Domination of Rationality by Power: Scholars, Traditional Political Culture, and Chinese Society

Author: Ge Quan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: Scholars are the bearers of traditional Chinese political culture. They acquire knowledge and disseminate culture, serving as both key members of the ancient Chinese political elite and the primary creators of traditional culture and Chinese literature. Therefore, the study of traditional Chinese culture and Chinese society cannot avoid engaging with scholars. In other words, research on scholars will be an important pathway for 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 scholars and culture is intricate. From where should we begin to accurately reveal the relationship between scholars and traditional political culture? This book adopts a positioning analysis approach in its conceptual framework. First, we make a fundamental judgment about the existence of scholars in traditional Chinese society, defining their historical positioning as "navigating between the Dao and the King," manifesting as political reverence for the King and adherence to the Dao in academia. We argue that this fundamental positioning determines their unique social identity and status. Then, this book uses this basic positioning as the analytical lens to unify the entire content. The logical development of each analytical level in the book, such as "Scholars as the backbone of society," "Scholars as social intermediaries," and analyses of scholars' personalities and spirit, are all based on this fundamental positioning.