images are not comparable because they are so radically different. Indeed that is part of the point. These two

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culture worlds have always functioned very differently in the ways they organize life for their people. Each has followed its own trajectory.

only if a person brings to the question a mentality that has been sufficiently conditioned by modern Western science to think in terms of atoms and molecules. To the

The Western image calls attention to two individuals in confrontation. Westerners tend to identify themselves as distinct from the others around them, as individuals who achieve selfhood by distinguishing themselves from others. As a result, when individuals interact, some form of contest often results. The Greek word was agon [contest], a competition between individuals formally defined as equals. The winner is recognized as the “best” – until the next contest. As such, agon constitutes a modus operandi actively underpinning many Western practices, then and now: not just sports, but also intellectual debate, politics, law, and market economies. “Competition,” after all, is simply a modern word for agon.

for the way things are constantly changing. Left to itself, water never stands still but keeps on moving, always seeking a lower level. Yet it has the power to wear away stone, thereby illustrating how yin, which initially yields to yang, tends, paradoxically, be stronger in the long run.

On the Chinese side, by way of contrast, this Ming Dynasty textile image implies symmetry and balance, implying overall stability and harmony. This harmony depends on the subordination of individuals to the

To go one step further into a Chinese view of the world, one needs an additional concept, qi. Qi is vital energy that animates everything that exists, even mountains and oceans that Westerners typically see as inanimate.7 Yin and yang are the two modes of expression of qi. Human health, to the Chinese consists in the free-flowing movement of qi through all parts of the human body along invisible channels known as meridians. Thus, each civilization views human bodies very differently.

is on symmetry and good order. What is represented in this image, formally speaking, is a cloud, one imaged in a way that asserts its harmonious internal proportions. As a symbolic image of a world-order, it is cultural, not religious, because the Chinese world does not involve transcendence in any Western sense. At the center of this Chinese image is a taiji symbol that represents a dynamic alternating dominance between two principles, yin (dark) and yang (light). These are complementary opposites central to a vast totalizing system of correspondences that has served, for more than 2000 years, to situate everything likely to occur in the Chinese world. As the alternation of yin and yang might suggest, “reality” – to Chinese minds – is always changing, quite the opposite of the Western emphasis, which seeks to

As this all too brief sketch suggests, our comparative approach uses each civilization to highlight the central presumptions of the other, implicitly acknowledging each one’s legitimacy. Calling inherited for anyone who grows up with only a single cultural surround. It is especially difficult for Westerners because this civilization has claimed for so long that its postulates are universal. In the West, this presumption lies behind both science and religion. The Bible’s God is explicitly the creator of all that is, the One God. Similarly, the “Laws of Nature” as pursued by scientists are understood to be “laws” precisely because they are deemed to apply universally, not just within the domain of Western Civilization. As one science student asked: “In China, water is still H2 36

Modern Acupuncture Man

John G. Blair & Jerusha McCormack

Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural Amnesia the differences – contextualized in their different worlds has long based its approach to life on asserting “universal” truths regardless of others’ preferences. The Chinese worldview, on the other hand, has long placed great emphasis on survival and continuity. As a result, China has been recognizably itself for longer than any other civilization on earth today. On the basis of past experience, one must predict that will still be the case in a century or two. As far as the West is concerned, the jury on its longterm viability is still out. The space limits applying to this article do not allow us to give a wider range of comparative examples, so we have selected these few that exemplify the broader tendencies we find. Nonetheless readers may well feel the need to see in brief how traditional Chinese concepts fare today. Because Chinese culture functions in its own distinctive ways, the New and the Old may appear strangely mixed up to Western eyes because “reality” is perceived so differently.

Vesalius’ Man, 1543

In traditional Chinese medicine, blockage in the qi as vital energy constitutes disease. The body image that fits with this concept has no muscles, no implicit means of self-assertion. Instead the body is the Western body image emphasis on muscles focuses attention on the individual as an agent that undertakes actions. Setting this representative man in the framework of Roman ruins prolongs the Western emphasis on musculature that dates back to classical Greek statues. But also the background hints at how Vesalius’ precise observation and dissections promise to improve on Galen and his Roman civilization, which, by the 16th century, survived only in ruins. These illustrations suggest why these two medical traditions remain radically disjoint, despite recent efforts to combine them. In comparative perspective, neither the Western nor the Chinese view of the body – or of water – is right or wrong. Indeed it would seem silly to suggest that a way of life that has proved viable for thousands of years for millions of humans could possibly be dismissed as merely right or wrong. Nor is it certain that one or the other of these approaches is inherently superior.8 It is

China’s newest orientation is also its oldest. Under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, underway for a quarter of a century now, China has returned to its longest-standing criterion for measuring good government – prosperity. All the great thinkers in the Chinese tradition, though they differed on how to achieve prosperity, have agreed on this criterion. Our earliest textual example comes from Guan Zhong in the 6th century BCE,9 even before his reforms on the grounds that nothing could be accomplished if China remained poor, as it had under Mao Zedong’s leadership. Among other misjudgments, Mao encouraged population growth to “make China strong.” The population doubled between 1949 and 1979, seriously diluting most of the gains made possible by strenuous revolutionary effort.10 But “prosperity” is a thoroughly pragmatic value. It has no specific content but implies responding successfully to whatever present conditions exist. In longterm perspective China’s present involvement with market economics represents not a conversion to a Western model but a Chinese-style adaptation to the conditions of now. This is one reason why we ourselves do not foresee a Western-style “democratic” future for China. When

successfully with a centralized model of governance – one which once again is paying off in terms of prosperity. Recent economic historians have shown that only as of the late 18th century did China fail to keep up with its standing as the most successful economy in the world. From this perspective, the 21st century is beginning to look like a return to what Chinese nationalists perceive as “normal.” 37

Comparative Studies of China and the West Paying attention to the continuities in Chinese civilization throws into perspective our own, Western, expectations of how civilizations develop. Once Western tive study of China, some reassessment of their home ways might reasonably emerge. They are likely to discover that – from a Chinese distance – science and religion seem much less at odds than is commonly believed. Both presume a scenario with a beginning and an end, which a traditional Chinese narrative typically does not. The Christian story begins with Genesis and ends with Apocalypse. The science narrative differs primarily in Big Bang and the Heat Death of the Universe. By contrast, the dominant Chinese worldview makes no claim to understand distant events either before us or after us.11 The focus is on the matic and strategic concern that may override the claims of legalities or abstract principles. The core of Chinese values remains much closer to home, to families and to the larger socio-political hierarchies that family relations reenact on a small scale. The name of the central value is xiao ᆍ , traditionally translated as ¿OLDO SLHW\. A better translation might be familial loyalty, because the central notion turns on the duty of subordination to elders and superiors, within the family and beyond. Imagine a mother who calls a neighbor and friend to say that she needs help moving some heavy furniture; she asks if the friend’s teenage son might be available to help. An American mother would be likely to respond: “I’ll ask him”; a Chinese mother: “I’ll send him over.” In this tiny contrastive episode are embedded a host of cultural assumptions about parents and children, about neighbors and the interactions among all of the above. To remedy cultural amnesia, our job as comparatists is to identify such culturally resonant instances and then to unpack them as fully as we can. In this hypothetical situation, the Western mother automatically respects her son’s right to an independent response, but in China the son would typically not even be consulted. Lurking here are contentious issues concerning “human rights.” Anyone who wants to take such issues seriously would be well advised to reread the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is composed of some 30 articles. The first two-thirds concentrate on Western-style human rights with a political and legal orientation, derived from Enlightenment concerns. The last third emphasize social and economic rights (food, employment, education). In international discussions, whenever human rights come up, China consistently focuses attention on the latter, proclaiming how much they have improved “human rights [socioeconomic]” for Chinese people. Meanwhile Westerners 38

Vol. 1 2013 decry how the Peoples’ Republic persists in denying the “human rights [political-civic]” of its citizens. As far as public discourse is concerned, a dialogue of the deaf has prevailed for many years. This stalemate might not be necessary if people took the time to read the actual document, to understand how it has been received differently in China and the then can one analyze dispassionately the functioning of the different political systems, and the pressures felt by leaders on both sides. What does Western Civilization look like to Chisay this comparative course helps them understand that behind the flotsam and jetsam of Western popular culture that washes across Chinese life today, the West does have some values that were invisible to them earlier. They admire and respect the Western skill of critical thinking, for instance. Perhaps more important, many of these students have said they now see a reason to take their own heritage more seriously. One student engaged us in the following dialogue: “It seems that you in the West have many political parties.” “Yes, At least two and in some countries more.” “We here only have one Party.” “Yes, we know.” “But you have only one god, whereas we have many.” “True.” “It looks like everybody lives with ones and twos. But somehow they got applied differently.”

So if both civilizations seem to involve Ones and Twos, they remain free to differ about what they see as most basic. This students had caught the non-judgmental spirit of this comparative process, acknowledging that, while each civilization has its sacred principles, neither is necessarily sacrosanct. Studying comparatively thus allows students to distance themselves from their own civilization in such a way as to repossess it – as a valuable resource in its own right. For both Western and Chinese students, it is exactly this distancing that highlights the richness of their own inheritance – and that, by this means, counters the universal tendency toward cultural amnesia induced by what we call “modernity.”

1 See John G. Blair and Jerusha H. McCormack, Western Civilization with Chinese Comparisons, third edition (Shanghai: Fudan University

John G. Blair & Jerusha McCormack

Comparing China and the West: Remedies for Cultural Amnesia

Press, 2010), 178-182. In later references, this text is referred to as WCwCC. In Chinese, one of the words for “generation” is shi ( ц ), which signifies 30, implying thirty years between each generation. To identify five generations in half a century or so, then, becomes a measure of extremely rapid social and cultural change. Now that “generations” are experientially so much shorter, misunderstandings disruptive to family harmony may easily result. 2 The best science in the world foresees a “tipping point” beyond which no human effort can reverse the decline in human livability on earth. No one knows quite when this point will be reached – if we do nothing but continue in our present practices – but most probably sometime before 2030 3 From a Chinese point of view, Western cultures often tend to produce ill-disciplined children, destructively individualistic mindsets, chaotic political and economic management, enabled by short-sighted selfseeking factions at every level of decision making. 4 So far in the West we have offered courses of this type in the USA and Ireland. The prospects have improved with the publication in 2013 of an American edition of our sourcebook entitled Comparing Civilizations: China and the West (New York: Global Scholarly Publications), 604 pages plus 1680 pages in PDF on CD-ROM. 5 The new type of world map, using a “Robinson Projection,” has been promoted by the National Geographic Society and by now is the map on the wall in most American schools when children begin to become aware of a wider world. 6 In China, traditionally, “world history” means non-Chinese history, not at all what is intended here. 7 In fact the Chinese tradition never distinguished between animate and inanimate, whereas from the Greeks on such differentiation has seemed basic to Western minds. 8 It is true that in recent years the majority of medical treatments delivered in China have been inspired by Western-style training, but traditional Chinese medicine remains superior for helping humans live with chronic conditions which cannot be cured but must be lived with. 9 See WCwCC 10 In world perspective, China does not get as much credit as it deserves. The one-child policy, for example, has contributed greatly to holding down the rise in the world population. Without this policy there would likely be nearly half a billion more human beings than the 7 billion there are now. 11 In the words of Zhuangzi: ੮㿲ѻᵜˈަᖰᰐェ˗੮≲ѻᵛˈަᶕ ᰐ→Ǆᰐェᰐ→ˈ䀰ѻᰐҏ

Immigrants learn to attend to cultures and comparisons. There are many invisible rules one is liable to violate unknowingly. His current work in comparative culture studies is rooted in this life experience. John Blair has lectured widely in Europe, the USA, and China, with occasional appearances in Africa. He began focusing comparative attention on China after his first teaching assignment there in 1988. His recent publications (jointly with Professor Jerusha McCormack) include Comparing Civilizations: China & the West (2012) and Western Civilization with Chinese Comparisons (2010).

Jerusha Hull McCormack, IACSCW secretary and treasurer, was born in the USA where she attended Wellesley College. There she concentrated her studies on philosophy, art history and English literature. After receiving her MA and PhD at Brandeis University in 1973, she taught English, American and Anglo-Irish literature at University College, Dublin for 30 years. Later, influenced by John G. Blair, she turned her attention to China. While teaching at Beijing Foreign Studies University of China, Professor McCormack helped develop an entirely new course for advanced students of English entitled “Western Civilization with Chinese Comparisons” in collaboration with Professor John Blair. Teaching the course together helped them to enhance its content, now published by the Fudan University Press under the same title (WCwCC): third edition, 2010.

that it is beyond description.] Zhuangzi, Library of Chinese Classics, Hunan People’s Publishing House, vol. 2, 1999, chapter 25, edited and translated by Wang Rongpei.

About the authors: John G. Blair is currently the IACSCW co-president for the West. He comes to comparative culture studies from thirty years of university teaching in European English Departments where he published several books and numerous scholarly Anglo-Irish literature and culture. He got his Ph.D of English & American Literature in Brown University before transferring his life and career to Europe.

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Building up Cultural Strategy of China as a Great Power through Cultural Innovation By Wang Yuechuan Peking University

Abstract: The more China’s rise matters in the world, the more Chinese culture matters in international cultural discourse. Chinese culture is not only part of the East, but it is becoming part of the world. Thinkers in each era have their own cultural standpoints and their own cultural identities. Interaction of the thinkers prompts the recognition of WKH JUHDW SRZHUV¶ FXOWXUDO LGHQWLW\ 7KLV SDSHU ZLOO LOOXVWUDWH WKH VLJQL¿FDQFH RI FXOWXUDO LQQRYDWLRQ WR WKH GHYHORSPHQW of a strong culture from six aspects. Keywords: cultural innovation; cultural power; cultural cycle of Chinese characters; core culture; cultural leadership

The globalization of Western culture indicates the withering of the richness of human multiculturalism. systems, science and technology, the globalization of the above aspects will and should be achieved, since it is the guarantee for human progress. However, as to cultural forms, aesthetic sensibility, artistic spirit, and religion, they should maintain their own characteristics, without which the ecosystem of human spirit would suffer a major fracture and dislocation of ontology. Those looking inward and lamenting that the earth is a global village do not notice that human beings have entered into the space civilization with interstellar communication, and Chinese culture should make a difference in the new century. Chinese culture should rise through overall innovation, and China should make efforts to integrate elite culture with folk culture, and bring together the masters in the fields of ideology, culture and art, to introduce them to the world, making the country a cultural superpower valued by the world. This means Chinese culture not only belongs to China’, but also belongs to the world. Therefore, Chinese culture should go out and meet the world in the new century.

al Cycle of America. Some countries of the South China Sea have begun to follow the United States; therefore, only through the restoration and reconstruction of the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics can we solve tries such as Vietnam, India and the Philippines; instead, these countries have become close to American culture and distant from China, encouraging confrontations as tural soft power, and the establishment of the country’s cultural strategy and national discourse is extremely urgent. It is not difficult to see that military crackdowns, economic competition and cultural battles have taken on a new trend, and the cultural innovation of China as a rising power is quite urgent. At present, the cultural battle has already begun. In the new century, the United States adjusts its strategy to promote its culture in Asia, and puts forward the plan to return to Asia, and claims to be dominated by the United States.

Cultural Power and Reconstruction of the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics

The United States, a nation with a 300-year history, has dominated the political, military and cultural direc-

China’s crisis in the East China Sea and South China Sea seemingly attribute to the intervention from the West, which has made the disputes on territory and resources more complicated, but the deeper reason lies in the death of the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics. In the past half century, anti-China trends in East Asia have been very serious, and the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics has been replaced by the Cultur-

it turned the 60 countries after World War II, into more than 200 countries. Second, it marginalized European modernism and earlier Asian modernism with post-modernism, and gradually formed the hegemonic discourse around the world. Post-colonialism, following the postmodernism, no longer involves territories conquest and slavery, but language, mind and money. America urges the world to follow it on the post-colonial road.

Wang Yuechuan

Building up Cultural Strategy of China as a Great Power through Cultural Innovation

In fact, there are many types and patterns of world modernization, including not only Western modernization, but also China’s modernization. China’s modernity cannot be a replica of the West’s and it proves that China’s values, religious views, and institution are all rooted in its long history and culture. China’s rise is rewriting human history and the country is no longer a marginalized one, but a country engaged in the changing of the world. A great power image is made up of four aspects: economic, political, military and cultural. China’s economic image is bright; its political image is winning the trust of more and more countries; and its military image is also on the rise; but its cultural image is at a disadvantage. Now what we need to think about is whether it is good for all humankind to follow the Western cultural mode, whether Eastern cultures can put forward their own cultural spirit, whether Eastern innovative culture is becoming a new cultural element in human civilization, and whether China should rethink what it means to be Chinese after a century of anti-China sentiments. With the threats of terrorism, separatism, racism, fundamentalism, imperialism and unilateralism, can Chinese culture offer the world a new option and a harmonious, peaceful dead, and China is pressed by English culture and neighboring countries’ cultures. In this case, can China revive

Margaret Thatcher once said, “In my opinion, the harmony of Chinese civilization has not entered into the world vision, but become an illegitimate, marginalized actions have been conducted in the western discourse for 65 years. The United States, the so-called world’s leader, asked the Korean peninsula to stop using Chinese language in 1945, and now even the name of the capital of South Korea Seoul ( ≹ ෾ ), which means “Chinese City”, has been replaced with the word “ 俆ቄ ” (transliteration). Japan abolished Chinese characters, took antiChina actions and departed from Asia for Europe. It does not recognize itself as an Asian country but claims that it has to neighbor another Asian power, namely China. Vietnam has also abolished Chinese characters; Singapore also has a tendency to prefer English to Chinese; anti-China phenomenon is serious in Taiwan. China’s crisis in the East China Sea and South China Sea seemingly can be attributed to the intervention from the West, which made the disputes on territory and resources more complicated, but the deeper reason lies in the disappearance of the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics. In the past half century, anti-China trends in East Asia tend to be very serious, and the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics has been replaced by the Cultural Cycle of America. Some countries around the South China Sea follow the United States; therefore, only the restora-

tion and reconstruction of the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics can help to solve these problems. Chinese characteristics’ diminishing in East Asia America part of the American cultural cycle. If we do not restore the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics, the South China Sea problem can only be solved through a war. If we could reconstruct the Cultural Cycle of Chinese Characteristics, people in the region could therefore be humanized and the war could be avoided as well. When China began to realize about the importance of soft power and announced that 100 Confucius institutes were about to be founded all over the world 10 years ago, South Korea opened the Sejong Institute and Japan opened the Japanese-learning center in sequence. What is more, India has always been working hard on expand-

In my opinion, in the new century, if China still holds its cultural inferiority and cultural defeatism instead of its cultural confidence, we will never find the core values. I have visited more than 50 countries, and never found any of them has set a foreign language as a must in the examination for entering college, gradu-

in no country have put forward such slogans as “down with ancient Greece and down with the Roman”, “down with Socrates or down with Plato”, but some Chinese did it—“down with Confucianism”. The core values of the Chinese nation, of course, cannot be obtained from others, just like our race, our yellow face, dark eyes, black hair, which cannot be obtained from genes of other look for new ones. In my opinion, the enlightenment of brilliant virtues, the innovation of people, and the pursuit of ultimate goodness will surely become a precious resource and element of the Chinese nation's core valChina spirit anywhere.

I I C u lt u r a l S t ra t e g y f o r R e s o l v in g Fundamentalism A strong culture must have its own core values. The globalization of Christianity leads to the stronger American fundamentalist tendencies, which has become a big issue today. Fundamentalists believe that when the authority is challenged, they should stick to the authority of the original beliefs, resolutely against challenges and compromises, and even use political and military means to further show their toughness. Clearly fundamentalism is strongly conservative, exclusive and confrontational. In other words, fundamentalists think “I’m right and you are wrong; I am of a clan and you are wandering; my belief is of universal value but yours is of regional

Comparative Studies of China and the West value.” But the United States came across another fundamentalism with stronger resistance—Islam. For 10 years, wars and disasters are ongoing. Anti-terrorism has led to more terrorism. A considerable portion of the US GDP is put in the war across the world. For ten years, human has suffered from the confrontation between Christian fundamentalism of America and Islamic fundamentalism. The trend of fundamentalism is on the rise in the world, and Obama tends to carry out imperialism. At this dangerous moment, we can neither choose narrow nationalism, nor follow the Western road. We can only focus on China, a country advocating tolerance and the doctrine of the Mean. Besides, we should absorb the virtues of cultures across the world, be creative and build a powerful China through culture. Rooting in the East means that the reconstruction of a cultural power identity is closely related to the Chinese Cultural Renaissance, and that the innovation of Chinese culture is not only an important symbol of comprehensive national strength, but also the basic guarantee of the harmonious and balanced development of the world’s natural and spiritual ecology. Over the years, tolerance, patience, doctrine of the Mean, and esteeming harmony in Chinese culture barely had their own sound heard in the world, and China has been marginalized. There are 3.6 billion Christians, 1.4 billion Islamic believers, 900 million Hindus, and 460 China is being marginalized. American scholar Samuel is between Christian civilization and Islamic civilization, civilization and Confucian civilization. The U.S.-China conflict has begun. The South China Sea was claimed to be the high sea by Americans, so was the East China Sea. The countries around the South China Sea, such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and countries around the East China Sea, such as Japan, South Korea, and even more marginalized countries such as India and other countries

We might as well say the voice of the Eastern culture becomes very important with the globalization and homogeneity of the world, with the spread of the financial crisis and economic crisis in the West. The output of Chinese culture will help make China’s modern experience the experience of the world, and China’s cultural globalization will help form a new world order, which can not only optimize the global allocation of resources but also replace the previous discourse structure. The neglect of the cultural strategy reflects the indifference of Chinese intellectuals, especially

Vol. 1 2013 scholars in humanities, to the cultural strategy. So far the region is almost an exclusive domain of domestic social science, lacking the voice of the humanists. The separation of humanities from national culture is not normal. The cultural problem is not only an academic one, but also an influential political one. In this case, introducing a cultural and political perspective, and expanding humanities into the cultural strategy not only help to strengthen the reasonability of the research on cultural strategy, but also, more importantly, rebuild the relationship between culture and the academy, between politics and the nation, and provide a new academic focus for cultural research. In the era of globalization, cultural strategy refers to the competition strategy between cultures. The word “strategy” can only be holistic and forward-looking. Although the decline or Renaissance of Chinese culture may have no direct impact on our current life, and we might even be pilloried as alarmist, a reflection of the past of the culture and an overall plan on its future should be an inescapable responsibility of Chinese intellectuals. The more China’s rise matters in the world civilization, the more Chinese culture matters in the international cultural discourse. Chinese culture is not only part of the East’s, but is becoming part of the world’s. Military war is replaced by culture war. In the future culture war, the view toward culture should be upgraded from tactical to strategic. China should attach greater importance to the overall national cultural strategy in China’s rise. As economy takes off, only when the cultural Renaissance, the output and widespread of Chinese culture have an impact on the world can China truly realize the peaceful rise. Reviewing the history, image output, which led to many dangers China is facing now, such as the American culture’s invasion, the utilitarianism of the society, and the negative effects of economic imperialism. In European cultural Renaissance, Germany and France are more active in cultural expansion. Leadership is struggled for within the East Asian cultural circle. Japanese cartoons have essence, is a kind of cultural invasion; Dae Jang Geum shows the South Korean government’s efforts to justify their culture and to struggle for leadership in the East Asian culture cycle. Thinkers in each era have their own cultural positions, and form their own cultural identities. Interaction of the thinkers prompts the recognition of a great power’s cultural identity. Rooting in the Eastern culture and paying attention to cultural output and innovation is the cultural strategy for the rise of China in the new century, and also ensures its cultural

Wang Yuechuan

Building up Cultural Strategy of China as a Great Power through Cultural Innovation

security. This means that China no longer chases the Western trend in the new century, but becomes part of the charm of the dialogue between East and West, and it shows the harmony of Chinese culture, spreading the innovative and positive spirit of new Chinese culture. The East-West dialogue will replace Western hegemony, and harmonious coexistence of human will replace any

The spirit of harmony and peace of the East can curb the jungle law of the West and the harm brought by it. Nowadays, wars and terrorism happen across the world; human culture faces unilateralism and hegemony; human spirit appears empty and faces the loss of survival significance; the world is under the threat of geopolitical of war and nuclear war. In this situation, we need to think about the future of human beings. As a big country in the East, we should ponder how to innovate and continuously output Chinese culture. China should think about human’s future from the point of all human beings. Cultural innovation should become the of Eastern culture will surely put an end to the Western

Rooting in the east means that the reconstruction of a cultural power identity is closely related to Chinese cultural Renaissance, and that the innovation of Chinese culture is not only an important symbol of national comprehensive strength, but also the basic guarantee of the harmonious and balanced development of the world. The cultural cycle of Chinese characteristics needs to be rebuilt. Under the confrontation of the Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism, only the voice of China being heard can help ensure the happiness of human beings.

