Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse by John Makeham (review)

166 Journal of Chinese Religions Enacting Heaven represents an attempt to look into that trend, the diversity of practices in folk religion would have deserved more examination. But these are only minor points: the organizations Richard Madsen looks at are largely recognized as the most influential and visible in Taiwanese society. This book, in sum, is more than a series of ethnographies on religious organizations’ influence on democratic life in Taiwan. It is also a reflection on the potential for some aspects of religious activities in East Asia to inspire a viable alternative to individualistic liberalism. Although some readers may disagree with the positive potential of religious values for political life in general and democracy in particular, the author of this volume has a point: At a time when socialism is discredited in the People’s Republic of China, and as liberalism faces a number of contradictions, the idea that religion can inspire different political ideals which dampen the dislocation of rapid social and economic change is not far-fetched. This book is elegantly written and passionately argued, and deserves to reach a wider audience than the academic community. A Chinese translation would be most welcome. ANDRÉ LALIBERTÉ, University of Ottawa Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse JOHN MAKEHAM. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center (for the Harvard-Yenching Institute), distributed by Harvard University Press, 2008. Harvard Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 64. xii, 397 pages. ISBN 9780 -674-02811-1. US$49.95, £32.95, €37.50 hardcover. This is above all a book about the so-called revival of Confucianism in recent decades, especially in mainland China but also in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and beyond. It seeks to explain the origin and nature of this revival, presenting a fascinating portrait of the interaction between movements, research projects, schools of thought, and individual scholars in all the geographical areas involved. It is also a book about alternative views of Confucianism, or Confucianisms (p. 277), including views denoted by the Chinese terms rujiao 儒教, ruxue 儒學, rujia 儒家, which Makeham uses, as needed, rather than the catchall English word “Confucianism.” Finally, it is a book about “contemporary Chinese academic discourse,” to use a phrase from the book’s subtitle. Indeed, Makeham is a well-informed guide to this discursive world or, at least, to the writings of those within it who have shown interest in rujiao, ruxue, and rujia (including xinrujia 新儒家, “New Confucianism”). It is particularly remarkable that in this book and a previous one that is in some ways its precessor, Book Reviews 167 New Confucianism: A Critical Examination (John Makeham, ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), Makeham has gone well beyond the area of his prior work in early Confucian texts, for which he has received well-deserved accolades. Lost Soul presents and defends four arguments related to four themes that run through the book’s fourteen chapters distributed into four parts (Historical Background; Ruxue and Chinese Culture; The Politics of Orthodoxy; and Distinguishing Rujiao and Propagating Ruxue). First, Makeham argues that a key impetus to sustained interest in ruxue has been intellectual cross-fertilization and rivalry between scholars in China and overseas Chinese scholars. In its strongest form, this involves the claim that “if it were not for the introduction of New Confucianism onto the agenda of mainland scholars in the 1980s, it is probable that there would have been no ruxue revival movement in the 1990s” (p. 332). Moreover, New Confucianism as it existed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in turn, received enhanced attention, not to mention fiscal support, by virtue of mainland scholars’ interest in it as well as the perceived need to prevent them from monopolizing its representation worldwide. Makeham presents a detailed picture—based on copious written sources and personal interviews—of the many facets of cross-fertilization and rivalry. Second, he challenges the conventional wisdom that CCP leaders and state nationalism have been deeply involved in ruxue revival. Using a distinction between cultural nationalism and state nationalism, he presents evidence that those most involved in the revival have been cultural nationalists who express a preference for ruxue over Marxism, with understandable caution (yet, occasionally, with brazen courage). Conversely, he shows that those closest...