Course Code & Title : Intellectual History of Modern China Instructor : Els van Dongen Academic Year : 2014/2015 Study Year (if applicable) : - Academic Unit : 4 AUs Pre-requisite : HH 2009 recommended [Seminars: 52 hours] Learning Objective To become familiar with the key themes and debates in modern Chinese thought To be able to analyze key issues and develop arguments To communicate complex ideas To synthesize, contextualize, and evaluate gained knowledge Content In order to understand past events, it is also important to understand why certain actors did what they did to influence the course of events. In other words, how did they understand the world around them? Using an intellectual history framework, this course looks at the main themes and debates of twentieth-century China through some of its main thinkers, thereby paying attention to the specific contexts in which intellectuals put forward and discussed ideas. The various themes and debates we will study address the nature of Chinese modernity and its economic, political, and cultural tenets which cannot be neatly divided into socialism, liberalism, or conservatism as well as how this modernity relates to the Chinese past. The readings will include translated selections of writings of major Chinese intellectuals, which will allow us to evaluate the various interpretations put forward in secondary sources. Starting in the late nineteenth century, when exchange programs and contact with foreigners in China led intellectuals to question their existing worldviews, this course moves chronologically and thematically across the twentieth century. We start in the late 1800s, where we look into some important thinkers who were influenced by Western notions of progress, but who merged this with interpretations of Confucianism and Buddhism. Here, we discuss the famous reformers Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929), but we will also look into the system of thought of the lesser-known revolutionary figure of Zhang Taiyan (1868-1936). From there, we move on to intellectuals of the Republican era, with a focus on the main intellectuals and features of the May Fourth Movement, but we will also pay attention to those who questioned the tenets of a liberal modernity based on scientism, such as Liang Shuming (1893-1988). For the post-1949 period, given the specifics of this historical period, our main focus is on Maoism and on the reworking of Marxism in a Chinese context. In a final section, we relate the intellectual developments in modern China to contemporary outgrowths. We will briefly discuss liberal thinkers of the so-called second Enlightenment period, the 1980s, after which the course will conclude with the rise of New Confucianism and debates between the so-called New Left and liberal intellectuals during the 1990s. In our final session, we will ponder the question of the nature and future of modern and contemporary Chinese thought. 1
Course Outline (note: subject to change) Weeks Topics Topics 1 Intro General introduction to the course theme 2 Intellectual History and China: Delineating the Field Skinner, Quentin. Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas. History and Theory 8 (1969): 3-53. Schwartz, Benjamin. A Brief Defense of Political and Intellectual History: The Case of China. In China and Other Matters, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, 30-44. Goldman, Merle and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds. An Intellectual History of Modern China. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. [chapter] 3 The Late Nineteenth Century (I) Problems and Isms Furth, Charlotte. Intellectual Change: From the Reform Movement to the May Fourth Movement, 1895-1920. In The Cambridge History of China 12, ed. John K. Fairbank. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983, 406-451. The Cambridge History of China 10.1, ed. John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978. [chapter] Chang, Hao. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning, 1890-1911. Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1987. [chapters] 4 The Late Nineteenth Century (II) Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Confucianism Howard, R. K ang Yu-wei (1858-1927): His Intellectual Background and Early Thought. In A.F. Wright and D. Twitchett, eds. Confucian Personalities. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1962. Chang, Hao. Intellectual Change and the Reform Movement, 1890-1898. In The Cambridge History of China 2.2, ed. John K. Fairbank and Kwang-ching Liu. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980: 274-338. 2
Chang, Hao. Liang Ch i-ch ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890-1907. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP: 1971. [chapter] 5 6 7 The Late Nineteenth Century (III) Zhang Taiyan and Buddhism The Republican Period (I) May Fourth: Problems and Isms The Republican Period (II) Liang Shuming Murthy, Viren. The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. [chapter] Makeham, John, ed. Transforming Consciousness: Yogacara Thought in Modern China. Oxford et al: Oxford University Press, 2014. [chapter] Yeh, Wen-hsin. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. [chapter] Fung, Edmund S.K. The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. [chapter] Lin, Yü-sheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Anti-traditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. [chapters] Schwarcz, Vera. The Chinese Enlightenment, Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. [chapters] Levenson, Joseph. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy. Volume One: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity. London: Routledge, 1958. [chapters] Alitto, Guy. The Last Confucian: Liang Shuming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Chi, W. Liang Shu-ming and Chinese Communism. China Quarterly 41 (1970), 64-82. Furth, Charlotte, ed. The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, ed. C. Furth. Cambridge, 3