III Core Value of Chinese Culture is not Nihilism Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism culture are three dimensions of Chinese ideology and culture. Confucianism emphasizes harmony and its purpose is to govern a country; Taoists believe that man is an integral part of nature and should pursue natural inaction, and the aim of Taoism is to govern the self; Buddhism emphasizes compassion, and its main purpose is to govern the mind and desires, including greediness, utilitarianism, even hegemony. These three doctrines have long been marginalized in history, but now should have their voice heard.

the remolding of people, and the pursuit of ultimate goodness. Virtue is the core of Chinese culture throughout the history, which is included in Beijing spirits today. Saving a man’s life is a small virtue; saving people’s life several times a year is a middle virtue; saving people’s life throughout one’s life is a great virtue. Today many people lack virtue since they no longer help others. Clearly, enlightenment means to transfer small virtues into great virtues. Good virtue is born in nature. We should wash away the dust on the mind every day. According to an old saying, if you can one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day and let there be daily renovation. It is crucial to keep the daily renovation.

3.2 China Emphasizing the Innovation of People’s Personality To reach the aim of self-enlightenment and enlightenment of others, Ancient Chinese asked for advice from both the learned and those who were not learned. Confucius was very modest, saying that we should ask about everything and learn from others. The book Shuo Wen Jie Zi (which means “explanation of Chinese characters”) written by Duan Yucai, had some explanation of the word “innovation”. In my view, innovation is the development based on the traditional spirit. It is not to completely negate the tradition. German philosopher Heidegger absorbed a lot of spiritual elements from ancient Greek studying on the contemporary existential philosophy, and he modernized many ancient Greek vocabulary and thoughts. Thus, innovation is not anti-tradition, but it helps to enhance people’s inner beauty.

3.3 Chinese Spirit Attaching Great Importance to the Word “ → ”˄literally means “stop”˅ Like two sides of the same coin, on the one hand, it means “stop sliding into corruption”, and “rein in”; on the other hand, it means “do not stop pursuing until one reaches the ultimate goodness”, which means “so long life exists, the struggle never rests”. The word “stop” emphasizes persevering pursuit—Qu Yuan, Zhu Geliang, Yue Fei, Wen Tianxiang, and Wang Guowei were convincing examples.

3.4 Three Reasons for Cultural Nihilism in the May 4th Movement

3.1 Chinese Spirit Emphasizing the Virtue

We need to reflect on three reasons for cultural nihilism in the May 4th Movement launched by Peking University: overthrow of Confucians, total Westernization, and abolition of Chinese characters.

The Great Learning says that the way of Great Learning lies in the enlightenment of brilliant virtues,

First, in the May 4th Movement, some professors from Peking University exaggerated the slogan “down 43

Comparative Studies of China and the West with Confucianism” put forward by a scholar surnamed Wu from Sichuan province. In October 1966, Red Guards of Peking University went to Qufu, Shandong. They called an assembly, held demonstrations, overturned the tombstone, burned the plaque written “A teacher is an example for all”, and dug up Confucius’ tomb in a cruel and inhuman manner. Tsinghua University’s Red Guards arrived in Qufu in November 1966, and dug up the tombs of Confucius’ 70 generations. After that, Korea, a small nation with a population 48 million, declared that: Confucius belongs to Korea, and then it claimed that Laozi, Xi Shi, and Jiang Taigong all belong to Korea, and even the Mid-Autumn Festival and Dragon Boat Festival are festivals originating from Korea. This, of course, should be attributed to Korean nationalism. Eight years ago President Hu Jintao announced the establishment of 100 Confucius institutes around the world. The Office of Chinese Language Council International announced: In 2011, there were over 400 Confucius institutes, including more than 300 Confucius classrooms around the world. The number may reach 1,000 in five years. If China fails to find a typical cultural code, the West will lose the recognition of China’s cultural identity and cultural value which distinguish the differences between them. Second, the idea of “Westernization” or “total modernization” put forward by Dr. Hu Shi from Peking University is misunderstood. No less than one doctor told me that China’s being colonized is absolute colony Hong Kong is rich, and as the former Portuguese colony Macau is rich. But I want to ask, is Vietnam

we should abandon “total Westernization”, and adhere to the “half-Westernization”: science and technology integration, paralleled systems, cultural dialogue, and modernization. The third is the abolition of Chinese characters, which was proposed by Qian Xuantong, a professor of Peking University. If we had abolished the Chinese characters, the mobile phones, computers, publications, newspapers and books would be in alphabets and the ancient Chinese literature and culture would lose its meaning for us. After one hundred years of cultural nihilism, in addition to total Westernization, Chinese seem to understand only two persons: Zhao Benshan and Xiao Shenyang. Peking University professor Wang Xuan terminated the abolition of Chinese characters. In the early 1980s, when Ji Xianlin said, “Fortune changes”, some major newspapers criticized him and a professor publicly said in an article that the once staunch rationalist who had been in Germany for 10 years turned into a fortune teller. I asked Prof. Ji why he said that. He 44

Vol. 1 2013 said, “I am opposed to the cultural inferiority, defeatism and not being confident. I think the rise of China will happen in 30 years.” Now, 30 years have passed, China’s GDP has risen to the second in the world from the 76th.

Chinese cultural spirit can no longer be nihilism, and the core value of Chinese cultural spirit must be

IV Chinese Language Crisis Prevents China from Becoming a Cultural Power Recently, a survey by the Social Survey Center of China Youth Daily through minyi.net.cn and sina.cn.com shows that 83.6% of respondents believe that Chinese people’s Chinese proficiency has deteriorated. 69.1% of them would like to see the promotion of Chinese traditional culture and classics, and 50.6% of them think that the Chinese language proficiency should be considered in personnel recruitment. This survey shows, in a sense, that saying the Chinese language is in crisis is not an exaggeration Historically, four written languages of the five world’s early civilizations, namely, Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform writing of Mesopotamia, American Mayan, and Indian Sanskrit, successively disappeared and are now represented only in history museums. Although Sanskrit is still studied by scholars, it cannot any longer be widely used as Chineseis. Chinese characters, the “oriental magic square”, have enjoyed a long life, which has disrupted the story of the tower of Babel since God cannot stop Chinese people building such a tower when their language remains united. It continues to show an increasing vitality in the 21st century. The so-called “cultural circle of Chinese characteristics” is a Chinese-centered discourse system and a cultural region in which the Chinese language developed similar sign systems. Chinese characters and Chinese culture spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and other countries in Southeast Asia, connecting the culture between China and its surrounding countries. Although most of these countries later created their own languages the Chinese language still exist. The East China Sea and the South China Sea crises indicate that the “cultural circle of Chinese characteristics” is losing its efficacy. Domestically, due to the intensive Westernization over the years, as well as the national education system and talent policy, the importance of English has been unprecedentedly exaggerated and increasingly consolidated. Additionally, the exaggeration of the public voice and the persistent

Wang Yuechuan

Building up Cultural Strategy of China as a Great Power through Cultural Innovation

overheating of the “overseas study fever” make English a crucial part of the contemporary Chinese education, affecting the insights of the intelligentsia and educational circles in general. Nowadays, students of different majors all consider English a top priority and spend one third of their time on the examination-oriented study. What’s worse, postgraduates and doctoral students spend more time on English learning than on their specialized courses, which leads to the decrease of their academic performance. The obvious “English over Chinese” situation is still being hyped and English is still being overemphasized, which leads to a lot of talented professional personnel being rejected from corresponding circles just because of their poor English. It is said that Chinese, asecond-class one in China. Children begin to learn English in kindergarten. When they grow up, they have to learn English for the college entrance examination, civil service examinations, job applications, and professional evaluations. Moreover, even the bus attendants also have to speak some English; and some prestigious universities even advocate all professors giving lectures in English. The promotion tests in China, so to speak, all take English, rather than Chinese, as the measurement for selection. Therefore, English seems to be the “new eight-part essay” in China’s examinations, playing the role of a “new imperial examination”. I have no objection to English learning since learning another language is indeed very important to know about the world. However, the study of the native language and foreign language should be done in balance. Taking English as the only measurement of entrance examinations will bring untold troubles. The in our native language, a neglect of professional quality, and a trend toward Westernization in the contemporary educational system. Studying the humanities and the science of art in this way can only result in talent shortages and mother-tongue inferiority. After all, English should only be the secondary measurement of a nation’s education, while the native language and majors should be of priority. Chinese language crises are not only embodied in the higher education system, but also in our daily life. People have suffered character amnesia in the age of computers. The randomness and individuality of Internet language and micro-blog language make Chinese language less standard and more vulgar. Nowadays, some people like to speak pidgin or Chinglish. Besides, as a result of the marginalization of the classical Chinese, the heritage of traditional culture is neglected. Therefore, many students make lots of errors in writing, sometimes their Chinese expression even doesn’t make

sense. With such a poor logic, they can even hardly write or appreciate calligraphy. Furthermore, there was a so-called “Theory on Abolishing Chinese Characters” during the ideological trend of Chinese cultural nihilism in the 20th century, which has led to a result that the Chinese language is no longer a divine presence but has come to seem an evil one. In fact, Chinese characters came into being with a divine glory. It is said that during the Huangdi period, Cangjie began to write on the basis of the markings of birds and animals. According to Huai Nan Zi, when Cangjie began to write, grains fell from heaven and ghosts cried in the evening. This was probably because our ancestors were awed to the mysterious unity of spirit the unique creation of Characters. Entering China’s grand unified period, Chinese characters served for the governors. The power of characters makes ideas immortal, following virtue and good deeds. It is only the written language that is also written language that can bring about ideological accusation which might be fatal. What’s worse, influenced by the Western culture, the voice of overall Westernization was higher in the 20th century. Under these circumstances, Qian Xuantong declared that “Chinese characters are difficult to identify and hard to write, which makes it an obstacle to the popularity of education as well as the spread of knowledge”. He believed that “replacing Chinese characters with alphabetic writing is the solution to solve the problem while simplifying current Chinese characters can treat the symptom” and “the solution is the essential thing at present”. Therefore, Chinese characters, which have helped record Confucianism and Taoism “should be abolished”. Chen Duxiu held that “Chinese characters cannot express new things or new theories and they are the source of those decadent ideologies and, therefore, should be abolished”. Lu Xun also believed that “the Chinese language is a powerful tool for obscurantism… and the ‘tuberculosis’ in China’s toiling masses”, so that “Chinese characters and Chinese people are extremely antagonistic” 1 . According to the above-mentioned views, it seemed that Chinese characters were already out of date and should be replaced by an alphabetic language. Chinese characters, in this way, fell from the peak of divinity to the abyss of being outdated and evil. The simplification of Chinese characters started in the register of post-colonialism, so, in the 1980s, people considered Chinese characters not suitable for the information era, simply because they were hard to input into computers. However, this viewpoint was later proved to be wrong when Professor Wang Xuan invented 45

Comparative Studies of China and the West computerized Chinese characters. As a matter of fact, the Japanese were the first who came up with the idea of abolishing Chinese characters. In December 1866, Baron Mitsu Mayejima presented “On Abolishing Chinese characters” to Japanese general Tokugawa, saying that “the reason for China, a vast country with a large population, being so is their hieroglyphic and their neglect of universalized education; abolishing Chinese characters does not mean to abolish all Chinese characters, but just record them in katakana… not abolishing Chinese characters would steal Yamato spirit because of the influential Chinese spirit.” ฀It can be seen that Japan has already connected national spirit with the use of written language. However, if we advocate abolishing Chinese characters along with Japanese, it will do great harm to China. The Chinese pattern of thought is the essence of Chinese and the epitome of Chinese culture. This means we need to think about China’s reality and future in our native language. I am not denying the English pattern of thought; on the contrary, I think it is important to introduce Western thoughts into China in this globalized world. Nowadays, under the shadow of terrorism, separatism, racialism, fundamentalism, hegemonism, and unilateralism, the former glorious sino-sphere exists now in name only and has already been besieged by Western cultures and the cultures of surrounding countries. Can China make “re-sinicization” a revival of

Fortunately, “Chinese fever” in the Western world has increased these days, especially in the United States. Quite a lot of American students choose Chinese as their major. And the TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) centers in China’s universities are crowded with the foreign students. As far as I am concerned, the Chinese language crisis, in nature, is the oriental cultural crisis, which is a result of Western cultural hegemony. Therefore, resolving Chinese language crisis is the prerequisite for introducing oriental culture, and the only way for China to become a cultural power. Only by rebuilding the sinosphere in the process of “re-sinicization”, can we build Chinese people’s awareness of and confidence in the Chinese language and can bring world culture to a really equal conversational table.

V Cultural Strategies of Great Powers and Cultural Hegemony In the modern world, countries compete for cultural hegemony, which drives China into multiple crises. American culture and fast-food culture bring many nega-

Vol. 1 2013 tive effects on our whole society, such as utilitarianism, McDonaldization, and economic imperialism. As to the revival of European culture, Germany and France are more active in cultural expansion. As far as I can see, China’s cultural soft power needs to be improved; thus the proposal of cultural power building is a good cultural strategy proposed urgently. I spent nearly half a year studying on how many works were translated into Chinese from English, French, German, Italian, and Russian from 1900s to 2000s. The answer is more than 100680 works. After that, I did another research on how many works have been translated from Chinese into Western languages in the 20th country. And the answer is only about 800, which is the same as that of the GAPP (General Administration of Press and Publication). How danabout the Western world, while they know too little about us. In these days, “China Threat”, “China Collapse” and Yellow Peril” linger in our ears. How comes we do not try to make a dialogue with the Western world based on equality. China is now trapped in multiple passive crises. Western powers are changing the world into a “global village” through globalization, while China’s rise limits their powers. The core of China’s cultural strategy in the new century should be exportation of Chinese culture. We should pay attention to our national image in the context of internationalization based on the cask principle— no matter how tall the cask may be, it is the shortest board, not the longest one, determines how much water the cask can hold. In other words, all cultures have to deal with the same problem related to their external images. A nation’s image is composed of different aspects in which its international image is always determined by the most disadvantaged one. The culture situation of East Asia is amid mounting tensions and has become an area full of instability and warns that during the material modernization, one percent of the population has mental diseases, one percent has AIDs, and one percent commits suicide. People’s spiritual and cultural ecology is faced up with serious problems, including loquacious cultures, fragile lives, void values, and vulgar spirit. Therefore, China should learn a lesson and persist in its spiritual modernization even, amidst its material modernization. Modern European cultural strategy, named cultural law of the jungle, includes three kinds of competition: competition between individuals, competition between groups, and competition between nations. Over half a century, the post-modern cultural strategy of America is spreading three American cultural products throughout the world, namely, blockbusters, potato chips, and

Wang Yuechuan

Building up Cultural Strategy of China as a Great Power through Cultural Innovation

computer chips. The blockbusters control our vision entertainment; potato chips control our stomach; and computer chips, our creativity and cultural security. It is very dangerous for “Three-Harmony Culture” of family harmony, society harmony and international harmony, as the core of Chinese culture, to be long absent from the international cultural strategies. Therefore, this “Three-Harmony Culture” should be one of the important supplements to the Western cultural strategy. And China’s cultural strategy might be correction of Western unilateralism and hegemonism. Over the past decades, China’s four great inventions have been frequently challenged. In 1966, Korea found a Buddhist scripture, to deny China as the inventor of the block printing accordingly. A Korean woman Ph.D in France found a movable-type printed book, Point, published in 1377, and then denied the fact that Bi Sheng was the inventor of movable type print. India denied Cai Lun’s invention of paper making, believing that Indians were the first to make paper 374 years earlier than China. A Japanese archaeologist perjured himself for 28 years, extending Japanese history from 30,000 years into 700,000. We have to be alertly aware that our cultural heritages have being seriously encroached. Let’s take a look at the problems China has encountered: in 1985, a Japanese scholar from Tokyo University put forward that China should be a great power in the world in 20 years and there was one way to stop its progress—the independence of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Korea, North China and South China, through which China will be divided into several parts. It was described in On Seven Countries, a book that Li Denghui has published in Taiwan. You may think it cannot happen, but look at USSR, the former second largest country in the world. It disintegrated into five countries. Putin, president of Russia has announced that Russia is no longer in the list of the great powers, because its GDP only account one seventh of China’s.

image. Cafferty, the host of the Voice of America, once insulted China, saying that the country was a mean and inferior nation. France posted a huge poster of handcuffs and foot chains on the Eiffel Tower before 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, saying that China was a state of dictatorship. In a Korean commercial poster, the image of Chairman Mao on the Tian’anmen Square was transformed into a wolf. The circulation of a Japanese book An Introduction to China, reaching twothirds of its population, contains a large number of malicious comics defaming China’s one-child policy, election system, pension system, medical system and even education. All these prevent Westerners from treating China’s prosperity objectively and rationally. Margaret Thatcher was even worse. Three years ago, she said something we will never forget: “China will never become a superpower, because they do not have an international theory to propel their power and impair western countries. Although China’s economy grows fast, it will only be a big country of production. For the output of spiritual and cultural innovation, China is just a tiny country that is not worthy of our attention.” ฀ China has already risen in the estimation of the World Bank. Some people think rich countries are great powers since they believe the men of wealth are the ones of high position. However, in my opinion, they are totally different. As a matter of fact, in history China began to collapse right after it enjoyed its richest period. Innovation, national spirit, and cultural confidence are essential for a country to move from being rich to being a great power. Cultural innovation becomes increasingly important. If we start from scratch without our cultural heritage, we could never catch up with the world. We can make cultural exportation and innovation based on our great and harmonious culture. I believe the Chinese concept of harmony cherished by Chinese people from generations to generations can be shared by all world from nuclear war.

VI Cultural Innovation and the Antidemonization of China’s Image With these terms such as “Yellow Peril”, “China Threat Theory”, and “China Collapse Theory”, China’s culture image is being demonized. During the cultural cold war, some Western countries intentionally misinterpreted and calumniated the rise and development of China. Deng Xiaoping’s idea of “keeping a low US military into “hiding the claws and teeth in order to find an opportunity to counter-attack”. They also translated China’s dragon into “Chinese Dinosaur”, or “Chinese Lizard”. If we don’t work on our culture, we

An internal obstacle of cultural innovation is China’s cultural defeatism. Externally, China’s cultural image is presented as blurry, and sometimes even very dangerous. To be short, the biggest problem of China’s culture is the inner emptiness and the external vacillation. Cultural innovation needs the cultivation namely, inner coordination and solidarity, and external vitality. The new civilization will be a post-traditional era, in which the essence of traditional culture, such as the world. And China’s cultural innovation will come into a new era. The development of the space civilization and the advancement of the cultural worldview will 47

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provide a healthy environment for China’s culture, including its innovation of systems, categories, art, and literature. China’s literary criticism should be a window of cultural innovation. The greatest mission in our age is to construct the spirit of the Chinese culture and art, as well as to rebuild China’s image.

The rise of China does not mean that China is becoming similar to the Western world, but that it will contribute its own experience and wisdom to the world. A wise leadership group should have the courage and vision to adjust the world’s cultural progress and fight against the “China Collapse Theory” and “China Threat

As a rising great power, we are obliged to introduce the Chinese culture to the world, in order to avoid cultural wars caused by the escalation of cultural

doors; we call for peaceful coexistence, but we do not attempt to accomplish nothing. After all, as I have said, culture is the key to the world competition and harmony is the only way of human development.

domestic and international academia and shift the “total Westernization” of the 20th century to the “interaction between East and West”. China’s sustainable cultural exportation is crucial to our cultural security. On the academic frontier we have witnessed important thought transitions in contemporary China, from clarifying the relationship between multinational capital operation and cultural hegemony, to resolving the spiritual secularization in the digital time; from clarifying the fact that US-globalism role China plays in Asia culturally. We cannot let hedonism and consumerism corrupt our national spirit. A tide of “return to the classics” is rising in the contemporary world. Chinese scholars should attach importance to both innovation and the heritage of classics, achieving spiritual modernization in the process of material modernization. China’s modernization should go beyond the national height to an international height based on independent innovation in the culture import and export, sharing valuable Chinese thought with all humankind. In the new century, China’s cultural innovation should also conform to the following rules: re-recognizing Eastern culture, returning to the classics, being innovative, and carrying forward Chinese Culture. Only in this way can China move towards an ecological and innovative culture. According to the forecast of Goldman Sachs, an American investment bank, China will exceed the United States and become the largest economy of the world no later than 2027. American scholars begin to realize that Western countries are not the only power in the 21th century; China, on its way to being a great power, will attach more importance to the values inherited from its ancient civilization and create a modernized new model—the Chinese Model. Culture is the key to the world competition and harmony is the only way of human development. The world culture is now at the turning point when China should abandon its ossified elements and promote its spirit of ecological culture, thus making our own contribution to the happiness of all human beings.

