Self-Cultivation, Family Management, State Governance, and World Peace: A New Perspective on the Historical Rationality and Modern Value of Traditional Chinese Holistic Values

Author: Li Ruilan Ji Nali
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: In recent years, with the advancement of China's modernization process and the subsequent challenges and issues, scholars have naturally focused their research on the Western world, which has achieved modernization first, in an attempt to learn from others and apply the principles of modernization to China. As a result, they discovered that a significant characteristic supporting Western modernization is individualism aimed at wealth accumulation, while China has consistently advocated collectivism with the concept of "the world for all" since ancient times. Consequently, some people conclude that China's backwardness since the modern era and the numerous obstacles it faces in the current modernization process are all due to this morally charged collectivism. Therefore, while promoting individualism, they begin to reflect on and criticize collectivism from various perspectives. Even more extreme, they directly target the criticism at the traditional collectivism with "the world for all" and the communist belief it supports, as well as the Chinese revolution guided by it, claiming that most of China's "scholars" and a few Western "scholars" (including Russian "scholars") are working together to push the nation and its people into an irreparable corner. The authors of this book attempt, with their limited knowledge, to systematically explore the traditional Chinese collectivist values of "self-cultivation, family harmony, governance, and peace" from their origins to their establishment, from their dissemination mechanisms to their social impact, using historical evidence to uncover their rich historical rationality. At the same time, with an open perspective grounded in the needs of the times, they compare traditional collectivist values in the East and West and analyze the modern significance and necessary transformation of traditional Chinese collectivist values, highlighting their inherent modern value.