Zhang Taiyan (1868-1936) is famous for being one of the first thinkers in China to promote revolution in the early twentieth century. Scholars have addressed Zhang’s revolutionary and nationalist thought, but until this work there has not been any sustained engagement with Zhang’s Buddhist writings which aimed to understand and criticize the world from the perspective of consciousness. These philosophical works are significant because they exemplify how, as Chinese intellectuals entered the global capitalist world, they constantly tried to find resources to create an alternative. As the author argues in the conclusion, this desire to create an alternative to capitalism remained throughout twentieth century China and continues today in the works of critical intellectuals such as Wang Hui. Thus this work is important not only to understand our past, but to hope for a better future.

Drawing on a vast array of Chinese texts, Japanese scholarship, and critical philosophy, this book offers a radical rereading of Zhang Taiyan’s philosophy, highlighting the significance of Zhang’s ideas in the context of global capitalist modernity.

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 offers a panoramic study of Chinese reflections on “progress,” its multifaceted expressions, contesting interpretations, highly optimistic implications, but also the criticism it encountered.

Winner of the Foundation Council Award of the Georg-August-University of Göttingen Public Law Foundation in the category of “Outstanding Publications of Young Scientists”, 2017. In Nation and Ethnicity: Chinese Discourses on History, Historiography, and Nationalism (1900s-1920s) Julia C. Schneider give an analysis of nationalist and historiographical discourses among late imperial and early republican Chinese thinkers. In particular, she researches their approaches towards non-Chinese people within the Qing Empire and the question on how to integrate them into a Chinese nation-state. Non-Chinese people, mainly Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and Turkic Muslims, (Uyghurs), have not been considered as important factors in the history of early Chinese nationalism so far. But Chinese nationalist and historiographical discourses tell not only a lot about the Chinese image of the Other, but also shed new light on the images of the Chinese Self and its assumed ability to assimilate and integrate other ethnicities.

Shimada Kenji is one of Japan's greatest sinologists, with formidable scholarly accomplishments in many fields--classical Chinese thought, Neo-Confucianism in China and Japan, late Qing thought, the 1911 Revolution, and Sino-Japanese relations. This book consists of two long essays touching on one of Shimada's abiding themes, the influence of domestic Chinese systems of thought on the development of Chinese revolutionary thought. This massive project engages Shimada's greatest strength, a profound awareness of and deep study in the history of Chinese philosophy and religion, when examining the people and ideas that culminated in the 1911 Revolution and the end of the imperial institution in China. Unlike most other scholars, Shimada takes his modern protagonists with complete seriousness when they draw on seemingly traditional ideas to justify radical change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Zhang Binglin, the subject of the first essay in this book, is arguably the most misunderstood figure among the key revolutionaries of the 1911 period. The appearance of this classic essay, Zhang Binglin: Traditional Chinese Scholar and Revolutionary (1970), marked the first time that Zhang had been assessed as a whole person. Shimada explains how Zhang himself saw the inextricable linkage between a wholehearted devotion to traditional Chinese scholarship-indeed, the very preservation of that tradition-and the revolutionary cause. Often dismissed as a crackpot, brilliant or otherwise, or as a perverse intransigent incapable of comprehending the modern world as it passed him by, Zhang has never received the kind of attention in the West that his importance warrants. The second essay, Confucius in the Era of the 1911 Revolution (I978), deals with an issue that has never before received concerted attention. How could the figure of Confucius have been deified by the leaders of the 1898 Reform Movement and, less than two decades later, be excoriated by the leaders of the May Fourth Movement? Shimada analyzes the views concerning Confucianism of all the major groups (including the Qing government and over seas Chinese in Europe) in the period under study (1895-1919) before suggesting some answers to this fascinating question.

An intellectual history of pan-Asianist discourse in the twentieth century. Recent proposals to revive the ancient Silk Road for the contemporary era and ongoing Western interest in China’s growth and development have led to increased attention to the concept of pan-Asianism. Most of that discussion, however, lacks any historical grounding in the thought of influential twentieth-century pan-Asianists. In this book, Viren Murthy offers an intellectual history of the writings of theorists, intellectuals, and activists—spanning leftist, conservative, and right-wing thinkers—who proposed new ways of thinking about Asia in their own historical and political contexts. Tracing pan-Asianist discourse across the twentieth century, Murthy reveals a stronger tradition of resistance and alternative visions than the contemporary discourse on pan-Asianism would suggest. At the heart of pan-Asianist thinking, Murthy shows, were the notions of a unity of Asian nations, of weak nations becoming powerful, and of the Third World confronting the “advanced world” on equal terms—an idea that grew to include non-Asian countries into the global community of Asian nations. But pan-Asianists also had larger aims, imagining a future beyond both imperialism and capitalism. The fact that the resurgence of pan-Asianist discourse has emerged alongside the dominance of capitalism, Murthy argues, signals a profound misunderstanding of its roots, history, and potential.