(Translated byWang Nina and Hu Wenxiao)

Essays from a Semi-concession (Qie Jie Ting Za Wen) by Lu Xun. Li Qing, History of Japanese Sinology, Volume I. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press, 2002,106. 3 Phoenix Weekly, 2006 (16). 2

About the author: Wang Yuechuan, IACSCW Vice President, is professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University. He has been a visiting professor at Kanazawa University, and an adjunct professor at

Professor Wang serves as the vice-chairman of the Society of Chinese and Foreign Literary Theory, the General-secretary of the China National Aesthetics Society Higher Education Institution Committee, and is a member of the China Writers Association, China Calligraphers Association, and a researcher at the Chinese Cultural Academy of Classical Learning. He has been dedicated to teaching and studying literature and aesthetics, literary theory, Western literary theory, and modern cultural studies and criticism.

Profit-oriented or Employment-oriented?

Gao Peiyi

3UR¿W RULHQWHG RU (PSOoymenW RULHQWHG" ——A New Topic for the Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Economic Cultures By Gao Peiyi Tsinghua University

I Origin of the Issue After a comparative study on the histories of economies, economics, economic thought and economic differ greatly in the economic development mode, in spite of the fact that they share almost the same view on the nature of “Economic Man”. That is to say, China has focused on the well-being of its people, while the West on the accumulation of wealth, which accounts for the crucial difference between them. In other words, Chinese economic culture is employment-oriented, while

Western economic culture is almost self-evident. We will reading the works of some Western economists like The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)1, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (John Maynard Keynes) 2or Economics (Paul Anthony Samuelson) 3. Although the problem of employment is mentioned in these books, it serves only as a footnote to the concern

However, things will be different when it comes to the employment-orientation of Chinese economic culture. Up to now, the Chinese mainland has not witnessed the birth of its own economics, and not a single authoritative book under the title of Chinese Economics by native Chinese scholars has been published. Therefore, it seems there is no point in talking about Chinese economic culture, let alone its employment-oriented focus.

After China’s reform and opening to the outside world in the early 1980s, Chinese economists applied Western theories and introduced the profit-oriented principle in their works, but their emphasis on profit differs from that of their Western counterparts, and the concern for people’s wellbeing and the problem of employment was not completely blotted out. Therefore, a really far-sighted Chinese economist should stick to the notion of return to the employment-oriented mode -the true essence of Chinese economic culture In fact, even some Western economists have gradually discarded extreme profit-orientation and begun to move slightly in the direction of employmentorientation, especially after the financial crisis, which broke out in America in 2008 and later spread throughout the world. This change has been drawing increasing attention, and nowadays the problem of employment occupies a more important position in macroeconomic control systems. According to Prof. Shen Liantao, Chief Consultant with the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) and former Chairman of Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), the next war will not be triggered by trade or currency, but by employment4. And in 2012, American economist Martin Feldstein emphasized that the election results would depend significantly on the economy’s performance and the unemployment rate5. Therefore the author of this paper insists that it is imperative that employment-oriented but also in the West.

It is true that China does not have an economics attributed to itself, or even a masterpiece entitled Chinese Economics by its native scholars, but its economic activities date back 5,000 years and its economic thoughts about 3,000 years, and therefore it is not devoid of valuable resources or profound ideas. If a comprehensive review is given to China’s history of economic culture, its employment-oriented nature will reveal itself. In this sense, this employment-orientation

For the above reasons, we are now raising the question of profit-oriented or employment-oriented, which is a key issue for the comparative studies of Chinese and Western economic cultures. The vital

oriented mode persists, the sustainable development of human society is impossible.

Comparative Studies of China and the West In addition, although the replacement of profitorientation by employment-orientation seems inexorable, there is still a long way to go, and the biggest obstacles will be rigid systems and pressure from vested interest groups. Finally, quite a few questions remain unanswered:

paper.

,, 3UR¿W RULHQWDWLRQ DQG .H\QHVLDQ 7UDSV 3UR¿W RULHQWDWLRQ Profit-orientation refers to principle of modern center and basis. It originates in greedy human nature, and serves as the code of conduct for the entrepreneurs in the age of modern capitalist economies. Everyone, once entering the capital market, will abide by this universal principle automatically. The essence of this

In its essence, profit originates from the value created by labor on the earth driven by capital. If “nature is the mother of wealth and the father of labor” (William Petty), I will maintain that capital is nothing but the “midwife” of wealth. The “labor” here refers to the necessary labor in the broad sense, including manual labor, mental labor, physical labor, spiritual labor, and the labor of entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists. In the market, profit exists in the form of money and is calculated in the form of price. It is the soul of capital, the dynamics of entrepreneurs, and the monetized economic basis upon which human society depends for its existence and development in a certain stage. Quantitatively speaking, it is the surplus left after subtracting the cost from the gross investment. Profit maximization means the maximum profit with minimum labor. In Keynes’ words, “the principle of That is to say, the employment size that entrepreneurs 6 -And this is the root cause of the problem.

2.2 Keynesian Traps Before John Maynard Keynes published his The 50

Vol. 1 2013 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, the code of conduct for enterprises. After he put forward in his book the three “magic keys” to the solution of employment problems -- stimulating demand, increasing government expenditures, and the policy of inflation, the whole society fell under the control of profit maximization. But in the long run, they cannot solve the problem fundamentally, and they lead to the double crisis of stagflation instead. According to my research, Keynes’ employment theory is in fact the nationalization, orientation and the principle of profit maximization, which laid a trap beyond redemption for the solution to the employment problem. Driven by profit-orientation, we have all been inescapably caught in a Keynesian trap. Due to this trap, the enterprise management models, economic theories, and the systems of politics, economy, education, science and technology and news media are all designed to

It is true that these institutions and people get their due share in this process, but the problem of employment is doomed from the very beginning. Employment hence becomes the biggest social and economic problem in the present day capitalist economy, and is hit hardest due to failures in the operation of market economy. In the opinion of Michael Spence, American economist and co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, “The fundamental structural changes in global economy indicate that we are faced with three changes in employment….And first, we need to create enough job opportunities for the young people about to enter the labor market. Obviously, many developed and developing countries have failed to do so.”7 Since the formation of profits is related to employment as well as to the consumption of energy and a variety of other resources, extreme profitorientation has not only resulted in the deterioration of the employment environment, but also posed a threat to the living conditions of the working class and the very existence of human society. More unfortunately, it is not only the entrepreneurs and capitalists but the whole society who are pursuing the maximum profit, and the government’s pursuit of GDP growth and an individual’s thirst for money are and money supremacy have already broken the legal and moral defense of man’s self-discipline, and are ruining the natural and social ecosystems upon which humankind depends for living.

Gao Peiyi

III Employment-orientation and Employment-oriented Theory

Profit-oriented or Employment-oriented? reasonable kernel of truths in them. The existing theories and policies concerning

3.1 Employment-orientation Profit-orientation is a mode of economic culture, with employment as the sole standard, motive, center and basis of human society. It is not only the ultimate goal of an ideal society originated in the essential nature of human beings, but also the natural historical process of returning from the hypothesis of economic man to the “complete” (gestalt) man -- the trinity of economic man, social man and ecological man. The principle of employment-orientation has its interior logic as well as its exterior realistic feasibility. It must be pointed out that this mode does not orientation does not eliminate that of employment. There orientation has played an important and irreplaceable role in the development of social productivity and the progress of civilization. The material wealth and achievement in science and technology attributed to modern capitalist system characterized by profitorientation since 1700s has exceeded the total in all of earlier history. But when it comes to moral cultivation, almost no progress has been made. Thus we can say that it has been led astray and has gone too far. According to the research of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, an oceanographer,“in the 100 years of the 20th century, mankind caused more damage to the earth than they had ever done before.”8 And that’s why experts from the Worldwatch Institute warn that the international community must unite to reverse the course of the crisis, or they will be caught in a vicious cycle and face the danger of environmental degradation and social disintegration.9 As the old thinking goes, “When things reach their extreme, they turn back.” Then what is the way of employment-orientation. This theory does not mean a complete negation of all the political, economic, social,

a critical inheriting and evaluating of them in order to correct the distortions and put things in the right order.

3.2 The Theory of Employment-orientation The fundamental transformation from profitorientation to employment-orientation is not only necessary but also essential. This change will not take place automatically, but requires effort from every one of us. A task of top priority in my mind is to firmly new paths in employment theory while absorbing the

to the transformation to the mode of employmentorientation. And therefore a brand-new employment theory must be established. This new theory should show respect for the former achievements and be operable in practice. Based on these principles, I now attempt to propose a new theory framework for employment, the major points of which are listed as follows: Firstly, the philosophical basis of employmentoriented theory is Marx’s Labor Philosophy, which holds that labor produces not only value and wealth, but also human beings themselves10. In a world with highly developed productive forces and overwhelming material wealth, in the process of producing and improving man, to becoming the first priority in one’s life. As a result, employment, as a specific state of labor in its broad sense in the process of socialization, ought not to be any longer related only to wages which man depends on for a living. Instead, it should become a basic approach, by which man can bring his working talent into full play and thereby realize the value of life. Secondly, its legal foundation is the theory of natural rights. Employment, like food, clothing and shelter, is one of man’s basic survival needs, one of the fundamental human rights. At the same time, he that will not work shall not eat. If a person with adequate one, we can say that his right of employment is violated, and the government should be responsible for it. After investigating into the relationship between output and unemployment in China, Professor Sun Yongjun from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, proposed a macro policy goal in the name of “employment maximization,” and emphasized that the Government should fully consider and accept this notion11. It is a direct challenge against profit-oriented mode and worth our full attention. Meanwhile, if a to be employed without a just cause, he will be blamed for being immoral and dishonorable. Thirdly, this theory holds that the hypothesis of acting man is the “complete” (gestalt) man, the trinity of economic man, social man and ecological man, whose behavior is not attributed to a self-centered economic animal, nor to the creatures subject to the ecological environment. According to the employment-oriented theory, the rights and duties of employment have the trinity of economic man, social man and ecological man 51

Comparative Studies of China and the West not only as their source, but also as their end. Fourthly, this theory has a law of capital employment ratio as its fundamental principle, which focuses on the employment size corresponding to per unit of capital. On a micro level, the capital employment ratio functions through enterprise behaviors, and regulate the rational flow of labor force between enterprises/ On a macro level, it functions through the operation of the general

Vol. 1 2013 organizing resources, can bring about numerous job opportunities in the process of being transformed into economic resources. Some new “sunrise industries”, including ecological industries, health industries and especially cultural industries, can greatly expand the employment space. As UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova pointed out, “Culture has a rich source of income generation and job creation, especially in the 12

The capital employment ratio law has an essential precut-throat competition, and also without unreasonable administrative monopoly or abnormal monopoly. This means that a new evaluation index system has to be es-

Fifthly, the basic distribution principle in this theory is one that depends on labor capital investment and the corresponding returns on it. Labor capital is in fact the capitalization of the cost for the reproduction of labor force. According to the employment-oriented theory, the price of labor, or the salary, is the return on the labor capital investment. Besides his salary, a worker is also

Finally, the concept of employment in this theory is a macro one, in a broad sense. Employment is in fact the crucial factor upon which human society depends for its survival, and an essential means by which an individual can realize his value. At present, many people have misunderstood the concept of “ ቡъ ”˄jiu ye˅, and often confuse it with ing a job ”can be rendered into the “ ቡъ ”˄jiu ye˅ˈ but the latter obviously has a wider range of implications. Therefore, the concept of “ ቡ ъ ” ˄jiu ye˅ has both the broad sense and a narrow sense in the discussion here. Narrowly speaking, it is synonymous with employment. More broadly speaking, it also takes into consideration of self-employment, free employment, taking on volunteer work, starting one’s own business and so on. All in all, if a person works and is paid legally, and thus realizes his value and makes his own contribution to the society, all his labor, work, business and activities belong to the category of employment. Then most probably, the real trouble will not lie in the lack of job opportunities, but in that of candidates for the large number of vacancies. A wide variety of resources, such as social resources, cultural resources, spiritual resources and

(Translated by Ma Shikui) 1

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nation. Trans.Yang Chingnien,Taiyuan: ShanxiPeople’s Publishing House, 2011. 2 John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Trans.Xu Yünan. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1957. 3 Paul Anthony Samuelson, Economics.Trans.Xiao Chen. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2011. 4 Shen Liantao, “Introspection of the Market”, Caijing, 2013(3), 41. 5 Martin Feldstein, “ Presidential Economics”.China Focus, 2012 (6), 84. 6 John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. Trans. Gan Qiang & Wang Junbo. Changchun: Jilin Literature and History Press, 2010, 19. 7 Michael Spence, “The Global Jobs Challenge”. Caijing, 2011(2),71. 8 Leften Stavros Stavrianos, A Global History(7th ed.). Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2005,18. 9 Ibid. 10 Wang Jiangsong, Philosophy of Labor. Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2012. 11 Sun Yungjun, Research on the Relationship of Chinese Unemployment and Output. Changchun: Dongbei University of Finance and Economics Press, 2012, 140. 12 UNESCO Calls for Attention to Cultural Industries. Reference News (Cankaoxiaoxi), May 17, 2013, 8.

About the author: Dr. Gao Peiyi, IACSCW Executive Vice President, is distinguished research fellow and co-director for the Urbanization and Industrialization Research Institute of Tsinghua University. After completing his doctor’s degree at Peking University in 1990, Gao served as a researcher at the State Price Control Bureau, and later as a professor and the director for Korean Studies Institute at Shandong University. Dr. Gao is the first to put forward a clear theoretical framework for the comparative study of Urbanization in China and the West, and has thereby laid a solid foundation for the budding discipline of Urbanization Development Studies. His most important works in this area include A Comparative Study of Urbanization in China and the West(1991; 2004); An Introduction to Urbanization Development Studies(2009); Principles of Urbanization Development Studies(2009); Population Urbanization (2011); Urbanization and UrbanRural Relationship (2011).

Frank Jacob

Social Organization, Secrecy, and Rebellion – Secret Societies in China and Ireland

Social Organization, Secrecy, and Rebellion – Secret Societies in China and Ireland By Frank Jacob Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg Abstract: The following article will compare secret societies in China and Ireland of the 18th and 19th century with regard to their genesis, their secrecy and their revolutionary potential. By a comparative analysis it will be shown, WKDW WKH KLVWRU\ RI VXFK VRFLHWLHV LQ &KLQD DQG ,UHODQG KDG EHHQ LQÀXHQFHG E\ WUDQVQDWLRQDO IDFWRUV OHDGLQJ WR PDLQ similarities in their national histories. Keywords: secret societies; Triad societies; United Irishmen; Chinese history; Irish history

1.Introduction There are still many people around the globe, who believe that secret societies are responsible for the course of history.1 For historians it is not a simple task, to analyze the history of secret societies. Despite this, recent studies confirm, that these societies constitute a global phenomenon, whose manifestations are comparable in many different points. Especially in China, many such societies existed and next to Bruce Lee or Fu Manchu, these groups are among the most known Chinese stereotypes in the United States or Europe.2 The Chinese secret societies have a long and complex history and there is almost no revolutionary event in the long history of China, for which no secret society had been responsible.3 In general the term secret society “designates associations whose policies are characterized by a particular kind of religious, political, and social dissent from the established order”4 and could be used for many organizations in different countries and time periods. There are a lot of similarities between these secret societies, no matter if they existed in Europe or China; especially the Triad lodges were compared to the lodges of the Freemasons by European visitors to China during the 19th century. Their organizational structure, their oaths, their rules and secret signs reminded the Europeans, who traveled to China, of the Masonic lodges of Europe.5

and a detailed analysis will show the similar aspects of their genesis, their reasons for secrecy as well as their revolutionary potential for the course of history.7 The ideas or political identities as well as the validations of the societies changed through the ages, but even if the Triads became a more criminal society, their history shows, that a comparative perspective is reasonable and will help to overcome a Euro-centric view of history.8 The following article will compare secret societies in Ireland and China to show, that the reasons for their foundation are mainly the same. They were not founded to rule from behind the curtain, but were social answers to existing problems in the single countries. In a second step, it should be asked, why the societies became secret. In the most cases, this decision was not made by the leaders of the societies themselves. They just reacted to existing problems or to forceful prosecution. Finally their revolutionary potential during the course of the national histories of China and Ireland shall be researched to show, which real influence the societies were able to carry out. Due to the temporal limitation of those presentations, I only chose a two-sided comparison, which could be broadened by the addition of more societies like the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Carbonari or African or American secret societies as well.

2.Genesis In contrast to these early visitors Jean Chesneaux denied a comparability of secret societies in China and Europe. 6 His thesis underlined a European-centered theory, due to which Asian and European developments were not comparable. But secret societies in China, as in other countries, have had their origin sometimes in political circumstances, and sometimes in the desire to maintain a craft, propagate a doctrine, or to advance some object of philanthropy. The political aims of secret

Secret societies are usually performing a task: the promise of deliverance and a better world, a replacement for family ties, mutual help, proto-democratic structures, and a better chance for survival, the ensuring of identity, resistance and upheaval against social inequity, patriotic motives, and the protection of villages or social groups as well as against governmental suppression. But they could serve criminal aims, too.9

Comparative Studies of China and the West Especially in China secret societies were a form of social organization and some kind of non-elitist answer to the challenge of a mobile, commercial, and competitive order of an early modern period. 10 As a consequence, the societies of the 18th and 19th century were no new phenomenon, but developed from older forms of mutual help in Chinese rural society. They continued by introducing oaths, signs and secrecy to secure the more political task of Ming loyalty. 11 In foreign Chinese communities the secret societies answered the need of young men to protect their identity by organizing people from the same cultural origin.12 Finally there were some areas in China in the 19th century, where one was not able to find even one village without a secret society. Around the 1850s there were two big systems or labels of secret societies: the White Lotus in the north and the Triads in the south.13 In contrast to the Triad societies, which had their rule in the 18th century, the White Lotus was a more religious movement, which became a label for secret societies as a consequence of an upheaval of the White Lotus in Shandong in 1622. In general, there were several small secret societies, which were loosely included under one of these two labels or brands.14 The end of the Ming dynasty in 1644 laid the ground for a new political aim and Ming loyalists in Taiwan founded the first Triad (ti-hui) society, which spread over all of China during the following decades. Its members were recruited from all social levels and over time the accessibility of the societies grew to a more universal phase of recruitment. Regardless of the fact, that the societies shared the same origin, their organizational structure remained decentralized. The regional groups just had a loose connection, which was underlined by shared traditions. All in all, the societies by the historical developments leading to the end of the Ming dynasty.15 Similar aspects were responsible for the history of Irish secret societies in the 18th century. Since 1695 in Ireland the Catholic community was ruled by a Protestant pro-English minority and the Penal Laws restricted the life of the inhabitants of those Catholic communities. The situation of the Catholics became worse and worse in the 18th century, when they were restricted from carrying weapons as well as having to send their children to foreign countries for their education. 16 As a consequence the number of secret societies in the agricultural areas increased and the Defenders were founded to protect the interest of the Catholic population. 17 In 1791 a new society, the Society of the United Irishmen, was founded and marked the beginning of a new Irish independent movement. The members of the United Irishmen asked for political reforms and tried to unite Catholics and

Vol. 1 2013 be abolished and propagated a new concept of peace.18 Their aim was “the greatest happiness of the greatest number on this Island”19 of Belfast, another branch was founded in Dublin.20 At the first instance, the society was founded as a public organization of religious tolerance, which asked for a peaceful change of the Irish situation. The new society was not seen then as dangerous, but the French Revolution had just begun to spread its ideas over Europe and did not simply influence the aims of the United Irishmen. 21 With the outbreak of the English-French War, Ireland became a strategic backdoor for a possible French invasion. The chance for military support from France transformed a national matter into an international one.22 The United Irishmen were prohibited and became a secret society; it then combined its forces with the still existing societies of the Defenders. This underlines the fact that secret societies were not secret from its origin onwards, a fact that raises the question of the roots of secrecy in a secret society.

3.Secrecy Rituals and secrecy are mostly important factors in the histories of secret societies, because these points were responsible for the image of exclusivity which produced an interest in the different groups. In China by their oaths and secret signs, the Triad societies became especially attractive for new aspiring members. 23 But why did the societies need such secrecy and why did the original social groups begin to transform into secret dangerous and were forbidden. A hierarchical order, which was an expression of a “social choreography”24, a recruitment, which followed the lines of friendships or blood relationships, and strict secrecy were adapted to save the members of the individual organizations.25 Between 1664 and 1668, the first punishments for a membership in a brotherhood were released by the Qing government, which feared the growing Ming loyalism of the regional groups. Due to this development, more and more groups transformed themselves into secret societies, of which more and more were discovered and punished as of the 1720s.26 In 1792, after the rebellion of Lin Shuangwen on Taiwan in 1787/88, the first law against the secret societies was announced. Till 1811, there followed more laws, which dealt with the same problem and defined severe punishments.27 The increasing severity of the punishments led to a higher level of secrecy and more secret signs, hand signals etc. were introduced by the Triad leaders, who asked for an abolishment of the Manchu rule. The rituals of initiation were now taking place at night, to protect the members, who were needed to carry out the oath ritual.28 Due to the fact of the laws

Frank Jacob

Social Organization, Secrecy, and Rebellion – Secret Societies in China and Ireland

against membership, the new Triad members became criminals at the instant of their oath. This makes it easy, to determine the reason for a stronger level of secrecy, the prosecution by the government. This fact was responsible for a heightening of secrecy in Ireland as well. The Defenders were founded to protect the interests of the Catholic population in the agricultural regions of Ireland. Due to their aims, it had to be kept secret, because the Protestant government prosecuted its members. The members of the Defenders were antiEnglish agitators, but became criminal as well, because the organization, which had been founded following the example of the Spanish Garduña, started raids against Protestant land owners and their families. They claimed the Irish land to be an Irish possession and were strongly connected to the Irish agricultural areas.29 The organizational structure followed Masonic examples, which means they were organized like the Triads, in local groups which were decentralized, just sharing the same traditions. 30 In contrast to the Defenders, the United Irishmen were not originally founded as a secret society and “their design was not systematically 31 . At the beginning neither a republic nor a revolution was part of the discussions with regard to the foundation of the society.32 Its members met and discussed in public about a possible more tolerant future of Ireland. Starting in 1792, the government had held trials against the members of the United Irishmen and as a consequence of the war between England and France in 1794 and 1795 the English government put more pressure on the United Irishmen. 33 In May 1794 the United Irishmen were prohibited and they then built secret lodges, to prepare the members for an open rebellion, which hopefully would be supported by the French.34 The public society became a secret one and the the Defenders was the result and the United Irishmen became a Catholic-dominated mass organization. From 1795 till 1797 the number of members multiplied and in 1798 the Irish secret societies were a major part of the rebellion, which was intended to abolish the Protestant rule of the pro-English minority.35 It was not just Ireland, or China, secret societies have always had revolutionary potential, but in these two countries in particular, this potential broke out in a decisive way.

