China Academic 2005.2, Issue 22 (Total)

Author: Liu Dong, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Time:
Features: History, as it always retains a glimmer of hope, lies in its ability to accommodate certain exceptions, no matter how rigidly it appears as a monolith. And the individual, as the subject of historical processes, also retains a glimmer of hope, because no matter how determined, they can still become an exception. And so, in the face of the recent surge in discussions about the "1980s," shame and regret are inevitable; thankfully, there are still exceptions that prevent our lives from being in vain—for instance, we couldn’t even publish a China Academia back then!
The Essays Section, from different perspectives, defends a single political philosophy, precisely the one that attempts to construct the foundation of modern political life. Strauss’s critique of modernity and liberalism, particularly his claim that liberal tolerance presupposes or is even equivalent to value nihilism, has recently garnered widespread attention. In this regard, Zhou Baosong attempts to demonstrate, through a conceptual analysis of "tolerance as a virtue" and a discussion of Locke, Mill, and Rawls’s arguments for tolerance, that liberalism’s commitment to tolerance does not and does not need to presuppose nihilism. Rawls’s view that justice is a "virtue" of social institutions has also recently been challenged—justice is not only a matter of social and political institutions but also of citizens. In this regard, Xu Xiangdong attempts to prove that these criticisms stem from a misunderstanding of Rawls’s theory of justice, particularly his theory of responsibility distribution; by analyzing Rawls’s understanding and emphasis on background justice, the author finds that his theory is actually capable of accommodating such criticisms. The second group focuses on Daoist studies, both attempting to observe the world from this ancient resource and to observe this ancient resource from the world. Huang Yong points out that when the subject and object of action have different preferences, especially in the era of globalization that together different religions and cultures, the moral golden rule (whether its affirmative statement "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or its negative statement "Do not do unto others what you do not want done to you") faces severe challenges. In this regard, the author primarily draws on the thought of Chinese Daoism to propose his "moral bronze rule" (its affirmative statement is "Do unto others as they wish" and its negative statement is "Do not do unto others what you do not want done to you"). A key difference between the bronze rule and the golden rule lies in this: whether an act is moral or not depends not on the actor’s own desires but on the desires of the moral object—the others. Yang Guorong points out that on the metaphysical level, Zhuangzi takes "unity" and "connection" as its core concepts, which first relate to "division" and "separation," "boundary" and "limit," and from this standpoint, it means transcending division, boundaries, and limits, focusing on the unified form of existence. With the profound connotations of "the Dao connects as one" and "viewing things through the Dao," "unity" and "connection" not only present the picture of existence but also embody the perspective of grasping existence; at the same time, opening up the true form of existence and transcending the fragmented perspective of existence also manifest as a unifying process. Han Linhe points out that according to Zhuangzi, the realm of the sage and the absolute values, absolute freedom, absolute security, supreme joy, and eternity within it all lie outside the world (referring to the empirical world or secular world in which the empirical subject lives), not within it, which poses a conceptual difficulty. However, the author points out that here, "inside and outside" do not refer to the usual spatial relationship but to the fact that when a person (the empirical subject) transcends to the sage through the practice of xin zhai, they enter a completely new realm—a realm entirely different from the world of ordinary people, which immediately ends their previous empirical world as an object belonging to it, and now others still belong to it. The third group comes from law, focusing on the emotional issues that have become prominent after the collision of East and West, which, in a certain sense, also concerns the relationship between external norms and the local context. Nie Xin points out that Shen Jiaben, the leader of the late Qing legal reforms, sought to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western sentiments and legal principles, striving to coordinate between the old and the new, and laid the theoretical foundation for the late Qing legal reforms. Before 1911, this represented an optimistic trend: ancient Chinese law (and by extension, ancient legal systems) might have a chance to survive through self-improvement and development, escaping the fate of rapid decline under external pressure; and Chinese society might also avoid the painful rupture caused by Westernized laws that were alien to it. Lin Yuqin recreates the sensational case of Shi Jianqiao assassinating the warlord Sun Chuanfang for revenge in the 1930s, and points out that the debates both inside and outside the court played a positive role in resolving the confusion between law and emotion. Since the defense relied on traditional Confucian ethics of filial piety and public opinion sympathy, while the prosecution appealed to the rigid and severe modern law, the final judgment reflected both conflict and compromise, which can be interpreted in a broader cultural context.
This issue’s Reviews Section belongs to comparative literature. Cheng Baoyi’s article is a preface to the Chinese new editions of two of his earlier works. In the article, the author reflects on how he, in the 1960s and 1970s, was deeply involved in the structuralist and semiotic movements in Paris, and through dialogues or intellectual exchanges with Barthes, Kristeva, Lacan, Jakobson, and Levi-Strauss, based on the mainstream philosophy of the time (which he understood as "an attitude, a perspective, a way"), he reflected on the Chinese artistic tradition, thus writing the two seminal works that explored the language of Chinese poetry and painting. Su Yuexi’s article explains the origin and chapters of Comparative Literature in the Age of Globalization, thereby supplementing the often-named (though he modestly calls himself "a running pole") 2003 Report of the American Comparative Literature Association in a polyphonic manner. Paradoxically, if such a biennial report was initially intended to alleviate periodic identity confusion, the diverse opinions collected in the book highlights the disciplinary crisis that comparative literature has never been able to escape in its 1.5 centuries. Perhaps no discipline is so constantly skeptical of its own right to exist—this much can be considered a special tradition of comparative literature.
The Platform/Communications Section features Wang Qingjie’s defense of Wu Xiaoming. That is, despite sharp criticism from the latter, the author still tends to believe that there truly exists a "theory of things" in Laozi’s philosophy that can rival Heidegger. In the end, we return to the 1980s. That era of liberation makes one think of the mid-19th-century Paris described by Berlin: "A society that produces geniuses is one with sharp self-awareness and a high vitality; though obsessed with self-analysis and pathological self-theatricalization, it is proud of its innovation and strength; suddenly freed from the shackles of the past, it feels the vastness of the world and can act and create within it. By 1851, this mood had come to an end; but the great legend had been forged, and it has endured to this day, making Paris a symbol of revolution and progress in the eyes of Parisians and others." (Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, p. 70) In this sense, the golden age has always been in our hearts.