Tag: modernity

Religion, philosophy, or neither? The challenges of engaging Confucianism in global cultural dialogues

Throughout the twentieth century, tensions between (Western) modernity and (Chinese) national culture dominated Chinese philosophical and intellectual debates. This was, and continues to be, especially the case in the difficulties in attempts to reconcile contemporary (liberal) political thought with traditional Chinese socio-political culture, questions that have remained “largely unanswered”.1

Confucian revivalism which seeks to relate and place Confucianism into direct conversation with Western-centric concepts can thus be problematic. Whilst conceptually useful in terms of introducing Confucian ‘motifs’2 to non-Sinitic intellectual spaces, its appropriateness in the reverse sense, when framed through non-Confucian notions, can be contested. The hegemony of Western modes of thought means that Confucianism, when related to other schools of thought, is often conceived through the lens of philosophy or religion. Whilst there is value in translating Confucianism into something more directly comparable to Western concepts, enabling Confucian ideas to be reappropriated into different cultural-historical contexts, it is also delimiting, rigidly fixing Confucianism into externally-produced intellectual ‘boxes’. This fails to account for the more comprehensive ways in which Confucianism interacts with, shapes, and is enacted in social and political life. Rather than an abstract ‘idea’ like democracy, liberalism, or Marxism which can be transported to different contexts, or a religion that can be ‘adopted’ and followed, Confucianism is more deeply and specifically entwined within Sinitic civilization or culture.

The civilizational discourse promoted by the New Confucian movement, inspired by the thought of Xiong Shili (1885-1968), thus seems most appropriate for conceptualising Confucianism in a global sense. This approach views connections between civilizations, in their comprehensive totality, as a means for Chinese “national character to reach higher places of perfection”,3 adopting a broader notion of Confucianism as the core of an all-encompassing Chinese civilization. The ‘Confucian Constitutional Order’ advocated by Qing Jiang4 or the political philosophy of “Confucian political perfectionism” envisioned by Joseph Chan5 offer examples of engaging with and at times integrating Western ideas yet remaining fundamentally rooted in and derived from a Confucian basis. These scholars have not pursued a complete Sinocentric approach: they recognise and engage with alternative (namely, Western political-philisophical) models of thinking about society. Yet, they have adapted them into a distinctly Confucian (Sinitic) civilizational framework: Confucianism provides the intellectual lens through which other cultures are approach, rather than fitting Confucianism into external concepts of philosophy or religion. This means that engagement with other cultures can take place through Confucianism in its comprehensive form, as a form of inter-civilizational dialogue, rather than a distorted, appropriated ‘Confucianism as philosophy’ or ‘Confucianism as religion’.

The idea of a ‘world philosophy of culture’ as advocated by the ‘Boston Confucians’6 is a valuable framework at the general, global level. However, when engaging with Confucianism specifically, utilising Western-derived concepts like philosophy or religion can distort, appropriate, and delimit Confucianism. As Sun has highlighted, such discourses have sometimes been reproduced in China itself,7 as, in attempts to relate Confucianism to other (Western) ideas, Chinese intellectuals recast Confucianism according to these conceptual labels, which shapes how Confucianism is studied, imagined and manifested in contemporary China.   Consequently, inter-civilizational dialogue perhaps provides the most appropriate, albeit similarly inherently imperfect, means for intercultural exchange and translation.