4.Revolutionary Potential The potential for revolution could be a consequence of natural catastrophes or times of hardship. We can trace a revolutionary potential for many cases in the 18th and 19th century, but in China and Ireland this potential is visible from the outset.36 In China it were the Triad

societies and its members, addressed their anger as well as their proto-nationalism against the Manchu rulers, and the traditional societies that transformed into a liberation movement in the 19th century, that was able to gain the support of the masses.37 In times of social confrontation this phenomenon was not unusual, due to a realignment of status, the revolutionaries sought for support from non-members as well. Despite the fact, that the Triad societies became the most important assemblage of anti-Manchu forces, striving for an overthrow of the Qing and a restoration of the Ming dynasty, the Triads alone were not able to win the fight against the actual government.38 The same was essential for the later revolutionary movement, which was not able to abolish the Qing rule on their own. As a result of that, they were willing to use an already existing tool of rebellion, the secret societies, which were able to activate and recruit the masses. In co-operation with the traditional forces of rebellion, the republican movement was able to succeed and to achieve the change of 1911.39 The revolutionary movement of Sun Yat-sen adapted the organizational structure of the Triad societies and combined their forces, because both wanted to overcome the Manchu rule. Due to this, Sun co-operated with the Southern secret societies and used the traditions of the societies as predecessors to his revolutionary movement. He had to do this, but it is clear that the secret societies acted as powerful supporters for Sun’s own ideas, because he did not want to return to a monarchy, but wanted to create a modern nation, the Republic of China.40Despite the fact that these societies had a high potential for revolution, on their own they were not successful. This was particularly true in the case of Ireland. The harsh reaction of the government cleared the the United Irishmen and the Defenders, there was a shift of the independent movement into a civil war between the government and the society of Ireland. The universal republicanism of the United Irishmen became displaced by a Catholic nationalism led by the Defenders.41 The membership structure changed from a regional to a national one. On May 23, 1798 the rebellion broke out in South Ireland (Wexford), but was struck down by the governmental troops. In the north, the rebellion was a failure as well. It was obvious that the plan for rebellion had been a failure, because the rebels were poorly equipped and their actions had no organization.42 Following the fast defeat, the leading United Irishmen were imprisoned and around 500 of them were sentenced to death. The defeat of the rebel forces marked the end of an enlightened proposal for an Irish national state, and Ireland became even more closely tied to the English government.43

Comparative Studies of China and the West A French supportive army was defeated as well, because the revolutionary forces had been beaten already and the troops from France were not able to establish some kind of bridgehead, a fact that lead to their fast surrender against the pro-English forces. The rebellion of 1798 was one of the most significant events in the tortured history of Ireland,44 but due to its failure, it was not able to change the disadvantaged position of the been a decisive factor of Irish history in the following decades and centuries until today.

5.Conclusion All in all the comparison of the Chinese secret societies and the Irish ones has shown that there are many similarities between both cases. The groups developed from regional groups of social help or protection, which became secret as a result of governmental prosecution. The secrecy was needed to protect the members and their aims. Even if there had been some criminal activities by several members, most of the societies sought a better political future. While the Triad societies wanted to abolish the Manchu rule of China, the United Irishmen wanted to overcome religious conflicts to create a united Ireland no longer dominated by the British. The revolutionary potential was visible for both cases and the secret societies had been the bearers of unrest as well as a dangerous factor in several national histories. The members were ready for rebellion and in times of unrest, they were the leaders of it. Consequently, the comparison has shown that the secret societies of China and Europe are comparable and that the history history of these organizations was influenced by on the different social groups in countries around the globe. A more complex and more detailed comparison with societies, which existed in Europe, Asia and the Americas, is able to underline this thesis and put an end to the mistaken claim that secret societies in China and Europe are not comparable. As a global phenomenon, the roots, memberships, activities and traditional views of many secret societies are equal consequences of transin the same manner.

John Morris Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies.London: Secker & Warburg, 1972, p. 1. 2 Serge Hutin, Les Société Secrètes en Chine.Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1976, p. 9; David Ownby, Brotherhoods and Secret Societies

Vol. 1 2013 in Early and Mid-Qing China. The Formation of a Tradition. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 1. 3 Kingsley Bolton and Christopher Hutton, eds., Triad Societies. Western Accounts of the History, Sociology and Linguistics of Chinese Secret Societies, Vol. I, Selected Writings. London: Routledge, 2000, ix; John Lust, “Secret Societies, Popular Movements, and the 1911 Revolution”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950 .Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 165-200, especially p. 165. 4 Jean Chesneaux, “Secret Societies in China’s Historical Evolution”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950 .Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 1-21, especially p. 3. 5 Frederic Henry Balfour, “Secret societies and their political Triad Societies. Western Accounts of the History, Sociology and Linguistics of Chinese Secret Societies, Vol. I, Selected WritingsLondon: Routledge, 2000, pp. 289-306, especially p. 292; Jean DeBernardi, “Epilogue: Ritual Process Reconsidered”, in David Ownby, Mary Somers Heidhues, eds., “Secret Societies” Reconsidered. Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and Southeast Asia. Armonk/London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 212-233, especially p. 212; Charles Gützlaff, “On the secret Triad Society of China (1846)”, in Kingsley Bolton and Christopher Hutton, eds., Triad Societies. Western Accounts of the History, Sociology and Linguistics of Chinese Secret Societies, Vol. I, Selected Writings. London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 93101, especially p. 96; John Kesson, The Cross and the Dragon or, The Fortunes of Christianity in China: with Notices of the Christian Missions and Missionaries, and some Account of the Chinese Secret Societies. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1854, pp. 265-271. 6 J ean Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China. In the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971, p. 188. 7 Jonathan Unger, “The Making and Breaking of the Chinese Secret Societies Unger”, Journal of contemporary Asia 5, no. 1 (1975). pp. 89-98, especially p. 89. 8 For the meaning of political identities see Charles Tilly, “Political Identities”, in Michael P. Hannagan, Leslie Page Moch and Wayne te Brake, eds., Challenging Authority. The Historical Study of Contentious Politics, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, Vol.7. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, pp. 3-16, especially p. 7. 9 Peter Kuhfus, “Rot und Schwarz – Einige Beobachtungen zu Männerbund.Aspekten der Geheimgesellschaften Chinas”, Ethnologica 15, no. 1 (1990). pp. 135-142, especially p. 136. 10 DeBernardi, Epilogue, p. 212; David Ownby, “Introduction: Secret Societies Reconsidered”, in David Ownby, Mary Somers Heidhues, eds., “Secret Societies” Reconsidered. Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and Southeast Asia. Armonk/London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 3-33, especially p. 5. 11 Ownby, Brotherhoods, pp. 31-33. 12 Ibid. p.4. 13 Chesneaux, Secret Societies (1972), p. 5; C. A. Curwen, “Taiping Relations with Secret Societies and with Other Rebels”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 65-84, especially p. 65. 14 Ivan Light, “Mak Lau Fong: The Sociology of Secret Societies: A Study of Chinese Secret Societies in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia (Book Review)”, Contemporary Sociology 12, no. 4 (1983). pp. 402-403; Barend Ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History. Leiden: Brill, Leiden, 1992, p. 227-228.

Frank Jacob

Social Organization, Secrecy, and Rebellion – Secret Societies in China and Ireland

15 Thoralf Klein, Geschichte Chinas. Von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007, p. 143; Light, Sociology, p. 403; Frederic Jr. Wakeman, “The Secret Societies of Kwangtung, 1800-1856”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 29- 47, especially p. 29-30. 16 Rosamond Jacob, The Rise of the United Irishmen 1791-1794. London: George G. Harrap & Co.Ltd., 1937, p.14; Kai Wehmeier, Geheimbünde in Irland 1760-1870. Hamburg: Verlag Dr.Kovaç, 2008, p. 14. 17 Jacob, Rise, p. 211; Wehmeier, Geheimbünde, p. 42; Kevin Whelan, Fellowship of Freedom. The United Irishmen and 1798. Cork: Cork University Press, 1998, p. 11. 18 Thomas Barlett, “Protestant nationalism in eighteenth-century Ireland”, in Michael O’Dea and Kevin Whelan, eds., Nations and nationalisms: France, Britain, Ireland and the eighteenth-century context, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 335. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995, pp. 79-88, especially p. 87; Jacob, Rise, p. 32 and pp. 62-66; Paul Weber, On the Road to Rebellion. The United Irishmen and Hamburg 1796-1803. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997, p. 15. 19 Anonymous, Application of Barruel’s Memoirs of Jacobinism, to the Secret Societies of Ireland and Great Britain by the Translator of the Work. London: E. Booker, 1798, p. 3. 20 George D. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland. London: Routledge, 3 1995, p. 125; Jacob, Rise, pp. 67-72. 21 Weber, Rebellion, p. 15; Whelan, Fellowship, ix. 22 Weber, Rebellion, p. 16; Whelan, Fellowship, p. 31. 23 Ownby, Brotherhoods, p. 2; Roberts, Mythology, p. 12; Wakeman, Kwangtung, p. 34. 24 Application of Barruel’s Memoirs of Jacobinism, p. 217. 25 DeBernardi, Epilogue, p. 219; Ownby, Brotherhoods, p. 38. 26 Robert J. Antony, “Brotherhoods, Secret Societies, and the Law in Qing-Dynasty China”, ”, in David Ownby, Mary Somers Heidhues, eds., “Secret Societies” Reconsidered. Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and Southeast Asia. Armonk/London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 190-211, especially pp. 192-196. 27 Ibid. pp.203-205. 28 William Milne, “Some account of a secret association in China, entitled the Triad Society”, in Kingsley Bolton and Christopher Hutton, eds., Triad Societies. Western Accounts of the History, Sociology and Linguistics of Chinese Secret Societies, Vol. I, Selected Writings. London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 17-39, especially pp. 19-25. 29 Captain B.C. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland. Their Rise and Progress. Kilkenny: The Irish Historical Press, 1998, pp. 1-13. 30 Application of Barruel’s Memoirs of Jacobinism, p. 4-5. 31 Alexander Knox, Essays on the Political Circumstances of Ireland, written during the Administration of Earl Camden.London: AntiJacobin Press, 1798, v. 32 Wehmeier, Geheimbünde, p. 49. 33 Weber, Rebellion, p. 34. 34 R. B. McDowell, “The Age of the United Irishmen: Revolution and the Union, 1794-1800”, in T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan, eds., A New History of Ireland, Vol. 4, Eighteenth-Century Ireland 1691-1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986, pp. 339-373, especially p. 348. 35 Wehmeier, Geheimbünde, pp. 50-52. 36 Chesneaux, Secret Societies (1972), p. 5; Wolfgang Franke, Das Jahrhundert der chinesischen Revolution 1851-1949. München/Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 21980, p. 20-21. 37 Chesneaux, Secret Societies (1972), p. 10; Guillaume Dunstheimer, “Some Religious Aspects of Secret Societies”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950.

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 23-28, especially p. 28. Michael P. Hannagan, Leslie Page Moch and Wayne te Brake, eds., Challenging Authority. The Historical Study of Contentious Politics, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, Vol.7. Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, xxii; Boris Novikov, “The Anti-Manchu Propaganda of the Triads, ca. 1800-1860”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 49-63, especially pp. 49-52. 39 Lilia Borokh, “Notes on the Early Role of Secret Societies in Sun Yat-sen’s Republican Movement”, in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, pp. 135-144; Chesneaux, Secret Societies (1971), p. 190-191. 40 Borokh, Notes, p. 138-139.; John DeKome, “Sun Yat-Sen and the Secret Societies”, Paciffic Affairs 7, no. 4 (1934). pp. 425-433, especially pp. 426-432; Wakeman, Kwangtung, p. 46-47. 41 Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen. Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791-1798. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 4 and p. 32; Wehmeier, Geheimbünde, p. 53. 42 Ibid. pp. 47-53. 43 Ibid. p. 54; Kevin Whelan, “United and disunited Irishmen: the discourse of sectarianism in the 1790s”, in Michael O’Dea and Kevin Whelan, eds., Nations and nationalisms: France, Britain, Ireland and the eighteenth-century context, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century Vol. 335. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995, pp. 231-247, especially p. 246-247. 44 Curtin, United Irishmen, p. 9. 38

About the author: Dr. Frank Jacob is Assistant Professor for Modern History of University of Würzburg. He got his Ph.D in Japanese Studies from University of Erlangen-Nurnberg in 2012. From 2011 to October 2013, he was Editor of the Serial Comparative Studies from a Global Perspective, and Editor of the Journal Global Humanities, Studies in Histories, Cultures and Societies. Since Oct. 2013, he has been Assistant Professor for Modern History, University of Wurzburg. He is a member of International Association for Comparative Studies of China and the West, The Historical Society, and The Society for Military History. His research interests and teaching areas cover modern Japanese history, Asian history since 1600, comparative history, global history, history of secret societies, modern German history and transnational history. His publications Dictators assert their Power and The Changing Nature of Power, Status and Hierarchies in Japan (1600-1877) and dozens of others.

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Fables of China. Frontier Fables, Fables of Radical Exoticism: Segalen, Michaux, Butor By Jean Bessiere Paris III

Segalen, Michaux and Butor visited and wrote about China. Three of their works are here commented upon because they offer a paradoxical image of China: although its reality is not denied, China can be described as kind of absent object. This paradox cannot be disassociated from the specific vision of Otherness which China imposes according to these Westerners. Consequently, Segalen, Michaux and Butor do not construe cultural comparisons and refuse to focus upon cultural differences. Here three literary fables provide the occasion for some ideas about the recognition and use of frontiers: Victor Segalen’s Peintures (1916), Henri Michaux’s Un Barbare en Asie (1928), and Michel Butor’s Boomerang (1988). These fables show us ways of describing, of discerning, the other, particularly involving China as seen from a Western perspective. They all involve a paradox: to identify a country as foreign implies a frontier but one which has already been crossed. This paradox does not imply playing a game, voluntarily or not, of misrepresentation. Inescapable frontiers do not require harping on an obligatory confrontation of cultural identities. Nothing is to be gained by conventional accounts of reciprocal strangeness. These perspectives are banal commonplaces that tell us nothing about the uses of a frontier, once that line has been crossed. These three works make best sense when considered as fables, even though they do not explicitly evoke that category of literature. Peintures evokes imaginary Chinese paintings. Un Barbare en Asie recounts a voyage to Asia and in particular China. Boomerang brings together travel accounts, stories, and descriptions related to the Orient, among other destinations. One calls them fables because an implicit argument emerges from their imaginative explorations and travel accounts, one that becomes clear through the play of intertextualities. Concerning Peintures, I find that the pictures involved are imaginary yet nonetheless plausible and 58

lifelike. So I feel obliged to conclude that these pictures as narrated both are and are not about what they depict. Their appearance lures us to imagine what their source must be. One must add, of course, that Segalen knows that source. If I say that Un Barbare en Asie is among other things the account of travel in China, I must also say, following Michaux’s text literally, that this story tells essentially the way the Chinese tell stories, paint, sing, and symbolize. This remark echoes the text itself based on stories, poems, paintings, all of which agree on the impossibility of translation. “A Chinese poem cannot be in the theater, that lifelike fleshiness of the Europeans. A Chinese poem points to things but what it points to is not the most important thing. They do not evoke vivid suggest them. As Michaux himself says, one must deduce from indirections the landscape and its atmosphere.” [Un barbare en Asia, p 161] To tell the China story, in a certain sense, amounts to telling no story, or, more precisely, to bring together the symbols that dictate those deductions. Giving a realistic account of China, then, boils down to offering the image of China — an image which is actually missing from the text. Michaux, as the barbarian in China, realizes that what he calls Chinese identity is simply an effect of representation, the indirect evocation of China in this book. In Un barbare en Asie, China itself is recognized only in the image the observer gives of it. If I say that Boomerang is a voyage text, particularly but not exclusively involving Asia, I must add that there can be no travel tales, nor descriptions of landscapes, nor explorations of exotic identities, without quoting descriptions and tales which are already available. Therefore, in Butor’s terms, this book is a kind of carnival. One must understand: every new piece of writing about the foreign is bifocal: no new description of the foreign can be disassociated from pre-existing descriptions; but these two entities do not mutually condition or modify each other. Following a remark of Butor, the person who sees is simultaneously a seer and a voyeur. That means he perceives but also he exercises an overview of everything that has already been seen

Jean Bessiere and already said. The eye can see only through this repetitive, familiar yet different. The traveler who seeks to see and to describe must always presume a similarity that is already perceptible. These three fables follow a single line: The foreign – China – is available. It is the site on the basis of which one can undertake to describe faithfully the images and the atmospheres of China. The foreign is in some sense familiar because it allows a discourse of recognition. But the evocation of this foreign which is familiar – and even “known” as directly attested in the accounts of Segalen and Michaux – never stops implying the deconstruction of this spectacle, this appearance of familiarity. This is why Chinese realities call forth a bifocal text. Segalen gives us, in Peintures, a way of allegorizing China but this allegory leads to no explicit characterization. This approach suggests at first an ethical portrait of Europeans (the French) in China, in the Orient. By his stories, by his descriptions, the writer offers a double perspective. He implies the recognition of the foreign in itself, for its own sake. Nonetheless he gives a literary setting to that recognition. In Peintures, this is accomplished by organizing the scenic imagination. In Un Barbare en Asie, it is accomplished by spectacularly organizing the accounts of China. China is identifiable only indirectly by its signs. In Boomerang, this double perspective is accomplished through the double vision of a bifocal text. Such situations amount to presuming, in evoking the foreign, a site, a site of the other which writing at once designs and discovers in itself. That’s the way writing designates the unalterable otherness of what it denotes. In other works, such as Butor’s Répertoires or Segalen’s Stèles, this site can be explicitly thematic. This thematics is inextricably linked to the full-bodied visibility of the foreign setting which, as the visitor finally realizes, excludes him. Because, to call this site full-bodied is simply a way of specifying how thoroughly this site is taken over by the power of writing and hence loses its otherness and richness as an alien place. One can never imagine writing as embedded in a foreign setting. Quite the contrary, to recognize and situate the foreign in an explicitly literary setting involves a conscious recognition of ambiguity. This recognition engages that sort of literary practice that depends on a breaking of communication. The writer who, knowing China, talks about China, is not addressing China. And if China is taken to be the addressee it can only be as a hypothetical presence which cannot, in the fictional moment, be understood as present. The fables of Segalen, Michaux and Butor all make clear that there can only be recognition of otherness in the labeling of

Fables of China. Frontier Fables, Fables of Radical Exoticism the other as foreign. The result is a special status for China and Asia in Peintures, Un Barbare en Asie, and Boomerang. Otherness in this writing is not contained by its subject; it grows away from what it seems to possess. Foreignness is read as objective in the very moment at which it escapes from all possessiveness by writing. This writing is always, therefore, performative. In Peintures this phenomenon emerges figuratively in the fluidity of these imagined paintings. In Un barbare en Asie it shows up in the strangeness that accompanies the act of voyaging. In Boomerang it is supported by the play of intertextuality: writing that interchanges only with itself and with other manifestations of writing. There is one additional consequence: this kind of writing knows itself to be partial and subjected to a constant game of echoes. It is none other than the regrouping and reiteration of the signs for China elaborated into whole volumes of writing. Another way of putting it is that the frontier you have passed over is an unchangeable one. To write about China is simultaneously to recognize its image as elusive and to acknowledge that writing can only construe a literary setting. Segalen, Michaux and Butor are all aware that they remain prisoners of this image that they use to stand in for China, for the Orient. They are also fully aware that to write thus is to refuse to give closure to this image. Hence these French fables of China come across playing up China, the Orient, as enigmas. Here “enigma” does not imply a mystery that calls for a solution but refers to an image of the foreign which can only serve as an emblem which nonetheless distances itself from that foreignness. All apparent referents turn out to be negative. This ploy is spelled out explicitly by Segalen in Peintures: Even the oldest and most classic of paintings in the Empire of calligraphy and literature never permit stopping which would amount to maintaining ignorance. But before showing its colors each one has already produced it own gloss: the margins are covered up under an elegant style, by descriptions, commentaries, lyrical enthusiasms. It wraps itself in an envelope of words. Thus these “paintings,” as promised in my dedication, are purely “literary” and imaginary as well. [Peintures, p 11] This Segalenian imaginary seems to mime a gesture of China giving us its paintings, already the gesture of a gloss. Painting, in this China, is recognizable from what is not painting. For a European to recognize Chinese painting is once again to entertain a duality, and to give a literary image – Peintures – that neither reveals nor hides that painting. Similarly Michaux speaks of the interplay of negative reference by evoking Chinese theatrical spectacle: “. . . The actor seems to represent something to himself, but then a sort of magnetism takes over made from the desire to feel what is absent.” This boils down to a kind of mimicry that excludes all mimesis. This Un barbare en 59

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Asie observer and by being referred back to him.

underlying argumentation of the fables called Peintures, Un barbare en Asie, and Boomerang, we might say that their evocations of China and the Orient are selfdeconstructing. But this deconstruction can be read as indicating the anamorphosis (in the sense of distorting reflexion) of the other, of that being who lives in the irony of appearances. As fables of China and the Orient, these works show Western visitors at the moment of realizing that the representation, the portrait given of China, of the Orient, proposes the deformation of something that itself cannot be seen. Thus Segalen does not see Chinese paintings. Thus Michaux does not see the object of Chinese drama, of Chinese poetry. Nonetheless what Segalen and Michaux say about painting, about

