The Enlightenment Turns to China: The International Flow of Concepts and Their Geographic Dispersion

Cultura ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Chien-shou CHEN
Keyword(s):  
Joint Production ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
International Flow ◽  
Geographic Dispersion ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article attempts to strip away the Eurocentrism of the Enlightenment, to reconsider how this concept that originated in Europe was transmitted to China. This is thus an attempt to treat the Enlightenment in terms of its global, worldwide significance. Coming from this perspective, the Enlightenment can be viewed as a history of the exchange and interweaving of concepts, a history of translation and quotation, and thus a history of the joint production of knowledge. We must reconsider the dimensions of both time and space in examining the global Enlightenment project. As a concept, the Enlightenment for the most part has been molded by historical actors acting in local circumstances. It is not a concept shaped and brought into being solely from textual sources originating in Europe. As a concept, the Enlightenment enabled historical actors in specific localities to begin to engage in globalized thinking, and to find a place for their individual circumstances within the global setting. This article follows such a line of thought, to discuss the conceptual history of the Enlightenment in China, giving special emphasis to the processes of formation and translation of this concept within the overall flow of modern Chinese history.

Projecting the Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
History Of

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his assessment of its impact. It argues that MacIntyre's Enlightenment Project is largely unreconstructed, unredeemed, and undiminished in its failure, even after substantial embellishment. His three principal works comprise an extraordinary indictment of the theoretical and practical legacy of eighteenth-century philosophy. His account projects the Enlightenment's implications and influence as they stem from its aims. He holds it to blame for some of the most sinister aspects of a morally vacuous civilization, cursed by the malediction of unlicenced Reason. His intellectual history of the period forms one of the mainsprings of his own philosophy.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Guo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Late Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
Chinese Perceptions ◽  
History Of ◽  
China Today

Ever since the concept of press freedom was first introduced into China during the late-Qing dynasty, Chinese perceptions of the function of a free press have frequently changed. This research has shown that the social and cultural context shaped the unique interpretations of press freedom in China and impacted the extent to which it was realized in modern Chinese history. There were numerous problems that permeated the history of press freedom in China, problems that continue to influence the experience of press freedom in China today. This chapter concludes by exploring the theoretical and contemporary implications of the conceptual history of press freedom in China.

Remember History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China's War of Resistance to Japan

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES REILLY
Keyword(s):  
Chinese History ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Education Campaign ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
Patriotic Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
External Events ◽  
War Of Resistance ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Party State

AbstractChinese leaders have repeatedly insisted upon the contemporary relevance of the ‘War of Resistance to Japan’ (1937–1945). However, the content of the official history of the war and the lessons drawn from it have changed dramatically from 1949 through 2010. This paper begins by reviewing theories of collective remembrance and then covers four historical periods: China's ‘benevolent amnesia’ on Japan's wartime atrocities before 1982; China's patriotic education campaign from the mid-1980s; the rise of history activism in China in the late 1990s; and the post-2005 reversal in official rhetoric on Japan and the wartime past. It concludes that, while the party-state retains an impressive capacity to shape the narratives of critical periods of modern Chinese history, Chinese leaders are likely to find themselves increasingly constrained by domestic forces and by external events beyond their control.

scholarly journals THE CONSTRUCTION OF SALAFIYYA: RECONSIDERING SALAFISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 389a-389a
Author(s):  
Henri Lauzière
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Concept

Scholars have long struggled with various and even conflicting historical narratives and definitions of Salafism (al-salafiyya), but a closer look at the history of the concept itself—rather than of the ideas for which it stands—goes a long way toward explaining the perennial confusion that has typified this religious orientation. This article examines the production of knowledge about Salafism as a conceptual construct and a typological category. It argues that although Salafi epithets have existed since the medieval period, they did not start referring to a religious concept known as salafiyya until the 1920s. By the same token, the widely accepted idea that salafiyya referred to an Islamic modernist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a historical fiction that originates with Louis Massignon. The history of Cairo's Salafiyya Press and Bookstore, however, sheds important light on the process by which the construction of Salafism took place.

scholarly journals FROM TRAITOR TO MARTYR: DRAWING LESSONS FROM THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF WANG JINGWEI, 1944

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Jeremy E. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
National Government ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
History Of

AbstractBased on recently reopened files and publications in Nanjing, as well as published and newsreel accounts from the 1940s, this paper represents the first scholarly analysis of the rituals surrounding the death and burial of Wang Jingwei in Japanese-occupied China. Rather than locating this analysis purely in the literature on the history of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), however, this paper asks what Wang Jingwei's Re-organized National Government might tell us about personality cults in the political culture of modern China. While Wang's burial drew heavily on the precedent of Sun Yat-sen's funerals of the 1920s, it also presaged later spectacles of public mourning and posthumous commemoration, such as Chiang Kai-shek's funeral in 1975 in Taipei. In focusing on this one specific event in the life of a “puppet government,” this paper hopes to reignite scholarly interest in the study of “dead leaders” and their posthumous lives in modern Chinese history more generally.

A General Review of the Study of the Revolution of 1911 in the People's Republic of China

1980 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Kaiyuan
Keyword(s):  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
General Review ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

Before Liberation, the history of the revolution of 1911 fell within the domain of Kuomintang party history. Although numerous publications appeared, some of which possessed historical value, generally speaking an orthodox point of view occupied the dominant position. Many published works were filled with prejudice and distortion and should not be regarded as genuine historical research.Since the new China was established, research on the revolution of 1911 has gradually become a branch of modern Chinese history, which takes historical materialism as its leading principle.

scholarly journals THE CONSTRUCTION OFSALAFIYYA: RECONSIDERING SALAFISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri Lauzière
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs

For nearly a century of scholarship, uncertainties and paradoxes have beleaguered interpretations of the origins and meaning of Salafism (al-salafiyya). Although academics and journalists alike are well aware of the various definitions and conflicting narratives of Salafism, relieving some of the confusion that beclouds the term continues to prove difficult. Given that concepts are fluid and relational, this state of affairs may seem inevitable. Yet there are reasons to believe that the current confusion surrounding Salafism is in part attributable to faulty scholarship and that consequently the substance and history of this religious orientation will remain unnecessarily puzzling so long as the production of knowledge about Salafism goes unexamined. In that sense, recent scholarly efforts to remedy the situation by providing deeper insights into the intellectual, geographical, and political diversity of Salafism have produced mixed results, for they have largely overlooked two of the most persistent epistemological problems that are at the root of much of the present-day ambiguity.

Sir Robert Hart and the Writing of Modern Chinese History

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Chihyun Chang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Inspector General ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Modern Chinese History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Modern China ◽  
Academic Debate

AbstractThis article examines the conflicts in writing the imperial modern history of China among various stakeholders, particularly Chinese and American historians, and their dealing with a set of personal documents of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Services (CMCS) during the Qing period. This set of documents is called “Hart Industry” and contains Hart's personal papers and seventy-seven volumes of diaries, among others. Revealing the imperial Inspector-General's view on “westernization” in modern China, the Hart Industry played a key role in the development of the history of modern China throughout the twentieth century. From around 1957 until 1995, the diaries became a source of a highly politicized academic debate between Chinese Communist historians of the People's Republic of China and western historians of the Hart Industry. By providing a “study of studies” on the historiography of the colonial modern history of China, this article argues that the Hart diaries were critical to historians’ understanding of their own academic discourse.

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