 

 

  1. Edmund S.K. Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era (Cambridge, 2010), p.94 [↩]
  2. Tu Weiming, ‘Foreword’ in Robert C. Neville, Boston Confucianism: portable tradition in the late-modern world (Albany, 2000). [↩]
  3. Carsun Chung, ‘Manifesto for a Reappraisal of Sinology and the Reconstruction of Chinese Culture’, The Development of Neo-Confucianism, pp.465-483 in W.M. Theodore De Bary and Richard Lufrano (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century (New York, 2001), p.553. [↩]
  4. Qing Jiang, A Confucian Constitutional Order: how China’s ancient past can shape its political future, translated by Edmund Ryden, edited by Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan (Princeton, 2012). [↩]
  5. Joseph Cho Wai Chan, Confucian perfectionism: a political philosophy for modern times (Princeton, 2014). [↩]
  6. Robert C. Neville, Boston Confucianism: portable tradition in the late modern world (Albany, 2000) [↩]
  7. Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton, 2013) [↩]

The American Encounter with Buddhism: What it tells us about Japan and it’s Pursuit of Modernity

In the second chapter of The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, Thomas Tweed discusses American engagement with Buddhism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Tweed explains that, “This study analyzes the public conversation about Buddhism (in English) and focuses on Euro-American Buddhists.”1 The author describes a contradictory engagement with Buddhism in America: the chapter starts off with evidence of Buddhism’s proliferation in America, but quickly turns to consider the many factors which limited American support of Buddhism. In addition to shedding light on American reactions to Buddhism, Tweed’s chapter, “Shall We All Become Buddhists?” points to major differences in Japanese and Chinese engagement with overseas populations, and illuminates in particular the Japanese relationship with modernity. 

In his discussion about Asian-American Buddhists, Tweed asserts that “The Japanese provided greater support for their immigrant Buddhist communities than the Chinese. They apparently did so, in part, in response to Christian missionary efforts.”2 As evidence for this assertion, he points to the 1898 decision by the Japanese Jodo-Shin-shu (True Pure Land Sect) to send two representatives to the United States to study immigrant spiritual practices and the subsequent move by the Kyoto headquarters to send two missionaries, officially recognizing the Buddhist mission in America. Tweed’s observations are useful in a discussion of Japanese reactions to Western industrialization and modernization. Just as the arrival of Mathew Perry’s “black ships” in 1854 threatened Japanese sovereignty, Christian missionaries’ attempt to convert Japanese immigrants in America jeopardized the future of one of the major Japanese religious traditions. Japanese powers intervened to preserve Pure Land Buddhism in America and therefore prove that it was a religion suited for the modern age. Tweed points out that as opposed to Japanese powers, the Chinese did not send missionaries to their American immigrant communities.3 The resulting poor adherence to Buddhism that Tweed notes among Chinese-Americans mirrors China’s failure to institute the systematic program of modernization undertaken in the Meiji era in Japan.  

Both the adoption of Western ideas about Chinese-Americans and the copying of certain Western elements of Buddhism that Tweed observes also represent manifestations of Japan’s pursuit of modernity. Although they largely arrived after the Chinese, “Japanese immigrants, often repeating American criticism of the Chinese, tried to distinguish themselves from the “lower class” Chinese who seemed unable to assimilate.”4 This adoption of western beliefs allow Japanese-Americans to elevate themselves to a status above Chinese-Americans, and therefore separate themselves from a “less developed” nation. In addition, Tweed comments that “A limited amount of Americanization and Protestantization also occurred in Japanese Pure Land Buddhist communities before World War I.”4 The construction of Buddhism along Western lines demonstrates Japan’s attempt to Westernize within the traditional Japanese framework of Pure Land Buddhism. Modern Western powers attained global primacy through intense industrialization and a Christian civilizing mission, Japan sought to do the same by utilizing the discursive tradition made available by Buddhism. 

This pattern is indicative of the new conceptualization of religion which emerged in mid nineteenth century Japan “as both transcending the profane society and responsible for improving and ‘civilizing’ its mores.”5 Religion was now seen as a force separate from the state, that could be used as a tool in Japan’s civilizing and modernizing mission. The Japanese policy regarding Buddhism in America mirrors the propagation of Christianity as a “civilizing religion” by Western powers and is a reaction to the introduction of Western modernity which reached Japan, along with Perry’s ships, in 1854. 

 

Bibliography 

Tikhonov, V. M, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea – The Beginnings, 1883-1910: Survival as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Brill, 2010). 