These notions - of the inflexible frontier and the interplay of mimetic perspectives that grows out of negative reference – carry with them in Peintures, Un barbare en Asie, and Boomerang, an original lesson. However foreign to China and to the Orient these may be, the writings of these Westerners, these French fables, claim to follow the way the other – the Chinese – goes. Segalen, in placing Peintures under the sign of unreality, suggests that the writer (or the readerspectator) of these paintings can no longer remain fully himself. Michaux, in entitling his evocation of the Orient as Un barbare en Asie makes it explicit that he exists only, at least for the time of this voyage, through the perspectives that originate from the other. Butor works more subtly through the textual interplay between public and personal. In Boomerang he indicates that his life disappears from his own awareness because it takes place in otherness, in the signs and spectacles of the other. If there is no solution to this foreignness, if the frontier remains unchangeable, and if, in literature, one can only mime the discourse and the spectacle of the other, therein resides nonetheless a paradoxical transparency, that which emerges from the rehearsal and transcription of otherness. One can formulate it with some precision: it is not given to Segalen, to Michaux or to Butor to discover otherness, Chinese or Oriental, in any direct fashion. That otherness in and of itself could only be the object of some kind of dream state, as is suggested in Peintures. So that otherness appears as a symbolic manifestation that is for all three, Segalen, Michaux and Butor, a kind of game – a world-game that is at the same time occidental and oriental. Hence, to recognize China or the Orient is not so much to recognize cultural similarities and differences that can be pinned down by Western mediation, but more to recognize the symbolic game of words, the mimicking that proclaims the impossibility of any mediation of otherness. In addition, Segalen, Michaux and Butor render their spectacles of China and the Orient under the ironic banner of appearances. Such is the case even when Segalen underlines about Chinese paintings their literalness. Such is the case even when Michaux remarks that in China “nothing is absolute, no principles, no a priori presumptions.” [Un barbare en Asie, p 166] Such is the case even when Butor remarks more generally that all perceptions and all expressions are bifocal. China and the Orient blend in with that equivocal figure that they give of themselves and that the traveler picks up and projects his own singularity. His own singularity implies presenting himself as the person who transcribes freely these spectacles and who recognizes the sovereignty and authority of the other precisely because he is the one who delivers these ironic appearances. To complete the 60

which cannot be seen do not forbid a kind of recognition. Thus we come to the final implication of these fables as paradox. The frontier cannot be modified. But it does not exclude a shared symbolic game which makes apparent a common language of reference. This emergence marks the radical exoticism which precludes any approach that is either universalist or comparative to otherness, to China or to the Orient. This emergence must be understood doubly: China and the Orient make otherness manifest, but China and the Orient are also manifest appearances, which are also those of the Western writer. The situation expresses itself in two movements, in a recognition of its actual form and also in a recognition of its play of self-referentiality, which in its turn can only reflect the observer and point back to him. These two movements allow us to recognize that evidently China and the Western witness are at the same time separated and yet linked by a reciprocal strangeness. Speaking of Laozi, Michaux drew on such an insight into the invisibility of the outsider. “. . . [Laozi] lived among the lions and the lions did not realize that he was a human. They saw nothing foreign about him.” [Un barbare en Asie, p 186.] Here resides the fable of of the frontier which is crossed yet nonetheless remains unchanged lies the paradox of a China, an Orient, that remain other yet which do not require of the Westerner to identify that otherness, to systematically describe that difference. The lack of formulating these differences blocks any move into comparisons or contrasts. On the other hand, otherness is not lost: though the lions may not identify the man as a man, the man knows the lions are lions. This lack of symmetry means that there cannot be a good use of difference, and that recognizing otherness — and this is the implication of the reference to lions — takes away any temptation to think of the other – the Chinese — as committed to introspection or to think of them as manifesting a thought-out identity. Such is radical exoticism. Such is the only game left for the Western witness: because he cannot any longer impose his own identify, because he cannot enter into the

Fables of China. Frontier Fables, Fables of Radical Exoticism

Jean Bessiere comparing of identities, it is left to him to tell the secret of experiencing the Orient — there where I can never be myself and I can watch, imagine or write only on the basis of evidence that comes from somewhere else. The positive side of the equivocal frontier reemerges: China, the Orient, only becomes a familiar site because there, between the native and the European, resides a transparency without reciprocity. The proof of the other only comes from something that is not me and by which I know that I cannot understand myself as other than I am. In this happily equivocal understanding of frontiers, we move beyond the simplicity of pure thought that presupposes the recognition and comparison of differences. So much for thinking and comparing of cultures between universalism and relativism. Experiencing and writing about China and the Orient grow out of a shared present: that of the other and that of the witness. This writing about China and the Orient makes sense in the extent to which it can make out of this shared present its own representation. History only matters, as we know from Segalen, because its witnesses partake of that same present. The fables of Segalen, of Michaux, of Butor, are – one is obliged to repeat – literary fables. They make us think in the manner that literature has to justify itself in the West, in the way it can be responded to as writing. What we call literature we are supposed, by more or less common accord, to be able to recognize as such. This recognition, particularly in any refusal of a symbolic or symbolist mode of literature — in that mode, literature manifests the enigma of self and of the other — identifies literature as inescapably otherness. If literature contains or is seen as inescapably containing an otherness in discourse, this is what the fables of Segalen, of Michaux and of Butor recognize in China and in the Orient. What writing like this tries to show of China and the Orient, in this game of frontiers and otherness, can serve as one way of characterizing Western writing and in particular

(Translated by J. G. Blair)

About the author:

to review and include multiple approaches led to a series of theoretical publications. His very numerous publications deal with such topics and problems as myth, narrative, novel, modernity, postcolonial literatures, multi-culturalism and identity.

An Important Book in Comparative studies of China and the West: Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece by Lisa Raphals Several books comparing ancient Greece and ancient China have been published in English over the last dozen years, involving such authors/editors as Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin or Steven Shankman Lisa Raphals, who now in 2013 has gone beyond her earlier books with Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece from Cambridge University Press. This ambitious title is fully justified by her meticulous multidisciplinary explorations of this vast was a major preoccupation and indeed the human drive to invent ways to predict the future remains with us today. In order to situate this fresh examination of the evidence, Lisa Raphals necessarily reassesses the trends in the relevant 20th-century scholarship, sometimes political, sometimes more diffusely cultural, that have affected received views of these time-honored practices. This depth of vision allows her to explore multiple perspectives on such practices BCE. In China the Yijing and its predecessor the Zhouyi are the most resonant texts but the author shows how broadly the Chinese cultivated arts of divination. In Greece as well, there were multiple avenues of approach to uncloaking the future. The range of scholarship concerning both civilizations is

likely to succeed.

Jean Bessiere, IACSCW honorary advisor, is professor of general and comparative literature at the Sorbonne. He has also taught in many universities around the world (Stanford, McGill, UNAM, Casablanca, Buenos Aires). He served as vicepresident and then president of the International Association of Comparative Literature (1997-2000). His research interests include francophone literatures and the paradigms of literary criticism. Jean Bessiere does not dissociate theoretical approaches from social and historical perspectives. His capacity 61

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Two Forms of Solitude: Tao Qianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Reclusive Ideal and Emersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Transcendentalist Vision By King-Kok Cheung University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Abstract: This essay compares the reclusive ideal extolled by Chinese poet Tao Qian and the solitude that Ralph Waldo Emerson regards as a prerequisite to self-trust. The works of both Tao Qian and Emersonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;forerunners of Chinese and American pastorals, respectivelyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;seem to bear the imprint of Lao Ziâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Daodejing. Both express distaste for material aggrandizement and social conformity, for the social, economical, and political pressures that curtail individual spirit. Both worship a universal spirit, exalt intuition over didacticism, deem nature to be salubrious and edifying, and discern correspondences between ecological and moral well-being. Their differences are equally pronounced. The Chinese poet maintains he can only be true to his high-minded nature by removing himself to the countryside, secluded from worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s affairs; though mindful of familial duties, he is content to lead a quiet pastoral existence. The New England sage, who sees nature as ancillary to the divine spark within each mortal, asserts that an independent self that KDUNHQV WR LWV SURPSWLQJV FDQ ÂżQG QDWXUH DQG VROLWXGH DQ\ZKHUH 1RWZLWKVWDQGLQJ KLV DYHUVLRQ WR VRFLHWDO GHPDQGV KH shoulders responsibility as a public intellectual who weighs in with a piece of his mind concerning pressing political issues. Keywords: Tao Qian/Tao Yuanming; Ralph Waldo Emerson; pastoral, nature; solitude

Although Tao Qian ä˛Ś â&#x2013;&#x152; (also known as Tao Yuanming ä˛Śâ?şá°ž and Sire of the Five Willows Ó&#x201E;á¸Łâ&#x20AC;Ť â?Ý¸â&#x20AC;Ź, 365-427 CE) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) hail from different epochs and continents, the two arguably have inaugurated Chinese and American pastorals, respectively. Tao Qian, the preeminent â&#x20AC;&#x153;recluseâ&#x20AC;? poet of the Six Dynasties period, spearheaded the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Return Home to the Farmâ&#x20AC;? tradition, while Emerson (along with his disciple Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman) ushered in American Transcendentalism. Their considerable impact goes beyond national borders into each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s country. Tao Qian has inspired not only Tang and Song poets such as Li Po áľžâ˛ , Tu Fu áś&#x152;â&#x203A; , and Su Shi ăŁżä&#x2013;Ź , but also American Beat writers of the 1950s and 1960s.1 Emerson is venerated not only by American and European luminaries such as Thoreau, Whitman, Thomas Carlyle, and Friedrich Nietzsche, but also by diasporic Chinese writers such as Gao Xingjian and Ha Jin. The reclusive ideal of Tao Qian and the transcendentalist worldview of Emerson converge in many ways: both writers take for granted the equivalence of ecological and moral landscape, of nature and existential solitude; both prefer independent living to social conformity, wealth, or fame. But they differ markedly in their conceptions of â&#x20AC;&#x153;selfâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;natureâ&#x20AC;? and in their individual visions of the relationship between self, nature, and society. For Tao Qian, the self exists in harmony with nature, which can be found only in the countryside; for Emerson both humanity and nature partake of a divine intelligence, but only an open mind not clouded by 62

received knowledge can decode a universe replete with meaning. Although both of them are averse to public service and governmental interference, they respond in and â&#x20AC;&#x153;returnsâ&#x20AC;? to the countryside, which he relishes as his â&#x20AC;&#x153;naturalâ&#x20AC;? abode; Emerson, in contrast, never ceases to be a public intellectual who speaks out vehemently against unjust policies. Through an analysis of selected works by Tao Qian and Emerson, I demonstrate their common spiritual instincts and aesthetic predilections, their revelry in nature and solitude, their divergent construal of selfhood,

Qianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reclusiveness and Emersonian Transcendentalism,

of ecological and ontological climate in their works. The third contrasts their views concerning the relationship between self and nature. The fourth juxtaposes Tao Qianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quiescence with Emersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activism. The last section illustrates the spiritual and stylistic resemblances in the two literati.

Daoist Impact on the Reclusive and Transcendentalist Appreciation of Nature Both Tao Qian and Emerson believe human beings should be nature-centered rather than society-centered. Their joint conviction in the human spiritâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intimate re-

Two Forms of Solitude

King-Kok Cheung lationship with nature seems rooted in Daoism. Tao Qian lived during a period marked by warfare and instability in the years between the collapse of the Han dynasty (220 nasties by the Sui Dynasty (589 CE). He espouses a simple life close to nature and decries the pernicious effects

humility, gentleness, resignation, quiescence, and contentment. He says of himself in “The Life of the Sire of Five Willows” < ӄḣ‫⭏ݸ‬Ր >, his self-portrait: “Living quietly in solitude and spare of speech, he covets not rank nor wealth.”2 His Daoist bent is further evident in lines such as “The Dao has been lost…And people everywhere are misers of their feelings” and “The life of man is like a shadow-play / Which must in the end return to nothingness,” and in his persistent association of nature with individualist freedom (as opposed to Confucian emphasis on duty and hierarchy).3 As recorded in autobiographical “Five Poems on Returning to Dwell in the Country” < ᖂഝ⭠ት > Tao Qian considers the life of affairs in the city to be a “net” or a “cage,” and the countryside to be his natural habitat: “Inadvertently I fell into the Dusty Net…Too long I was held within the barred cage. / Now I am able to return again to Nature.”4

If so, Thoreau’s mentor is unlikely to have been unaware of its content. Not being a Sinologist myself, I refrain from one of the most elusive concepts in Transcendentalism, about an all-encompassing spirit that is the source of all wisdom and intuition, is highly reminiscent of The Book of Dao: “Tao is invisibly empty, / But its use is extremely plentiful. It is profound like the originator of all things….I do not know where it comes from / It seems to have appeared before the existence of God.”11 Compare this with Emerson’s reflection on the primal Intuition: Who is the Trustee [of self-trust]? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition.... In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all WKLQJV ¿QG WKHLU FRPPRQ RULJLQ :H OLH LQ WKH ODS RI immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.…If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault.12

Daoist philosophy seems to resonate with Emerson as well, but whether he has actually read The Book of Dao is open to speculation. His familiarity with Hindu and Confucian classics, however, has been documented by Frederic Ives Carpenter and Arthur Christy.5 Lyman V. Cady further informs us that “Thoreau’s acquaintance with Oriental texts began with his residence in Emerson’s home in 1841” and among the Oriental books in Emerson’s private collection were Joshua Marshman’s The Works of Confucius (1809) and David Collie’s The Chinese Classical Work, commonly called the Four Books (1828), the latter being also Confucian classics.6 Emerson has obviously read French translations of Chinese texts as well. Christy indicates that the name of the French Sinologist Jean Pierre Abel Rèmusat (17881832) “was often on the tongues of the Concordians”; Emerson even notes in his journal that Rèmusat’s L’Invariable Milieu (1817) begins with “promising 7 Although L’Invariable Milieu is also a translation of The Four Books, Rèmusat’s “Extrait d’un memoire sur Lao Tseu,” which “dealt with parallels of Daoism, Plato, and Pythagoras,” appeared in the Journal Asiatique of 1823.8 Emerson, given his extensive reading and his familiarity with Rèmusat’s other works, might have come across this article, pace Carpenter’s assertion to the contrary: “Lao-tse [Emerson] had never read.” 9 David T.Y. Chen, in “Thoreau and Daoism,” suggests that another French translation of Daoist texts, G. Pauthier’s Memoire sur l’Origin et la Propagation de la Doctrien du Tao, published in 1831 by Libraire Orientale, was also available to the Concordians and that Chen strongly suspects Thoreau to have read this book.10

Emerson’s premise about a pervasive spirit that has no beginning and no end and that is at one with all things is almost identical with Laozi’s evocation of Dao. Gu Zhengkun, as English translator of The Book of Tao and Teh, observes: “Daoism is systematically constructed with four integral parts: 1) Tao as the ontological being; 2) Tao as the dialectic law; 3) Tao as the epistemological tool; 4) Tao as a practical guide to worldly affairs.”13 Emerson’s Intuition similarly has an ontological, dialectic, epistemological, and practical dimensions. In particular, Laozi’s notions about the law of nature and about the paradox of “less is more” inform both Tao Qian’s and Emerson’s writing. Both the Chinese poet and the American doyen prefer a simple life of wandering in the woods, removed from the din of the city “Peach Blossom Spring,” Tao Qian’s well-known fable, a fisherman who follows the course of a brook finds a natural spring.14 By leaving his boat and walking through a small pass, he comes upon a village founded dynasties ago by refugees from wars, draft, taxation, economic rivalry, and political persecution. There are no potentates controlling the populace in this egalitarian community, where villagers make their living by farming and raising cattle. After the fisherman returns to his prefecture he informs the prefect of the unique village against the wishes of its inhabitants, but when the prefect dispatches 63

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cate the village again. Peach Blossom Spring, Tao Qian implies, exists only in the imagination. In the fable, the ruling class is responsible for most of the ills of society; magistrates often reek of toadyism, rapaciousness, and go in tandem) are deemed corrupting, unworthy of a poet’s pursuit and detrimental to artistic integrity. Tao Qian himself resigned from the Jin court to become a farmer and lived in the countryside for twenty-two years before he died at sixty-three; he is known for his ascerbic refusal to “grovel to petty provincial functionaries for his livelihood ᡁኲ㜭Ѫӄᯇ㊣ˈᣈ㞠ґ䟼ሿ‫˷” ݯ‬literally,

been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again.”21 For both Tao Qian and Emerson, it is through communion with nature that humankind can get in touch with the sacred core of their beings.

Correspondence between Topos and Ethos This healing and restorative power of nature is more than physical. The two writers look to nature for existential, intellectual, and moral edification, as well

Although Emerson never worked as a civil servant, he gave up his secure post as Unitarian minister in 1832 when he was scarcely thirty, “without any assurance that he [would] ever be employed again.”16 After touring Europe, he retired to a farm in the neighborhood of Concord. Like Tao Qian, he associates public life with with nature. He looks askance at social conventions, religious creeds, and national laws: “the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen.”17 In other words, individuals must exercise innate virtues even if these run

plants the template of carefree and glorious living. Tao Qian muses in “Spending the Ninth Day in Solitude” < ҍᰕ䰢ት >: Our lives are short and our ambitions many… And while one can with wine exorcize all sorrows Chrysanthemums know how to restrain declining years. How is it with me the thatch-cottage scholar, Vainly watching how my time and fate decline?... 7KHVH FROG ZHDWKHU ÀRZHUV EORRP RI WKHPVHOYHV DORQH I pull close my lapels and sing to myself at leisure, Which somehow distantly awaken deep emotions. Even in retirement I do have many pleasure, Even in my lassitude I still get things accomplished.22

Emerson’s ruminations about solitude and nature, like Tao Qian’s reclusive ponderings, are grounded in “the presumed opposition between the realm of the collective, the organized, and the worldly on the one hand, and the personal, the spontaneous, and the inward on the other.”18 Like Tao Qian, who discerns a certain kinmore dear and connate [in the wilderness] than in streets and villages.”19 He sees exposure to nature as conducive to solitude and selfhood: To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. If a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate him and what he touches. … The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.20 The passage suggests that solitude is a sublime experience accessible to the human faculty in nature’s presence. Just as Tao Qian credits his bucolic surrounding with insulating him from the “vulgar tone” of the city and allowing him to regain his intrinsic self, so Emerson lauds the restorative power of nature on the workaday soul: “To the body and mind which have

The poet urges us to learn from chrysanthemums to live with gusto even in adversity, instead of bemoaning living life to the brim each morn, implicitly in nature’s lap, one can catch intimations, if not of immortality, then at least of vibrant mortality. He sketches comparable scenario in “The Life of the Sire of Five Willows”:

called himself by such a title…. His short coats of coarse fabric are patched and knotted, his reed cereal case and gourd shell for liquid food are often empty: but he takes such at his ease… He quaffs at his beaker and chants his poems to find happiness in his sublimating will. Isn’t he a free, blissful subject of our legendary kings at the dawn of the world, the One of Care-free Rule and the 23

Despite his meager means and threadbare existence, this sire exults at being a free, blissful subject heedless of material abundance or worldly renown. Nature similarly provides Emerson with virtual majesty: “Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos.”24 Regal pomp

Two Forms of Solitude

King-Kok Cheung and circumstances dwarf beside natural bounty. Roses offer Emerson a lesson congruent with the one the set by chrysanthemums for the Chinese poet: Man is timid and apologetic; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day…. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless or the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.25 The blade of grass and the blowing rose instruct by shining examples how to live with aplomb in the present. Humankind too can bask in the moment, instead of comparing themselves with predecessors, submitting themselves to ancient authority, regretting the past, or fretting about the future. For both Tao Qian and Emerson, the riches that nature affords outweigh any an ecological boon, living in nature is conducive to selfcultivation. Cultivating the self is certainly a common goal of Tao Qian and Emerson, both of whom regard nature to be the perfect classroom for this discipline. Far from associating nature with untrammeled wilderness, let alone with the Noble Savage, they are genteel dwellers in the countryside who cherish a life of farming or horticulture and study. Tao Qian’s thatched hut is stocked with books; Emerson’s journal entries attest to his capacious library. The Chinese bard discloses that he is often so engrossed in his study that “he jovially forgets his meals.”26 He registers in “On Reading the Classic of the Hills and Seas” < 䈫ኡ⎧㓿 > that he looks forward to browsing as his reward after farm work: Ploughing is done and also I have sown— The time has come to return and read my books. … I read at length the story of King Mu, And let my gaze wander over pictures of hills and seas. Thus with a glance I reach the ends of the Universe— ,I WKLV LV QRW D SOHDVXUH ZKHUH FRXOG , HYHU ¿QG RQH"´27

It is worth noting, however, that the ineffable pleasure he derives from reading consists in his being transported vicariously to “hills and seas,” that the felicity unleashed by texts is inseparable from his delight in nature. Nature does more than provide a blueprint for right living. It fosters, in the writing of both Tao Qian and Emerson, as ethic (whether grounded in Daoist or Transcendentalist thinking) deeper than social propriety or

conventional morality. “Peach Blossom Spring” situates the idyllic utopia in a secluded niche away from corrupt Qian’s poetry similarly evinces a synergistic relay between natural and ethical environment. couples ecological asset with moral well being. In “Six Songs of Poor Scholars” < િ 䍛 ༛ life with “real pain,” in contrast to the rustic existence of poor scholars: A bed of straw was always warm enough, And fresh-gathered yams were good enough for breakfast… Poverty and wealth will always war within us, But when the Tao prevails there are no anxious faces. Utmost moral power will crown the village entrance And purest chastity shine in the western gateway.28

The poem, particularly the last two lines, exhibits a well-known Daoist paradox: “Flex to remain whole; / Bend to be straight; / Empty to be filled; / Be worn and be renewed; / Seek less and have enough; / Seek more and be perplexed… / The self-effacing shines; / The humble becomes distinguished; / The unpretentious are acclaimed.” 29 Tao Qian intimates that “utmost moral power” resides in the lowliest abode and “purest chastity” emanates from the humblest quarter. Tucked away in remote mountains and hidden hamlets, Tao Qian’s locus amoenus is free not only of air pollution and economic competition. The poet does not, however, downplay the hardship of being indigent. Laments about bitter cold and gnawing hunger can be found in another canto of “Six Songs of Poor Scholars,” but the speaker consoles himself by observing that “many ancient sages 30

Emerson, too, disparages worldly possession and dominion. The connection he draws between ecological environment and ethical conduct also resembles a Daoist things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes.”31 His pronouncement, which implies that architectural grandeur and political clout are inversely proportional to inner peace and personal integrity, may have been inspired by Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after ULJKWHRXVQHVV IRU WKH\ VKDOO EH ¿OOHG« Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (Mathew 5:2-8) 65

Comparative Studies of China and the West The prospect of the hungry about to be filled matches exactly the Daoist notion: “Empty to be filled.” Unlike the Beatitudes, which promise delayed gratification in the kingdom of heaven, however, the Book of Tao here and now—an idea that accords with both Tao Qian life for the sake of self-cultivation; Emerson considers “the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, [as] the want of selfreliance.”32 Like Tao Qian, Emerson exalts nature as a “discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths” and regards every “natural process [as] a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference.” Everything about a natural landscape can impart a valuable lesson:

be doubted that this moral sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The amount of truth which it illustrates to him…. Who can

to man from the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, 33

Nature is a living text of moral truth; the laws of

and untainted by the storm and stress of the world. By far the greatest lesson instilled by Nature in Emerson is self-reliance: “Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore selfrelying soul.”34 all that concerns me, not what the people think.”35 Like Tao Qian, he cautions against the pressure of society that induces one to kowtow to power, fame, or fortune: “Society is a joint-stock company . . . in which the members agree, for the better security of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Selfreliance is its aversion.” Hence the oft-quoted corollary: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”36 Emerson would surely approve

Vol. 1 2013 Tao Qian’s decision to insulate himself from the “vulgar tone” so as to resume his natural bent and to engage in

We can thus draw many analogies between the transcendentalist notions of self-reliance in Emerson and the reclusive ideas concerning spiritual independence

poet reckons as obstacles to the Way of Dao what the New England sage remonstrates against as impediments to self-trust—dogma, property, government, discontent stemming from regret about the past and anxiety about the future. Both thinkers embrace the paradox of “less is more,” pitching natural living against material comfort, craven security, and obsequious existence.