8 FOR INFORMATION ONLY The Republican Period (III) Hu Shi MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. [chapter] Chou, M. Hu Shih and Intellectual Choice in Modern China. Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1984. [chapter] Clopton, R.W. and Ou T., trans. and ed. John Dewey: Lectures in China, 1919-1920. Honolulu: University of Hawai i Press, 1973. [chapter] Grieder, Jerome. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970. [chapter] Chou, Chih-ping, and Hu Shi. English Writings of Hu Shih: Chinese Philosophy and Intellectual History. Heidelberg; New York; Dordrecht; London: Springer, 2013 [selections] 9 Post-1949: Mao Zedong and Maoism Schram, Stuart. The Thought of Mao Tse-tung Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. [chapters] Chong, Woei-Lin. Mankind and Nature in Chinese Thought: Li Zehou on the Traditional Roots of Maoist Voluntarism. China Information 11.2-3 (Autumn-Winter 1996): 138-175. Knight, Nick. Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong s Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. [chapters] 10 Post-1976 (I) Problems and Isms: Culture Fever Gu, Edward, and Merle Goldman, eds. Chinese Intellectuals between State and Market. London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. Wang, Jing. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng s China. Berkeley; Oxford: University of California Press, 1996. Davies, Gloria. ed. Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 4
11 FOR INFORMATION ONLY [chapters] Post-1976 (II) Conservative Thought of the early 1990s and the Confucian Revival Makeham, John, ed. New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003. [chapters] 12 Post-1976 (III) The Great Divide? Liberals and New Left since the mid-1990s Chen, Feng. Order and Stability in Social Transition: Neoconservative Political Thought in Post-1989 China. The China Quarterly 151 (September 1997): 593-613. Bell, Daniel. China s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2008. [chapters] Wang, Chaohua. One China, Many Paths. London; New York: Verso, 2003. [chapters] Wang, Hui. China s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition. Ed. Theodore Huters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP: 2003. [chapters] Davies, Gloria. Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. [chapters] Xu, Youyu. The Debates between Liberals and the New Left in China since the 1990s. Contemporary Chinese Thought 34.3 (2003): 6-17. Wang, Chaohua. One China, Many Paths. London; New York: Verso, 2003. [chapters] 13 Revision and Wrap up Levenson, Joseph. History and Value : The Tensions of Intellectual Choice in Modern China. In A.F. Wright, ed. Studies in Chinese Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953: 146-194. Elman, Benjamin. The Failures of Contemporary Chinese Intellectual History. Eighteenth-Century Studies 43.3 (2010): 371-391. Metzger, Thomas. A Cloud across the Pacific: 5
Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. [chapters] Learning Outcome As a result of this course, students will: Be able to identify the key themes and debates in modern Chinese thought Be able to analyze these issues and develop arguments Be able to communicate complex ideas (both in the form of individual presentations and group discussions) Be able to synthesize, contextualize, and evaluate gained knowledge (both in the form of response briefs and the development of a research project) Student Assessment: 100% Continuous Assessment Weightage of CA components: 30 % Research paper 20 % Individual Presentations 20 % Response Briefs 10 % Leading Group Discussion 10 % Two Quizzes 10 % Class Participation and Discussion 30 % Research paper The research paper (5000 words) must demonstrate synthesis and evaluation of a thinker, idea, school, or debate in modern China. 20 % Individual Presentations (3 in total; 30 mins. each) Students will present a relevant work in modern Chinese intellectual history to the class through a focus on (1) the main ideas and arguments and (2) contextualizing these ideas and arguments and placing them in the context of the course. 20 % Response Briefs to selected quotes from readings (3 in total) Students will reflect on readings in the form of response briefs (500 words) to selected quotes. 10 % Group Discussion Leading and Reporting Students will discuss main ideas in groups; the leader will guide the discussion in the groups, report to the class, and defend the group s perspective in consequent class debate. 10 % Two quizzes Throughout the course, two short quizzes will be held to test understanding of and critical engagement with course content. 10 % Class attendance and discussion Class attendance and participation in discussion will be worth 10 % of the final mark. 6