Academic literature on the topic 'German impact on modern Chinese intellectual history'

The Crescent School was a significant liberal intellectual organization in modern China during the 1920s and 1930s, greatly impacting the development of new Chinese literature and modern thought. This paper reviews the research conducted on the Crescent School in the twenty-first century, identifying an evident shortcoming of one-sided, superficial, and repetitive research due to disciplinary boundaries and a lack of theoretical framework. To address these limitations, this paper argues for the adoption of a new integrated perspective that combines literature, intellectual history, and histology, aimed at establishing the Crescent School’s complete subjectivity. Furthermore, this paper explores the potential value of such an approach, which not only enriches the morphological samples of organizational studies but also expands the research view of organizations. In summary, this paper calls for a fresh look at the Crescent School and its impact on modern Chinese intellectual history, advocating for a more holistic approach to studying this organization and its contributions.

AbstractThis article presents new evidence on the authorship and readership of the earliest printed Ottoman language materials that details the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire actively engaged in learning Ottoman. Such findings open up a new field of inquiry evaluating the Ottoman impact on the German-speaking lands reaching beyond the so-called “Turkish menace.” Presenting the variety of Ottoman language students, teachers, and materials in central Europe, as well as their connections with the oral world(s) of linguistic fieldwork in the Habsburg-Ottoman contact zone, this article argues that Ottoman language learning is an important but thus far neglected element in understanding the cultural and intellectual landscape of early modern central Europe. What may appear to be experiments with linguistic riddles on first glimpse was in fact grounded in deep enthusiasm and fascination for Ottoman language learning shared among a community of Protestant semi-scholarly aficionados.

This paper examines the intellectual history of the first generation of architectural historians in China, with a focus on the activities of Liang Sicheng and his colleagues from the 1920s to the 1950s. It analyzes the various oppressive forces they encountered during this period. Initially, they challenged Western and Japanese hegemonies in Chinese architecture research. Following World War II, they faced off against Soviet Union experts to safeguard China’s architectural heritage. The paper evaluates their successes and failures in achieving academic and social goals, their impact on the preservation of Chinese heritage, and their ongoing influence in academic and societal spheres. Additionally, it explores how professional ethics were utilized to dismantle colonial narratives and perceptions in China, suggesting that professionalism can serve as a mode of intellectual opposition.

AbstractThis article explores the acceptance of Marxism by a non-Marxist Chinese philosopher, Feng Youlan, before and after 1949. Previous studies have largely focused on establishment intellectuals in the study of Marxism and intellectuals in China, and this article seeks to fill the lacuna on the intellectual potential Marxism offered to non-Communist intellectuals in China. This article finds that for Feng Youlan, a non-Marxist Chinese intellectual, Marxism was able to provide meaningful venues for his attempt to modernize Chinese knowledge and transform Chinese culture. A Marxist emphasis on universal rules governing all human societies on the same stage of development, Marxist presentist approaches to history, and most of all, a Marxist emphasis on praxis, aided Chinese intellectuals like Feng in constructing new approaches to learning the Chinese past. The Marxist emphasis on praxis helped deepen the discussion of experience, a concept central to a reconstruction of Confucian learning in modern China, after the Communist takeover of China in 1949. Eventually the state monopoly of the definition of Marxist praxis stifled the spontaneous search for a new understanding of experience in Communist China. Nonetheless, Marxism had a transformative and lasting impact on modern Chinese scholarship, as seen from the example of Feng Youlan.

