Rethinking the Zombie:
A Response to Joshua Fogel
By Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2015)
Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider, eds., The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. 301 pp. ISBN13: 9789004260139; E-ISBN: 9789004260146 (Hardback: €115, $149)
We are grateful to Joshua Fogel for providing us an opportunity to reflect on our edited volume, The Challenge of Linear Time, and giving it some publicity. We of course take full responsibility for the various typographical and grammatical errors that Fogel points out, and we recognize his work in the field of Sino-Japanese cultural and intellectual history. However, Fogel’s lengthy review brings out another side of him: he seems engaged in a war against theory, which perhaps stems from an insecurity about his own mode of scholarship.
We can catch a glimpse of this insecurity already in 1994, when Fogel reviewed Stefan Tanaka’s Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Fogel’s book on Naitō Konan appeared in 1984, and was one of the first English-language books on Japanese sinology. However, the early 1980s were also a time when the linguistic turn and a number of critical theories were beginning to influence the humanities and Area Studies. In 1993, the publication of Tanaka’s Japan’s Orient took the study of Japanese sinology to a new level. Tanaka drew on a huge range of theories to rethink the role of Japanese sinology in relation to larger theoretical and epistemological issues connected with the Japanese empire and the construction of geographical space. Whether we agree with Tanaka’s analysis or not, we cannot deny that he made an immense contribution by engaging with theoretical issues. In this context, Fogel might have perceived his own mode of research slipping into the past and in 1994, he wrote a fairly hostile review. He claimed that Tanaka’s enmity for Japanese orientalists “comes across in snide comments as well as a new style that seems to have come of age with postmodernism, argument by innuendo rather than by evidence (which, presumably, still smacks of benighted enlightenment positivism).”[1]
It is difficult to read this sentence without thinking of the aphorism, “Each time we point, we simultaneously point three fingers back at ourselves.” As part of a larger movement to defend positivistic scholarship and shield area studies from theory, Fogel himself has written reviews filled with snide remarks and innuendo, and we have to understand his review of our book in this context. Our book of course does not offer a sustained argument as did Tanaka’s, and rather than postmodernism, this time Fogel singles out Marxism for attack.
Fogel provides a key to understanding his own review of our work when he offers us advice about how we could have organized our edited volume: “One theme that would have been good to treat thematically throughout the essays is the zombie-undead.” For the most part, Fogel is silent about why the zombie would be a theme that runs through the book, but at the end of the review, he recalls a conversation he had with Frederic Wakeman:
Many years ago, I mentioned to the late Fred Wakeman that I had actually read a work that dated the emergence of postmodernism to 1972. He responded (as best I can remember): “[expletive deleted], that’s just when Marxism died.” The idea occurred to me that Marxism, like the religion that it has become, may be the undead philosophy of our time. When postmodernism arose and most thought Marxism dead and gone—and then especially after the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorships around the globe and melioration of all but one or two—we entered the era of the culture wars. It was not a happy time in the academy with the advent of political correctness, but at least the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere seemed to be headed for better times. But, now that postmodernism is moribund or perhaps dead and gone, zombie Marxism is on the rise, stalking the world, reminding everyone to never forget class (who would?), that “global capitalism” is an ever-present threat, appearing in rustification theme restaurants in China, and the like. Might I suggest that everyone dust off their tattered copies of One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse and (re)-read it? Either that or rent Love at First Bite (1979), starring George Hamilton.
This passage suggests the larger goals that motivate Fogel’s review, such as a critique of what Fogel perceives as the return of Marxism, which according to Fogel is dead. However, we must ask: What allows Fogel to make such claims? When we ask this question, we see that the real undead animating Fogel’s review is not Marxism but two paradigms that we thought had long passed away: the Cold War paradigm, with its characteristic anti-Marxism, and its twin, the Area Studies paradigm, with all its essentialism. Despite the many critiques that have been issued of both these paradigms, like zombies they haunt Fogel’s review.
In the early 1980s, Fogel could pretend as if Marxist and postmodern theory did not exist, but by 1994, when such theories became salient in the study of Asia, he began to lash out at books attempting to bring theory and scholarship together. In his reactive fervor, Fogel apparently internalized the Cold War and Area Studies zombies. Because Fogel misrecognizes these zombies, his review of our book reveals that he is either not able or not willing to engage carefully with the core themes of the volume.
If Fogel himself had probed some of the ideas he mentioned in the above passage, he might have navigated a bit more successfully through the essays in the volume. By invoking Marcuse, Fogel shows that he is at least aware of new interpretations of Marxism, which conceive of capitalism as more than merely an economic system. However, if Fogel really understood the books that he cites, then he would not have been prone to such misunderstandings of the essays in our volume.
We can see this by examining his reading of Murthy’s essay. The essay is important to Fogel not because its author is one of the editors of the book but because it is the only one among the ten essays in the volume that explicitly invokes a Marxist project. So the fixation on zombie Marxism in such a volume, while perhaps flattering to Murthy, reveals to us Fogel’s fear of Marxism’s return, along with his incomprehension of the Marxist project.
After asserting that Murthy’s study of Tan Sitong’s famous Renxue is “unobjectionable,” Fogel goes on to ask questions about the author’s use of Lukács. He asks “Did Tan or Zhang live in a capitalist society? Were they at all engaged in anything related to capitalism?” If Fogel were even a casual reader of Lukács and Marcuse, he would have understood that the very definition of capitalism is at stake here. The “long citation” of Lukács to which Fogel refers is precisely about modern bureaucracy, which Lukács sees as intimately connected to capitalism. Lukács wanted to expand our conception of capitalism beyond the market and economics to include the cultural and political structures that made market exchange possible. Murthy grants that in late-nineteenth-century China, unlike in England, we would not find a fully developed market. However, since the Self-strengthening Movement in the 1860s, Chinese elites were involved in a project to make China wealthy and powerful in a way that would be incomprehensible outside the context of capitalism and imperialism. In other words, since the various unequal treaties associated with the Opium War, China was thrust into the global capitalist system of nation-states and consequently intellectuals such as Tan and Zhang could not avoid contending with issues related to the modern capitalist world, including new forms of time, constitutions, and concepts of equality and freedom. Lukács makes a controversial claim that these various aspects of capitalism become generalized because of the spread of the commodity form. Fogel might disagree with such a statement, but his review merely issues blanket criticisms while ignoring the arguments.
Because Fogel overlooks the nature of Lukács’ call to conceptualize the commodity at a more fundamental level that includes thought and culture, he fails to grasp Murthy’s various references to philosophy. For example, Murthy mentions Aristotle in his discussion of the notion of linear time. Fogel comments, “correct me if I am wrong, but Aristotle did not live in anything remotely resembling a capitalist society.” Georg Lukács (in the book that Fogel himself cites), Alfred Sohn-Rehtel, and others have written about how Plato’s and Aristotle’s respective philosophies were conditioned by the partial prevalence of commodification in ancient Athenian society, but their theories need not detain us here. More important, Fogel just fails to read what Murthy wrote: “While this vision of time can be found in Aristotle, we must emphasize that it becomes widely institutionalized and universal in capitalism” (52). Aristotle can be useful in discussing linear time, even though such abstract notions of time were not generalized in ancient Athens.
Fogel’s reading of Murthy shows how Cold War zombies prevent him from understanding Marxist theory, but in his critique of Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik’s essay, the zombies produce statements that are even more out of place in a scholarly review. Fogel suggests: “Why not come right out and say that Mao had lost his marbles and this whole campaign was insanity run amok?” Do such statements really shed much more light on the Campaign to Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius than Weigelin-Schwiedrzik’s essay does? Fogel’s critique, if one can even call it that, fails to consider how the intellectual discourse of the 1970s concerning Legalism and Confucianism was not only connected to issues of politics, privilege, and equality, but to a debate about history and time. According to Weigelin-Schwiedrzik’s argument, in this campaign, Mao, who had been a proponent of linear time, returns to a cyclical understanding of time. Fogel, in his obsession with fending off Marxism, again fails to read this article properly.
As the previous example already shows, the zombies haunting Fogel prevent him analyzing the core theme of the book, i.e. linear time. Axel Schneider’s essay is brushed away with the awkward remark that it has been published before, as if this would invalidate its argument. Schneider introduces Liu Yizheng’s conservative critique of linear time and progress, a critique that recently has become the focus of much research in China. This critique, in Schneider’s view, ultimately had to fail, because Liu wasn’t able simultaneously to argue for a theory of history based on Confucian ethics and bring forward concrete plans for China’s political and economic modernization. Dismissing this essay with the aforementioned remark, Fogel simply ignores the analysis presented and hence he also overlooks how Kuo Ya-pei and Schneider each deal with the theme of the book, linear time, in different ways. Another missed opportunity to engage with the volume in a meaningful manner.