Divergent Ideas about Nature, Selfhood, and Solitude With regard to the definition and interconnection of nature, selfhood, and solitude, we find both striking coincidences and sharp divergences. Both sages not only stress the importance of nature and solitude but also regard studying nature and knowing oneself to be twin pursuits. But their ideas about nature and self veer from each other. Tao Qian sees nature as a haven from feudal must remove themselves to the countryside to cultivate their native temperament, even as humans are merely insignificant particles in the scheme of things, dissolving back into nature eventually. For Emerson, it is the human mind that must intuit the meaning of the external world and communicate its lessons. He anticipates Darwin’s theory of evolution in designating homo sapiens as the highest form to which nature aspires while proclaiming, against both Darwinian atheism and orthodox Unitarianism, that “God is here within.”37 Where Tao Qian envisions the self to be living in harmony with nature, Emerson bids the self-reliant individual to explicate the world, generating order out of chaos. The solitude that Tao Qian savors can be found only in the countryside; the kind that Emerson extolls can be found anywhere by the self-possessed. Tao Qian associates nature and solitude with the countryside, but not with a hermetic existence. His idea of solitude involves distancing oneself from hubs of power and commerce, but it does not preclude the enjoyment of family and friends. He reveals in “Retracing My Way Home” < ᖂ ৫ ᶕ 䗎 > that despite ending his “intercourse with the world,” he continues to be “pleased with the feeling words of … kin and friends.”38 His pastoral poems describe the hard work of a farmer providing for his kin: “I have never yet utterly failed my family / Even though cold and hungry / they always had bran and 39

King-Kok Cheung But he also celebrates the joys of being surrounded by children: “Now I hold hands with a train of nieces and nephews, / Parting the hazel growth we tread the untilled wastes.”40 Above all, he revels in drinking with neighbors and friends: “Fond of wine, he is too poor to resort to it often; knowing this, his kin and friends would invite him to bumpers.”41 The poet is a “hermit” only in the Chinese sense of choosing to live in a rural area, but still within human earshot. What is of utmost importance to him is the freedom to follow his heart’s desire, as celebrated in “Retracing My Way Home: A Prose Poem” [ ᖂ ৫ᶕ䗎 ]: To be wealthy and to be high in rank are not what I wish; to be in the celestial city is not what I expect. I may wish to go somewhere on a fair day alone, or to weed and manure the soil… Or I may wish to rise on the eastern bank to halloo in easing my heart, or to compose poetry by the side of a limpid stream. In such wise, I may merge into Nature and come to my end, delighting in the decree of heaven and doubting nought.42 Whether fertilizing the soil, composing by a stream, or dissolving back into the earth, the poet here is very much a part of the scenery. Tao Qian and Emerson share a free spirit that wishes above all to be true to themselves and their inward promptings. Like the Chinese poet, who refuses to “grovel” for a living, Emerson refuses to ingratiate himself: “If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions… But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility.” He values honesty and liberty far above tact. He will harken to the voice of his mind and do “whatever inly rejoices [him] and the heart appoints.”43 Neither Tao Qian nor Emerson is willing to pay hypocritical attention to those they dislike. Just as Tao Qian will rise spontaneously on the eastern bank and halloo to ease his heart, Emerson will do whatever his heart appoints.

Two Forms of Solitude setting for solitary communion and for learning in NaAmerican Scholar” (1837), he opines in a later essay, also entitled “Nature” (1949), that nature is ubiquitous: If we consider how much we are nature’s, we or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature who made the mason, made the house. We disengaged air of natural objects, makes them enviable to us chafed and irritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be men instead of woodchucks, and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk.46 In this piece nature and solitude are no longer confined to bucolic locales but is within reach everywhere, even in an ornate boudoir, for ivory and silk are also natural products. Nature even evaporates or cycles as “thought” in this essay: “Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas.” Hence “every moment instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form.”47 The alert mind can be illuminated by any external objects, including those found indoors or in cities. Nature in this later essay encompasses just about everything under the sun. If Emerson defines nature much more broadly in his later work, his idea of solitude, which is increasingly allied with self-reliance, becomes more and more a function of the inner self: “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” 48 Solitude is almost synonymous with independence here. This solipsistic by popular opinions, must remain intact even when one is surrounded by a rabble.

Nature for both men is the repository of knowledge and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows… The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages.”44 He believes that nature and the human soul are rooted in the same order, that a law of nature is also a law of the human mind, so much so that “the ancient precept, ‘Know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘Study nature,’ become at last one maxim.”45 It is not always easy, however, to nail down this lay philosopher’s ideas owing to his contempt for consis-

Emerson thus goes much farther than Tao Qian in his insistence on self-amplifying solitude. Unlike the Chinese poet, who never shuns family and friends, Emerson holds that the mental state essential for selfreliance must preclude any extrinsic interference, including that of one’s closest kin: Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child … all knock at once at thy closet door… But keep thy state; come not into their confusion…. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after ap-

Comparative Studies of China and the West pearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law… I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.”49 Unlike Tao Qian, who remains mindful of his duties to his family, Emerson contends that one must turn a deaf ear to all immanent demands when the transcendentalist spirit beckons. The enjoinment to “keep thy state” seems to pun on “state” of mind and a sovereign “state”: an individual must hold his own mind supreme like that that of a sovereign who does not have to heed anyone else. The next injunction, couched in biblical language, to parents, sibling, and friend to leave the speaker alone further elevates this sovereign into the role of the Son of God, for it echoes twelve-year-old Jesus’s response to his mother. The teen, unbeknownst to his parents, had stayed behind in the temple in Jerusalem. Upon being rebuked, he reposted: “ (Luke 2:49). Just as Christ’s retort implies that his unique relationship with God supersedes his relationship with his earthly parents, so Emerson suggests that individuals the God within. Although both Tao Qian and Emerson envision Nature as a teacher that instructs individuals, they differ in their ideas concerning the relationship between self and nature. As Tao Qian’s line about merging eventually into nature suggests, the Chinese poet subscribes to the Daoist worldview in which “man is not separated from nature either by intellectual discrimination or by emotional response; he is one with nature, and lives with it in harmony.”50 The poet thus quietly blends with nature, as often tiny specks overshadowed by grand landscapes. In stark contrast to Tao Qian, who is content to lead a self-effacing pastoral existence, Emerson sees nature as “thoroughly mediate,” subject to human orchestration: It is meant to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful… One after another his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes at last only a realized will, —the double of the man.51 The last line, with its megalomaniac sense of nature as the realized will of humankind, would never be uttered by Tao Qian or any traditional Chinese poet, not even the grandiloquent Li Bai or Su Shi. Emerson deems an enlightened person to be “the creator in the 52 with ascendency over nature, which will remain nebulous and inchoate till it is quickened by God-given

Vol. 1 2013 human intelligence. While individuals can learn from

Writing centuries after Tao Qian, Emerson has also incorporated scientific knowledge in his understanding of the world, as the epigraph for the 1849 edition of Nature A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings; The eye reads omens where it goes, And speaks all languages the rose; And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.53

The chain at first glance resembles the Chain of Being in Renaissance British literature. But upon close examination, it looks not so much backward to the Elizabethan world picture as forward to Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Instead of depicting humankind clambering up the ladder to the galaxy, “man” in this Emersonian hierarchy is the highest order of beings toward which the worm inches upward. Furthermore, while natural objects such as the rose and the worm embody fundamental lessons, it is the human eye that divines these omens where it goes. Nature itself cannot deliver any message without the human intuition that makes sense of external phenomena. Because Emerson sees human beings as endowed with godly intelligence, cultivation of the self takes on very different forms than those found in Confucian or Daoist literature. In Confucian culture, self-cultivation is often associated with self-control, self-restraint, even self-abnegation, and with learning one’s place in a social and political hierarchy. Although Daoism gives much freer reign to the individual spirit, this self, as one miniscule cog in the universal wheel, must not strive for a discrete existence. In the words of Joseph Levenson and Franz Schurmann: Nature is not merely observed, for observation implies separation of ego and object—a separation which, for the Daoists, isolates the self, thus condemning it to the striving they hold vain and to the suffering they see ture that banishes consciousness, a consciousness that in the last analysis is always and ominously of self.54 This Daoist construal of self, which has found its way into much of Tao Qian’s poetry, is anathema to Emerson.

of the relation between self and nature are in some way encapsulated in the works of Tao Qian and Emerson. William Acker’s translation of one of Tao Qian’s poems

Two Forms of Solitude

King-Kok Cheung 5HQRXQFLQJ P\ FDS RI RI¿FH , ZLOO UHWXUQ WR P\ ROG KRPH Never more entangled with love for high position. I will nourish my REAL self under my gates and thatch And by doing this be all the better known.55

The line rendered as “I will nourish my real self” is at variance with the Chinese expression “ ޫ ⵏ ”—nurture natural disposition and cultivate truth— ironically betraying the Western bias of the translator. In the Chinese idiom, nurturing disposition and cultivating truth are cognate pursuits, so that the idea of a “self” discrete from “truth” is notably absent. Tao Qian implies that living close to nature is conducive to improving one’s character precisely because it can be at one with the environment. By the same token, the line rendered as “be all the better known” really means “so honor redounds on me.” What the poet desires is not worldly prestige but a sense of honor. Tao Qian may be echoing a saying in Analects: “Be not grieved that you are not known, but seek to be worthy of being known.”56 The distinction is important because elsewhere Tao Qian has lamented that “The Tao has been lost…And people everywhere are misers of their feelings… And think of nothing save keeping their reputation.”57 Tao Qian is unlikely to be equally guilty. A.R. Davis’s translation of these lines—“I’ll cultivate truth ‘under a cross-beam door’; / So may I make myself a name for goodness”58— though slightly awkward, is, in my opinion, closer to the original Chinese meaning. Where solitude connotes pastoral reclusiveness and ascetic existence in Tao Qian’s poetry, it is linked primarily to intellectual independence in Emerson’s writing. Self-cultivation amounts to developing complete trust in one’s intuition, to the degree of making light of the teachings of past saints and savants and being deaf to the criticism of one’s peers. Instead of seeing humans as dissolvable specks in the universe, Emerson contends that “a true man…is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature.”59 Nothing is grander than the selfreliant human soul, which even sets off “the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.”60 Because the mind is its own place for Emerson, solitude does not entail actual mountain retreat: “Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. The poets who have lived in cities have been hermits still. Inspiration makes solitude anywhere.”61

star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. … Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote.”62 Deployed in the the forces of the elements and in the second to inspire humankind to harbor high principles, in common usage the phrase is often used as an exhortation to pursue lofty enterprises. Although both Tao Qian and Emerson view knowing oneself and knowing nature as inextricably intertwined, the grand entelechy signaled by Emerson’s starry metaphor differs from Tao Qian’s humble if occasionally epicurean pursuit. In place of the boundless your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense” and “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” Tao Qian describes himself as “spare of speech,” writing merely “to please himself and show his bent.”63

Relationship between Self and Civil Society The most noticeable difference between the two pastoral enthusiasts is their relationship to the world of affairs. Tao Qian abstains completely from civil society and ensconces himself in rural backwater. He goes so far as to change his name from Tao Yuanming to Tao Qian—Qian meaning “hiding” or “submerging”— signifying his resolve to remove himself from the public eye and to avoid the tarnishing effects of society. Emerson, according to Christy, is nudged by his friends to do the same: “[Amos Bronson] Alcott might have begged him to enter the ill-fated Fruitlands venture. Thoreau was considering Walden.” Both Fruitlands and Walden are reminiscent of the Utopian Peach Blossoms Spring. Instead of imagining Emerson wavering between Laozi and Confucius, Christy, citing his journal of 1843, fancies the New England sage staunchly aligning himself with Confucius, “with Alcott and Thoreau as Chang Tsoo and Kee Neih”: Reform. Chang Tsoo and Kee Neih retired from their displeasure at Confucius who remained in the world. Confucius sighed and said, “ I cannot associate with birds and beasts. If I follow not man, whom shall I 64

The restive independence Emerson champions differs from Tao Qian’s pragmatic self-sufficiency. Urging individuals to harken to their own callings without dreading public censure or hankering after popular acclaim, he famously exhorts: “Hitch your wagon to the star.” He uses this sidereal axiom twice (once with a different possessive) in Society and Solitude: “Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves.” And again: “Hitch your wagon to a

Emerson, despite his insistence on resolute intellectual freedom, is scrupulously mindful of Confucian duty to the state. Although he reproves a controlling political organ (“the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen”), he continues to be a public intellectual after his resignation as Unitarian minister.

Comparative Studies of China and the West Emerson decrees that a true thinker must not retreat from a commonplace world but must assay to usher in a brave new world: L e t u s a ff r o n t a n d r e p r i m a n d t h e s m o o t h mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works…. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age…. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius…. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man…and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.65 As opposed to retiring from society, Emerson implores us to “affront and reprimand,” to remove obstacles to progress, to affirm the conviction that society has always been transformed by remarkable individuals such as Caesar and Christ, and therefore every human has the potential to become a vanguard. Instead of succumbing to institutional constraints, a great leader can overhaul the institution itself. He further expounds on the social obligations of a seminal mind in “The American Scholar”: There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian,--as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe…. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth… Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.66 Thinking and living, according to Emerson, must to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.”67 He must think for himself and forego the “pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, and the religion of society,” he must bear the cross of being contrary, endure poverty and solitude, and “the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society.” He can only take as consolation the awareness that he is the repository of wisdom for others, exercising the highest human functions: “He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart.”68 As such, the American scholar is obligated to communicate the noblest thoughts and sentiments to the public.

Vol. 1 2013 Emerson himself never retracts from his selfappointed mission as the world’s eye and heart, as the seer and conscience of his age; he continues to bring his considerable talents to bear on flashpoint events of his time. Carl Bode observes that much as Emerson “begrudged acting as a public man,” he spoke out against three major political issues during his prime: the expulsion of the Cherokees from Georgia, the war against Mexico, and slavery.69 As the contributor to The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography puts it, “It is no slight sign of the greatness of the thinker, that he can leave the amenities of the city and the quietudes of the forest to stand upon the anti-slavery platform. The subordination of the pursuit of a thought to the love of a duty thus manifested, may be accepted as the crowning lesson in the life and works of Emerson.”70

Nature, Spirit, and Writing Having discussed the points of convergence and divergence in these two pillars of Chinese and American letters, I would like to turn to their metaphysics and aesthetics, which are no less informed by their reverence for nature. Despite a spiritual note that often accompanies both of their compositions, and the many Daoist and biblical allusions in their respective writing, neither writer devotes much thought, if at all, to life after death. Their works, presented in limpid and unadorned verse and prose free of abstruse allusions, seem natural growths from the soil of the old China and the New England. Instead of citing precedents and bowing to

irreverence. The Chinese poet openly embraces the beliefs of Dao as moral and eternal, but he steers clear of Zhuangzi’s mysticism and occult folk practices associated with Daoism, such as the search for elixir for immortality via alchemy. It is quite clear from his work that he does not give any credence to an afterlife. “To be in the celestial city is not what I expect,” quoth he in “Retracing My Way Home.” He asked rhetorically, “To be born in the morning possessed of Love and Faith / 71 The elegy below dispels any lingering doubt about human

Where there is life there also must be death… Success or failure he [the deceased] will not know again, Questions of right or wrong mean nothing to him now. In a thousand autumns—after ten thousand years, Who will know whether he had glory or disgrace? The only pity is while he was in the world Of drinking wine he never got enough.72

King-Kok Cheung The sentiment is replicated in “Written on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month of the Year I-yu” < ᐢ䝹 ኱ҍᴸҍᰕ >: “From ancient times / there was none but had to die, / Remembering this scorches my very heart. / joy myself drinking my unstrained wine. / I do not know about a thousand years, / Rather let me make this morning last forever.”73 Human life in these poems follow the natural rhythm of morning and evening. Though the thought of eventual nothingness sometimes gives rise to melancholy, the poet uses this unpleasant fact to counsel against transient glory and to prompt his readers to make the most of their numbered days. His recurrent advice is to drink before it is too late. out by one of his several poems entitled “Drinking” < 侞䞂 >: I set up my cottage in the world of men, Away from the hubbub of horses and carriages. Being asked how it could be thus, I reply, “My heart stays apart, so secluded must be the spot.” In plucking chrysanthemums beneath the east hedge, I vacantly see the southern mountains afar; The mountain aura hovereth fair morn and eve, 7KH ELUGV À\ IURP DQG EDFN WR WKHLU QHVWV HDUO\ DQG ODWH There is the pith of truth in all this sight; When I am about to say how, I forget my words.74

The poem is deceptive in its simplicity. While the first two quatrains use concrete imagery and informal language to answer a simple question and evoke a rustic scene, the last two lines bring the self-analysis to a philosophical (but not at all didactic) close. The enigmatic couplet invites at least two interpretations. In

too deep for articulation, like those mentioned in “The Book of Tao”: “The Tao that can be expressed in words / Is not the true and eternal Tao.”75 The “pith of truth” gleaned by the Chinese poet from his nature-watch likewise surpasses language; his epiphany—possibly precipitated by alcohol—must be intuited rather than verbalized. “Drinking” is emblematic of Tao Qian’s disarming and resonant style, which modulates easily from a descriptive to a philosophical register. He has indicated in his autobiographical sketch that he does not chase after fancy diction or obscure references, that he “takes delight in books, but is not enmeshed in mere words.”76 On account of his transparency the bard was “slighted by his era’s critics and only fully appreciated by later generations of readers.”77 Unlike his contemporaries, who flaunt their learning by adhering to rigid conventions,

Two Forms of Solitude citing literary authorities, and using esoteric references, Tao Qian writes directly, using down-to-earth expressions and vignettes from country life. In the words of of his natural voice and immediate experience, thereby creating the personal lyricism which all major Chinese poets inherited and made their own.”78 He was keenly admired by Tang poets such as Meng Haoyan and Wang Wei on account of "the freshness of his images, his homespun but Heaven-aspiring morality, and his steadfast love of rural life.”79 Tao Qian’s correlation of rustic vista and moral high ground anticipates Emerson’s claim that “particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts” and that “nature is the symbol of spirit.”80 Indeed Emerson’s ideas about the “Over-soul” or “the eternal One” are almost indistinguishable from Laozi’s and Tao Qian’s delineations of the eternal Dao. Although the one-time Unitarian preacher refers frequently to God in his work, his idea of divinity is much closer to the universal spirit of Dao than to any Christian Godhead: Spirit…suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most, will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse…but when we try to define and describe himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it.81 Here and elsewhere Emerson posits almost exactly the same Daoist paradox about ineffable truth: “the highest truth on [Intuition] remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the faroff remembering of the intuition”; “My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold.”82 The transcendentalist’s assumptions about the Over-soul recall Laozi’s concepts concerning the Tao. These two sets of beliefs have several common denominators: everything is interconnected; the Spirit is accessible to all, whether or not people actively seek it; moral character and action evince that the human and divine spirit are aligned; through self-cultivation one can get closer to the universal spirit. Like Tao Qian, Emerson is loath to dwell on the afterlife: “Men ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven…and so forth… These questions which we lust to ask about the future…God ‘decree of God,’ but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow.…By this veil

Comparative Studies of China and the West

Vol. 1 2013

which curtains events it instructs the children of men of live in to-day.”83 Emerson, speaking putatively on behalf of God, dismisses interests in posthumous affairs as “low curiosity” and urges his readers to channel their energy into the here and now: “work and live, work and live.”84 S t y l i s t i c a l l y, E m e r s o n a l s o m i r r o r s Ta o Qian’s poetic immediacy, using figurative language spontaneously to provide abstract ideas with welcome of Tao Qian’s “Drinking.” The Chinese poet does not miss stately conveyances, preferring natural resources. The “pith of truth” for him is embedded in the profuse mountain air that is available throughout the day, in the birds that go out with sunrise and return at sunset. Emerson likewise prefers living in sync with nature to modern luxuries: The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun… and it may be a question whether machinery does not energy, by a Christianity, entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue.85 Had Emerson been Tao Qian’s coeval, he too would have chosen a secluded spot “away from the hubbub of horses and carriages,” learning to tell time, exercise muscles, cultivate wide virtue, and decipher truth from natural surrounding. Emerson envisions not only a moral symbiosis between human and nature, but also a homological relation between microcosm and macrocosm, between the inmost and the outermost, so that an autonomous and honorable individual can readily cull moral lessons from the external world: The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. A life in harmony with Nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and 86

Convinced that “every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture,” Emerson is as adept as Tao Qian at drawing inspirations from everyday landscape.87 In addition to tropes of the sun, rain, stars, blade of grass, blowing rose, and the worm introduced earlier, he has forged piquant conceits in lines such as “the world globes itself in a drop of dew.… God reappears with all

his parts in every moss and cobweb.”88

recommending instead an original relationship with the universe. He poses a series of questions in Nature (1836): Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of [our

invite us by the powers they supply…why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.89 This passage, in which Emerson bemoans how veneration for past theories has sapped the creativity of his contemporary generation, is also a stylistic tour de force. He obeys his own precept by seldom citing other authorities to support his observations, confronting us instead with spectacular evidence from the teeming the reader’s eye to the plenitude of the New World with three crisp sentences before ending with a simple exhortation, rendered all the more persuasive by the preceding imagery yoking classical antiquity with the macabre and conjoining personal intuition with cornucopia. The American scholar believes that not books by our forefathers but nature itself should provide individuals with the raw material for philosophy and poetry. Each person must learn to “detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.” 90 He vouchsafes to mention other worthies of the past only to further illustrate his point: “the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.”91 These men are great precisely because they disregard their predecessors and contemporaries. Like Tao Qian, Emerson communicates his thoughts briskly and winsomely. “Self-Reliance” concludes thus: A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend…raises your spirit, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.92 These sentences display a fetching arc. Addressing

King-Kok Cheung the readers, Emerson starts by taking the reader (addressed intimately in the second person) for a seductive rhetorical spin, via a lengthy sentence full of promising scenarios, till she arrives at the summary enjoinder: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Do not believe it.â&#x20AC;? He then ends with two anaphoric sentences, pounding his message home. The periodical structure and teasing suspense are comparable to the turn of thought in Tao Qianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drinking,â&#x20AC;? at once playful and soulful, proffering instruction and diversion in equal measure. The metaphysical observations and stylistic maneuvers of these two masters seem part and parcel of their resolute individuality and their enchantment with nature.