The decades between 1850 and 1930 saw traditional understandings of Christianity subjected to rigorous social, intellectual, and theological criticism across the transatlantic world. Unprecedented urban and industrial expansion drew attention to the shortcomings of established models of church organization while traditional Christian beliefs concerning human origins and the authority of Scripture were assailed by new approaches to science and biblical higher criticism. In contradistinction to lower or textual criticism, higher criticism dealt with the development of the biblical text in broad terms. According to James Strahan, professor of Hebrew at Magee College, Derry, from 1915 to 1926, textual criticism aimed “at ascertaining the genuine text and meaning of an author” while higher “or historical, criticism seeks to answer a series of questions affecting the composition, editing and collection of the Sacred Books.” During the nineteenth century, the controversy over the use of higher critical methods focused for the most part upon the Old Testament. In particular, critics dismissed the Mosaic authorship and unity of the Pentateuch, arguing that it was the compilation of a number of early documentary fragments brought together by priests after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C. This “documentary hypothesis” is most often associated with the German scholar, Julius Wellhausen. Indeed, higher criticism had been fostered in the extensive university system of the various German states, which encouraged original research and the emergence of a professional intellectual elite. It reflected the desire of liberal theologians to adapt the Christian faith to the needs and values of modern culture, particularly natural science and history.

Abstract The article explores the role of transcultural encounters for the development of the thought and philology of Shigeno Yasutsugu, an eminent Japanese scholar of history and Chinese learning in 19th-century Japan. It argues that a close look at the impact of Shigeno’s encounters with Western diplomats, Chinese scholar-officials and a German historian illuminates the richness in the biography of a scholar whom the literature has valued predominantly for his role in the introduction of “modern” Western historiography. Through an analysis of the multilayered foundations of his scholarly practice, the article aims to demonstrate the use of a transcultural paradigm in engaging the complexity of the history of knowledge in a period of Western imperialism.

The intellectual impact of the First World War in China is often understood as having led to a disenchantment with the West and a discrediting of the authority of “science”, while at the same time ushering in a renewed sense of cultural as well as national “awakening”. Important developments such as the May Fourth Movement, the rise of Chinese Marxism, and the emergence of modern Confucianism have become integral parts of the narrative surrounding the effects of the “European War” in China, and bear witness to the contested relation between tradition and modernity in twentieth-century Chinese thought. Through a case study of a number of wartime and post-war texts written by the “cultural conservative” thinker and publicist Du Yaquan (1873–1933), this paper tries to draw attention to the complexity and occasional ambiguity of responses to the “Great War” in modern Chinese intellectual history. More specifically, the following pages offer an analysis of Du’s critique of “materialism” in the context of his quest for social freedom and cultural continuity, his enduring commitment to scientific notions of social evolution and political governance, and his approach to the relations among war, the nation-state, the individual, and the international interstate order developed against the background of the First World War.

Modern church historians have roundly accepted the ancient pedigree of imperial regalia privileges exercised by the archbishops of Cyprus, yet new research has shown that their origins are actually to be found in the mid-sixteenth century and within a decidedly western intellectual and ecclesial orbit. This article builds on such findings by documenting the modern history of these privileges and their relationship to the emerging political role of the archbishops of Cyprus as ethnarchs as well as archbishops of the Cypriot community under both Ottoman and British empires. Travelling across the boundaries of western and non-western cultures and employing a rich interdisciplinary array of evidence (chronicles, liturgy and liturgical vestments, hagiography, iconography, insignia, painting, cartography, diplomacy, and travel literature), this article presents a coherent reconstruction of the imperial regalia tradition's modern historical evolution and its profound impact on modern Cypriot church history. This study integrates the often compartmentalized English, French, Italian, German, and Greek scholarship of many subfields, producing a new holistic understanding of how the archbishop's ethnarchic aspirations could produce a spiritual culture in which St. Barnabas, the island's founding patron saint and once famous apostolic reconciler, became transformed into an ethnarchic national patriot and defender against foreign conquerors.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese intellectuals had to respond to the dire situation of their country. Against this background, the leading intellectual Kang Youwei aimed to re-establish some traditional values. Although Yang Zhu had long been employed rhetorically in pre-modern China, Kang reconstructed Yang Zhu as an ancient master who had a coherent theory centered around two expressions: wei wo (serving one’s own interest) and zong yu (indulging in desires). However, there is a tension in Kang’s attitudes towards Yang Zhu: on the one hand, he criticizes Yang Zhu for when he reflects upon the despotic nature of Chinese governance; on the other hand, Kang sees the positive sides of wei wo and zong yu in the achievement of the Great Unity. Despite the ambiguity, Kang’s choice of vocabulary still made an impact to the portrayals of Yang Zhu after his: his portrayal turned this master into someone highly relevant to modern China; he also showed the possibility of reading Yang Zhu in a positive light.

