What are the focal points of Chinese intellectual history?
In recent years, there has been a unique phenomenon in Chinese academia: While the study of intellectual history is declining in some Western countries, the study in China remains popular. It must be said that this is both abnormal and rational. Why is it abnormal? In Chinese academia over the past decades, there has been the phenomenon of pursuing Western trends. However, the case is different in terms of intellectual history.
Why is it rational? Because the phenomenon reflects the academic trends of recent years in China. I once said in a speech made in Princeton University that due to the Chinese historical tradition, topics concerning thinking and history will always be popular; furthermore, the real-world environment in China dictates that political thinking usually needs to be demonstrated through historical narratives. This has made the study of intellectual history in China boom for a long time, and an increasingly strong political and cultural basis for it has been formed.
What is Chinese intellectual history, rather than Japanese or European intellectual history? The simplest distinction is that the thoughts described in the intellectual history are different in terms of content, due to differences of knowledge, thought and belief among countries as well as differences of historical context, social life and cultural features.
For example, attributed to the opposing views among such thinkers as Pythagoras, Thales, Aristotle and Plato in the early period when European thought germinated, Europe was later forced to integrate various different thoughts and value systems. As a result, the continent henceforth continued to be dedicated to integrating new types of thought. Many see this creative polarization as a recurring theme in Europe’s history.
However, the integration between theology and philosophy, between belief and reason, the central topic of Being which repeatedly appears in the European history of ideas, and the recurring argument about God in theology are all not to be found in the intellectual history of China.
As many scholars have noticed, during the two thousand years of Chinese feudal society, the imperial power’s control over politics, religion and culture was far greater than the control held by central powers in Western or other Eastern secular regimes—such as the kings of Europe or the emperors of Japan. On the other hand, the status of China’s scholar-officials was far more glorious than of scholars in the West or officials in Japan, and they were always the guide of the political and ideological sphere. The independent factors of Chinese mainstream culture are greater than the external influences. In addition, the political ideology centered in Chinese Confucianism has always occupied the mainstream of the country’s knowledge, thought and belief. For these reasons, the continuity of Chinese history is stronger than its fractures, and Chinese intellectual history may have different implications from that of any other nation, state or cultural community.
Similarly, since Chinese Confucianism stresses humanistic qualities and classical knowledge, factors of science and technology, religion and art, territory and navigation have never produced as big a shockwave in Chinese intellectual history as they did in Europe. For Europe, Copernicus’s revolution, Baroque architecture and the age of overseas exploration became touchstones in its intellectual history.
If we use “central ideas” or “key words” to summarize Chinese intellectual history, I think there are five important concepts which constitute the focus of discussion among ancient thinkers. The first is the concept about the world, such as tianxia (the world and universe associated with political sovereignty), and border tribes. The second is the concept related with politics, such as monarchical power and state-officials’ power; the feudal laws and code of ethics and rites. The third is the concept of human nature. The fourth is the concept of life. The fifth is the way of observing things within the basic framework of yin-yang and the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, earth), which can be regarded as ancient China’s theory of cosmology.
Therefore, Chinese intellectual history obviously cannot simply apply the concepts and ideas of European or Japanese intellectual history. It needs to be earnestly comprehended and explained in the context of Chinese history.
In addition, what is particularly important is whether researchers of Chinese intellectual history can keep historical discussions pertinent to today’s reality and diagnose the current ideological problems through reviewing traditional concepts. For this reason, researchers in this field have been following and asking some questions both concerning history and reality in recent years. For example, how the traditional Chinese concepts of unification and tianxia affect the country’s national management system and the vision of international order.
This article was edited and translated from Beijing Daily. Ge Zhaoguang is a professor from the Institute of Literature and History at Fudan University.
edited by BAI LE