An overview of Dai's ethics, highlighting some overlooked or misunderstood theses on moral deliberation and motivation.

In this essay I argue that recent philosophical attempts to ‘modernise’ Confucianism rehearse problematic relationships to the past that – far from broadening Confucianism’s appeal beyond its typical borders – end up narrowing its scope as a source of scholarly knowledge. This is because the very attempt to modernise assumes a rupture with a past in which Confucianism was once alive and relevant, fixing its identity to a static historical place disconnected from the present. I go on to explore alternative (...) means of situating past thought to present inquiry, by examining a debate among early 20th-century Chinese intellectuals over the value of their past heritage in a modern age. Their diverse responses undermine the certainty of a singular or persistent Chinese past, enabling a creative presentism that encourages deliberate filiation with alternative ‘tracks’ of past practice and thought. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe circulation of science across cultural boundaries involves the construction of various representations by the various actors, who each account for their involvement in the process. The historiography of the transmission of European science to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has long been dominated by one particular narrative: that of the Jesuit missionaries who were the main go-betweens for these two centuries. This fact has contributed to shaping Western images of China's history and science up to the (...) present day.To retrieve the multifaceted history of this transmission, more than one discourse needs to be taken into account. Even within the Society of Jesus, representations changed with the evolution of patronage of the mission, and the concomitant building up of state-sponsored science in Europe. Chinese sources yield different pictures, accounting for the reception of Western learning — rather than “European science” — in terms of integration rather than of conversion, and legitimizing it first by the Jesuits' status as scholars, then by the idea that Western learning was of Chinese origin. This shift corresponded to the imperial appropriation of this learning. (shrink)

This essay begins to explore the philosophical grounds on which Chinese literati thinkers came to legitimate, and in some cases value, alternative ways of life in the early modern era (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). In this essay I examine arguments from two such scholars, the flamboyant iconoclast Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602) and his lifelong friend, the historian and classicist Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1540–1620), to show how this interest in the empirical world led them away from their commitments to moral universalism (...) and toward an appreciation of the diversity and plurality of human moral values. (shrink)

The aim of the essay is to demonstrate that the contact of European philosophy with Chinese thought in the second half of the 17th and 18th century influenced the rise and development of secularism, which became a distinctive feature of the Western Enlightenment. The first part examines how knowing the history of China and Confucian ethics has questioned biblical chronology and undermined faith as a necessary condition of morality. These allegations were afterwards countered by reinterpreting Confucianism as crypto-monotheism. I will (...) argue this debate has contributed to the birth of secular philosophy of history, which put an end to the Enlightenment Sinophilism. Throughout those changes in the image of China, nothing but an image was discussed: as it would be presented on a basis of the thought of Wang Fuzhi and other representatives of Chinese kaozheng考證 movement, the encounter with the contemporaries of the Westerners would have opened a real dialogue. (shrink)

ArgumentIn recent decades a large body of scholarship on the first half of twentieth-century China has successfully shown the ways in which history and historiography had been constructed at the time, as well as the links between history, national identity, education, and politics that was forged during this period. In this paper, I examine Qing intellectual history, in particular that of the mid or “High Qing.” I discuss the development of the historiography of this field in the early twentieth century (...) by drawing on the larger developments in historiography; by demonstrating how these developments had shaped Qing intellectual history for later times; by focusing on the historical actors’ sense of the importance of “science,” being “scientific,” and “modernization”; and, by unraveling the intimate connections to older historiographical narratives going back all the way to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

The thought of Kang Youwei 康有為, who is revered as one of the most important Confucian politicians of modern China, has received considerable attention in recent decades. While many studies are devoted to Kang’s theory of Confucianism and his political visions underlying the theory, what is generally overlooked is that, to a large extent, his arguments are built upon his understanding of Mohism. This article argues that Kang Youwei employs the Mozi 墨子 and early narratives about Mozi and Mohism to (...) support his claims that Kongzi 孔子 authored the New-Text versions of the Five Classics, that he was a reformer of political institutions, and that he was a religious leader. By shedding light on Kang Youwei’s discussions of Mohism, this article offers a reconstruction of his argument and an alternative perspective for investigating his New-Text interpretation of Confucianism. (shrink)