Yearning for the Lost Paradise: The "Great Unity" (datong) and Its Philosophical Interpretations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2017.5.1.83-102Keywords:
Datong, Moism, Confucianism, New Confucianism, nationalism, communismAbstract
In the course of China’s history, the term datong (great unity) has been interpreted in multiple ways. This article first discusses the concept as understood in the Liji, and then focuses on the way in which the perceived loss of the “great unity” within “all-under-heaven” (tianxia) at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), and the endeavor to reconstruct the empire as a modern nation-state starting in the early twentieth century, informed the way the term datong was interpreted. After discussing the interpretations by Wang Tao (1828–1897), Hong Xiuquan (1813–1864), Kang Youwei (1858–1927), Liang Qichao (1873–1929), Sun Zhongshan (1866–1925), and Mao Zedong (1893–1976), this work concludes with a discussion on how, against the background of the perceived threat of loss of national unity that characterizes the contemporary People’s Republic of China, a New Confucian interpretation is developed.Downloads
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References
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Tang, Junyi. 2000. Renwen jingshenzhi chongjian 人文精神之重建 (The Reconstruction of the Spirit of the Humanities). Taipei: Xuesheng shuju.
Tu, Weiming. 2000. “Implications on the Rise of ‘Confucian’ East Asia.” Daedalus 129 (1): 195–219.
Wang, Edward Q. 2001. Inventing China Through History. The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. New York: State University of New York Press.
Wang, Tao. 1994. “Yuan dao 原道 (Explanation of the Dao).” In Dao yuan wenlu waibian. Vol.16. Edited by Zhang Dainian. Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe.
Wei, Yuan. 1852. Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志 (Illustrated Treatise on the Countries in the Sea). Yangzhou.
Zhang, Dainian. 1984. Zhang Dainian wenji 张岱年文集 (A Collection of Essays by Zhang, Dainian). Beijing: Qinghua Daxue chubanshe.
Zhang, Qijun. 1988. Shudao yu datong 恕道與大同 (The Way of Forbearance and Datong). Taipei: Dongda.
Zhu, Xi. 1988. Daxue zhang ju ji zhu 大学章句及注 (The Words of the Chapter Great Learning and its Collected Commentaries). In Si shu wu jing. Vol.1. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.
Zlotea, Mugur. 2015. “Weaving Confucianism into the Official Party Discourse: From Hu Jintao’s ‘Harmonious Society’, to Xi Jinping’s Communist junzi.” In Contemporary East Asia and the Confucian Revival, edited by Jana S. Rošker and Nataša Visočnik, 149–70. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Chen, Weiping. 2014. “Lun Makesizhuyi yu Zhongguo chuantong wenhua xiangjiehede wu ge wenti 论马克思主义与中国传统文化相接和的五个问题 (Five Questions on the Connection of Marxism with Chinese Traditional Culture).” Sixiang lilun jiaoyu 思想理论教育 (Ideological and Theoretical Education) 5: 4–8.
Chen, Zhimin. 2005. “Nationalism, Internationalism, and Chinese Foreign Policy.” Journal of Contemporary China 14 (41): 35–53.
Choukrone, Leila, and Antoine Garapon. 2007. “The Norms of Chinese Harmony: Disciplinary Rules as Social Stabiliser.” China Perspectives 3: 36–49.
Cohen, Paul. 1997. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dessein, Bart. 2016. “Historical Narrative, Remembrance, and the Ordering of the World. A Historical Assessment of China’s International Relations.” In China’s International Roles. Challenging or supporting international order?, edited by Sebastian Harnisch, Sebastian Bersick, and Jörn-Carsten Gottwald, 22–37. Role Theory and International Relations. New York and London: Routledge.
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Fairbank, John K. 1942. “Tributary Trade and China’s Relations with the West.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 1 (2): 129–49.
Fairbank, John K., and Su-yü Teng. 1941. “On the Ch’ing Tributary System.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6 (1): 135–246.
Fei, Xiaotong. 1992. From the Soil. The Foundations of Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fitzgerald, John. 1996. Awakening China. Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Goossaert, Vincent, and David A. Palmer. 2011. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Guo, Yanwu, and Wenru Zhang. 2001. Zhongguo dangdai zhexue 中国当代哲学 (Contemporary Chinese Philosophy). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.