Tweed, Thomas, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (UNC Press Books, 2005). 

 

 

  1. Thomas Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (UNC Press Books, 2005), p. 38 [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 36 [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 35 [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 37 [↩] [↩]
  5. V. M. Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea – The Beginnings, 1883-1910: Survival as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Brill, 2010), p. 113. [↩]

Modernising China: Why Discourses Surrounding Love and Sex were Central to Republican China’s National Rejuvenation.

In Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China Prasenjit Duara maintains that the nation is often conceived as the primordial subject of history: the foundation upon which a multiplicity of social, political and economic phenomena may be analysed[1]. As such, historiography surrounding nationalism has often taken a ‘top-down’ approach, suggesting that the reification of nationalist sentiments is instantiated by governing bodies or international events[2]. Hence historians such as Lloyd Eastman, Maggie Clinton, Frederick Wakeman Jr., and William Kirby have analysed China’s quest for modernity as a response to the dynamic rise of fascist states in Europe, as Germany and Italy’s rapid national rejuvenation provided a model for nationalists in China who coveted national development[3].

However, these analyses provide an impoverished account of China’s ineluctable path to modernity. Most notably, they overlook how apparently superfluous cultural phenomena such as love, and sex could contribute to China’s national development. Frank Dikötter’s Sex, Culture and Modernity in China provides a necessary response to such historiography by demonstrating how ideas related to sex and sexual desire contributed significantly to China’s modernising discourse[4].

Dikötter argues that in Republican China interest in the subject of sex grew exponentially, as evidenced by the proliferation of new periodicals such as The sex periodical, The sexual desire weekly, The sex journal bi-weekly and ‘The sex journal’[5]. This interest was grounded in the belief that the control of sexual desire was somehow integral to the restoration of a strong China, for if ‘evil’ sexual habits could be eliminated, then Chinese citizens could sacrifice their attention to the development of the nation[6]. For example, great interest was placed upon reproductive health and the procreative behaviour of couples, as medical scientists sought to understand the optimum conditions with which healthy offspring could be produced, as such offspring could then be successfully integrated into China’s fledgling industrial workforce[7].

Contra Eastman, Clinton, and others, one cannot fail to see that discourses around sex and China’s national well-being were inextricably linked. Chinese nation-building was not simply a process of emulating Europe, rather, it embodied certain indigenous cultural transformations such as more open discourses surrounding sex and changing attitudes towards love. Haiyan Lee develops this argument in Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 in which she demonstrates the significance of love in the discourses surrounding national development. The May Fourth Movement (a political and cultural movement emanating from Beijing in 1919) is one such example, where love and its free expression became symbolic of equality and autonomy from foreign interference[8].

Therefore, an intellectual history of the discourses surrounding China’s national development in the Republican period cannot and should not overlook these cultural factors. The history of Republican China should not be a history of competing political ideologies, viewing Chinese nationalism as a tabula rasa upon which a European creed could be imprinted. The Chinese path to modernity is more complex than this, and, in like manner to Dikötter and Lee, explanations which reflect these complex cultural and social dynamics are imperative.

[1] Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China, (Chicago, 1995), pp. 27-29

[2] Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895-1937, (Stanford, 2005), p.1

[3] Lloyd Eastman, Fascism in Kuomintang China: The Blue Shirts, The China Quarterly, 49: 1 (1972), pp.1-31. Maggie Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937, (Durham, 2017). Frederick Wakeman Jr., A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism, The China Quarterly, 150: special issue: Reappraising Republican China (June, 1997), pp.395-432. William Kirby, Germany and Republican China, (Stanford, 1984)

[4] Frank Dikötter, Sex, Culture and Modernity in China, (London, 1995), p.2

[5] Ibid., p.1

[6] Ibid., p.2

[7] Ibid., pp.62-71

[8] Haiyan Lee, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China 1900-1950, (Stanford, 2007), p.5