This lack of understanding and of earnest engagement pervades Fogel’s review. But let us move on to how his review embodies the ghost of Area Studies and promotes its essentialism. With respect to the opening essay, Fogel writes: “Can there be a bigger mistake in East Asian studies than beginning an anthology with an essay by Naoki Sakai? Maybe, but doing this virtually ensures setting the stage with incomprehensibility.” We are tempted to rewrite Fogel’s question with him as the object of critique. “Can there be a bigger mistake than to allow Joshua Fogel to review anything theoretically sophisticated? Perhaps, but asking him to write such a review will clearly lead to useless mudslinging and misunderstanding.” The review is in tone condescending and partly insulting. It is polemical, ideologically motivated, and thus an intellectual failure—we were surprised to see a review published in this form. It reminded us of the wise dictum “suaviter in modo, fortiter in re,” which of course turned upside down means that a failure to keep good manners is more often than not an indication of the author’s unwillingness or inability to bring forward substantial and sober arguments.
Once we ask why Fogel fails to comprehend and bring forward sober arguments, we find certain structures of Area Studies emerging. In particular, based on the Area Studies model, scholars have interpreted Japanese thinkers in terms of indigenous traditions and contexts. Sakai’s work has been path-breaking precisely because he refuses this paradigm and underscores how many if not most Japanese thinkers were extremely well versed in European thought and consequently go beyond the dichotomy of East and West. However, because of Sakai’s attention to the philosophical contexts of Japanese thinkers, his essays, and, in particular, his contribution to our volume, require seriously engaging with philosophical concepts.
Fogel appears unwilling to engage the philosophical complexity of Ienaga’s, Maruyama’s, or Sakai’s arguments and consequently makes embarrassing comments. For example, he cites Sakai saying, “history is invariably a story, and also tied to narration,” but naively asks: does this mean “we just make it up as we go?” Such statements overlook the vast literature about narrative, fiction, and history, which is not all simply relativistic. We do not experience time in terms of discrete now-points or linear time, but rather in terms of a narrative or story. This fundamental structure informs our lives, fiction, and, of course, the writing of history. None of this implies that “anything goes.” Moreover, far from being a relativist, it is Sakai rather than Fogel who forces us to think seriously about the fascist and imperialist pasts of Japanese postwar liberal intellectuals.
Fogel and the zombies do not allow us to understand the complexity of postwar Japanese texts. Fogel cites Sakai saying, “The second problematic is that of the negativity in terms of which they articulated the issues of subjectivity to the formation of historicist consciousness” and comments “your guess is as good as mine.” Fogel’s use of this common expression is an excellent example of negating the heterogeneity embodied in “you,” the reader(s). In Fogel’s statement, the I is the same as the “you” (the reader), so of course “your guess would be as good as mine.” He has totally receded from the Sakai statement in despair and then attempts to universalize his bewilderment by suggesting that faced with Sakai’s prose all guesses are equally valid. This would only be true in a land where all readers were Joshua Fogels or at least shared his framework—he negates readers with different orientations and backgrounds, who might not need to guess. But such a homogenizing perspective actually conceals the conditions of Fogel’s own review. It is ironic that, even as his review embodies (a somewhat crude) negativity, he fails to understand what negativity means. Sakai’s point is that because Japanese thinkers, and Ieanaga and Maruyama in particular, were immersed in German idealism and other philosophical texts, they were fascinated by the problem of negativity, the ability to distance oneself from an object, criticize it and eventually change it. They further understood negativity, subjectivity, and historical consciousness together. Being conscious of making history implies being able to re-conceptualize, criticize and change things based on one’s own perspective—a negativity that emerges from the subject. In Sakai’s view, despite their emphasis on negativity, neither Ienaga nor Maruyma could avoid the pitfalls of positivist essentialism, especially when it came to discourses about geographical space.
When Fogel recedes from Sakai’s text, he expresses a purely negative relation to the words on the page and it is precisely this stance that makes it impossible for him to make sense of the concepts in front of him. However, because Fogel does not understand this negativity, he unknowingly grafts the results of his retreat from the words and concepts on the page onto the text itself. Such a lack of consciousness of the negative often leads to positivism and essentialism—the projection of an essence onto an object, while eliding one’s own subjective activity in constructing the object.
In his critique of various authors in the book, Fogel makes the ghost of positivist essentialism shine through. Take the following examples. When discussing Schneider’s work, he writes: “Unlike the previous two essays [Sakai and Murthy] which salt and pepper their paragraphs with German expressions, but who do not appear to know the language, Schneider is a native speaker.” No evidence is given to show that either Sakai or Murthy made mistakes in German or used German carelessly. In Fogel’s eyes apparently only native German speakers appear to know German and have direct insight into German philosophical terms. The zombie of essentialism strikes again. If that is the case, then shall we assume that Fogel and other non-Japanese who study Japan do not really know Japanese? This point would not be worth belaboring if Fogel did not make a similar assumption with respect to Sun Ge. He writes: “Nakajima has the distinct advantage over Sun Ge in that he clearly knows something about the work of Takeuchi and the context in which it emerged.” Why is this so clear just from reading the two essays? Of course, it is because Nakajima is Japanese and has an innate access to Takeuchi’s work, just as Schneider was born speaking philosophical German. I suppose it is of no import that Sun has published a monograph on Takeuchi, which has been well-received in both Japan and China, along with numerous articles on the subject, while, as far as we know, this essay is one of the only essays that Nakajima has published on Takeuchi. Such assumptions along with a lack of knowledge about Takeuchi make it difficult for Fogel to understand the content of Sun Ge’s essay. Consequently, Fogel cannot understand why Takeuchi is associated with the right wing. Sun’s point is precisely that Takeuchi defies the usual Cold War categorizations of right and left. Indeed, although Takeuchi praised Mao, he could be associated with the right because of his support for the Greater East Asia War, his essay on Ōkawa Shūmei, and his continued promotion of pan-Asianism, which was intimately associated with imperialism. Here again, when Japanese and Chinese intellectuals fail to conform to Fogel’s preconceptions, he stops reading. The zombies take over.
We should thank Fogel for providing us a key in his final paragraph to understanding his review. We would like also to make one comment with respect to how to understand our book. Fogel begins his remarks by noting that the “only thing that keeps the book together, then is the binding.” It is true that there is no overarching ideology or theoretical framework that brings the book together. The book was a result of a conference on nationalism, modernity, and history writing, and all of the essays grapple with how intellectuals in China and Japan wrote history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how they reconstructed narratives about the past in various media. Given that this was the period when the discourse of linear time and progressive history began to dominate East Asia, most authors discussed in the volume could not avoid dealing with this issue. Fogel’s review points out the ways in which Murthy and Kuo attempt to address the theme of linear time, and in this response we have shown how Weigelin-Schwiedrzik and Schneider deal with this central theme of the book. We could list the ways that other essays address this theme and perhaps should have done this more effectively in the introduction. But we hope that readers of the book will enjoy the variety of styles encompassed in the book, and we look forward to further dialogue about our volume.
[1] Joshua Fogel, “Review of Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History.” Monumenta Nipponica vol. 9, 1 (1994): 108-112.
The Challenge of Linear Time:
Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia
Edited by Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider
Reviewed by Joshua Fogel
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2015)
Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider, eds., The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. 301 pp. ISBN13: 9789004260139; E-ISBN: 9789004260146 (Hardback: €115, $149)
Let me begin with an admission. I forced myself to read the first two-thirds of this book and so hated it that I had to put it aside—in the ultimately vain hope that the editor of these reviews would forget about me and the book. What I forgot, however, was that, in the era of computers, nothing ever gets forgotten—the MCLC book review editor emailed to remind me of my approaching submission deadline. I know both editors of this book (Murthy and Schneider), not well, but I like them both and think of them as good scholars. But what I had read of this collection at that point was beyond bad. The good news is that the last third of the book—actually, the last four essays—is much better. So, here is my honest review.