Conclusion Tao Qian and Emerson speak to us afresh in this materialist age riddled with social pressures and ecological concerns. Though separated by millennia, the two might be considered kindred spirits with singular affinities: propensity for rustic living and seclusion; disdain for establishment, gilded acquisition, and indolent conformity; predilection for self-cultivation and recourse to nature for intellectual and moral guidance; adherence to a spirituality that pertains to the here and now; preference for a plain style not laden with erudite allusions or external authorities. Because of their divergent notions of selfhood, however, the two envisage the relationship between self and nature and between self and society differently. Although both thinkers conceive their duty to mankind as being true to themselves, Tao Qian sees the self to be a relatively insignificant â&#x20AC;&#x153;shadowâ&#x20AC;? subsumed by natural landscape (â&#x20AC;&#x153;Vast and majestic, mountains embrace your shadowâ&#x20AC;?), whereas Emerson underscores the importance of a unique human spirit in radiating divine wisdom and transmitting a higher ethic. Tao Qian can find solitude only in the countryside; Emerson holds that where â&#x20AC;&#x153;a true man is â&#x20AC;Ś there is nature.â&#x20AC;? Instead of retreating from society, he continues to denounce benighted practices and policies. Still, the two aficionados of solitude share a profound belief in the intercourse of mindscape and landscape. They see the visible world as an â&#x20AC;&#x153;open bookâ&#x20AC;? awaiting to be apprehended by a soul attuned to its lessons, whether during a moment of heightened (if occasionally tipsy)

Jack Keruacâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Running Through (Chinese Poem Song),â&#x20AC;? for example, contains the lines â&#x20AC;&#x153;No body has respect / for the self centered/Irresponsible wine invalid. / Everybody wants to be strapped/ in a hopeless space suit where they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t move. / I urge you, China / go back to Li Po and Tao Yuan Ming.â&#x20AC;? http://archive.neopoet.com/ node/1075 (Sept 7, 2013). 2 Tao Yuanming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of the Sire of Five Willows,â&#x20AC;? in á&#x2020;&#x2030;ŕ˝&#x2014;ä´&#x2DC; Sun Dayu, ed. & trans., Ç&#x2030; ŕ¨&#x201D; ä&#x2C6;&#x2021; áŽˇ ă¤Ą ä&#x2C6; äłśÇ&#x160; Ë&#x2039; An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poetry. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1995, p. 73; Chinese original on p. 72. 3 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Six Poems Written while Drunkâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Five Poems on

Two Forms of Solitude Returning to Dwell in the Country,â&#x20AC;? in William Acker, trans., Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien. London: Thames and Hudson, pp. 65, 56; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;äşĽ 65, 28. All English citations of Tao Qian are to Ackerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s text unless otherwise stated. 4 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Five Poems on Returning to Dwell in the Country,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, pp. 52-53; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160; äşĽ Ë&#x2030; 5 See Frederic Ives Carpenter, Emerson and Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930; Arthur Christy, The Orient In American Transcendentalism: A Study Of Emerson, Thoreau, And Alcott. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932. 6 Lyman V. Cady, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thoreauâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Quotations from the Confucian Books in Walden,â&#x20AC;? American Literature 33.1 (1961): p. 20. Cady makes a convincing case from textual evidence that Thoreau is also familiar with G. Pauthierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Les Livres sacrĂŠs de Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Orient (1841), a French translation of the Four Books. 7 Christy, The Orient In American Transcendentalism, pp. 45, 317. 8 Ibid, p. 49. 9 Carpenter, Emerson and Asia, p. 235. 10 David T.Y. Chen, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thoreau and Daoism,â&#x20AC;? in C.D. Narasimhaiah, ed. Asian Response to American Literature. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972, p. 409. 11 Lao Tzu, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Book of Tao,â&#x20AC;? Chapter 4, in Gu Zhengkun, trans. & annotated, The Book of Tao and Teh. Beijing: China Publishing Group Corp., 2013 p. 11. 12 Ralph Waldo Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? in Carl Bode and Malcolm Cowley, ed. The Portable Emerson (New York: Penguin, 1979), pp. 149-150; all citations from Emerson are to The Portable Emerson unless otherwise stated. Emerson is also very much influenced by British poets (e.g. Wordsworth and Coleridge) whose works reflect Eastern philosophical currents. 13 Gu Zhengkun, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lao Zi and His Philosophical System: An Introduction,â&#x20AC;? in Gu Zhengkun, trans. & annotated, The Book of Tao and Teh. Beijing: China Publishing Group Corp.,2013 p. 30. 14 Tao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Peach Blossom Spring,â&#x20AC;? in Cyril Birch, ed. Anthology of Chinese Literature, Vol. 1: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1965, 167-168;Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 136 Ë&#x2030; 137. 15 Quoted in ăŠ&#x2014;ă&#x201D;?Ë&#x2C6;< ä˛Śâ?şá°žŐ? >, á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160; .Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 1982, p. 2; my English translation. 16 Carl Bode, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Introduction,â&#x20AC;? in The Portable Emerson. New York: Penguin, 1979, p. ix. 17 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Politicsâ&#x20AC;? (1844), in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems. New York: Random House, 2006, p. 254. 18 Leo Marx, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pastoralism in America,â&#x20AC;? in Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen, ed. Ideology and Classic American Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 44. 19 Emerson, Nature (1836), in Carl Bode and Malcolm Cowley, ed. The Portable Emerson, p. 11. 20 Ibid, p. 9. 21 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Five Poems on Returning to Dwell in the Country,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, p. 52; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 24; Emerson, Nature, p.14. 22 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Spending the Ninth Day in Solitude,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, pp. 50-51; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 22. 23 Tao Yuanming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of the Sire of Five Willows,â&#x20AC;? in á&#x2020;&#x2030; ŕ˝&#x2014; ä´&#x2DC; Sun Dayu, ed. & trans., Ç&#x2030;ŕ¨&#x201D;ä&#x2C6;&#x2021;áŽˇă¤Ąä&#x2C6; äłśÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2039; An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poetry.Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1995, pp. 73, 75; Chinese original on pp. 72, 74. 24 Ibid, pp. 14-15. 25 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p.151. 26 Tao Yuan-ming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of the Sire of Five Willows,â&#x20AC;? p. 72. 27 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;On Reading the Classic of the Hills and Seas,â&#x20AC;? in

Comparative Studies of China and the West Acker, pp. 99-100; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6; äşĽ 129. 28 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;en, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Six Songs of Poor Scholars,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, p. 132; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 118. 29 Laozi, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Book of Tao,â&#x20AC;? Chapter 22, in Gu Zhengkun, trans. & annotated, The Book of Tao and Teh. Beijing: China Publishing Group Corp. 2013 p. 58; my English translation. 30 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;en, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Six Songs of Poor Scholars,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, p. 127. 31 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Compensation,â&#x20AC;? p.169. 32 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p.163. 33 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Natureâ&#x20AC;? (1836), p. 29. 34 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p 153; the imagery of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;bended treeâ&#x20AC;? echoes the Daoist paradox â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bend to be straightâ&#x20AC;? quoted earlier. 35 Ibid, p. 143. 36 Ibid, p. 141. 37 Ibid, p. 153. 38 Tao Yuanming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Retracing My Way Home,â&#x20AC;? in Sun Dayu, p. 65; Chinese original on p. 62. 39 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Seven Miscellaneous Poems,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, trans., p. 78; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 111. 40 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Five Poems on Returning to Dwell in the Country,â&#x20AC;? p. 56; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 28. 41 Tao Yuan-ming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of the Sire of Five Willows,â&#x20AC;? in Sun Dayu, p. 73; Chinese original on p. 72. 42 Tao Yuanming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Retracing My Way Home: A Prose Poem,â&#x20AC;? in Sun Dayu, p. 67; Chinese original on p. 62. 43 Ibid, p. 155. 44 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The American Scholar,â&#x20AC;? p. 53. 45 Ibid, p. 54. 46 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Natureâ&#x20AC;? (1949), in Collected Essays: Complete Original Second Series. Rockville, Maryland: ARC Manor, 2007, p. 111. 47 Ibid, p. 117. 48 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p.143. 49 Ibid, pp. 154-155. 50 Joseph R. Levenson and Franz Schurmann, China: An Interpretive History: From the Beginnings to the Fall of Han. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971, p. 112. 51 Emerson, Nature, p. 28. 52 Ibid, p. 43. 53 Ibid, p. 7. 54 Levenson and Schurmann, China, p. 112. 55 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Written in the Seventh Month of the Year Hsin-chou while Passing Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;u-kâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ou in the Night on my Way back to Chiang-ling for my vacationâ&#x20AC;? [ ä&#x2014;&#x2039;Ń á&#x160;ąĐłá´¸ä&#x17D;¤â&#x20AC;ŤŮˇâ&#x20AC;Źä&#x2DC;&#x2C6;â&#x160;?ä˛Ľŕ˝&#x152;ăšźä&#x2122;&#x201E;ŕ¨&#x201C; ] in Acker, p. 111; Chinese original in A.R. Davis, Tao YĂźan-ming: His Works and Their Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, Vol. II, pp. 70-71. 56 Analects, IV.14; in David Collie, trans., The Chinese Classical Work Commonly Called the Four Books. Malacca: Mission Press, 1828, p. 14. 57 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Six Poems Written While Drunk,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, p. 65; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6;äşĽ 65. 58 A.R. Davis, ed., Tao YĂźan-ming: His Works and Their Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, Vol. I, p. 83. 59 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p. 147. 60 Ibid, p.154. 61 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Literary Ethics,â&#x20AC;? Essays and Lectures, p. 58. 62 Emerson, Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters (1862). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2008, pp. 25, 27. 63 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? pp. 138, 139; Tao Yuan-ming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of the Sire of Five Willows,â&#x20AC;? in Sun Dayu, p. 73. 64 Christy, The Orient In American Transcendentalism, p. 126; Journals

Vol. 1 2013 of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Waldo 65

Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? pp. 147-148. Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The American Scholar,â&#x20AC;? p. 59. 67 Ibid, p. 62. 68 Ibid, p. 63. 69 Carl Bode, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Introduction,â&#x20AC;? p. xvi. 70 The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography: A Series of Distinguished Memoirs of Distinguished Men, of All Ages and All Nations, Part 4. London: William Mackenzie, 1857, p. 245. 71 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Six Songs of Poor Scholars,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, p. 130. 72 Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Three Songs Written in Imitation of Ancient Bearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Songs,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, pp. 101-102. 73 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Written on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month of the Year I-yu,â&#x20AC;? in Acker, pp. 121-22; Chinese original in á&#x2014;&#x20AC;á?˝Ë&#x201E;ă&#x2022;&#x2020;Ë&#x2026;Ë&#x2013;Ç&#x2030;ä˛Śâ?şá°žä&#x2C6;&#x2021;ä&#x2DC;šÇ&#x160;Ë&#x2C6; äşĽ 58. 74 Tao Yuanming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drinking,â&#x20AC;? in Sun Dayu, ed. & trans., An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poetry, p. 77; Chinese original on p. 76. 75 Lao Tzu, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Book of Tao,â&#x20AC;? in Gu Zhengkun, trans. & annotated, The Book of Tao and Teh. Beijing: China Publishing Group Corp., 2013, p. 3. 76 Tao Yuan-ming, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of the Sire of Five Willows,â&#x20AC;? p. 73; Chinese original on p. 72. 77 Stuewe, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien,â&#x20AC;? p. 2071. 78 David Hinton, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Introduction,â&#x20AC;? in The Selected Poems of Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ao Châ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ien, trans. David Hinton. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1993, p. 5. 79 Ibid, p. 2073. 80 Emerson, Nature, p. 19. 81 Emerson, Nature, p. 41. 82 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p. 152; â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Over-Soul,â&#x20AC;? p. 211. 83 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Over-Soul,â&#x20AC;? pp. 219-220; my exclamation mark. 84 Ibid, p. 220. 85 Ibid, p. 162. 86 Nature (1836), p. 25. 87 Ibid, p. 20. 88 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Compensation,â&#x20AC;? p. 171. 89 Emerson, Nature (1836), p. 7. 90 Emerson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Self-Reliance,â&#x20AC;? p. 139. 91 Ibid, pp.138-39. 92 Ibid, p. 164. 66

About the author: King-Kok Cheung received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and is now a professor in the department of English at UCLA. Her research interests include American Ethnic Literatures, Asian American Literature, Chinese and Chinese American Literature, Renaissance British Literature (Shakespeare and Milton), World Literature (Comparative Odysseys and Comparative Heroic Traditions), gender studies. She is on the International Advisory Boards of Feminist Studies in English Literature (Korea) and EuroAmerica (Taiwan). She is also an associate editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and a Guest Research Fellow at the Chinese American Literature Research Center, Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei

Li Yongyi

Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei By Li Yongyi Chongqing University Abstract: Wallace Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision of nature is characterized by a paradox: while he yearns to circumvent, with the aid of the imagination, the barriers of human consciousness and cultural tradition so as to â&#x20AC;&#x153;returnâ&#x20AC;? to a pre-concepWXDO SUH OLQJXLVWLF LQWXLWLRQ RI QDWXUH KH LV SHUIHFWO\ FRJQL]DQW WKDW VXFK D PHQWDO JUDVS LV LWVHOI D ÂżFWLRQ FUHDWHG E\ WKH human mind. In contrast, Wang Wei seems to always refrain from exploring the intellectual intricacies of the relationship between nature and human consciousness, resting content with his quasi-objective representations of the physical universe. Reading the two great poets alongside can illuminate differences between the conceptions of nature in the two cultural traditions they work with, and give us, by mutual mirroring, glimpses to subtleties in their poems that otherwise do not easily meet our eye. Keywords: 1DWXUH KXPDQ FRQVFLRXVQHVV LPDJLQDWLRQ WUDGLWLRQ ÂżFWLRQ

An old man sits In the shadows of a pine tree In China. He sees larkspur, Blue and white, At the edge of the shadow, Move in the wind. His beard moves in the wind. The pine tree moves in the wind. 7KXV ZDWHU Ă&#x20AC;RZV Over weeds.

The above is the first section of Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s early 1 Though we cannot assert that he drew inspiration from Chinese poet Wang Wei (701-761CE), who wrote in one of his great poems, â&#x20AC;&#x153;bright moon incandescent in the pines, / crystalline stream slipping across rocksâ&#x20AC;? 2, Stevens in this poem almost captures the spirit of classical Chinese nature poems. However, the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;thusâ&#x20AC;? betrays his identity as a Western poet, for it reveals a desire to impose human logic on nature, as if the sheer mental force of imagined causation could compel the water to move, even though thematically Stevens seems to suggest here the necessity of diminishing human consciousness if we are to view nature in its pristine purity. Throughout his career, Stevenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision of nature is characterized by a paradox: while he yearns to circumvent, with the aid of the imagination, the barriers of human consciousness and cultural tradition so as to â&#x20AC;&#x153;returnâ&#x20AC;? to a pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic intuition of nature as it is, he is perfectly cognizant that such a mental grasp is itself a fiction created by the human mind, that art inevitably invents

nature since we can never confront nature without the mediation of our consciousness. In contrast, ancient Chinese masters, adhering to the Taoist attitude of â&#x20AC;&#x153;forgettingâ&#x20AC;? their egos and immersing their spirit in the ubiquitous circulation of Tao, the inactive yet allpowerful life force of the universe, seldom consciously attempted to interpret nature when composing poetry, and thus found it not difficult to create what Stevens

nature appear so artless that the Chinese believed nature itself molded his poems. Unlike Stevens, Wang Wei seems to always refrain from exploring the intellectual intricacies of the relationship between nature and human consciousness, resting content with his quasi-objective representations of the physical universe. Reading the two great poets alongside can illuminate differences between the conceptions of nature in the two cultural traditions they work with, and give us, by mutual mirroring, glimpses to subtleties in their poems that otherwise do not easily meet our eye.

1.Nature and Human Consciousness Even though Stevens does not view tradition in a favorable light, his constant doubt of the authenticity of nature as perceived by human beings is a typical Western stance. As early as Plato, the material existence of nature was already questioned. The visible world was reduced by Plato to a mere shadow of the world of Ideas. Throughout Western history, the mainstream tendency, both in religion and in philosophy, has been to diminish, even totally refuse to acknowledge, the validity of sensual experience. Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skepticism shares with this

Comparative Studies of China and the West tradition a mistrust of the senses, but differs in that he, in most cases, does not begrudge an actual existence to nature. His emphasis is placed on the impossibility, given the restriction of a human perspective, of accurately perceiving nature. Once we behold nature, it ceases to be naked, but is seen as invested with human thoughts and emotions. In this sense, the very act of perception becomes an act of invention. However convincingly it

Stevens is well aware that he is predestined to live in an “invented world”3, but his craving for “things as they are”4 often impels him to create some highly selfconscious myths. In “Nuances of a Theme by Williams,” he apostrophizes a star: Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses You in its own light. Be not Chimera of morning, Half-man, half-star. Be not an intelligence, Like a widow’s bird Or an old horse5.

He longs to see a star that is simply and purely a star, not a symbol of light, or of wisdom, or a sign of religious significance. This ideal is better embodied in his late poem “Of Mere Being,” in which he envisions a palm “beyond the last thought” and a gold-feathered bird singing “without human meaning, without human feeling.”6 But paradoxically, such crystalline beauty is achieved only after laborious cerebration and conscious human intervention. Stevens comes closer to a supreme fiction of nature in his less self-conscious moments. The opening section of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” successfully gives the reader an illusion of regarding nature itself: “Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.”7 To be at one with nature, as advocated in and evidenced by Stevens’s poetry, we have to momentarily suppress our consciousness, that is, lull to sleep our emotions and intellectual faculties. Instead of humanizing nature, we need to integrate into nature by transforming ourselves into a natural object, an empty site where phenomena unfold without human intervention, where nature reveals itself in crystal transparence. It is for this reason that images of sleep hold a unique place in Stevens’ poems. As J. Hillis Miller comments, “Sleep is the beginning, the radiant candor of pure mind without any content, mind as it is when it faces a bare unimagined reality or as it is when it has completed the work of decreation and is ready ‘in an ever-changing, calmest unity’ to begin imagining again.”8

Vol. 1 2013 In “The Snow Man,” Stevens presents this state of slumber succinctly: “One must have a mind of winter / To regard the frost and boughs / Of the pine-trees crusted with snow.” The “mind of winter” is void, passive, uncontaminated, free of emotion, ensuring that it will not “think of any misery” when hearing “the sound of the wind”, remaining impervious to infiltrations of ethical associations, and able to behold “[n]othing that is not there and the nothing that is.” Only when the beholder seems to have lost his ability to see and become “nothing himself” can he finally filter out everything added by human consciousness and see the original appearance of nature, even the ultimate nothingness behind it9. Thus to be privileged with a glimpse of nature as it is, the beholder has to pay the price of turning himself into an the title of the poem is “The Snow Man,” not “The Snowman.” A snow man after all is not a snowman, a lifeless thing, but a human being hoping and striving to enter the role of a snowman, a man who has a mind of snow. As hinted by the space between “Snow” and “Man,” the chasm between the two is unbridgeable. What Stevens calls for here is a neutral, almost nonhuman perspective. This Wang Wei unselfconsciously achieved in his late poems. The first poet landscape painter of China, he introduced techniques of traditional Chinese painting into his poetry. Ancient Chinese artists did not adopt perspective, which implies a humancenteredness. They often spent months even years in some mountain and then produced a panoramic work that was intended to give an overall representation of the scenery. More significantly, human beings depicted in their works rarely obtrude; they are like trees or stones, merging naturally into the landscapes. To the Chinese mind, nature and humanity are never polarities. Even though Taoism, the only halfmetaphysical school of ancient China, worships Tao, the supreme creative force of the universe, it is believed to be a material, though invisible, entity rather than a spiritual presence. Zhuangzi (3rd century BCE), whose philosophy has been the major inspiration for Chinese landscape painting and nature poetry, advocates that we should regard ourselves as on equal footing, since Tao has no bias for the human species, with everything else in the world. Furthermore, the process of logical thinking brings with it an array of conceptual and value distinctions that are essentially arbitrary and futile, having no counterparts in the natural world10. Therefore, the wisest approach to nature is to forego the intellect, that most cherished property of human beings. As philosopher Shao Yong (1011-1077 CE) puts it, “To observe things in terms of those things: this is to follow one’s nature [xing]. But to observe things in term of the self: this is to follow one’s feelings [qing]. The nature is impartial and enlightened; the feelings are partial and

Li Yongyi

Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei

blind.”11

Stevens.

In “Deer Park,” Wang Wei successfully effaces his own presence from the scenery: “No one seen. Among empty mountains, / hints of drifting voices, faint, no more. / Entering these deep woods, late sunlight / Flares on green moss again, and rises.” 12 A trap into which Western translators of this poem often fall is to supply an “I” in their renditions, but the original is

2.The Nature of Nature

as it were, in perceiver-less perceptions. The word “empty” corresponds to kong in Chinese and ĞǌQ\DWƗ in Sanskrit. Influenced by native Taoism, Chinese intellectuals tend to regard ĞǌQ\DWƗ as a state of mind a metaphysical summary of the nature of the universe. Wang Wei’s poem is empty in that it is devoid of any emotional response and intellectual engagement, as if everything has been recorded by an automatic camera. We seem to forget that it is a poem, a human creation; what absorbs us is simply the scenery. Yet the choice of details and the structural control displays the ingenuity of a poet-painter. More importantly, the very effort at self-effacement reminds us of the reining in of wandering thoughts that takes place in Taoist and Buddhist meditations. At such moments, even if there is human presence, it is hushed by, and absorbed into, a sense of cosmic unity: “It is dusk—heaven and earth vast silence, / mind all idleness a spacious river shares.”13 In “Visiting Provision-Fragrance Monastery”, this freedom for things to reveal themselves and the paradoxical power of stillness are given fuller expression: Provision-Fragrance beyond knowing, I travel miles into cloud-hidden peaks, follow deserted trails past ancient trees. A bell sounds, lost in mountain depths. Cragged rock swallows a creek’s murmur, Sunlight’s color cold among pines. Here on lakeshores, water empty, dusk spare, Chan stillness masters poison dragons14.

The “I” in the poem serves to string together frames of landscapes, but never intrudes on the natural scenes. The shifting focal points are always on the things themselves, whose combinations, contrasts and changes are presented as the real “events” of the work. Even though Chan (the Chinese word for Zen) hints at a human religion and culture, it exercises its power as a pervasive “stillness” that is hardly distinguishable from the self-contained physical world. The human intellect, through abdication and inaction, achieves a sensuous enlightenment, dispensing with the logical imperatives and emotional self-resistances indispensable with

There are moments when Stevens almost believes that he can arrive at a true communion with nature, but his dominant fear is that the chasm between nature and human consciousness is impassable. With the presence of this opaque boundary, it is natural for him to suspect that nature may be hostile and so to suffer from a sense of insecurity. Once human beings realize that the world is not really anthropocentric, and that they have been acting like “A Rabbit King of the Ghosts” 15 living with delusions in a universe full of latent threats, they may well be overwhelmed by an inexorable fear. In “Domination of Black,” Stevens writes: Out of the window, I saw how the planets gathered Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. I saw how the night came, Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks. I felt afraid. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks16.