The article is devoted to the origin, causes and degree of development of loanwords into the Japanese language from other languages throughout the history of the formation of the cultural identity of the Japanese nation. The first and most ancient loanwords are words and phrases from the ancient language of the Ainu peoples. The original Japanese language wago, a significant cultural layer of words of Chinese origin kango, foreign loanwords gairaigo and wasei gairaigo are described. Direct and indirect loanwords came from the Dutch, German, Swedish, Russian languages. The lexical layer of the most significant proportion of modern loanwords from English and American languages, which have a significant impact on the development and variability of the modern Japanese language, is considered. Examples of synonyms in the style of wago, kango and gairaigo are given. An assessment is given of the transformation of anglicisms in the means of telecommunications and Japanese mass culture in the era of globalization.

The history of cinema, and notably that of post-war Italian cinema, can only be understood adequately in the context of other contiguous cultural disciplines. World literature, including that of France, Germany, and Russia, played a key role in the development of post-war Italian film and the cinematic technique it has come to embody. Moving away from the usual modes of defining this period—a trajectory that begins with neorealism and ends with Bertolucci—author Carlo Testa offers proof that coming to terms with literary texts is an essential step toward understanding the motion pictures they influenced. The means of recreating literature for the screen has changed drastically over the last half-century, as has the impact of different national traditions on Italian cinema. Testa's work is the first to explicitly and deliberately link postwar Italian cinema to general intellectual concerns such as the relationship between literary authors and cinematic auteurs. Moreover, his analysis of the impact of French, German, and Russian cultures on Italy brings forth a new reading of Italian cinema, a new paradigm for exploring complex issues of authorship, culture, and art.

Abstract This chapter explores the historical turn in German intellectual life at the turn of the nineteenth century and its impact on theology. Two aspects are pivotal: the revolutionary social changes of the time create a sense of rupture between past and present; and radical criticism calls into question the reliability of historical sources. Historicization seeks to address both through a transformation of history into a rigorously methodical science while drawing on contemporaneous philosophy for models of reintegrating past reality into the contemporary horizon. Theologians played an active part in this development, but their work cannot be understood without their wider context. The chapter discusses Lessing and the Fragment Controversy; philosophies of history in Kant and Schelling; and the theological adaptation of these ideas in Schleiermacher, Marheineke, and de Wette.

The present paper aims to present an overview of major ideas, practices and cultural manifestations of Chinese Chan Buddhism from the perspective of contemporary academic literature on this subject. The first part describes the background of Chan’s emergence as the meditative tradition of Sinitic Buddhism in the first millennium AD and discusses some key doctrinal and practical tenets of this tradition emphasized by the pre- -modern Chan authors. The second part presents major literary genres associated with Chan and their role in creating a personal role model of an enlightened Chan master. The third and final part attempts to situate Chan Buddhism within a larger context of the intellectual history of early modern and contemporary China; it points out the impact of Chan ideas and rhetoric on various doctrines and practices of Pure Land Buddhism, Neoconfucianism and Daoism and discusses the patterns of transformation which Chan itself underwent in the 20th century.

