What Is Enlightenment

Wei Zhang

Description

What is enlightenment? Wei Zhang brings together the fabled consideration of enlightenment by Kant, his contemporaries, and modern respondents such as Habermas and Foucault with the question "What is Chinese enlightenment?" Kant and his peers began a discussion of the notion of enlightenment in the pages of the Berlinische Monatsschrift when that newspaper's editor posed the question "Was ist Aufklärung?" in 1784. Chinese intellectuals began a similar consideration in the wake of the May Fourth cultural movement of 1919, which marked a self-conscious break from the feudal past and a new engagement with the West.

Zhang asks to what extent European enlightenment can be regarded as purely philosophical and isolated from political events and, alternately, to what extent the Chinese enlightenment can be split into separate political and intellectual discourses. Her work yields a new set of conceptual questions and practical issues and provides new energy to the dialogue on political and cultural modernity. In cross-cultural context, Zhang finds the answers to the question "What is enlightenment?" are multiple, pluralistic, dynamic, and self-renewing.
Introduction
Two “Unrelated” Questions

1. What Is Enlightenment?
A Kant-Foucault-Habermas Sequence

2. What Is Chinese Enlightenment?
Can China Answer Kant’s Question?

3. Hermeneutics as Politics
May Fourth Appropriation of a Confucian Model

4. History and the Present
A May Fourth Critique of Spurious History

Conclusion
So . . . What Is Enlightenment?

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• History of philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438431079
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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What Is Enlightenment

SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture ——————— Roger T. Ames, editor

What Is Enlightenment Can China Answer Kant’s Question?

WEI ZHANG

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2010 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Zhang, Wei.  What is enlightenment : can China answer Kant’s question? / Wei Zhang.  p. cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)  Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.  ISBN 978-1-4384-3105-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)  1. Enlightenment—China. 2. China—History—May Fourth movement, 1919. 3. Enlightenment—Europe. 4. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. 5. Philosophy, Comparative. I. Title.

B5233.E55Z43 2010 181'.11—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2009034299

In loving memory of my parents

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Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction Two “Unrelated” Questions

Chapter 1. What Is Enlightenment?  A Kant-Foucault-Habermas Sequence

Chapter 2.Is Chinese Enlightenment? What  Can China Answer Kant’s Question?

Chapter 3. Hermeneuticsas Politics  May Fourth Appropriation of a Confucian Model

Chapter 4.History and the Present  A May Fourth Critique of Spurious History

Conclusion So . . . What Is Enlightenment?

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

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