This authoritative collection surveys the teachings of Confucius, and illustrates his importance throughout Chinese history in one focused and incisive volume. A Concise Companion to Confucius offers a succinct introduction to one of East Asia’s most widely-revered historical figures, providing essential coverage of his legacy at a manageable length. The volume embraces Confucius as philosopher, teacher, politician, and sage, and curates a collection of key perspectives on his life and teachings from a team of distinguished scholars in philosophy, history, religious studies, and the history of art. Taken together, chapters encourage specialists to read across disciplinary boundaries, provide nuanced paths of introduction for students, and engage interested readers who want to expand their understanding of the great Chinese master. Divided into four distinct sections, the Concise Companion depicts a coherent figure of Confucius by examining his diverse representations from antiquity through to the modern world. Readers are guided through the intellectual and cultural influences that helped shape the development of Confucian philosophy and its reception among late imperial literati in medieval China. Later essays consider Confucius’s engagement with topics such as warfare, women, and Western philosophy, which remain fruitful avenues of philosophical inquiry today. The collection concludes by exploring the significance of Confucian thought in East Asia’s contemporary landscape and the major intellectual movements which are reviving and rethinking his work for the twenty-first century. An indispensable resource, A Concise Companion to Confucius blazes an authoritative trail through centuries of scholarship to offer exceptional insight into one of history’s earliest and most influential ancient philosophers. A Concise Companion to Confucius: Provides readers with a broad range of perspectives on the ancient philosopher Traces the significance of Confucius throughout Chinese history—past, present, and future Offers a unique, interdisciplinary overview of Confucianism Curated by a team of distinguished scholars in philosophy, history, religious studies, and the history of art A Concise Companion to Confucius is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses on Confucius and Confucianism. It is also fascinating and informative reading for anyone interested in learning more about one of history’s most influential philosophers.

This translation of the Introduction to Wang Hui’s Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004) makes part of his four-volume masterwork available to English readers for the first time. A leading public intellectual in China, Wang charts the historical currents that have shaped Chinese modernity from the Song Dynasty to the present day, and along the way challenges the West to rethink some of its most basic assumptions about what it means to be modern. China from Empire to Nation-State exposes oversimplifications and distortions implicit in Western critiques of Chinese history, which long held that China was culturally resistant to modernization, only able to join the community of modern nations when the Qing Empire finally collapsed in 1912. Noting that Western ideas have failed to take into account the diversity of Chinese experience, Wang recovers important strains of premodern thought. Chinese thinkers theorized politics in ways that do not line up neatly with political thought in the West—for example, the notion of a “Heavenly Principle” that governed everything from the ordering of the cosmos to the structure of society and rationality itself. Often dismissed as evidence of imperial China’s irredeemably backward culture, many Neo-Confucian concepts reemerged in twentieth-century Chinese political discourse, as thinkers and activists from across the ideological spectrum appealed to ancient precedents and principles in support of their political and cultural agendas. Wang thus enables us to see how many aspects of premodern thought contributed to a distinctly Chinese vision of modernity.

In Shifts of Power: Modern Chinese Thought and Society, Luo Zhitian brings together nine essays to explore the causes and consequences of various shifts of power in modern Chinese society, including the shift from scholars to intellectuals, from the traditional state to the modern state, and from the people to society. Adopting a microhistorical approach, Luo situates these shifts at the intersection of social change and intellectual evolution in the midst of modern China’s culture wars with the West. Those culture wars produced new problems for China, but also provided some new intellectual resources as Chinese scholars and intellectuals grappled with the collisions and convergences of old and new in late Qing and early Republican China.

Rethinking Political Thinkers explores a uniquely diverse set of political thinkers, from traditionally canonical theorists such as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Mill, to marginalized women and thinkers of color, such as hooks, Du Bois, Butler, Fanon, Firestone, Said, and Goldman. Placing traditional thinkers alongside and in conversation with neglected and unheard voices opens up important debates, and presents political thought in a new light. Each thinker is examined within the contexts of patriarchy, white supremacy, and imperialism, and the relations and structures of race, gender, and class which different theories have reflected, defended, or challenged. The text is organized thematically, rather than simply chronologically, in order to explore central ideas such as social contract theory and its critics, freedom and revolution, the liberal self and black consciousness, colonial domination, and the environment. In each chapter students are encouraged to think through ideas in relation to their everyday experiences, and to understand that political thought occurs in many formats, so that they develop a more inclusive, intercultural, and critical awareness of the development of social and political thought. Original and timely, Rethinking Political Thinkers is designed to support the study of a decolonised political theory curriculum, revitalising political thought as a practice that belongs to us all. The online student resources include links to relevant videos, articles, blogs, and useful websites, which help students further develop their research interests. Additionally, detailed thinker biographies provide further social, political, and cultural context for each theorist covered in the text.