Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics

Preface

ix Preface The state successfully transformed the idea of individualism into a synecdoche for a negative West, as the discourse surrounding this meaning began to play an important role in China’s reinvention of the power relationship between East and West, as well as that between the state and its intelligentsia. In other words, the state had a political stake in presenting the idea of individualism to its people as un-Chinese. —Lydia H. Liu, “Translingual Practice”1 Chinese culture is often characterized as a culture of obligation rather than individual freedom. This characterization is not just a stereotype; it is rooted in various nineteenth- and twentieth-century constructions of Chinese identity , as such an identity is compared to that of the “West.”2 Such a characterization affects scholarship, diplomacy, and public policy. For example, the modern Chinese state, among other Asian contemporaries, has resisted paying attention to charges of “universal human rights” violations on grounds that such rights are bound up in culturally specific views on individualism —views that are incompatible with traditional “Asian values.”3 Given that policy decisions and international relations depend greatly on whether or not Chinese or Asian values are compatible with individualism , it would seem that the issue would be of considerable scholarly importance . Furthermore, given the wealth of scholarship on human rights in Asia and the “Asian values” question, one would think that understanding the nature of Chinese individualism might be central to determining the extent to which Western-style human rights are relevant to Asian traditions and contexts.4 Yet relatively few scholars directly address the specific notion of individualism in China or Asia, and they especially do not discuss it at length in historical context.5 An exclusively European and American concept , “individualism” remains, for most scholars, an icon in the development of Western thought and institutions.6 x Preface Individualism in modern times has greatly influenced social and political institutions, views of the self, and liberal, democratic values associated with the universal rights of man and human rights.7 In such contexts it is invariably construed as a particular development of ideals and movements specific to Enlightenment Europe that traces its origins to earlier Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions. Given its close associations with European cultural and historical identity, some scholars of China have been apprehensive about using such a concept to analyze the history of China and East Asian cultures. They contend that definitions of individualism in contemporary European and American contexts do not exactly correspond to the various views on the individual that obtain in Asian history.8 They point to China’s deep involvement with Confucian values as defining individual obligations to one’s family so as to overshadow the importance of the self. Rather than be found guilty of misappropriating or mistranslating individualism, many scholars of China avoid the topic altogether, or they assume that the concept of the individual is simply not relevant to a society imbued with communitarian values and a penchant for interpersonal relations.9 Such a view might appear reasonable on the surface, but when one closely examines the imperatives of cross-cultural analysis, translation, and comparison , its flaws begin to emerge. Indeed, proponents of this view refuse—in the name of being historically precise—to use the term “individualism” when referring to ideas outside of the Western context, not even as a heuristic tool. But, I contend, terms with specific histories, such as “science,” “religion,” “philosophy,” “self,” “cosmos,” etc., can and should be effectively used outside of their original historical and linguistic contexts for comparative and interpretive purposes. To cut off the use of a perfectly good term and analytic device simply out of allegiance to a presumed original context or a single tradition is to deny concepts their potential to change, adapt to new contexts, and facilitate the translation of other cultures and the past. The taboo against redefining concepts such as “individualism” for hermeneutical purposes encourages thinking about concepts as fixed, unchanging entities, rather than as fluid, living representations of fleeting human agendas and thought.10 It is untenable because even within its so-called “original” context in the West, the concept of individualism assumed many forms and was constantly being contested and redefined.11 To isolate individualism in terms of a single definition and context actually misunderstands the dynamic, contextual, and fundamentally unstable nature of such concepts in any historical tradition. Given how eager people in the West are to apply what they term “universal human rights” to...