Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-42653-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 13, 324 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 598 g

Reihe: Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 offers a panoramic view of reflections on progress in modern China. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the discourses on progress shape Chinese understandings of modernity and its pitfalls. As this in-depth study shows, these discourses play a pivotal role in the fields of politics, society, culture, as well as philosophy, history, and literature. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Chinese ideas of progress, their often highly optimistic implications, but also the criticism of modernity they offered, opened the gateway for reflections on China’s past, its position in the present world, and its future course.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fröhlich, Thomas

Schneider, Axel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

List of Contributors

Introduction: Progress, History, and Time in Chinese Discourses after the 1890s

Thomas Fröhlich

Part 1: Initial Conceptual Encounters

1 The Chinese Concept of “Progress”

Kai Vogelsang

2 The Progress of Civilization and Confucianism in Modern East Asia: Fukuzawa Yukichi and Different Forms of Enlightenment

Takahiro Nakajima

Part 2: Tides of Optimism

3 The Idea of Progress in Modern China: the Case of Yan Fu

Li Qiang

4 Prospect Optimism in Modern China: the Formation of a Political Paradigm

Thomas Fröhlich

5 An Anatomy of the Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1890–1940

Peter Zarrow

6 The Optimism of Cultural Construction in the 1930s: Wholesale Westernization, Cultural Unit Theory, and Cultural Construction on a Chinese Base

Leigh Jenco

7 Fantasizing Science: the Idea of Progress in Early Chinese Science Fiction (1905–1920)

Rui Kunze

Part 2: Margins of Skepticism

8 Critiques of Progress: Reflections on Chinese Conservatism

Axel Schneider

9 Playing the Same Old Tricks: Lu Xun’s Reflections on Modernity in His Essay “Modern History”

Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Thomas Fröhlich is Professor of Sinology at Hamburg University. He has published monographs, edited volumes, and many articles on modern Chinese philosophy and intellectual history, including Staatsdenken im China der Republikzeit (Campus, 2000) and Tang Junyi. Modern Confucianism and the Challenge of Modernity (Brill, 2017).

Axel Schneider is Professor of Modern Sinology at the University of Göttingen. He has published monographs in German and Chinese, several edited volumes and many articles on modern Chinese intellectual history, especially academic history and the philosophy and politics of Chinese conservatism.