Domination of Power over Rationality (Scholarly Class, Traditional Political Culture and Chinese Society)

Author: Ge Quan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: The scholar-officials are the bearers of traditional Chinese political culture. They acquire knowledge and spread culture, serving as both key members of the ancient Chinese imperial political group and the primary creators of traditional culture and Chinese literature. Therefore, the study of traditional Chinese culture and Chinese society cannot avoid engaging with the scholar-officials. In other words, research on the scholar-officials will be an important path to gaining an in-depth understanding of traditional Chinese political culture, recognizing the relationship between traditional culture and traditional society, and assessing its impact on contemporary China. However, traditional Chinese culture is vast and profound, and the connection between scholar-officials and culture is intricate. Where should we begin to accurately reveal the relationship between scholar-officials and traditional political culture? This book adopts a positioning analysis approach in its conceptual framework. First, we make a fundamental judgment about the existence form of scholar-officials in traditional Chinese society, identifying their historical positioning as "navigating between the Way and the King," manifesting as political reverence for the king and adherence to the Way in academia. We argue that this fundamental positioning determines their unique social identity and status. Then, this book uses this fundamental positioning as the analytical perspective to unify the entire content. The logical development of each analytical level in the book, such as "scholar-officials as the backbone of society" and "scholar-officials as social intermediaries," as well as the analysis of scholar-officials' personalities and spirit, are all based on this fundamental positioning.