First things first—this is the most poorly edited book that I have ever set eyes on: countless typos, impossibly bad grammar, gibberish masquerading as prose, and a totally haphazard inclusion/exclusion of Chinese characters. For example, in the “List of Contributors,” seven of the ten authors are scholars with Chinese or Japanese names, but only one has characters next to his Romanized name. The editors would like us to believe that the central theme of the volume has to do with “linear time,” but only a few of the essays even mention this topic, let alone address it. The only thing that keeps the book together, then, is the binding. The editors’ introduction basically just attempts to summarize the themes of each of the ten essays that follow.
Can there be a bigger mistake in East Asian studies than beginning an anthology with an essay by Naoki Sakai? Maybe, but doing this virtually ensures setting the stage with incomprehensibility. As I forced myself to read this essay, an old song by Peter, Paul, and Mary kept floating through my head, “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” (1967); in that classic, they spoof several then-current singing styles, and they note of The Mamas and The Papas: “They got a good thing goin’ / When the words don’t get in the way.” Wow, do the words ever get in the way of this essay—and there’s no music to save anything. I’m sure an editor would have helped this essay, but I doubt s/he could have saved it.
Entitled “Negativity and Historicist Time: Facticity and Intellectual History of the 1930s,” a distinctly opaque title never fully explained, Sakai looks at works written by two exceedingly famous historians of thought in Japan, Ienaga Saburō and Maruyama Masao, during the Pacific War. Both of these men are well known for their leftist, pro-democracy political bent in the postwar era, but Sakai attempts to demonstrate that, earlier, both drew on the works of 1930s philosophers whom no one would confuse with the left: Tanabe Hajime and Miki Kiyoshi. This could be extremely interesting, but the words (Sakai’s) get in the way. For example (and this could be multiplied many times): “The second problematic is that of the negativity in terms of which they articulated the issues of subjectivity to the formation of historicist consciousness” (16). Your guess is as good as mine. At one point, Sakai decides that periodization is an issue to be discussed, and he closes his section on the topic thusly: “We must now inquire into the ways periodization works with a view to negativity and subjectivity. For, history is a matter of the individual’s praxis” (21). What could this possibly mean? Two paragraphs later: “First of all, history is invariably a story, and always tied to narration virtually in all the languages.” Infelicities of language aside, does this mean we just make it up as we go? And, when he concludes his next section on history and facticity, Sakai writes: “[I]t is understandable that the historical is grounded in the future-oriented facticity (jijitsu-sei) of the subject, and necessarily mediated by negativity” (25). Doesn’t help much, does it?
Earlier in his essay, Sakai makes it clear that he is going to be leveling serious criticism at Ienaga and Maruyama: “It goes without saying that Ienaga and Maruyama are both engaged in the imperialist enterprise of demonstrating the exceptional character of Japan in Asia, of its leadership in the modernization of Asian people” (17). If “it goes without saying,” then what is the point of this kind of postmortem character assassination? He goes on a bit later: “One can hardly fail to recognize that they are, wittingly or otherwise, committed to a certain exceptionalist logic similar in structure to that of Eurocentrism.” Again, “hardly fail to realize” and “wittingly or otherwise” are condescending in the extreme. The same paragraph continues in this vein, but this should suffice.
One point Sakai makes is both terribly interesting and important to future scholarship in the intellectual history of the 1930s. Tanabe, Miki, and others were highly critical of what he calls “Japanese fascism,” but that does not mean they opposed Japanese imperialism in Asia. There has been a tendency, he points out, in both Japanese and Western scholarship to conflate the two.
When he turns to closer examination of Maruyama’s famous study of Tokugawa-period intellectual history, the ship runs aground again. This book, which two generations of English readers have now been able to access (even if we have reasonably good Japanese) thanks to Mikiso Hane’s 1974 translation, is found wanting in many regards. In a note, Sakai writes: “Hane’s translation facilitates readers’ immediate comprehension, so I have objection to it” (41). Again, an editor would have been helpful here, but more to the point: why is comprehension objectionable? Sakai goes on to opt for utter obfuscation, which is apparently a good thing. When he shortly thereafter tries to trace the root of Maruyama’s historicism to German sources, he claims: “I cannot identify the second context in terms of specific texts, but I am convinced that Maruyama was inspired by Carl Schmitt on a number of issues” (41). This strikes me as argument by innuendo—at best. Associating anyone who has demonstrated firmly pro-democratic, anti-“fascist” ideas over many decades with the likes of the unreconstructed fascist Schmitt without evidence is scandalous. (The bibliography is a mess—47-48).
Viren Murthy’s study of Tan Sitong’s famous Renxue (仁學) is unobjectionable. It is not immediately clear why ren in the title is translated as “cosmic love.” This is, of course, an interpretive translation, and possibly an overdetermined one. Murthy claims in a footnote that the usual rendering of “benevolence” won’t work here, because he believes “Tan invokes it [ren] as an ontological ground rather than merely a moral maxim” (49). Why he believes this is not clarified, nor for that matter why an “ontological ground” should lead us into “cosmic” dimensions. Later, he states that Tan understood ren (now mysteriously translated by Murthy as “benevolence”) “as the cosmological ground of the universe” (57). Can something be an ontological ground and a cosmological ground at the same time? I’m genuinely not sure. Murthy goes on: “this substance is extremely difficult to pin down and is peculiarly hybrid.” What does this mean? That it’s a difficult concept to describe? That would be true of any philosophical concept. Does deeming it “hybrid” help us to understand it? We soon, though, see that the hitherto surreptitious viper is “global capitalism.” Now that postmodernism is dead, Marxism is apparently enjoying a rebirth—I would prefer to see it, in line with a subsequent essay in this volume, as a zombie that refuses to die. Somehow then, the young—very young—Tan Sitong was responding to global capitalism.
In an effort to illuminate, Murthy writes: “The practice of philosophy and the dialectic of time and history point to deeper structural changes. Following Georg Lukács’ analysis of German idealism, I contend that Tan and Zhang [Taiyan]’s philosophical concepts, such as equality, abstract time, and evolution are intimately associated with the logic of global capitalism” (50). Soon thereafter we meet up with a long quotation from Lukács and a footnote, but there is no such work cited in the bibliography. The text referred to here is dated 1971 and, hence, must be the much belated English translation of Lukács’s famous History and Class Consciousness which will soon be celebrating the centennial of its original publication. (Marxist classics never die, it seems.) Why would Lukács be invoked here? This is, by the way, Lukács the rebel—he would soon be forced into self-criticism and repentance—picking up what he perceived as subterranean Hegelian threads in Marx. But, what could this possibly have to do with late-nineteenth-century China? “One can understand Zhang and Tan as expressing aspects of China’s process of entering the global capitalist system of nation-states” (50). Can one? How? I think only by reading healthy doses of what one wishes to find into the text under scrutiny.
To his credit, Murthy tries to tie his argument to the issue of time, the putative central theme of this volume. Capitalism changes our conception of time—no argument there. But, then he cites Aristotle to demonstrate the issue of time and change. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Aristotle did not live in anything remotely resembling a capitalist society. There are many philosophers cited from antiquity to modern times—from China and the West. Much of this reads like so much Salba sprinkled over a mess of potage. For example, for some inexplicable reason, Baruch Spinoza is referred to (59), but no text by Spinoza is mentioned, and frankly it remains unclear to me if Murthy knows anything of the extremely difficult philosophical work of this Dutch thinker. And, what any of it has to do with Tan Sitong is beyond this reviewer. (When Murthy quotes Tan quoting Jesus as saying “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” it might have helped to note here that Jesus, if he actually ever said this, was actually quoting Leviticus 19:18.)
In his conclusion, Murthy notes: “We have seen how the theories of Tan Sitong and Zhang Taiyan react to and express different dimensions of internationally circulating discourses related to global capitalist modernity” (80). I’m not sure who this “we” refers to. Did Tan or Zhang live in a capitalist society? Were they at all engaged in anything related to capitalism? I have strong doubts. One final note—in the bibliography, Murthy cites the writings of Zhang Taiyan, about whom he has written a book, and he has the wrong character for Zhang’s name (should be: 章). Again, where were our editors?
Axel Schneider follows his co-editor with an essay entitled “Nation, History and Ethics: The Choices of Post-Imperial Historiography in China.” Schneider has long been working on those scholars of the early twentieth century to whom, for lack of a better adjective, we often refer as “traditional” or “conservative.” In fact, he has been working on this so much that this essay is reprinted from a volume published in 2012. Unlike the previous two essays which salt and pepper their paragraphs with German expressions, but who do not appear to know the language, Schneider is a native speaker. This doesn’t mean he necessarily knows what he’s talking about, but we can at least be reassured that he knows the terms he tosses about.
