Unlike any other nation, China is a civilization country, a country that identifies itself with a civilization and vice versa. Then, facing the issue of coping with the onslaught of a different civilization prompted some profound rethinking and soul searching about China’s intellectual history, both as a cultural and a national issue. Nothing similar exists to this extent outside China. Yet it’s essential to all because it prompts people from other countries to consider their own intellectual history and find their own identity and a common cultural ground to be together peacefully (Appia Institute).
Ⅰ Why is Intellectual History so central for China?
As you probably know in America, that intellectual history is not quite popular with the western academia, and less popular is the Chinese history of thought. My friend professor Huang Jin-xing（黄进兴） has recently written an article on the decline of as an academic field in the west. Then he concluded with a quote from the famous General MacArthur, that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away”. Quite interestingly, the trend in mainland China was just the other way round. The study on intellectual history had always been hot, maybe hotter in the recent two decades. In 1980s, the three volumes on intellectual history written by Professor Li Zehou（李泽厚） provided basic historical resources for the “cultural fever” at that time. Then the book on Chinese gentry by professor Yu Ying-shih（余英时） greatly influenced this field. Scholars present today, including professor Benjamin A.Elman, professor Wang Hui（汪晖） and me, are all engaged in the research of intellectual history. In China, there were quite a few scholars who had specialized in literature and philosophy, turned to intellectual history studies, so that some people blamed the current “fever” in intellectual history for the imbalance of Chinese learning.
I’m not exaggerating out of my own interest and field of research. People who know about contemporary Chinese thought and learning will agree that, during the past two decades, intellectual history, especially Chinese intellectual history, has expanded its influence beyond historical studies, and has invoked large-scale reflections in related disciplines such as the history of literature, art and politics. Most particularly, it triggered a round of re-examination over the ideology, political regime and cultural orientation in today’s China.
So, why it happened to be intellectual history that played such an important role? Why did it receive so much attention in China today?
I think we should notice that, in China, thought and history had always occupied the central place in humanitarian disciplines. Since the Chinese had long formed a habit of mind to search for the fundamental “truth”(道理), and to seek support and recognition from classics, in order to explain specific issues. In other words, “testament of history” is required in addition to historical experience and conclusion. In China, “thought” outweighed “knowledge”, and history was regarded more serious than literature. This hierarchy was best demonstrated by the evaluation of Chinese gentry in the past, that if he was included in, satisfactorily Wen Yuan (文苑，The Litterateurs), better still, recorded in Shi Lin (史林，The Historians), or most preferably Ru Lin (儒林，The Confucians) and Dao Xue (道学，思想家The Ideologists). So it always required highly generalized concepts as those in the Classics. In this sense, any change in politics, custom, education and institution would be explained according to the paradigms of intellectual history, and in turn, changes of ideas were seen as would cause institutional transform.
Although not sure about your opinion, I have an intuition that China is still in the process of its “unfinished modernization”, which could be traced back to the late Qing period and May Fourth Movement when Chinese warmly pursued transformation, from technologies to institution, to culture, and finally to ideology. China today is still on this track, as all the imported values like democracy, liberty, science and justice need an ideological overhaul to be accepted by the public. Therefore, the Chinese intellectual history in fact was trying to rationalize modern values with historical meditation. As Liang Qi-chao（梁启超） said in his famous essay Xin Min Shuo (《新民说》), “the thought of learning tends to change with politics”, and “the changes in custom and politics was rooted in the thought of learning”. So the necessity of intellectual history lies in its close relationship with the society, as well as the correlation between history and today. In an age with unprecedented cravings for thought, nullifying history thus forgetting the past is definitely impossible, especially in a nation as conventional as China.
I would especially like to remind that, in Chinese academia, the boundaries among scholars, freelancers, public intellects and political commentators are not clear. Since the attempts to sort out the history of culture, learning and thought, were usually motivated by current political intention. Thus history as a humanitarian discipline has always been prosperous and sensitive. The change in China, as “the biggest ever in the past three thousand years”, continues. The old saying goes: “heaven changes not, not the Tao either”. Now it was turned upside down. People were seeking for a changeable “Tao”. But how will it change? It was a question that captured the passion of intellectuals. Under a state regime that allows little space for fundamental changes, intellectuals developed the practice to solve problems by means of thought and culture, or turn to history in order to criticize the reality. In this regard, Chinese academia is not only professional and intellectual, but also able of expressing criticism on politics and institutions. This is the case in the research fields of culture, learning and thought.
Therefore, intellectual history counts a lot in China. And its rise and thriving should be examined in the background of Chinese tradition.
Ⅱ Why does intellectual history count so central in today’s China?
After explaining its significance to China, we now turn to why it is significant at present. As you know, the popularity with intellectual history began in the mid nineteen nineties, after spells of academic fevers such as “cultural history” and “the history of learning”. I’ve written an essay entitled “From Cultural History, the History of Learning to intellectual history”, explaining the continuities among the three. Thus a good understanding of Chinese society, politics and culture after the year 1989, especially after the mid 1990s, is very important for encoding the prevalence of intellectual history. Generally speaking, it responds to the following three issues (a)new situations in Chinese society, politics and culture; (b)new theories and methodologies from both the east and west; and (c)challenges from new historical materials.
