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Time and the Sense of History: West and East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John T. Marcus
John T. Marcus
Affiliation:
Hojstra College
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Extract

The natural condition of history is the paradox. The half century of upheavals which saw the devolution of colonial empires and the humbling of the West's hybris, also witnessed the culminating impact of Western culture upon non-European nations. Toynbee even suggests that this development points to the eventual evolution of a universal civilization, geared to the Westernized rhythm of an industrial society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , January 1961 , pp. 123 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

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19 T. E. La Fargue notes (China's First Hundred) that despite early maladjustment, the first group of Western-educated Chinese did subsequently achieve a useful role in the imperial bureaucracy.

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26 de Riencourt, Amaury, The Soul of China (New York, 1958), pp. 14–16Google Scholar.

27 See especially Nivison, David S., “‘Knowledge’ and ‘Action’ in Chinese Thought since Wang Yang-ming”, in A. F. Wright, ed., Studies in Chinese Thought, p. 131Google Scholar. For specific instances, see Kuang, Ssu-ma, The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms; Chapters 69–78 from the Tzu Chih T’ung Chien, trans, by Fang, Achilles (Cambridge, Mass., 1952)Google Scholar. T’an, Ssu-ma and Ch’ien, Ssu-ma, Statesman, Patriot and General in Ancient China; Three Shih Chi Biographies of the Ch’in Dynasty, trans, by Bodde, D., American Oriental Series, XVII (New Haven, 1940)Google Scholar. Essentially the same “chronicle” characteristic is found in the historical accounts of social and economic conditions, as compiled, for example, in Food and Money in Ancient China; the Earliest Economic History of China to A.D. 25; Han Shu 24, with Related Texts Han Shu 91 and Shih Chi 129, trans, by Lee Swann, Nancy (Princeton, 1950)Google Scholar. See particularly Watson, Burton, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Grand Historian of China (New York, 1958)Google Scholar. Franke, Otto comments (“Der Ursprung der Chinesischen Geschichtsschreibung”, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; Sitzung der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse [Berlin], XXIII [1925], [07 16], p. 308)Google Scholar that Ssu-ma Ch’ien did not achieve the heights of historical perspective of Thucydides—indeed, that this would not have been possible in his environment—but that he stands rather on a level with Tacitus, although still far from the latter's psychological insight.

28 Gardner, Charles S., Chinese Traditional Historiography (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), pp. 69–71, 77–78Google Scholar. Dubs, Homer H., “The Reliability of Chinese Histories”, The Far Eastern Quarterly, VI (1946), p. 29Google Scholar. Yu-shan, Han, Elements of Chinese Historiography (Hollywood, Cal., 1955), pp. 24–25Google Scholar.

29 See for example Levenson, Joseph R., Confucian China and Its Modern Fate; The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley, Cal., 1958), pp. 91–92Google Scholar; and de Bary, W. T., “Chinese Despotism and the Confucian Ideal; A Seventeenth-Century View”, in Fairbank, John K., ed., Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago, 1957), pp. 168–69Google Scholar.

30 Gardner, C. S., Chinese Traditional Historiography, pp. 7, 76, esp. 77–78Google Scholar. Nivison, D. S., “‘Knowledge’ and ‘Action’ … since Wang Yang-ming”, Studies in Chinese Thought, p. 131Google Scholar. Yu-shan, Han, Elements of Chinese Historiography, p. 33Google Scholar. Han Yushan also cites Liang Ch’i-Ch’ao's comment to the same effect {ibid., p. 171).

31 Teng, S. Y., “Chinese Historiography in the Last Fifty Years”, The Far Eastern Quarterly, VIII (1949), pp. 131 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dubs, H. H., “The Reliability of Chinese Histories”, The Far Eastern Quarterly, VI, pp. 23, 43Google Scholar.

32 Bodde, Derk, “Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy”, in Wright, A. F., ed., Studies in Chinese Thought, pp. 28–30Google Scholar. de Bary, W. T., “Chinese Despotism and the Confucian Ideal”, Chinese Thought and Institutions, p. 168Google Scholar.

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34 Bodde, D. (“Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy”, Studies in Chinese Thought, pp. 27–30)Google Scholar distinguishes between a static historical philosophy in early Confucianism and what he terms the predominant “dynamic” conception of cyclical evolution, voiced, for example, by Mencius. In the present writer's view, cyclical concepts, whether found in Chinese thought or in Polybius and Machiavelli, are inherently “static” and the term “dynamic” is suited rather to linear-evolutionary concepts. See also Yu-shan, Han, Elements of Chinese Historiography, p. 33Google Scholar.