Harrison, Henrietta. 2001. China. Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold.
Hellendorff, Bruno. 2014. “Hiding behind the Tribute: Status, Symbol, and Power in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations, Past and Present.” In Interpreting China as a Regional and Global Power. Nationalism and Historical Consciousness in World Politics, Politics and Development of Contemporary China, edited by Bart Dessein. 142–68. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hong, Xiuquan. 1961. “Taiping zhaoshu 太平詔書 (The Taiping Proclamation).” In Taiping tianguo yinshu 太平天國印書 (The Book of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom), compiled by the Taiping Historical Museum. 20 vols. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe.
Jiang, Qing. 2013. A Confucian Constitutional Order. How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Kang, Youwei. 1936. Datong shu 大同书 (Book on the Great Unity). Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju.
–––. 2002. Zhongguo zhexue shi 中国哲学史 (History of Chinese Philosophy), edited by Liu Wenying. Vol.1 and 2. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe.
Kou, Qingjie. 2012. “Buke jiang ‘Rujia shehuizhuyi’ yu Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi xiangtibinglun. 不可讲‘儒家社会主义’与中国特色社会主义相提并论 (On the impossibility to mention Confucian Socialism and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in One Breath).” Sixiang lilun jiaoyu daokan 思想理论教育导刊 (Intellectual and Theoretical Education)12: 51–55.
Kuhn, Philip A. 1978. “The Taiping Rebellion.” In Cambridge History of China. Volume 10: Late Ch’ing 1800–1911. Part 1. Edited by John K. Fairbank, 264–317. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuo, Ya-pei. 2008. “Redeploying Confucius: The Imperial State Dreams of the Nation (1902–1911).” In Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, 65–84. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Legge, James. (1960) 1970. The She King or The Book of Poetry. The Chinese Classics. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Li, Zehou. 1995. “Zai shuo xiti zhongyong – zai Guangzhou Zhongshan Daxue Xianggang Zhongwen Daxue Jiangyan 再说西体中用 – 在广州中山大学香港中文大学讲演 (Western substance and Chinese function – Lecture at Zhongshan University, Guangzhou; and Chinese University of Hong Kong). Accessed November 4, 2016. http://tieba.baidu.com/p/87024815.
Liji. 1988. In Si shu wu jing. Vol.2. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.
Liu, Wuji, ed. 1953. “Introduction.” In Readings in Contemporary Chinese Literature, 7–17. Far Eastern Publications. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Liu, Wenying. 2002. Zhongguo zhexue shi 中国哲学史 (A History of Chinese Philosophy). 2 vols. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe.
Lunyu. 1988. In Si shu wu jing. Vol.1. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.
Mao, Zedong. 1961. Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Volume 4. Accessed August 15, 2016. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.htm.
Metzger, Thomas A. 2012. The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel. Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Näth, Marie-Luise. 1975. “Die Aussenpolitik der VR China: Talleyrand Redivivus?” In China nach der Kulturrevolution, edited by Jürgen Domes, 259–331. München: Wilhelm Finck Verlag.
Needham, Joseph. 1958. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol.2: History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pusey, James Reeve. 1983. China and Charles Darwin. Harvard East Asian Monographs 100. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rošker, Jana S. 2008. Searching for the Way. Theory of Knowledge in Pre-modern and Modern China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
–––. 2016. The Rebirth of the Moral Self. The Second Generation of Modern Confucians and their Modernization Discourses. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig. (2008) 2009. “Diagram (tu) and Text (wen): Mapping the Chinese World.” In Conceiving the Empire. China and Rome Compared, edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, 169–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schram, Stuart. 2002. “Mao Tse-Tung’s Thought from 1949–1976.” In An Intellectual History of Modern China, edited by Merle Goldman and Leo Ou-fan Lee, 267–348. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. 1985. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Shun, Kwong-Loi. 2004. “Conception of the Person in Early Confucian Thought.” In Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, edited by Kwong-Loi Shun and David B. Wong, 183–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bauer, Wolfgang. 1974. China und die Hoffnung auf Glück. Paradiese, Utopien, Idealvorstellungen in der Geistesgeschichte Chinas. München: DTV Wissenschaftliche Reihe.
Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chen, Albert, H. Y. 2011. “The Concept of ‘Datong’ in Chinese Philosophy as an Expression of the Idea of the Common Good.” Social Science Research Network. Legal Scholarship Network. Legal Studies Research Paper. University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 2011/20.
Sun, Zhongshan. 1960. Guofu Quanshu 國父全書 (Complete Works of the ‘Father of the State’), edited by Hang Jiyun. Taipei: Dangshihui.
Tang, Junyi. 2000. Renwen jingshenzhi chongjian 人文精神之重建 (The Reconstruction of the Spirit of the Humanities). Taipei: Xuesheng shuju.
Tu, Weiming. 2000. “Implications on the Rise of ‘Confucian’ East Asia.” Daedalus 129 (1): 195–219.
Wang, Edward Q. 2001. Inventing China Through History. The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. New York: State University of New York Press.
Wang, Tao. 1994. “Yuan dao 原道 (Explanation of the Dao).” In Dao yuan wenlu waibian. Vol.16. Edited by Zhang Dainian. Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe.
Wei, Yuan. 1852. Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志 (Illustrated Treatise on the Countries in the Sea). Yangzhou.
Zhang, Dainian. 1984. Zhang Dainian wenji 张岱年文集 (A Collection of Essays by Zhang, Dainian). Beijing: Qinghua Daxue chubanshe.
Zhang, Qijun. 1988. Shudao yu datong 恕道與大同 (The Way of Forbearance and Datong). Taipei: Dongda.
Zhu, Xi. 1988. Daxue zhang ju ji zhu 大学章句及注 (The Words of the Chapter Great Learning and its Collected Commentaries). In Si shu wu jing. Vol.1. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.
Zlotea, Mugur. 2015. “Weaving Confucianism into the Official Party Discourse: From Hu Jintao’s ‘Harmonious Society’, to Xi Jinping’s Communist junzi.” In Contemporary East Asia and the Confucian Revival, edited by Jana S. Rošker and Nataša Visočnik, 149–70. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Chen, Weiping. 2014. “Lun Makesizhuyi yu Zhongguo chuantong wenhua xiangjiehede wu ge wenti 论马克思主义与中国传统文化相接和的五个问题 (Five Questions on the Connection of Marxism with Chinese Traditional Culture).” Sixiang lilun jiaoyu 思想理论教育 (Ideological and Theoretical Education) 5: 4–8.
Chen, Zhimin. 2005. “Nationalism, Internationalism, and Chinese Foreign Policy.” Journal of Contemporary China 14 (41): 35–53.
Choukrone, Leila, and Antoine Garapon. 2007. “The Norms of Chinese Harmony: Disciplinary Rules as Social Stabiliser.” China Perspectives 3: 36–49.
Cohen, Paul. 1997. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dessein, Bart. 2016. “Historical Narrative, Remembrance, and the Ordering of the World. A Historical Assessment of China’s International Relations.” In China’s International Roles. Challenging or supporting international order?, edited by Sebastian Harnisch, Sebastian Bersick, and Jörn-Carsten Gottwald, 22–37. Role Theory and International Relations. New York and London: Routledge.
–––. Forthcoming. “Religion and the Nation: Confucian and New Confucian Religious Nationalism.” In Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies, edited by Cheng-tian Kuo. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Fairbank, John K. 1942. “Tributary Trade and China’s Relations with the West.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 1 (2): 129–49.
Fairbank, John K., and Su-yü Teng. 1941. “On the Ch’ing Tributary System.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6 (1): 135–246.
Fei, Xiaotong. 1992. From the Soil. The Foundations of Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fitzgerald, John. 1996. Awakening China. Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Goossaert, Vincent, and David A. Palmer. 2011. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Guo, Yanwu, and Wenru Zhang. 2001. Zhongguo dangdai zhexue 中国当代哲学 (Contemporary Chinese Philosophy). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.
Harrison, Henrietta. 2001. China. Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold.
