This book explores the interaction of European Enlightenment thinkers with Chinese theory and shows how ideas from China and ideas about China had a profound impact on Enlightenment thought.
Challenging the orthodox account of the Enlightenment as an innovation that emerged solely among European men, the book argues that many ideas which led to human progress originated outside Europe. Focusing on the cultural interaction between Europe and China it demonstrates how Chinese theory precipitated debate and demanded theorization by fundamentally challenging the intellectual framework inherited from European antiquity. The result was neither European nor Chinese, but a dynamic fusion that has continued to produce theory right up to the present day.
In illustrating how cultural interaction with alien perspectives, civilizations, and worldviews can further human development, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese and European history and philosophy.
Introduction: Uncovering The Mythic Origins of European Modernity
1.
Even without an Overlord: Christian Wolff and Confucianism
2. How Americas
Founders Learned that Equality Means Meritocracy
3. Confucius and the
American Enlightenment
4. Francois Quesnays Despotisme de la Chine as a
Critique of Early Political Liberalism
5. A New Cosmology and a New
Aesthetics: Pierre Bayle and the Monistic Connection of Shaftesbury to China
6. Chinese Metaphysics in the Formation of European Organicist Thought:
German Romanticism, Structuralism and Relational Politics
7. China in the
Political Imaginary of Restoration England: Revisiting John Webbs Fantasy
about the Chinese Language
8. The East-West Orientation in Immanuel Kants
Thinking
Martin Powers is Professor in the School of Arts at Peking University and Professor Emeritus in History of Art at the University of Michigan.
Shuchen Xiang is the Mt. Hua Professor of Philosophy at Xidian University, China.