This essay is actually a case study of one important but little known historian, Liu Yizheng, who will also be the topic of a later essay in this volume by Ya-pei Kuo. A closer look at the footnotes reveals that, indeed, there have been more than a handful of studies of Liu, but he is still relatively unknown. Schneider begins his account of Liu’s writings with an early textbook to which he contributed, Lidai shi lüe 歷 代史略, translated differently in Kuo’s essay, though both mention that it was “an adaptation” (Schneider, 91) “based on” (Kuo, 281) Naka Michiyo’s Shina tsūshi. Schneider gives “1899” as the publication date of Naka’s work, which is wrong. It should be 1888-1890; 1899 was the date of a Shanghai reprint edition. I’m not sure if either Schneider or Kuo actually investigated what they summed up as “adaptation” or “based on,” because Naka’s book was written in literary Chinese. Did Liu et al. simplify the text, modernize the grammar, cut and paste material in the book? As I understand it, the Chinese merely removed the Japanese reading punctuation from the text and reprinted it, but I haven’t studied this issue for some years. It might have been of interest to tell readers that Naka’s book was the first comprehensive history of China written in the modern period in any language, and that it ends with the fall of the Song. I’m beginning to wonder if Schneider or Kuo have ever seen Naka’s original work.
The principal reason Schneider singles out Liu for analysis is the centrality of ethics to Liu’s historical sensibility. As he notes: “It seems to me that one of the, if not the most fundamental difference between the development of history as a discipline in the modern West and in China is the position of ethics. In the West, historicism drew reason and ethics into history, thus relativizing and undermining them, ultimately leading to a fundamental epistemological and moral crisis, which is in a way at the root of current post-modern concerns” (102). In China, by contrast, ethics is central to historical concerns. This is an interesting observation, if it is true. “[I]n a way at the root of” is a slippery phrase—it’s like being “in a way” pregnant. In the end, Schneider stakes out a position critical of Joseph Levenson—referring to his book on Liang Qichao of over sixty years ago—which is refreshing. It’s time to move on from hero worship.
At this point, the volume under review turns to an altogether different kind of essay. Sun Ge, who seems to have become some sort of Chinese expert on Japan, the basis for which escapes me, offers an interpretation of the writer Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977). Takeuchi was a gifted, leftwing Japanese scholar of modern Chinese literature who wrote extensively on Lu Xun, among other topics. Why this essay was translated (by Murthy) is incomprehensible. It adopts a lecturing, almost hectoring style on “how to write history.” But, it intersperses annoying, chatty verbiage. The one interesting aspect of this piece is how Takeuchi is read and understood in China, especially after the translation and publication of a collection of essays by him in 2005: Jindai de chaoke 近代的超克 (Overcoming of modernity). Sun wants us actually to believe that “the study of Chinese literature and thought was not actually his real goal” (113). Okay, I’ll bite. “He used this study as a medium in order to establish Japanese thought…. [This 2005 book] also presents an outline of a Japanese thinker who shoulders social responsibility while searching amidst reality.” Takeuchi was certainly committed to social causes, and he certainly wrote extensively about Sino-Japanese relations. But, without a doubt, his most influential work was a 1944 biographical study entitled Ro Jin (Lu Xun). What does “searching amidst reality” mean? Does that mean he was a realist?
Here’s an inkling of the kind of conclusion-jumping this essay excels in: “on the one hand, he does not consequently simply negate the pan-Asianism of the early Meiji period, although, after 1890, the latter was inextricably linked to invasion in a complex formation, and finally fell into fascist ideology” (114). This sort of reasoning involves a lot of stretching. Why 1890? What happened that made every pan-Asian impulse thereafter “inextricably linked” to imperialism and hence to fascism? In fact, as Sun notes: “some ‘critics of Takeuchi’ grasped the risky part of his intellectual practice and plainly stated that he was a fascist” (115). Something must be wrong with this translation. How anyone could conclude that Takeuchi had rightwing sympathies, let alone was a fascist, is inane. It is one thing to disagree with a fellow scholar—quite another to label his ideas “fascist.” Sun attempts some fancy footwork to avoid disagreeing with such ideas. It is difficult to say whether her legerdemain or those who pronounced Takeuchi a fascist is more idiotic.
But, wait, there’s more. Sun is also apparently a philosopher of history: “The process of history is just like a person who plans to take an airplane and encounters a thunderstorm” (117). There have been many statements about what the historical process most resembles, but this is arguably the most bizarre simile on the topic yet. There is more silliness of this sort—actually, lots more—but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Fortunately, Sun does not seem to be one of those bent on assassinating Takeuchi’s character, as she notes how instrumental he was in bring two generations of Japanese scholars into the study of modern Chinese literature and history. How she expresses this is a bit odd, though: “if one reads the work of Takeuchi, you will find that his real perspicacity does not consist in telling his contemporaries what they should do…. Rather, his perspicacity lies in his acute sensitivity to the fact that history moves” (119). Glad as I am to know that Takeuchi is not ordering me around, does one need Takeuchi to know that “history moves”? What does this mean? Then, after noting that reading Takeuchi “is the best object to help us train to read history,” she claims: “One could say that in both China and Japan, our intellectual training has not provided us an effective means of dealing with Takeuchi” (120-21). Huh?
The next essay by Nakajima Takahiro of Tokyo University also concerns Takeuchi Yoshimi. Unfortunately, it cannot possibly have been read by an Anglophone editor prior to publication. The English is utterly execrable—including inconceivable grammar (e.g., “Confucian norms do not binding the for people” [142]). Nakajima has a distinct advantage over Sun Ge in that he clearly knows something about the work of Takeuchi and the context in which it emerged, but, as with Sakai, the words get in the way. He also thinks it’s very important to bring Takeuchi into comparison with Walter Benjamin, but it is unclear why. If one can read through the language—no mean feat—there are interesting points hiding here and there that concern how postwar Japanese have dealt with Japan’s war responsibility and the rise of Communist China. Also, the footnotes for this chapter are cited in a fashion unlike all the others, and the bibliography and notes are packed with typos and errors, and there are no characters at all to help.
In her contribution to this volume, Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik examines the campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius (in that order) that took place in China in the last years of the Cultural Revolution. She focuses on the recurring—as if from the grave?—theme of “restoration,” though it remains unclear just what the leadership of this movement feared might be restored. Lin Biao and Confucius were both very dead at the time. Attention to the unification of China 2200 years earlier by Qin Shihuang (also quite dead) may have been meant to imply that there was fear of a restoration of decentralized rule, as had been the case prior to the Qin. Was this a crusade to stir up the people to support centralized control over the country by the Party and Mao? Sounds like it.
When Weigelin-Schwiedrzik actually turns to discussing the campaign, it is often difficult to separate her recounting the details and presumed motivations of the leadership from her own analysis. For example: “That Lin Biao and Lin Liguo had made plans to assassinate him [Mao] and fled the country had made it clear to him that the 9th Party Congress had chosen the wrong successor” (162-63). Did anyone besides Mao believe this at the time? Does anyone now? In her conclusion, she notes that this campaign “did attract quite a number of intellectuals” (174). Really? Or, were they forced to participate? I kept saying to myself as I read this frequently repetitious essay: Why not come right out and say that Mao had lost his marbles and this whole campaign was insanity run amok? Of course, that might be somewhat less than the proper scholarly style in which to sum things up, but there is the parallel danger of over-intellectualizing this admittedly bizarre affair.
We now come to the last third of the book, and it is as if the editors miraculously awoke from sleeping with the dead and began stalking the authors much more closely than before. Liu Long-hsin’s highly focused piece on the PRPH (Popular Reading Publishing House, Tongsu duwu biankanshe 通俗讀物編刊社) in the 1930s addresses a theme all but absent from Western historiography and a fascinating one at that. Many familiar names—Gu Jiegang, Lao She, Fan Wenlan, and Xu Bingchang, among others—are known to us, but their activities in preparing popularized works in Chinese history and culture are much less well known. There is a great deal of detail here, but it is worth the effort, as this is mostly new material. Liu ultimately attributes the decline of the PRPH’s efforts to a lack of money and leftist inclinations that the Guomindang would not brook.
