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It's-hard-out-here-for-a-confucian

The sudden appearance and disappearance of a Confucius statue on the edge of Tiananmen Square in 2011 tells us more about the modern career of the ancient sage in China than we might realize.  He’s there and then he’s gone.  He’s assumed to have great cultural significance but honored more in theory than in practice. So, how much influence does ancient Chinese philosophy have on the actual behavior and beliefs of people in contemporary China?

In this talk Sam Crane, professor of Chinese politics and ancient Chinese philosophy at Williams College in the US, will argue: not much.  Or, at least, not as much as we might think.  The twentieth century was brutally unkind to Chinese traditions of all sorts, especially ancient philosophies.  Not only was Confucianism fervently rejected as backward and superstitious by avid modernizers after the May Fourth Movement, but the thoroughgoing economic and social changes roiling post-Mao China have transformed the material landscape within which culture is enacted.  While ancient philosophical ideas still circulate, they cannot be reproduced and practiced in the manner of imperial times.  Modernization – with its social mobility and cultural individualization and economic competition – has created a vastly different China, and that changed context refracts and shatters and obstructs the lived expressions of ancient philosophies.

Join us on Thursday July 17th for an enlightening discussion on why the revival of Confucianism will not transform Chinese society.

  • Date: Thursday, July 17th
  • Time: 19:00 – 21:00
  • Cost: 100 RMB, 50 for members (includes a soft drink or local beer and local snacks)

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About Sam

 

Sam Crane is Chair of the Department of Political Science at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, USA.   In the past decade his research and writing has moved from contemporary Chinese politics to ancient Chinese philosophy.  His most recent book, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Dao: Ancient Chinese Thought in Modern American Life (Wiley 2013), applied insights from pre-Qin Confucian and Daoist texts to contemporary American social and ethical issues, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and end of life issues.  His current book project, tentatively titled Laozi in a Lamborghini, considers how ancient  Chinese thought – Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Mohism – might circulate within present-day Chinese life.

 

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