Description
Seminar on “Notions of time, modernity, and ethics in modern China”
This course will use a topical approach to examine the “Notions of time, modernity, and ethics in modern China,” with emphasis on the New Confucians and the so-called Chinese conservatives. These elites, mostly thinkers or scholars, usually had a fundamental and very sharp uneasiness with some basic features of modernity, while their, especially the historians’, concepts of history were not as teleological progress, but as an ethical endeavor based on very different concepts of time. Moreover, it seems that none of these people actually wanted to simply return to the past, because they clearly saw some of the attractive elements of Western thought and they were aware that for pure survival China is forced to adapt. That created a very painful dilemma for them.
The notions of time and reality of these “conservatives” came mainly from the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions, and were often fundamentally different from the Greek, Christian and, especially, Enlightenment ideas of time and reality. The different notions of time and reality affect not only ethics and historiography but people’s world-view, beliefs and action in general. This helps to explain why China took such a different course from other nations even in her so-called “modern history.” We will look closely into these basic elements of “modern” Chinese intellectual history so as to have a better understanding of not only the Chinese civilization but also ourselves.
Teaching method
Admission requirements
Course objectives
Course load
Required reading
Selected readings in Chinese
Lin, Yu-sheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness (Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 1979)
Furth, Charlotte ed. The Limits of Change (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1976)
Chang, Hao. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1987)
Metzger, Thomas A. Escape from predicament : neo-Confucianism and China’s evolving political culture (New York : Columbia University Press, 1977).
Test method
Participation in the seminar. 40%
Final paper (15-25 pages) on selected topics. 60%
Time table
See the timetable departmental website for time and location.
Contact
Registration
Blackboard
Remarks
None