As an intellectual tradition, the history of Hegelianism is the history of the reception and influence of the thought of G.W.F. Hegel. This tradition is notoriously complex and many-sided, because while some Hegelians have seen themselves as merely defending and developing his ideas along what they took to be orthodox lines, others have sought to ‘reform’ his system, or to appropriate individual aspects and overturn others, or to offer consciously revisionary readings of his work. This makes it very hard to identify any body of doctrine common to members of this tradition, and a wide range of divergent philosophical views can be found among those who (despite this) can none the less claim to be Hegelians. There are both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ reasons for this: on one hand, Hegel’s position itself brings together many different tendencies (idealism and objectivism, historicism and absolutism, rationalism and empiricism, Christianity and humanism, classicism and modernism, a liberal view of civil society with an organicist view of the state); any balance between them is hermeneutically very unstable, enabling existing readings to be challenged and old orthodoxies to be overturned. On the other hand, the critical response to Hegel’s thought and the many attempts to undermine it have meant that Hegelians have continually needed to reconstruct his ideas and even to turn Hegel against himself, while each new intellectual development, such as Marxism, pragmatism, phenomenology or existential philosophy, has brought about some reassessment of his position. This feature of the Hegelian tradition has been heightened by the fact that Hegel’s work has had an impact at different times over a long period and in a wide range of countries, so that divergent intellectual, social and historical pressures have influenced its distinct appropriations. At the hermeneutic level, these appropriations have contributed greatly to keeping the philosophical understanding of Hegel alive and open-ended, so that our present-day conception of his thought cannot properly be separated from them. Moreover, because questions of Hegel interpretation have so often revolved around the main philosophical, political and religious issues of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Hegelianism has also had a significant impact on the development of modern Western thought in its own right. As a result of its complex evolution, Hegelianism is best understood historically, by showing how the changing representation of Hegel’s ideas have come about, shaped by the different critical concerns, sociopolitical conditions and intellectual movements that dominated his reception in different countries at different times. Initially, Hegel’s influence was naturally most strongly felt in Germany as a comprehensive, integrative philosophy that seemed to do justice to all realms of experience and promised to preserve the Christian heritage in a modern and progressive form within a speculative framework. However, this position was quickly challenged, both from other philosophical standpoints (such as F.W.J. Schelling’s ‘positive philosophy’ and F.A. Trendelenburg’s neo-Aristotelian empiricism), and by the celebrated generation of younger thinkers (the so-called ‘Young’ or ‘Left’ Hegelians, such as Ludwig Feuerbach, David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Arnold Ruge and the early Karl Marx), who insisted that to discover what made Hegel a truly significant thinker (his dialectical method, his view of alienation, his ‘sublation’ of Christianity), this orthodoxy must be overturned. None the less, both among these radicals and in academic circles, Hegel’s influence was considerably weakened in Germany by the 1860s and 1870s, while by this time developments in Hegelian thought had begun to take place elsewhere. Hegel’s work was known outside Germany from the 1820s onwards, and Hegelian schools developed in northern Europe, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, America and (somewhat later) Britain, each with their own distinctive line of interpretation, but all fairly uncritical in their attempts to assimilate his ideas. However, in each of these countries challenges to the Hegelian position were quick to arise, partly because the influence of Hegel’s German critics soon spread abroad, and partly because of the growing impact of other philosophical positions (such as Neo-Kantianism, materialism and pragmatism). Nevertheless, Hegelianism outside Germany proved more durable in the face of these attacks, as new readings and approaches emerged to counter them, and ways were found to reinterpret Hegel’s work to show that it could accommodate these other positions, once the earlier accounts of Hegel’s metaphysics, political philosophy and philosophy of religion (in particular) were rejected as too crude. This pattern has continued into the twentieth century, as many of the movements that began by defining themselves against Hegel (such as Neo-Kantianism, Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, post-structuralism and even ‘analytic’ philosophy) have then come to find unexpected common ground, giving a new impetus and depth to Hegelianism as it began to be assimilated within and influenced by these diverse approaches. Such efforts at rapprochement began in the early part of the century with Wilhelm Dilthey’s attempt to link Hegel with his own historicism, and although they were more ambivalent, this connection was reinforced in Italy by Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. The realignment continued in France in the 1930s, as Jean Wahl brought out the more existentialist themes in Hegel’s thought, followed in the 1940s by Alexander Kojève’s influential Marxist readings. Hegelianism has also had an impact on Western Marxism through the writings of the Hungarian Georg Lukács, and this influence has continued in the critical reinterpretations offered by members of the Frankfurt School, particularly Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas and others. More recently, most of the major schools of philosophical thought (from French post-structuralism to Anglo-American ‘analytic’ philosophy) have emphasized the need to take account of Hegel, and as a result Hegelian thought (both exegetical and constructive) is continually finding new directions.