35 Bodde, D., “Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy”, Studies in Chinese Thought, pp. 30–34, 68, 73Google Scholar.

36 A different view, it might be noted, is presented in de Riencourt, A., The Soul of China, pp. 82–83Google Scholar.

37 Yu-lan, Feng, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2 vols., trans, by Bodde, D. (Princeton, 1952–1953), II, pp. 11 ff., 58–75, esp. pp. 71–75, 158–59, 474–76, 698–702Google Scholar. Yu-wei, K’ang, Ta T’ung Shu; The One-World Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei, trans, by Thompson, Laurence G. (London, 1958), pp. 47–50 ff., 241 ffGoogle Scholar.

Arthur Hummel explains that K’ang Yu-wei, seeking to fit the Western attitude of progress into a Confucian frame, was forced to deny the Chinese historian's axiom of a past Golden Age, indeed had to “explain it away” as a deliberate myth by Confucius. In doing this, Hummel notes, K’ang Yu-wei was in fact undermining the traditional foundation of Chinese historiography (Chieh-Kang, Ku, “The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, Being the Preface to a Symposium on Ancient Chinese History [Ku Shih Pien], Translated and Annotated by Arthur W. Hummel”, Sinica Leidensia, Edidit lnstitutum Sinologicum Lugduno-Batavum, I (Leyden, 1931), pp. XII–XVIGoogle Scholar.

38 Gardner, C. S., Chinese Traditional Historiography, esp. pp. 4–6, pp. 75–77Google Scholar. Teng, S. Y.. “Chinese Historiography in the Last Fifty Years”, The Far Eastern Quarterly, VIII, pp. 135 ff., 147Google Scholar. See also Han Yu-shan, op. cit., pp. 170–71.

39 Levenson, J. R. (“‘History’ and ‘Value’: The Tensions of Intellectual Choice in Modern China”, in Wright, A. F., ed., Studies in Chinese Thought)Google Scholar discusses the basic conflict between “historical” justification based on tradition, and “value”-justification based on a comparison of absolute, “universal” alternatives. He notes that a traditionalist defense of Confucianism itself denotes a critical retreat from the earlier confident assumption of the universal supremacy of Sinic values. Between these alternatives of “history” and “value”, the author sees the cultural dilemma of modern China.

As a variant of this significant analysis, the present article suggests a tension between the traditionalist Chinese approach to the past and the relativist “value”-implications of the new Western cultural-historical comparative sense.

40 The Bhagavad Gita, trans, by Nikhilananda, Swami (New York, 1944), pp. 81–82, 102–22, 146–47 ff., 253–54Google Scholar. Coomaraswamy, A. K., Hinduism and Buddhism, p. 29Google Scholar. Zimmer, H., Philosophies of India, pp. 151–60, 160–61 ff., 177, 387–88, 395, 403–4, 459–60, 561, 596–98Google Scholar.

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43 In Northrop, F. S. C.'s well-known work, The Meeting of East and West; An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding (New York, 1946), pp. 366–70 ff., 391–401 ff.Google Scholar, this central theme of Indian thought is transformed, perhaps with some overstatement, into a unifying Weltanschauung of the East.

44 James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience; A Study in Human Nature (New York, 1925), pp. 379–82, 405–12Google Scholar.

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47 Guénon, René, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, trans, by Whitby, Clark (London, 1928), pp. 34–35Google Scholar. Event-making men like Asoka have, of course, existed, but the attitude regarding them has been different from that predominant in Western history.

48 Keith, A. B., Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon, pp. 277–80Google Scholar. The Bhagavad Gita, pp. 83, 89, 278, 347, 353. See especially Zimmer, H., Philosophies of India, pp. 231–34, 537–38Google Scholar.

49 This did not prevent the development in classical India of power-politics that in cynicism outdid the peccadilloes of Machiavelli's compatriots. The political morality of the “law of the fish” would confirm Hobbes’ estimate of the qualities of human nature. See Zimmer, H., Philosophies of India, pp. 87–127, 136–39Google Scholar.

50 A striking example of this transition can be found in the attitude of Swami Vivekananda who was intent upon preserving the Vedanta tradition against the “materialistic” encroachments of the West, yet was prepared to accept the dynamism of action and even to appeal occasionally to the enthusiasm of engagement exemplified by the Occident; see for example The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 7 vols. (Mayavati- Almora-Himalayas, 1924–1931)Google Scholar, scattered, but esp. III, pp. 204–5, 213, 220, 285–304, 315–19, IV, pp. 316–18, 332–41, 399–413, 421–25.