Chinese Academic Spirit -- Chinese Spirit Series

Author: Xu Fuguang (Author), Chen Kejian (Editor)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The author has divided the selected articles into six parts, with the titles of each part added by the author. Part is "Ren Education and Governance." The content of Ren (benevolence) includes self-cultivation, family harmony, governance, and peace for the world, or simply put, it is the cultivation of inner virtue and the achievement of external sovereignty, or in modern terms, it is self-cultivation and engaging in politics. The second part of this book is titled "Case Studies," featuring three articles; the third part is titled "Dialectical Approach to Academic Methods," featuring six articles. In the "Methodological Dialectics" section, the first three articles are debates with Mr. Mao Zishui and others on the relationship between textual research and principle-based reasoning. As debates often involve emotional outbursts, even the virtuous cannot entirely avoid them, and Mr. Xu was no exception. With time passing, looking at these debates with a calm heart today, this emotional intensity was not entirely necessary. Mr. Xu himself said that writing these articles was a "waste of ink" and that he "felt great distress," and at the end of the last article in this group, he expressed his intention to "respectfully decline further responses." However, setting aside the unnecessary emotions, there are indeed many profound insights in these articles. This group of articles, along with other related discussions, holds undeniable value in clarifying the complexities between textual research and principle-based reasoning, as well as in exploring how to organically integrate the two. Mr. Xu was a scholar of great erudition and had profound expertise in literary history. His fundamental approach to literary studies was no different from his approach to philosophy—he described it as "pursuing experience," and I personally find the appropriate summary to be "understanding the literary heart through historical insight." Therefore, I have used this as the title for several literary commentaries in this fourth part. Among these, the article "Interpreting Du Fu's 'Six Quatrain Poems Playfully Written' from the Perspective of Literary History and Poetic Method" is one I particularly favor. This article begins with a critique of a national Chinese literature exam question, revolves around Du Fu's "Six Quatrain Poems Playfully Written," and brings up numerous issues in the literary history from the Qi and Liang dynasties to the early Tang dynasty. It provides a comprehensive examination and precise judgment on the critiques of the predecessors regarding the Correspondence and the Four Masters, making it a masterful work that interweaves poetic history and mutual verification. It has long been said that "poetry has no definitive interpretation," yet this has become the best excuse for some to indulge in arbitrary assertions. If "governing poetry" is merely a creative exercise built on a pretext, then such conjecture would be acceptable. What is truly alarming is when the notion of "poetry having no definitive interpretation" spreads to "principle-based reasoning having no certain understanding" or "history having no true knowledge," leading to rampant arbitrary assertions everywhere, almost becoming the trend of the times. Mr. Xu Fuguang, through his "self-acquired effort"—"the method of inductive reasoning"—his consistent academic spirit and methods of "pursuing experience," has produced numerous insights and research works that serve as a serious critique of the era's ills. The fifth part of this book is titled "Cultural Embrace," featuring seven articles, most of which discuss the relationships between Chinese and foreign cultures, particularly Sino-Japanese cultural relations. The sixth part is "Prefaces and Annotations," featuring twelve short essays.