There are, unfortunately, a fair number of typos and errors that the editors (if they even saw this essay) either missed or simply passed on. I shall spare readers the typos, but here is a sampling of other mistakes or infelicities: tanci 彈詞 is translated “twang singing” (186)—something like “storytelling accompanied by stringed instrument” might have been better; Yuan mishi (197) should probably be Yuanchao mishi (if what is meant is the Secret History of the Mongols); and all the Japanese terms in the doggerel translated on p. 199 are mistranscribed (the same is true of the one Japanese item in the bibliography)—Chinese characters are only haphazardly included in the text, making it difficult to assess things properly.
And, they just keep getting better, at least temporarily. Haiyan Lee’s marvelous essay is by far the jewel in the decrepit crown. To be fair, it would have shined anywhere. Moreover, the zombie imagery she evokes could nicely have provided the motif for this whole volume, but that would have called for some editorial leadership. Lee examines the bizarre background and subsequent exposé of a museum not far from Chengdu, a museum housed in a former landlord’s estate with a horrific “water dungeon” allegedly used for torture. It all could be brushed aside easily as just one more ghastly tale from the socialist crypt, but Lee uses it to develop a much more nuanced and meaningful critique of state socialism in China. And, it’s devastating.
Employing theory as a condiment rather than as a blunt object, the ghoulishness of the whole tale—I shan’t recount it here, because Lee’s beautifully written account deserves to be read itself—begins to make larger sense. She is especially strong in this early segment in demonstrating how the Communists turned class status through the chengfen 成分 system into a heritable trait. What she doesn’t mention is that China had not had identifiable classes (Marxist or otherwise) for the millennium preceding the Communist revolution. With the chengfen system, classes became castes, a status assigned at birth that simply could not change, and class antagonism became a kind of racism. After 1949, especially after collectivization, putative former landlords would no longer have been wealthy, blood-sucking vampires, but they (and their offspring) were repeatedly brought out—like the living dead—for humiliation, torture, and often execution.
I have not done justice to this marvelous piece of scholarship, but I shall return to the imagery it invokes below. This essay is the best scholarly critique of Chinese socialist ideology that this reviewer has ever read. Nuff said.
The last two essays in this volume are let downs, but most anything would have been after Lee’s piece. Hon Tze-ki looks at the traditionalist scholars associated with the journal Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 in the early twentieth century, and he notes their distinctive use of guangfu 光復 (restoration) and geming 革 命 (revolution). When Zhang Binglin, for example, called for a restoration, he meant the ouster of the Manchus and a return to Han Chinese rule. Because these guys were not strict Confucians, like many of their opponents in the reformist camp, they looked for cultural sources among other ancient schools and rediscovered the zhuzi 諸子 (non-canonical) philosophers of the late Zhou. This is an interesting and important point, but it is hardly news. Shimada Kenji made it over half a century ago, and he was preceded by other Japanese scholars writing in the 1920s. Still, Hon brings to light a number of nearly forgotten guocui scholars who deserve our attention and whose writing style is often difficult to penetrate.
This volume’s final piece by Ya-pei Kuo concerns (as noted above) Liu Yizheng and in particular his Zhongguo wenhua shi 中國文化史 (History of Chinese culture). Kuo devotes considerable space to what Liu meant by wenhua (281-82), because “culture” as we now use that term doesn’t cover the broad range of the Chinese term at that time. Interestingly, this breadth of meaning closely parallels Naitō Konan’s use of the term at the same time; in his view, the history of China was the history of its culture. A closer look at sources of knowledge or influence, even across political borders, would have been instructive here.
When Kuo starts to unpack some of Liu’s ideas, though, I for one would like to have seen some critique applied. For example, Liu argued that China’s “first national trait was moderation”—zhong 中, and, for that reason, the land acquired the toponym Zhongguo. There is, of course, not a scintilla of evidence for such a weird statement; if there is, it would have been good to mention it. Later, we learn of his idea that China gained its balanced name on the basis of a unanimity of “‘all citizens of the nation’” (289). How would such a poll have been taken during the Zhou dynasty? Kuo should get points, though, for trying to engage the putative theme of the volume via Liu Yizheng’s historical views.
How to ultimately assess this volume? Most of it should never have been published. It is increasingly becoming apparent that Brill does not copy edit. That should not be understood as a license to publish anything written in the Roman alphabet. Certainly, one should not abdicate responsibility for work that will go out into the world under one’s name, editorial or authorial. Sadly, the really good work in this book—first and foremost, that of Haiyan Lee—may get lost in the muck and mire of the rest.
One theme that would have been good to treat thematically throughout the essays is the zombie-undead one that Lee handles so nicely. Many years ago, I mentioned to the late Fred Wakeman that I had actually read a work that dated the emergence of postmodernism to 1972. He responded (as best I can remember): “[expletive deleted], that’s just when Marxism died.” The idea occurred to me that Marxism, like the religion that it has become, may be the undead philosophy of our time. When postmodernism arose and most thought Marxism dead and gone—and then especially after the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorships around the globe and melioration of all but one or two—we entered the era of the culture wars. It was not a happy time in the academy with the advent of political correctness, but at least the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere seemed to be headed for better times. But, now that postmodernism is moribund or perhaps dead and gone, zombie Marxism is on the rise, stalking the world, reminding everyone to never forget class (who would?), that “global capitalism” is an ever-present threat, appearing in rustification theme restaurants in China, and the like. Might I suggest that everyone dust off their tattered copies of One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse and (re)-read it? Either that or rent Love at First Bite (1979), starring George Hamilton.
Joshua Fogel
York University
September 8, 1985
The World on a Couch
By ARNOLD A. ROGOW
FREUD FOR HISTORIANS
By Peter Gay.
n "The Next Assignment," his presidential address to the American Historical Association in December 1957, William L. Langer urged his fellow historians to deepen their understanding of history through the "exploitation of the concepts and findings of modern psychology." By "modern psychology" he did not mean, as he made clear, "classical or academic psychology" but psycho-analysis "and its later developments and variations as included in the terms 'dynamic' or 'depth psychology.' " He added that despite the "prodigious impact" of psychoanalysis on many, perhaps even most, fields of knowledge, historians had "maintained an almost completely negative attitude" toward Freud and the teachings of psychoanalysis.
While there is no record of whether that address was followed by polite or enthusiastic applause, psychoanalytic training institutes have not been overwhelmed - either then or in the decades since - by a flood of applications from historians. Although a small number of young historians, usually referred to now as psychohistorians, have accepted Langer's assertion that the "newest history" should be based on "penetration in depth," the negativism of historians and social scientists in general toward psychoanalysis has changed relatively little during the past three decades. One does not exaggerate much in observing that in the academic world, psychoanalysis, far from being an idea whose time has passed, is an idea whose time has not yet come.
In "Freud for Historians," Peter Gay, perhaps the most eminent of the psychohistorians, takes sharp and informed issue with his naysaying colleagues and broadens and deepens our understanding of the contributions psychoanalysis and history can make to each other. A professor of history at Yale and since 1976 a research (nonmedical) candidate in psychoanalytic training at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, Gay is one of those rare academics whose competence in psychoanalysis is hardly less than his expertise in historical research.
His argument is that the relationship between historians and psychoanalysts has been bedeviled by misunderstandings, prejudices and failures on both sides. On the one hand, most historians wrongly imagine the main thrust of psychoanalysis is to reduce everything to a psychiatric cause springing from a single trauma, and they believe that psychoanalysts are wholly uninterested in objective reality and the varieties of human experience. On the other hand, most psychoanalysts do not care much whether their theories and concepts are relevant to historians, and many are indifferent to questions of scientific or historical fact. The result, as Gay says, is not only mutual suspicion and distrust but research findings that, because they are poorly grounded in history or psychodynamics, are woefully incomplete or, even worse, wholly wrong.
Gay does not spare psychoanalysts. He notes their tendency to rely on Freud's assertions as adequate proof of psychoanalytic propositions and their "almost unrelieved clinical preoccupation [and] passionate inwardness." Nor is he unaware that the psychohistorian (and any nonanalyst who makes use of psychoanalytic concepts) "must be prepared to face skepticism from Freud's followers almost as much as from his denigrators." But he is far more critical of historians who denigrate psychoanalysis than he is of the ultra-orthodox Freudians whose scientific world is the couch, and only the couch.
