20th Century Foreign Cultural: Ikeda Daisaku Collection

Author: He Jingsong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-03-01
Features: At the turn of the century, the development of humanities and academia requires reflection and review. This is the need of the advancing socialist cultural cause, and the considerable accumulation achieved by domestic academia in researching contemporary Western studies under the guidance of Marxism has made such reflection and review possible. Thus, we organized scholars to translate and select the "20th Century Collection of Foreign Cultural Masterpieces." Today, we are compiling the "20th Century Collection of Foreign Cultural Masters," with the intention of showcasing the basic features of several generations of intellectuals through a series of individual selections and outlining the general contours of humanities and intellectual development in this century. This is a preliminary sketch, far from a grand mural. The predecessors had the "Myriad Library," where everything was considered to be within reach—a truly magnificent achievement. However, given our capabilities and conditions, we can only select a series of cross-sections. Naturally, striving for completeness is not always a choice. The introduction of modern foreign thought has already had a history of over a century, yet how many classic authors remain untranslated, their names little known. For a cultural powerhouse, this is highly unsuitable. Pound said, "A great literary century must also be a century of translation." Broadly speaking, culture is no exception. In light of this, as we undertake a cultural summary of the century, we have resolved to cede a portion of it to others. The remaining work, the work at hand, as Lu Xun would say, is still called "stealing fire from heaven." As a large-scale series, it should not be limited to cultural accumulation. The fundamental purpose still lies in the reconstruction of modern culture. In this era of global information integration, the development of national culture is inevitably set against the backdrop of world culture. We can only draw on heterogeneous ideas, cultural knowledge, and humanistic literacy to create a favorable ecological environment from within our innate traditional system, one that is conducive to preserving, developing, and perfecting our own culture.