Hellendorff, Bruno. 2014. “Hiding behind the Tribute: Status, Symbol, and Power in Sino-Southeast Asian Relations, Past and Present.” In Interpreting China as a Regional and Global Power. Nationalism and Historical Consciousness in World Politics, Politics and Development of Contemporary China, edited by Bart Dessein. 142–68. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hong, Xiuquan. 1961. “Taiping zhaoshu 太平詔書 (The Taiping Proclamation).” In Taiping tianguo yinshu 太平天國印書 (The Book of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom), compiled by the Taiping Historical Museum. 20 vols. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe.
Jiang, Qing. 2013. A Confucian Constitutional Order. How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Kang, Youwei. 1936. Datong shu 大同书 (Book on the Great Unity). Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju.
–––. 2002. Zhongguo zhexue shi 中国哲学史 (History of Chinese Philosophy), edited by Liu Wenying. Vol.1 and 2. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe.
Kou, Qingjie. 2012. “Buke jiang ‘Rujia shehuizhuyi’ yu Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi xiangtibinglun. 不可讲‘儒家社会主义’与中国特色社会主义相提并论 (On the impossibility to mention Confucian Socialism and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in One Breath).” Sixiang lilun jiaoyu daokan 思想理论教育导刊 (Intellectual and Theoretical Education)12: 51–55.
Kuhn, Philip A. 1978. “The Taiping Rebellion.” In Cambridge History of China. Volume 10: Late Ch’ing 1800–1911. Part 1. Edited by John K. Fairbank, 264–317. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuo, Ya-pei. 2008. “Redeploying Confucius: The Imperial State Dreams of the Nation (1902–1911).” In Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, 65–84. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Legge, James. (1960) 1970. The She King or The Book of Poetry. The Chinese Classics. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Li, Zehou. 1995. “Zai shuo xiti zhongyong – zai Guangzhou Zhongshan Daxue Xianggang Zhongwen Daxue Jiangyan 再说西体中用 – 在广州中山大学香港中文大学讲演 (Western substance and Chinese function – Lecture at Zhongshan University, Guangzhou; and Chinese University of Hong Kong). Accessed November 4, 2016. http://tieba.baidu.com/p/87024815.
Liji. 1988. In Si shu wu jing. Vol.2. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.
Liu, Wuji, ed. 1953. “Introduction.” In Readings in Contemporary Chinese Literature, 7–17. Far Eastern Publications. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Liu, Wenying. 2002. Zhongguo zhexue shi 中国哲学史 (A History of Chinese Philosophy). 2 vols. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe.
Lunyu. 1988. In Si shu wu jing. Vol.1. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.
Mao, Zedong. 1961. Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Volume 4. Accessed August 15, 2016. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.htm.
Metzger, Thomas A. 2012. The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel. Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Näth, Marie-Luise. 1975. “Die Aussenpolitik der VR China: Talleyrand Redivivus?” In China nach der Kulturrevolution, edited by Jürgen Domes, 259–331. München: Wilhelm Finck Verlag.
Needham, Joseph. 1958. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol.2: History of Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pusey, James Reeve. 1983. China and Charles Darwin. Harvard East Asian Monographs 100. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rošker, Jana S. 2008. Searching for the Way. Theory of Knowledge in Pre-modern and Modern China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
–––. 2016. The Rebirth of the Moral Self. The Second Generation of Modern Confucians and their Modernization Discourses. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig. (2008) 2009. “Diagram (tu) and Text (wen): Mapping the Chinese World.” In Conceiving the Empire. China and Rome Compared, edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, 169–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schram, Stuart. 2002. “Mao Tse-Tung’s Thought from 1949–1976.” In An Intellectual History of Modern China, edited by Merle Goldman and Leo Ou-fan Lee, 267–348. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. 1985. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Shun, Kwong-Loi. 2004. “Conception of the Person in Early Confucian Thought.” In Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, edited by Kwong-Loi Shun and David B. Wong, 183–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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A Specific Path to Chinese Modernization
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DESSEIN, Bart. 2017. “Yearning for the Lost Paradise: The ‘Great Unity’ (datong) and Its Philosophical Interpretations”. Asian Studies 5 (1): 83-102. https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2017.5.1.83-102.