Thus historians as distinguished as Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., Lawrence Stone, Arthur Link, Kenneth S. Lynn, David E. Stannard, G. R. Elton and G. Kitson Clark, among others, are treated as uninformed and unfair critics of psychoanalysis, and not without cause. The most doctrinaire of Freud's disciples could not be more closed-minded than Schlesinger in declaring, according to Lynn, "that he had never read Freud and did not intend to." Also difficult to credit, much less accept, is Lawrence Stone's presumed belief that Freud held the sexual drive to be uniform from individual to individual, whereas, as Gay correctly notes, Freud knew only too well that the sexual drive varies enormously. On the whole, after reading "Freud for Historians," one has difficulty believing that psychoanalysts are as ignorant of history as historians are of psychoanalysis.
If that ignorance were overcome, historians and psychoanalysts might discover they have much to contribute to, and learn from, each other. Without some collaboration between them, there is little likelihood anyone will undertake what Gay sees as this generation's next assignment - a comprehensive history of the defenses against anxiety and how they vary by origins, epoch and social postion. Nor are we likely to know more about the psychodynamics of self-interest, which historians assume to be a powerful motivating factor in the behavior of nations, classes, groups and individuals, if the subject continues to be of little interest to either historians or psychoanalysts. F REUD suggested that we are never entirely free of our childhood wishes, fantasies and fears. In Gay's words, "the great lover is merely seducing his mother over and over again . . . the muscular bully is forever testing his little prepubertal manhood . . . the rational scientist finds himself bedeviled by superstitions he has preserved intact from primitive stages of his mental organization [and] politicians are only gratifying their own boyhood fantasies while they arouse those of others." If that is true, historians and psychoanalysts must consider the dismal possibility that "history is nothing more than an infinite regress, cruelly and interminably extended, in which superannuated little boys and girls solemnly replay the games of their tender years." Gay is careful to qualify such an assertion, but the fact remains -historians and psychoanalysts have been exasperatingly slow in attempting to make connections between regressive tendencies in the human psyche and the horrors of the century in which they have lived.
But "Freud for Historians" is unlikely to convince Gay's colleagues that "all history is in some measure psychohistory." And probably many psychoanalysts who read the book will not agree that "psychohistory cannot be all of history." Before rejecting Gay's argument, however, historians would do well to remind themselves that historians since Thucydides have not hesitated to speculate about psychological influences in human behavior, although they have done so with far less knowledge of such behavior than Freud and his followers possess. After all, it was not a psychohistorian or a psychoanalyst but Thomas Hobbes who in 1629 commented approvingly that in the writings of some historians, "there be subtle conjectures at the secret aims and inward cogitations of such as fall under their pen; which is also none of the least virtues in a history, where conjecture is thoroughly grounded, not forced to serve the purpose of the writer in adorning his style, or manifesting his subtlety in conjecturing."
Arnold A. Rogow is the author of "James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics and Policy." His "Thomas Hobbes: Radical in the Service of Reaction" will be published next year.
The Best History Apps
By Kate Wiles
Posted 1st April 2015, 9:19
Our pick of the finest history-related apps for your smartphone or tablet.
Imagining the IliadSome of the most exciting research being done today makes full use of modern technological advances which open up new avenues of enquiry. An added bonus of this is that the tools and materials researchers produce and use are perfectly suited to making apps, and now anyone can have direct access to some amazing historical resources.
We’ve compiled a list of our favourite history apps, suitable both for general interest and to help you conduct your own research.
Digital Libraries
Many apps now allow you to have whole libraries of manuscripts and early books in the palm of your hand. Libraries and archives have realised the benefits of producing their images for online use and are now starting to produce apps which enable you to view their manuscripts in amazing quality, and nearly all for free.
e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland (text and bytes LLC)
The libraries of Switzerland have provided over 1000 manuscripts from their collection here, and is the most extensive of any of these apps. Each is scanned in high quality and available offline, sortable by date, language, place of origin and more. The app also includes official catalogue descriptions for each manuscript.
Available for iPad and iPhone (free).
The Book of Kells (Kells Technologies Ltd)
The Book of Kells is one of the most famous and certainly one of the most beautiful manuscripts produced in medieval Britain and Ireland. This app gives you the complete Book of Kells in high resolution (up to six times original size on featured pages). With over 600 examples of animals, initial letters and other decorative themes, it is well worth the price.
Available for iPad (£8.99/$11.99).
While Kells is not available on iPhone, Colm Cille (free, by CCEA) is. This app is a virtual museum of manuscripts, stone crosses and other treasures associated with Saint Columba.
Imaging the Iliad (Vis Center)
The manuscript known as Venetus A contains the oldest complete copy of Homer’s Iliad. It was produced at the end of the 10th century but was added to later including, in the 12th century, the addition of illuminations of mythological scenes in the margins around the text. This app gives you a complete digital scan of the manuscript complete with an English translation of the text.
Available for iPad, free.
Codex Voynich (Giuseppe Castrovilli)
Written in the 15th century in an unknown language and filled with illustrations of the natural world, the Voynich Manuscript is one of the greatest mysteries in book history. This app contains complete digital scan of the 240 pages still surviving.
Available for iPad and iPhone (£0.79/$0.99). Also available for Android as Voynich Manuscript by Richard Kopyl.
Turning the Pages (TTP) (National Library of Medicine)
High-quality scans of medical books from the library’s collection, including al-Qazwini’s Wonders of Creation, Andrew Snape’s Anatomy of a Horse and the Mongolian Book of Astrology. The books in this app are fully interactive, with notes, sound clips and translations provided.
Available for iPad (free)
Oriental Books (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek)
Digital facsimiles of 20 notable books from the Bavarian State Library’s impressive collection of Oriental and Asian books. The selection in this app includes some important Quran manuscripts and examples of particularly impressive illumination.
Available for iPad and iPhone (free)
Braginsky Collection Berlin (Emile Schrijver)
The Braginsky Collection contains eight centuries of Jewish manuscripts and books. The manuscripts included in this app include marriage contracts and Esther scrolls.
Available for iPad (free)
Tools and Learning
Latin Parser – (Paul Hudson)
Never get stuck on a tricky passage again. The Latin Parser translates Latin to English and provides root Latin words with full meanings as well as person, gender, number etc.
Available for iPad and iPhone (£1.49 / $1.99) and Android (£3.49 / $4.99)
LP Old English/Old Norse/Ancient Greek/Sanskrit/Old Occitan/Latin/Gothic (David Arthur)
The Liberation Philology series of language learning apps includes both ancient and modern languages. They drill you in grammar and vocabulary with multiple-choice tests.
Available for iPad, iPhone and Android (£2.99 / $3.99).
Readings in Early English (University of Glasgow)
Readings of a selection of Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English texts, so you can hear these languages brought to life.
Available for iPad and iPhone (free).
Medieval Handwriting and English Renaissance Handwriting (agbooth.com)
Now you’ve downloaded all of the manuscript apps above, it’s time to teach yourself to read them. Based on software designed to teach postgraduate students to read early handwriting, these apps use manuscripts written in different hands from the medieval and renaissance periods, held by the University of Leeds. Users can start transcribing anywhere on a page and check their success word-by-word.
Available for iPad, iPhone and Android (free).
Interactive
Cdli Tablet (University of California, Los Angeles)
Explore ancient Mesopotamia through texts and images, with explanations by experts. This app covers 3,500 years of human activity, including the development of trade, mathematics and astronomy.
Available for iPad (free).
MFA Coins (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
High quality images of more than 250 Greek and Roman coins from the MFA’s collection, with full descriptions and background info.
Available for iPad (free).
Byzantium at the Getty and Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance (J. Paul Getty Trust)
Created to work alongside exhibitions these apps present the objects, paintings and manuscript illuminations from them, along with slide-shows, animations, and X-ray and ultraviolet options on some images.
Byzantium: iPad, iPhone and Android (free)
Florence: iPad (free)
***
We have previously reviewed some excellent history apps which are not included in this list: Timeline WW2 with Dan Snow, part of the Timeline series of apps; Pevsner’s Architectural Glossary and Streetmuseum: Londinium, the sequel to Museum of London’s Streetmuseum.
If you love a history app which we haven’t listed here, let us know in the comments below.
