史華慈所論嚴復核心思想的商榷 = A Reappraisal of Schwartz's Core View of Yan Fu's Liberty Bias
Journal
臺大歷史學報
Journal Issue
68
Pages
147-200
Date Issued
2021
Author(s)
Abstract
In Search of Wealth and Power focuses on the defining difference between what Yan Fu applied categories derived from the West to Chinese culture and what Benjamin Schwartz reexamines the meaning of these categories in the original context of western culture and history. In chapters devoted to the Yan Fu’s reception of Herbert Spencer it presents and then analyzes an set of unique and unnoticed phenomena in the origin of political democracy in modern China, namely the persistent appearance of a distorted view: view implies that Yan Fu found in ideas of Western liberalism (particularly Herbert Spencer) a fundamental source of the secrets of western wealth and power. According to Schwartz, to be sure, this instrumental view of liberalism was mortally vulnerable to any challenge from both the right and the left when they offered more effective ways to achieve the goals of modernity. The present essay demonstrates how the texts produced by both Herbert Spencer and Yan Fu provides a significant resource for intellectual exchanges, in much the reverse way that what Schwartz found in Yan Fu’s thought and commitment based solely on the instrumentalism is quite deformed and distorted.
Type
journal article