Double Bind: An Anthology of Literature, Imitation, and Anthropology

Author: (French) Gillel
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-05-01
Features: René Girard is one of the most talented, ambitious, and thought-provoking thinkers of our time. He craves debate, is passionate, and is unwavering—a destroyer of idols who does not hesitate to engage with figures such as Freud, Lévi-Strauss, Deleuze, and Lacan. Since Yan Fu translated Western legal and political works in the late Qing Dynasty to the 1940s of this century, the insightful scholars in the Chinese academic world have deeply felt that encountering Western learning was an unprecedentedly significant event in the history of Chinese thought. They have diligently sought to understand the depths of Western learning, selecting and translating classic works based on their personal talents and interests, giving rise to a generation of outstanding translators. It is understandable that at that time, the academic community's understanding of the Western intellectual tradition was still in its infancy, and the selection of Western classics was inevitably somewhat arbitrary. In the late 1950s, the government of the new China standardized the translation of Western classics, compiled the drafts left over from the 1940s, and formulated new topic plans. Over the decades, through inch-by-inch accumulation, by the mid-1980s, a comprehensive and well-structured "Chinese Translation of World Academic Classics" system had taken shape. Although the contribution of opening the door for later generations is inestimable, the design of this classic system was still constrained by the dogmatism of the academic community at the time.
"The mind is not beyond the realm of principles and institutions" (a saying by Kang Youwei), Western classics that deal with principles and institutions have not been translated into Chinese, and the actual number is not few.