More by Kate Wiles
- See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/kate-wiles/best-history-apps#sthash.rleFyLPJ.dpuf
余英时：我所承受的五四遗产
2015-05-04 19:48:32
多维人文
五四运动的学生领袖傅斯年曾说：“若说这五四运动单是爱国运动，我便不赞一词了：我对这五四运动所以重视的，为它的出发点是直接行动，是唤起公众责任心的运动。我是绝不主张国家主义的人，然而人类生活的发挥，全以责任心为基石。”另一位五四运动的领袖、《北京学界全体宣言》起草者罗加伦则将五四运动的精神概括为“学生牺牲的精神”、“社会制裁的精神”和“民族自决的精神”。胡适后来评价说：“这里的三个评判是很公道的估计”。这似乎才是值得我们喜闻乐见的纪念五四的理由所在。五四运动在“反帝、反封爱国运动”这顶大帽子之下，实则是公民在社会责任的感召下，进行的一场有见识与担当的社会运动。余英时先生则认为五四运动是一次启蒙，“我们今天似乎不必再‘神化’它”。
余英时
关于“五四”，我先后已不知道写过多少篇经念性的文字了。但那些文字都是从整体的文化史和思想史的观点写成的，不免流于空泛，其中并无切己之感。这次《中国时报》和《晚报》提出“五四”和个人的感受问题，我觉得是一个颇为别致的构想。这种写法事实上等于是写个人思想成长过程中的一个侧面，带有浓厚的“自传”意味。在这一特殊的角度下，“五四”便不再不是一个笼统的“思想运动”，而是因人而异的“月映万川”了。虽然同是此“月”，映在不同的“川”中自有不同的面目。下面我将简单地说一说我个人所感受到的“五四”。
我是出生在“五四”发生的十几年以后的，根本没有受到“五四”的直接冲击。抗战八年正是我从七八岁到十五六岁这一阶段，我能明确记忆的个人生命史大致是从抗战第一年（1937）开始的。那一年我上小学一年级，从安庆逃难到故乡潜山县官庄乡，是一个典型的“穷乡僻壤”，那是在万山之中的一个农村，和外面的世界是完全隔离的。我在那里整整地度过了八年的岁月。那里不但没有现代式的学校，连传统的私塾也不常有，因为师资难求。所以在十六岁以前，我根本不知道有所谓“五四”其事，更不必说什么“五四”的思想影响了。
从民国二十六年到三十五年，我完全是一个乡下孩子，从未接触到现代的知识和思想。事实上，现代的正规教育和我是绝缘的，我只在私塾、临时中学等处断断续续地上过两三年的学。临时中学设在邻县舒城的晓天镇上，步行要走一整天，极不方便。我只在十三岁时去过半年，然后便因病休学，等于什么也没有学到。读书识字大概主要是从看旧章回小说中得来，这是旧社会中儿童所共有的经历。此外所接触的则是一些片断的中国文史知识。抗战的末期，我曾在桐城县住过一年，那是我少年时代惟一记得的“城市”，其实也是闭塞得很。桐城人以“人文”自负，但仍然完全沉浸在方苞、姚鼐的“古文”传统之中。我在柚城受到了一些“斗方名士”的影响，对于旧诗文发生了进一步的兴趣。但是我从来没有听人提到过“五四”。当时无论在私塾或临时中学，中文习作都是“文言”，而非“白话”。所以我在十五六岁以前，真是连“五四”的边沿也没有碰到。
抗战胜利以后，我才真正从“乡下人”变成了“城里人”，先后住过的城市包括沈阳、北平、上海，而大致以北平对我个人思想的形成最关重要。这当然便逃不开“五四”的影响了。最初一两年中，因为要补上抗战八年的教育空白，以争取考大学的机会，我的时间大都用在补习英文、数、理等科目方面，没有余暇来注意新思想、新文学之类的问题。但当时我也读了一些梁启超、胡适、鲁迅等人的作品。现在回想起来，大概梁启超给我的影响最深，胡适次之，鲁迅几乎没有发生任何刺激。这大概是因为我所生活的社会已和“五四”前后大不相同。鲁迅所谴责的“正人君子”以及其他具体对象对我而言是完全陌生的，无法引起我的共鸣。梁启超和胡适的影响主要也限于中国学术传统方面。梁启超“笔锋常带感情”，他一方面批判旧传统，一方面又激动读者热爱中国文化。这是一个很微妙的“矛盾的统一”。但是对我个人而言，他的热情似乎偏向于“求知”的一面。我从他那里得到一种启示：我必须去真正理解中国历史，特别是学术思想史。这种理解，和为理解而从事的研究，必须是超越现实效用的。我们决不能为了任何眼前的利害而曲解历史。
这一为知识而知识的精神在胡适那里得到进一步的加强。胡适对西方文化的认识在梁启超之上。我因此了解到：如果我真正要理解中国的传统，我必须同时要对西方传统和现代世界有深入的体认。这便把我推向另一个知识的领域。
现在回想起来，“五四”对我的影响大概以“求知”这一点为最深。但“求知”并不排斥“道德”，因为推动“求知”的仍是一种巨大的首先力量。我很同情“改造中国”的理想，但我始终相信“改造”必须以可靠的“知识”为起点。“求知”的精神在“五四”运动中其实不占主流的地位，不过对我而言，这是最主要的影响。
现在大家都说“五四”是反传统的运动，“打倒孔家店”、“礼教吃人”、“全盘西化”等代表“五四”的主要精神。这大概是不错的。但是对于我这个出生在“五四”以后十几年的人，这些口号则从来没有在我心中发生过激动的力量。我在典型的旧乡村中度过了八九年，那里并没有“礼教吃人”的事。中国农村其实是充满了人情味的，特别是过年过节的时候。用“礼教”或“孔家店”压迫人的情形至少并不严重。“愚昧”倒是事实，思想封闭也是不可否认的。所以我相信“知识”是现代中国所最为需要。但要真正求得“知识”，我们首先便要建立起“为知识而知识”的严肃态度。
抗战胜利以后，中国知识界最流行的杂志大概是储安平所创办的《观察》，此外还有比较偏右的《独立时论》等。但当时“五四”的潮流已转入马克思主义一途了。胡适早已被暗中“斗垮、斗臭”，不但不再是“五四”的象征，而且是“反动”、“反革命”的代表人物了。他在青年群中，特别是在北大、清华学生们的心中，早已成为一个“反面教员”了。但是左派的猛烈攻击并没有对我的思想发生什么重要的影响。他的“自由主义”还是比较能博得我的同情的。这是“五四”对于我的另一面的启示。
总之，我所随的“五四”的遗产是很有限的，这当然和我的生活经验的限制是分不开的。由于以“知识”和“自由”为核心，我对于中国旧传统也产生不了激越的“打倒”情绪。因为我最关心的问题还是怎样去认识传统的真面目。没有知识的基础，我便不敢提出任何“改造中国”的构想。
我现在当然更能认识到“五四”的限制。“五四”是一种“启蒙”的心态。即使以“知识”而言，“五四”也偏于实证主义一路。所以我们今天似乎不必再“神化”它，当然更不必“丑化”它。以我个人而言，我对于“五四”还是希望求得更深的“理解”。但这也正是“五四”所赐给我的一种“遗产”。
(小枝 编辑)
馮友蘭《中國哲學史》審查報告
陳寅恪