Now let’s go to the first point. The symbolic year of 1989 was just as important as the year 1895 in China. This year witnessed the breakup of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as the Tian An Men Event in China. People might think it as the big turn of history, but I doubt it for three reasons. First, the party-state regime and the ideological structure in China had remained largely unchanged. Second, values of democracy, liberty and science that were pursued ever since late Qing period and the May Fourth Movement, would still to be respected and practiced in Chinese thought. Third, all economic and social reforms were dominated by political forces just as before. So the history in China had in no way come to an end, except that under the new settings, there were turns and divisions emerging in the more complex situation of society and thought, yet on a very superficial level. The identical thought in the past gave way to various kinds of tendencies sprung up since the nineteen eighteen’s. Old Confucianism and Confucius were won over by democratic opinions; Buddhism and Taoism were tagged as superstition in the fever for science; then Marxism was established as political ideology and became more rigid; later on, modern thought of democracy and science got trapped in doubt by the “critiques on modernity”. Now, when Confucius was once again taken to the front, the act was attacked by nationalism; and post-modern thoughts finally turned out to be too ahead of time. It seemed in today’s China there’s no common standard or style, resulting in disorders in both “thought”, which explains social changes, and “learning”, which upholds knowledge and was once quite clear.
In an era ridden of changes, the field of intellectual history is confronted with new questions. For example, how did “thought” fall into disorder; what was the tipping point for the Tao to break down; what can be found in tradition to help rebuild the Chinese thought; what are the values that need to be reestablished; and what thought best represents China, etc.
Now the second point. After trends of “introduce” and “pragmatism”, people began to reflect on the imported theories, mostly western theories that had come into China after the nineteen eighties’. Among these, many need to be considered in terms of intellectual history, such as:
(a), the evaluation of ancient Chinese civilization as a whole. In the past, attention was paid to its role in developing a civilian system, its promotion of social mobility, its lack of institutions and its highly centralized structure. However, this impression was beginning to seem unfit in the growing caution against the Europe-centric position, and also in the effect of the so-called post-modern and post-colonial theories. (b), whether the Chinese tradition, or Guo Xue（国学）, could be reduced to Confucianism and its classics; or are there plural traditions in China; how to evaluate the tradition of Buddhism and Taoism; could it be built into the basis of modern Chinese culture and rival with the West? (c), while the west is experiencing a round of self-reflection over “modernity”, there are people holding the view that Chinese tradition could probably be a therapy for the western crisis. China, as they argue, could hopefully be the “beacon in the oriental world” and the “core of the world economy”, if it were not for the imperial plundering in late Qing period. This obscured the once clear picture of history and thus connected historical exploration with the thinking of the day. (d), problems arise about the legitimacy of historical dynasties to represent a nation, and the identification of Chinese culture. What was particular in the ancient Chinese knowledge of the world and nation, and how did this difference continue into the current age and affect China’s attitude to international politics? Was there only one form of national identification (patriotism), or rather, were there multiple identifications of culture, history and politics? (e), many solid premises are being challenged. For instance, did history necessarily head for modernization; did China have its own direction during this process; how should we evaluate these directions and their limits; was modern China derived from its response to western impact, or from its own history; how did the anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism discourse in Mao’s The New Democracy (新民主主义论) underpin the validity and rationality of politics at that time, and shape the whole contemporary Chinese history.
These doubts come in bunches and are hard to answer. In China, they are mostly related to politics and can’t be discussed in public, resulting in a habit of intellectuals to find solution in thoughts and culture. Therefore, while western historians gradually turned to social history or new cultural history, their Chinese counterparts initiated a lasting fever of intellectual history since mid 1990s.
The third point is related to new historical materials discovered since the 1970s that greatly challenged previous studies on intellectual history. These historical materials include the newly discovered writings on bamboo slips or silk fabrics, the primary sources in the west as well as Japan and Korea, lots of historical images and large amount of electronic publications. On the one hand, they made it possible to develop new insights in intellectual history; on the other, they proposed new questions and challenged the settled views in the fields of intellectual history and the history of philosophy.
There’s another aspect that I would like to mention, that is the emergence of a trend advocating an “intellectual history speaking Chinese”. After thirty years of following western academics, Chinese intellectual historians began to realize the necessity and possibility to stop mimicking and find a new mode of narrative. Because the old framework could neither explain the above questions, nor respond to new theories and methodologies, let alone incorporate new materials. Books on intellectual history in mainland China were mixture of the Confucian “Legitimacy of truth” (道统，dao tong), plus modern philosophies from either Japan or the West, and Marxism. They were jokingly put as “the big size history of philosophy”. However, these patterns of study were too ideological as they aimed to build “the Legitimacy of truth” and “honor the political order”. It is definitely necessary to change such a way of writing. And, in mainland China, it means dismissing the political ideology.
Ⅲ Why would intellectual history be important even in the future?
The situation in the field of intellectual history has changed a lot over the past decade. It could be summed up as follows:
(a), new sources and materials, together with the “downward view” in research method, prompted scholars to care more about how elite culture and classical thought became institutions, customs and common sense.
(b), the scope of research has expanded to the so-called “ancient western regions” and the “marine world in the east”. This necessitated a mindset to think across boundaries of both nations and nationalities, and to notice the interaction between Han nationality and others.
(c), the study on modern intellectual history was advanced within the framework of “modernization” and the “critiques on modernity”.
(d), it also promoted the combination of intellectual history with political history, social history and the history of learning, completely breaking up with the pattern since Hu Shih（胡适），Feng You-lan（冯友兰）, Hou Wai-lu（侯外庐） and Ren Ji-yu（任继愈）.
But I also realized that, while engaging in historical discussion, it is still important to focus on reality and provide diagnosis to current issues. We could notice some interconnected trends in the past two decades, within the Chinese intellectual and cultural world. It is still hard to say if the some trends could possibly take over one another. Yet the confrontation and argument among them proposed new questions and challenges to intellectual history. After all, China had its long tradition of finding justification in history and seeking solution in thought. This also applies to the world of thought in today’s China, which also needs justification from its past thoughts, especially those in modern times.
Therefore, intellectual history in China has every chance to keep alive for some time to come.