In this poem, the fear that springs from the indecipherability of nature is compounded with a sense of doom that even the gigantic universe itself will come to an end. Though in his middle career, Stevens largely suppressed this haunting fear and concentrated on the human creative power, whatever the external world was like, it obstinately re-emerged in his late poems. In “Auroras of Autumn,” he is again drawn into his accustomed turbulence. Absorbed in the natural spectacle, he doubts that the power of the human imagination, however great, could confront, let alone incorporate, the immense universe. All the domestic warmth and comfort, all human attempts at building an illusory happy world, seen in this light, become insignificant and desperate, “a tragedy.”17 He cannot reconcile the two polarities; he has to invoke his imagined “rabbi” to contrive “balance,” “the vital, the never-failing genius.”18 Ancient Chinese poets were immune to such intellectual angst regarding nature. In Wang Wei’s case, nature was always a friendly presence, healing all the wounds he had received in the human realm. The catastrophic An-Shi Rebellion (755-763 CE), which almost cost Wang Wei his life19, never cast its shadow on his nature poems. In his eyes, while the human world is full of vicissitudes, nature is a haven of stability, repose and beauty. The cyclic change of nature for him is the very form of its eternity. In “Hearing an Oriole at the Palace,” he writes, “We wander life, no way back.

Comparative Studies of China and the West Even a simple / birdcall starts us dreaming of home again.”20 Even at this early stage in his life when the cursus honorum yet beckoned, he was already harboring nostalgia for a simple life in woods. This divided mindset is typical of ancient Chinese intellectuals. Despite the imperatives of socially oriented Confucianism to serve among them to dismiss all worldly affairs as empty and vain, compared with the simple but essential pleasures associated with nature. While they were conscientious, even religious in their zeal to help the prince achieve a golden reign, a hermit’s dream always glistened in the back of their minds. Wang Wei thus comforts a friend disillusioned with politics (“A Farewell”): Off our horses, I offer you wine, ask where you’re going. You say your work has come to nothing, you’ll settle at South Mountain. Once you set out, questions end and white clouds keep on and on21.

Nature, in its wordless eloquence, is the ultimate source of consolation and strength. Having known the futilities and dangers of political careers, Wang Wei lived a secluded life in his late years. He comments on his hermitage in an epistle: “In these twilight years, I love tranquility / alone. Mind free of all ten thousand affairs, / self-regard free of all those grand schemes, / I return to my old forest, knowing empty.” To people asking about “the inner pattern behind failure and success,” he answers, “Fishing song carries into shoreline depths.” 22 Nature is the realm of freedom, where human definitions of failure and success do not apply, where meanings we impose on our secular aspirations evaporate. Fishermen in the Chinese literary tradition represent a detached wisdom, an enlightened perception of the vanity of pursuits after wealth, power and fame, a perfect sense of belonging in the natural world. In “Whole-South Mountain Hermitage,” Wang Wei describes his carefree life: I cared enough for Way in middle age, so now I’m settled beside South Mountain. Setting out alone in old age, emptiness knowing itself here in such splendor, I often hike up to where streams end, gaze into a time newborn clouds rise. If I meet some old-timer in these woods, we laugh and talk, all return forgotten23.

Stevens could never feel so much at ease with 78

Vol. 1 2013 nature, with his intellectual intensity and under the shadow of a long metaphysical tradition. It is interesting to note that the poet in the above poem enjoys talking with “some old-timer,” maybe a farmer or woodcutter. Though he may not share a Taoist-Buddhist belief with Wang Wei, the common bond with nature enables them

3.Nature and Art If nature is felt as the ultimate haven for humanity, any dichotomy between human perception of nature and nature itself is downplayed, and the subjectivity of the artist seems to be taken over by a “common” consciousness that envelops both the natural setting and the human presence in it. Art ceases to be a mirror held up to nature, but becomes, as it were, a manifestation willed and filled by the very soul of nature. When another great poet Su Shi (1037-1101 CE) praises Wang Wei’s painting and poetry as containing and illuminating each other, he is marveling at the ability of this 7th century poet to know the “heart” of nature, and to reveal it equally extraordinarily in two art forms, in a way nature would have had itself revealed. A quintessential short poem picked by Su Shi reads: “Bramble stream, white rocks jutting out. / Heaven cold, red leaves scarce. / Up here where the mountain road ends, / sky stains 24 It is amazing to see how Wang Wei manages, in a minimalist manner, to penetrate to the peculiar spirit of a late-autumn landscape, especially its rich, fluid, mysterious palette and the expressive stillness of tactile diversity. Like other ancient Chinese poets, however, Wang Wei is as a rule not interested in meticulous accuracy of detail when depicting nature; in order to capture the essence of nature, he usually adopts as his way of representation an impressionistic juxtaposition of images of poetic intrigue. In “Whole-South Mountains,” he ambitiously aims to re-create the area in its entirety: Star mountains for a deep-sky capital, these Great-Origin peaks stretch to the far seas. Returned to white cloud, my gaze is whole; in azure haze, sight empties nonbeing utterly. Our star-lands orbit around this central peak, valleys all shifting shadow and light. Here, If I wanted human company for the night, I’d cross water, visit a woodcutter, no more25.

While he excludes, in his accustomed manner, redundant emotional or intellectual engagement with the scenery, the excellent descriptive skills, as of painting and cinematography, convince us that the poem is not an objective description of the mountains, but an artistic invention of Wang Wei the poet-painter. This distinction

Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei

Li Yongyi between art and nature certainly does not bother him. For him, art is part of nature. In “Bamboo-Midst Cottage,” art (here music), like bamboo and the moon, nothing alien or external, pulsates in a quiet yet lively microcosm: “Sitting alone in silent bamboo dark, / I play a qin26, settle into breath chants. / In these forest depths no one knows, / this moon come bathing me in light.”27 If one’s life is in tune with the rhythms of nature, every object, every trivial detail, every uneventful moment, is transformed into ongoing drama by an acute sense of its beauty. Wang Wei thus addresses a rock: “Dear stone, little platter alongside cascading streamwater, / willow branches are sweeping across my winecup again. / And if you say spring wind explains nothing, tell me why, / when 28

This friendly banter crosses the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, just as the frontiers between art, nature and life temporarily disappear in his poems at moments of intense perceptual involvement: “Faint shadow, a house, and traces of rain. / In courtyard depths, the gate’s still closed / past noon. That lazy, I gaze at moss until / its azure-green comes seeping into robes.”29 In this empty trance, the moss seems to have been summoned by the spell of the poet’s oblivion into the interiority of human sensation, with its color, as in a painting, invading and occupying the motionless human

For Stevens, art and nature are more in tension than in harmony. As a way out of his obsession with the division between nature and the human mind, he devotes himself to celebrating the creative power of human beings. He is aware that “[he] cannot bring a world quite around,” and that “things as they are changed upon the blue guitar” (“The Man with Blue Guitar”)30, but he seems to believe that we at least can create another world in works of art. In “The Idea of Order at Key West,” the fact that we cannot replicate nature in art is not taken as dismaying but encouraging: It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hours its solitude. 6KH ZDV WKH VLQJHU DUWL¿FHU RI WKH ZRUOG In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker31.

Art acts as a constructive force that brings the chaotic fragments of the world, which are alien and unmanageable, into unified wholes of order and harmony, which are within human control. Thus art mollifies the human fear in a universe that is largely inexplicable to them, and can serve as a substitute for

crumbling religion in providing a spiritual haven. In “Anecdotes of the Jar,” the human utensil, a symbol of art, even subdues the wilderness and “[takes] dominion everywhere.”32 For Stevens, an important function of art is that it helps him to be reconciled with death. By rejecting orthodox Christianity, Stevens also deprived himself of the comfort of a promised heaven. The unsatisfied human desire for immortality had tormented him for a long time before he found the solution in art. In “The Rock” he suggests that, though death will obliterate our bodily existence, poetry as ambassador of human consciousness can resist the tyranny of time: These leaves are the poem, the icon and the man. These are a cure of the ground and of themselves, In the predicate that there is nothing else. They bud and bloom and bear fruit without change. They are more than leaves that cover the barren rock33.

When a poet ceases to be, his poems transform from subjective projections of his mind into objects of contemplation; for the reader, they become purely part of the external world, part of nature. The consciousness of the poet is revived whenever a reader approaches his works and engages in a cross-time dialogue. In this way, Stevens seems assured, immortality is accessible to him. However, he forgets that the material on which his poems are written or printed is subjected to change, that many masterpieces have been lost simply because natural or social catastrophes destroyed the manuscripts or books. Although Stevens worships the remedial powers of the imagination for human spirituality, his conception of this mental faculty, derived from his own understanding of nature, differs considerably from the traditional Orphic version of it. Orpheus in Greek mythology, as archetype of poets, was able to move animals, plants and even lifeless rocks, to turn the gloom of Hades into a dreamland of art. In the history of Western esthetics, he represents a human-centered, humanizing imagination, for which the visible world (nature) is merely the projection and embodiment of the invisible world (human consciousness). Stevens does not subscribe to this assumption, claiming, “It is important to believe that the visible is the equivalent of the invisible, and once we believe it, we have destroyed the Imagination, that is to say, we have destroyed the false imagination, the false conception of the imagination as some incalculable vates within us, unhappy Rodomontade.”34 For Stevens, the vates is the Orphic bard, always inclined to mold nature according to human will, but the true artistic imagination must overcome this humanizing tendency and strive

Comparative Studies of China and the West towards the abstract. The first section of “Notes towards a Supreme Fiction,” his masterpiece, is titled “It Must Be Abstract.” The word “abstract” comes from the Latin verb abstrahere, which denotes “to drag away.” For Stevens, “dragging away” means stripping human concepts and perceptions of those historical, cultural and linguistic sediments hidden therein. Before eliminating these “a supreme fiction.” In this poem, human ancestor Adam serves as the symbol of the false imagination, dubbed by Stevens “the father of Descartes,” the French philosopher commonly hailed as the icon of rationalism. Owing to Adam’s inescapable presence, “[t]he first idea was not our own.” As Descartes builds his whole cogito, so Adam erred in the very beginning by succumbing to human centrism. Since the true imagination ought to be prehistorical, pre-logical and even pre-linguistic, Adam’s naming of things was already an act of distorting nature: “Phoebus was / A name for something that never could be named.”35 As Robert Harrison argues, even before his disobedience to God’s edict, Adam had already committed an original sin, “not the sin of transgression by which he lost the garden but the sin of denomination 36 To Adam, to return to a stage where nature was not yet treated as an extension of human concepts: “There was a myth before the myth began, / Venerable and articulate and complete. // From this the poem springs.”37

4.Nature and Tradition Stevens realizes that apart from the limitation of personal bias, cultural heritage is also responsible for our inaccurate perception of nature, as it is constantly molding our mentality. He suffers from an anxiety that he cannot, as Emerson puts it, “enjoy an original relation to the universe.”38 He is suffocated by the sense that he is looking at nature through the eyes of the dead, and resents the tradition that weighs down on his free imagination. In “The Man on the Dump,” he implicitly compares the literary tradition to a dump: One feels the purifying change. One rejects The trash. That’s the moment when the moon creeps up To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires. Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon (All its images are in the dump) and you see As a man (not like an image of man), You see the moon rise in the empty sky39.

Vol. 1 2013 Stevens reminds us that, when we think that we are beholding the moon, what we really see is but a mixture of the images of the moon poets in the past have created. Only if we reject these images as trash can we see “the moon [come] up as the moon…in the empty sky” that is not populated by ghosts of the past. He is tired of all the second-hand experiences, the bulky interpretations that have accumulated in thousands of years. As a poet imbued with modern spirit, he longs to break new ground for poetry and establish his own domain. In his masterpiece “Notes towards a Supreme Fiction,” he expresses his fervent wish: “You must become an ignorant man again / And see the sun again with an ignorant eye / And see it clearly in the idea of it.”40 Yet Stevens cannot “become an ignorant man again”; he is too intellectual for that. Paradoxically, his very urge for circumventing culture so as to return to nature is itself a product of culture. In it we can at least trace the influences of three cultural factors. The first is modern scientism. During Stevens’ lifetime, great breakthroughs were achieved in the natural sciences, pushing their frontiers into the subatomic level. The prestige of the humanities, in contrast, suffered serious blows, resulting in a crisis for these traditional disciplines. In order to prove their worthiness in a changed world, they also moved in the same direction, aiming at objectivity and precision venerated in science. Husserl’s phenomenology, Russian Formalism and the Linguistic Turn of the humanities all bore witness to this trend. Under such circumstances, it was no surprise for Stevens to dream of grasping nature objectively and purely through the artistic imagination. Steinman points out, after analyzing elements of Planck’s physics and Whitehead’s scientific philosophy, that Stevens’ sciences41. Stevens’ concept of nature also grew out of the American nation’s persistent myth-making. Harrison believes that in disposition Stevens is most close to Thoreau 42 . Similar to Stevens’ emphasis on a preconceptual and pre-linguistic original state, Thoreau regarded the morning as a symbol for the source of spiritual awakening: “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an us in our soundest sleep.”43 For Thoreau, the morning is the moment when the soul reawakes and reestablishes living links with the world. Such a complex for priority is deeply engrained in the American psyche. As Harold Bloom writes in The American Religion, “Americans regard priority as superiority, doubtless because we are the belated Western nation, the Evening Land of Western culture.” 44 For this reason, American culture places great value on internal awakening achieved in religious or quasi-religious practices. They are attracted by the

Li Yongyi prospect of retrieving a sense of priority, lost through their historical belatedness, by tapping the pre-history, pre-universe existence of God. This space within their mind, this pure realm transcending time, is inseparably connected in American culture to images of wilderness or nature. Stevens’ enterprise of pursuing art in a nature free of human consciousness is powered by the same psychological dynamic that triggers Thoreau’s endeavor to regenerate spirit by a hermit’s life in the woods. Viewed in a larger cultural framework, Stevens’ hankering after something pure and absolute fits nicely into the metaphysical tradition of the West. For millennia, it has been the dream of countless philosophers, poets and artists to arrive at the ultimate Being that is absolute, eternal, independent of all the fluctuations of the physical world. Stevens is different in this: he removes the religious and ethical accretions from the dream, and affirms the inaccessibility of pure nature, assigning to poetry the role of mediating between passive, apathetic nature and human beings’ passionate pursuit for absoluteness. With his imaginative richness and rational vigor, his poetry creates for us a distinctively Stevensian world, much more compressed, bare and dispassionate than the world in traditional Western poetry. Compared with Stevens, Wang Wei’s position on tradition is more temperate. Even a subtle reader can hardly detect in his nature poems any marked deviation from those anterior to his time. Yet he is an innovator both technically and thematically. Most poets before him in whose works nature features prominently took nature as the inherent setting for human activities, echoing the tenet, embraced by all major schools of thought in China, of the mutual activation and mirroring between nature and humanity. But they tend either to show an emotional attachment to nature, like Tao Qian (352427 CE), or to be carried away by their eagerness to enlighten readers on Taoist-Buddhist truisms, like Xie Lingyun (385-433 CE). Wang Wei, however, is both intense and detached; his insights rarely obtrude. Silent parallels between natural scenery and states of mind, and ingeniously orchestrated presentation inspired by mountains and streams, help to convey his message.

Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei symbolist or allegorical reading would fail to do justice to the unassuming narration of the work, as realistically, it is certainly legitimate for anyone to indulge in such temporary luxury of forgetful tranquility after a tiring trip and surrounded by an alluring landscape, and as any laborious interpretation automatically violates the “perennial form” of “idleness.” Similarly, when he is gazing out from a terrace, the poet suddenly glimpses something lurking in the view: “In farewell on the terrace, we gaze / across boundless plains and rivers. / It it never ends.”46 The event is commonplace—saying farewell to a friend, and the scene is ordinary—birds returning to their nests, but when they are juxtaposed, and when Wang Wei ends the poem with “it never ends,” a picture of eternal tragedy emerges. Seen in this light, human beings, with Sisyphean labors and Odyssean wanderings imposed on themselves, whatever pleasant names they call them, are essentially exiles in nature, striving against the universal law of home-coming. But even without such philosophizing, the poem still stands as a moving farewell piece. When he makes more explicit reference to Buddhist doctrine, Wang Wei differs from his predecessors in his ability to dissolve it in his poems in a homely, effortless manner. His “Off-Hand Poem” is a best example: I’m ancient, lazy about making poems. There’s no company here but old age. I no doubt painted in some former life, roamed the delusion of words in another, and habits linger. Unable to get free, I somehow became known in the world, but my most fundamental name remains this mind still here beyond all knowing47.

While recognizable Buddhist motifs of VDPVƗUD (reincarnation) and ĞǌQ\DWƗ (emptiness) thread the poem, the witty, self-deriding tone and the colloquial language give this miniature narrative of incarnations a grace that cannot be found in most literature inspired by that faith. Interestingly, although he suggests that his identity as a

In “Azure Creek,” after a meandering boat journey, the poet arrives at his destination: “My mind’s perennial form is idleness, / and the same calm fills a river’s

cycle of rebirths and fluctuating chances, Wang Wei leaves us with the impression that he is not ready to sever his affectionate ties with art or life, a revealing print of his native Confucianism. It is also owing to the

my fishing line--and stay, stay.”45 All of a sudden, as illumined by lightning, yet all too naturally, as following the inevitable course of a river, we are overwhelmed by a sense of perfect sympathy between the purpose of our existence and that of nature, the nostalgia and resolution at the end of the poem pointing at once to the physical here and now, and to the metaphysical beyond. But any

a devout Buddhist in his years of creative peak, seems never to relegate manifestations of nature, not even his own representations of them, to the realm of emptiness as understood by orthodox Buddhism. Wang Wei silently revolutionized Chinese nature poetry. He opened a new vista for later poets, especially those drawn to Zen Buddhism. Yet those Zen poets are more self-conscious

Comparative Studies of China and the West because they like working Zen concepts into their works. With his disarming fictions of nature, Wang Wei replaced for the Chinese the moon, to borrow Stevens’s metaphor, with his own version of it. While Wang Wei’s serenity helps him, arguably, come closer to a genuine communion with nature and perfect his artistry in representation, it restricts his imaginative power and intellectual sophistication. Stevens, on the other hand, fully exploits his own imagination as he is dismayed at the dichotomy between nature and human consciousness, but can never quite feel at ease with nature. Perhaps the “rabbi” whom Stevens calls upon to “contrive a whole”48 should be able to combine the talent of the two artists and the strengths of the two traditions, at once immersed in nature with amiable humility and celebrating his creative energy with confidence, keeping an intellectual awareness without suppressing his/her instinctual responses to nature. This is certainly too idealistic, but it is an ideal woth striving for.

Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind [hereafter cited as PEM. New York: Vintage Books, 1990, p. 15. 2 Wang Wei, “Autumn Twilight, Dwelling among Mountains,” in David Hinton, trans., The Selected Poems of Wang Wei [hereafter cited as WW] . New York: New Directions, 2006, p. 76. 3 Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens [hereafter cited as CP]. New York: Knopf, 1954, p. 380. 4 Stevens, CP, p. 424. 5 Stevens, PEM, p. 39. 6 Stevens, PEM, p. 398. 7 Stevens, PEM, p. 20. 8 J. H. Miller, Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1965, p. 269. 9 Stevens, PEM, p. 54. 10 Chuang-Tzu, “Khi Wu Lun, or ‘The Adjustment of Controversies,” in James Legge, trans. and ed., The Texts of Taoism: The Tao Te Ching, the Writings of Chuang-Tzu, and the Thai-Shang, Tractate of Actions and Their Retributions. New York: Julian Press, 1959, pp. 224-245. 11 Qtd. in Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983, p. 467. 12 WW, p. 40. 13 “On a Wall Tower at River-North City,” The Selected Poems of Wang Wei, p. 4. 14 WW, p. 12. 15 Stevens, PEM, p. 150. 16 Stevens, PEM, p. 14. 17 Stevens, CP, p. 415. 18 Stevens, CP, p. 420. 19 The rebel army stormed the capital before many officials, including Wang Wei, could make their escape. They were either murdered or, like Wang Wei, served in the rebel regime under coercion. After the rebellion was quelled, Wang Wei was charged along with others for treason, but he was finally pardoned with the intervention of his brother, premier at that time, and extenuated by a poem written during rebel occupation that proved his loyalty to the Tang court. 20 WW, p. 10.

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WW, p. 29. “In Reply to Vice-Magistrate Zhang,” in WW, p. 97. 23 WW, p. 90. 24 “In the Mountains,” in WW, p. 91. 25 WW, p.33. 26 Ch’in, a seven-stringed classical Chinese instrument. 27 WW, p. 49. 28 WW, p. 13. 29 “The Way It Is,” in WW, p. 96. 30 Stevens, CP, p. 165. 31 Stevens, PEM, p. 98. 32 Stevens, CP, p. 76. 33 Stevens, PEM, p. 362. 34 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. London: Faber, 1951, p. 61. 35 Stevens, PEM, p. 383. 36 R. P. Harrison, “Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself.” New Literary History Vol.30, no.3 (1999), p. 663. 37 Stevens, PEM, p. 383. 38 R. W. Emerson, Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960, p. 21. 39 Stevens, PEM, p. 163. 40 Stevens, PEM, p. 207. 41 Lisa Steinman, Made in America: Science, Technology and American Modernist Poets. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987, pp. 133-168. 42 Harrison, p. 663. 43 H. D. Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience. New York: Norton, 1966, p. 61. 44 Harold Bloom, The American Religion. New York: Simon, 1992, p. 260. 45 WW, p. 85. 46 “Gazing out from the Upper Terrace, Farewell to Li,” in WW, p. 18. 47 WW, p. 100. 48 Stevens, CP, 420. 22

About the author: Li Yongyi is professor of English at Chongqing University. His major fields of inquiry include Anglo-American modernist poetry, Roman poetry and classical Chinese poetry. He was awarded a Loeb Classical Library Foundation grant in 2008 and a Fulbright Visiting Scholarship in 2012. An active literary translator, he has rendered fourteen books into Chinese from English, French and Latin, of which Catullus’ Carmina signaled the first full presentation of the Roman poet in China.

COMPARATIVE STUDIES of CHINA and THE WEST

The First International Conference of Comparative Studies of China and the West was held in Beijing

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The First International Conference of Comparative Studies of China and the West was held at Peking University, from July 12 to 14, 2013. Prof. Gu Zhengkun chaired the opening session. In his congratulatory letter, Professor Wang Enge, President of Peking University, sent his warm congratulations. Professor Tu Weiming made an opening speech and Prof. John G. Blair expressed his welcome to the participants. The conference aimed mainly at promoting the dialogue and communication between the two civilizations.

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ISSN 2009-6097(Print) ISSN 2009-6100(Online)

2013

This conference was a great success and attracted a considerable attention of the media including China Central Television (CCTV). Related reports on the conference are available on various websites, such as xinhuanet.com, Chinanews.com, Chinadaily.com.cn, news.xinmin.cn, npopss-cn. gov.cn, people.com.cn, sina.com.cn, epaper.gmw.cn, cqnews.net, jfdaily.com, guoxue.com and sohu. com. The next conference will be held in 2015 in Germany.

Volume < I >

The conference was organized by the International Association for Comparative Studies of China and the West (IACSCW), hosted by the Institute of World Literature, Peking University, and co-sponsored by the Shakespeare Society of China and Beijing Normal University. More than 150 scholars from over 20 countries attended this event. The conference lasted three days and included seven keynote speeches and 12 panel sessions. The presentations covered a wide range of topics and multiple aspects of Chinese-Western comparative studies.