竊查此書,取材謹嚴,持論精確,允宜列入清華叢書,以貢獻於學界。茲將其優點概括言之：凡著中國古代哲學史者,其對於古人之學說,應具瞭解之同情,方可下筆。蓋古人著書立說,皆有所爲而發;故其所處之環境,所受之背景,非完全明瞭,則其學說不易評論。而古代哲學家去今數千年,其時代之真相,極難推知。吾人今日可依據之材料,僅當時所遺存最小之一部；欲藉此殘餘斷片,以窺測其全部結構,必須備藝術家欣賞古代繪畫雕刻之眼光及精神,然後古人立說之用意與物件,始可以真瞭解。所謂真瞭解者,必神遊冥想,與立說之古人,處於同一境界,而對於其持論所以不得不如是之苦心孤詣,表一種之同情,始能批評其學說之是非得失,而無隔閡膚廓之論。否則數千年前之陳言舊說,與今日之情勢迥殊,何一不可以可笑可怪目之乎?但此種同情之態度,最易流于穿鑿傅會之惡習;因今日所得見之古代材料,或散佚而僅存,或晦澀而難解,非經過解釋及排比之程式,絕無哲學史之可言。然若加以聯貫綜合之搜集,及統系條理之整理,則著者有意無意之間,往往依其自身所遭際之時代,所居處之環境,所熏染之學說,以推測解釋古人之意志。由此之故,今日之談中國古代哲學者,大抵即談其今日自身之哲學者也;所著之中國哲學史者,即其今日自身之哲學史者也。其言論愈有條理統系,則去古人學說之真相愈遠;此弊至今日之談墨學而極矣。今日之墨學者,任何古書古字,絕無依據,亦可隨其一時偶然興會,而爲之改移,幾若善博者能呼盧成盧,喝雉成雉之比;此近日中國號稱整理國故之普通狀況,誠可爲長歎息者也。今欲求一中國古代哲學史,能矯傅會之惡習,而具瞭解之同情者,則馮君此作庶幾近之；所以宜加以表揚,爲之流布者,其理由實在於是。至於馮君之書,其取用材料,亦具通識,請略言之：以中國今日之考据學,已足辨別古書之真僞;然真僞者,不過相對問題,而最要在能審定僞材料之時代及作者而利用之。蓋僞材料亦有時與真材料同一可貴。如某種僞材料,若逕認爲其所依託之時代及作者之真産物,固不可也;但能考出其作僞時代及作者,即據以說明此時代及作者之思想,則變爲一真材料矣。中國古代史之材料,如儒家及諸子等經典,皆非一時代一作者之産物。昔人籠統認爲一人一時之作,其誤固不俟論。今人能知其非一人一時之所作,而不知以縱貫之眼光,視爲一種學術之叢書,或一宗傳燈之語錄,而齗齗致辯於其橫切方面,此亦缺乏史學之通識所致。而馮君之書,獨能於此別具特識,利用材料,此亦應爲表彰者也。若推此意而及于中國之史學,則史論者,治史者皆認爲無關史學而且有害者也;然史論之作者,或有意或無意,其發爲言論之時,即已印入作者及其時代之環境背景,實無異於今日新聞紙之社論時評,若善用之,皆有助於考史。故蘇子瞻之史論,北宋之政論也；胡致堂之史論,南宋之政論也;王船山之史論,明末之政論也。今日取諸人論史之文,與舊史互證,當日政治社會情勢,益可藉此增加瞭解,此所謂廢物利用,蓋不僅能供習文者之摹擬練習而已也。若更推論及於文藝批評,如紀曉嵐之批評古人詩集,輒加塗抹,詆爲不通,初怪其何以狂妄至是。後讀清高宗禦制詩集,頗疑其有所爲而發;此事固難證明,或亦間接與時代性有關,斯又利用材料之別一例也。寅恪承命審查馮君之書,謹具報告書,並附著推論之余義於後,以求教正焉。
六月十一日
此書上卷寅恪曾任審查。認爲取材精審,持論正確。自刊佈以來,評論贊許,以爲實近年吾國思想史之有數著作,而信寅恪前言之非阿私所好。今此書繼續完成,體例宗旨,仍複與前卷【冊】一貫。允宜速行刊佈,以滿足已讀前卷【冊】者之希望,而使《清華叢書》中得一美備之著作。是否有當,尚乞鑒定是幸!寅恪於審查此書之餘,並略述所感,以求教正。
佛教經典言:"佛爲一大事因緣出現於世。"中國自秦以後,迄於今日,其思想之演變歷程,至繁至久。要之,只爲一大事因緣,即新儒學之産生,及其傳衍而已。此書于朱子之學多所發明。昔閻百詩在清初以辨僞觀念、陳蘭甫在清季以考據觀念,而治朱子之學,皆有所創獲。今此書作者取西洋哲學觀念,以闡明紫陽之學,宜其成系統而多新解。然新儒家之産生,關於道教之方面,如新安之學說,其所受影響甚深且遠。自來述之者皆無愜意之作。近日當盤大定推論儒道之關係,所說甚繁,(《東洋文庫本》)仍多未能解決之問題。蓋道藏之秘笈,迄今無專治之人,而晉、南北朝、隋、唐、五代數百年間,道教變遷傳衍之始末,及其與儒佛二家互相關係之事實,尚有待於研究。此則吾國思想史上前修所遺之缺憾,更有俟於後賢追補者也。南北朝時即有儒釋道三教之目；（北周衛元嵩撰《齊三教論》七卷【。】見《舊唐書•【肆柒】經籍志【下】》）至李唐之世,遂成固定之制度。如國家有慶典,則召集三教之學士【，】講論于殿廷,是其一例。故自晉至今,言中國之思想,可以儒釋道三教代表之。此雖通俗之談,然稽之舊史之事實,驗以今世之人情,則三教之說,要爲不易之論。儒者在古代本爲典章學術所寄託之專家。李斯受荀卿之學,佐成秦治。秦之法制實儒家一派學說之所附系【擊】。《中庸》之"車同軌,書同文,行同倫",(即太史公所謂:"至始皇乃能並冠帶之倫"之倫)爲儒家理想之制度,而于秦始皇之身而得以實現之也。漢承秦業,其官制法律亦襲用前朝。遺傳至晉以後,法律與禮經並稱,儒家《周官》之學說悉采【採】入法典。夫政治社會一切公私行動莫不與法典相關,而法典爲儒家學說具體之實現。故二千年來華夏民族所受儒家學說之影響最深最巨【鉅】者,實在制度法律公私生活之方面;而關於學說思想之方面,或轉有不如佛道二教者。如六朝士大夫號稱曠達,而夷考其實,往往篤孝義之行,嚴家諱之禁,此皆儒家之教訓,固無預於佛老之玄風者也。釋迦之教義,無父無君,與吾國傳統之學說,存在之制度無一不相衝突。輸入之後,若久不變易【，】則決難保持。是以佛教學說能于【於】吾國思想史上【，】發生重大久長之影響者,皆經國人吸收改造之過程。其忠實輸入不改本來面目者,若玄奘唯識之學,雖震蕩【動】一時之人心,而卒歸於消沈歇絕。近雖有人焉,欲燃【然】其死灰;疑終不能複【復】振,【。】其故匪他,以性質與環境互相方圓鑿枘,勢不得不然也。六朝以後之道教,包羅至廣,演變至繁。不以儒教之偏重政治社會制度,故思想上尤易融貫吸收。凡新儒家之學說,似無不有道教或與道教有關之佛教爲之先導。如天臺【台】宗者,佛教宗派中道教意義最富之一宗也。(其創造者慧思所作誓願文,最足表現其思想。至於北宋真宗時【，】日本傳來之《大乘止觀法門》一書,乃依據《大乘起信論》者。恐系華嚴宗盛後,天臺【台】宗僞託南嶽而作。故此書只可認爲天臺【台】宗後來受華嚴宗影響之史料,而不能據以論南嶽之思想也。)其宗徒梁敬之與李習之之關係,實啓新儒家開創之動機。北宋之智圓提倡《中庸》,甚至以僧徒而號中庸子,並自爲傳以述其義。(孤山((閒居編))其年代猶在司馬君實作《中庸廣義》之前。（孤山卒于宋真宗乾興元年,年四十七）似亦于宋代新儒家爲先覺。二者之間【，】其關係如何,且不詳論。然舉此一例,已足見新儒家産生之問題,猶有未發之覆在也。至道教對輸入之思想,如佛教摩尼教等,無不儘量吸收。然仍不忘其本來民族之地位。既融成一家之說以後,則堅持夷夏之論,以排斥外來之教義。此種思想上之態度,自六朝時亦已如此。雖似相反,而實足以相成。從來新儒家即繼承此種遺業而能大成者。竊疑中國自今日以後,即使能忠實輸入北美或東歐之思想,其結局當亦等於玄奘唯識之學,在吾國思想史上既不能居最高之地位,且亦終歸於歇絕者。其真能于思想上自成系統,有所創獲者,必須一方面吸收輸入外來之學說,一方面不忘本來民族之地位。此二種相反而適相成之態度,乃道教之真精神,新儒家之舊途徑,而二千年吾民族與他民族思想接觸史之所詔【昭】示者也。寅恪平生爲不古不今之學,思想囿于咸豐同治之世,議論近乎(曾)【】湘鄉(張)【】南皮之間,承審查此書,草此報告,陳述所見,殆所謂"以新瓶而裝舊酒"者。誠知舊酒味酸【，】而【人】莫肯售【酤】,姑注于【於】新瓶之底,以求一嘗,可乎?
——《金明館叢稿二編》，三聯，2001年，頁285.原載一九三四年八月商務印書館馮友蘭《中國哲學史》。文中黑框為三聯版的校對内容。
