Philippe Major
Lancaster University, Politics, Philosophy & Religion, Faculty Member
This study provides an analysis of the discourse on tradition of two of the first texts written in the Republican period which endeavoured to oppose the May Fourth portrayal of Confucianism as an artifact of the past and which enjoyed a... more
This study provides an analysis of the discourse on tradition of two of the first texts written in the Republican period which endeavoured to oppose the May Fourth portrayal of Confucianism as an artifact of the past and which enjoyed a significant amount of success at the moment of their publication and thereafter: Liang Shuming’s Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua jiqi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學; 1921) and the classical Chinese edition of Xiong Shili’s New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness (Xin weishi lun 新唯識論; 1932).
Through discourse analysis, this study examines two interrelated aspects of the texts: their discourse on the role tradition plays in individual emancipation or in a modernization process teleologically oriented toward human liberty on the one hand, and the discursive techniques they employ in order to legitimize their discourse through the authority of tradition. My central aim is to see which discursive tools could be employed in texts that are presented as reactivating the Confucian dao (道) within the modern Chinese context, especially as one of their main objectives is to oppose the modern discourse of anti-traditionalism which emerged during the May Fourth Movement.
My contention is that both texts are for the most part as anti-traditional as the most iconoclastic of May Fourth discourses, as they both deny that traditions can contribute to individual emancipation and to the modernization process, and both conceptualize emancipation as a breaking free from the hold of traditions. There is an exception to this general rule, however. The Confucian tradition (as they define it), and to some extent the Buddhist one, are singled out as traditions which can point the way to a transcendence and a liberation from tradition. Traditions are therefore valueless unless they represent what I call “traditions of anti-traditionalism”: traditions that show the way to a final liberation from tradition.
At work in these claims, I argue, is a dialectic whereby the texts salvage particular traditions yielding trans-historical truths from the dustbin of history before presenting themselves not only as contemporary representatives of those traditions, but also as their highest point: a point at which these traditions of truth are entirely subsumed, clarified, finalized, and monopolized by the contemporary texts. The texts, moreover, not only re-appropriate the modern discourse of anti-traditionalism to their own ends; they also redefine it in a way that relegates the Euro-American conceptualization of modernity (as a tradition of anti-traditionalism) at a lower echelon while celebrating their own vision of Confucian and Buddhist traditions as the highest form of a universal culture capable of emancipating once and for all humanity from the shackles of tradition and history. These texts, in other words, offer alternative visions of a tradition of anti-traditionalism which compete with that of the Euro-American discourse of modernity, but do so in a manner that is for the most part equally hegemonic in its rejection of competing perceptions of truth.
Through discourse analysis, this study examines two interrelated aspects of the texts: their discourse on the role tradition plays in individual emancipation or in a modernization process teleologically oriented toward human liberty on the one hand, and the discursive techniques they employ in order to legitimize their discourse through the authority of tradition. My central aim is to see which discursive tools could be employed in texts that are presented as reactivating the Confucian dao (道) within the modern Chinese context, especially as one of their main objectives is to oppose the modern discourse of anti-traditionalism which emerged during the May Fourth Movement.
My contention is that both texts are for the most part as anti-traditional as the most iconoclastic of May Fourth discourses, as they both deny that traditions can contribute to individual emancipation and to the modernization process, and both conceptualize emancipation as a breaking free from the hold of traditions. There is an exception to this general rule, however. The Confucian tradition (as they define it), and to some extent the Buddhist one, are singled out as traditions which can point the way to a transcendence and a liberation from tradition. Traditions are therefore valueless unless they represent what I call “traditions of anti-traditionalism”: traditions that show the way to a final liberation from tradition.
At work in these claims, I argue, is a dialectic whereby the texts salvage particular traditions yielding trans-historical truths from the dustbin of history before presenting themselves not only as contemporary representatives of those traditions, but also as their highest point: a point at which these traditions of truth are entirely subsumed, clarified, finalized, and monopolized by the contemporary texts. The texts, moreover, not only re-appropriate the modern discourse of anti-traditionalism to their own ends; they also redefine it in a way that relegates the Euro-American conceptualization of modernity (as a tradition of anti-traditionalism) at a lower echelon while celebrating their own vision of Confucian and Buddhist traditions as the highest form of a universal culture capable of emancipating once and for all humanity from the shackles of tradition and history. These texts, in other words, offer alternative visions of a tradition of anti-traditionalism which compete with that of the Euro-American discourse of modernity, but do so in a manner that is for the most part equally hegemonic in its rejection of competing perceptions of truth.
