Scheler's Selected Works (Volume 1 and 2) -- 20th Century Thought Library

Author: [German] Scheler, edited by Liu Xiaofeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-01-01
Features: Over the past century, Chinese intellectual scholarship has been greatly unsettled by the impact of Western thought and the reform and transformation of Chinese society. One manifestation of this is the separation of thought and scholarship: thought has become empty and speculative, while scholarship has become unrealistic and unbalanced. Confucius, the original ancestor of Chinese thought, once said, "I have not eaten for a whole day and not slept for a whole night, thinking, but to no avail. It is better to learn." Confucius warned, "To learn without thinking is to be lost; to think without learning is perilous." Scholarship and thought should mutually promote each other in depth and caution. The great thinkers of the late Qing Dynasty (Kang Youwei, Zhang Junmai, and Liang Qichao) were all deeply versed in and advanced in a specific academic field; the May Fourth New Culture Movement thinkers, in their debates over "ideology," encouraged a speculative and unfounded intellectual trend. The situation of thought and scholarship in the 20th century was particularly difficult, not unique to Chinese thought, as Western thought also faced numerous reform challenges. However, the great Western thinkers of this century were all deeply rooted in a specific academic field, with scholars who were cautious and thoughtful thinkers or thinkers who were scholars emerging one after another. They used their rigorous scholarship to address the modern dilemmas of society and thought, and the brilliance of their intellectual scholarship was not something ordinary minds could disrupt. The intellectual scholarship of the 20th century in Western languages was dominated by social theory and emerging disciplines. In the past, the Chinese academic world has focused more on philosophers and thinkers, neglecting political, economic, historical, linguistic, and anthropological thinkers, thus ultimately limiting its grasp of Western thought and scholarship in this century. The translation of Western classics into Chinese by intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty remains an unfinished task for the Chinese academic world over the past century. At the turn of the 20th century, the translation of Western studies into Chinese should particularly emphasize the accumulation of social thought in this century. The intellectual scholarship of the 20th century bears the burden of harmonizing and coordinating: first, the tension between technical knowledge, empirical knowledge, metaphysical knowledge, and religious knowledge; second, the tension between classical knowledge and modern knowledge. For Chinese scholarship, there is also the need to harmonize the tension between Chinese and Western cultural traditions. However, the relationship between Chinese and Western thought is fundamentally not one of national competition but of a shared fate in the modern context. Intellectual scholarship advancing in these two linguistic traditions faces the fundamental modern dilemma of re-arguing the legitimacy of social and human order. Therefore, establishing the "Twentieth Century Thinkers Library" is of great significance. How can intellectual scholarship achieve results in a single day without accumulating over a hundred years? The works of Western intellectual scholarship in this century are so numerous that they fill the libraries. The future of Chinese intellectual scholarship will lie in nurturing the great ideas of Western scholarship in this century.