In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West
Reading reponse to Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West.
In his book, Benjamin Schwartz discusses two hypostatized entities, “Western culture” and “Chinese culture.” He follows the conscious responses of one individual, Yen Fu, to the cultural and historic situation of China at the turn of the 20th century. Yen has been chosen because he relates himself with peculiar directness to the confrontation of traditional China with the ideas of 18th and 19th century Europe. Unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, Yen is profoundly interested in what Western thinkers have thought about issues like military, economic and political power. To Schwartz, Yen does not respond to the “West” as an integral entity but to certain definite strands within the complex of eighteenth and nineteenth century thought, and thus he shed light on which is problematic in both cultures.
The questions that Yen concerned were “what does the West have which China lacks? Where does the crucial difference lie?” The questions are thrust forward by an urgent, overriding concern with the woeful debility of the Chinese state – its lack of wealth and power. In seeking the ultimate sources of the West’s power Yen Fu has driven far beyond the domain of the political to an inquiry into the very essence of modern Western civilization. Schwartz points out that two strands of modern Western development can be distinguished in Yen Fu’s writings. The first is the Faustian-Promethean strain – the exaltation of energy and power both over non-human nature and within human society. Yen believes that the crucial difference between the Western and Chinese culture is not a question of matter but a question of energy. The West has exalted human energy in all its manifestations – intellectual, moral, and physical. The Faustian-Promethean nature of Western civilization has produced the West’s enormous output of wealth and power.
The second strain might loosely be called the stream of social-political idealism, represented by terms like freedom, equality, democracy and socialism. Yen is convinced by many Western scholars that the energies which accounted for the West’s development are stored up in the individual and that these energies can be realized only in an environment favorable to individual interests, which is provided by liberty, equality, and democracy. Yen looks into the nature of relations among men within the larger macroscopic structures of political and social life.
Schwartz considers these two strains as the machinery of wealth and power, and the social political ideals. He argues that it is only in the early 19th century that close functional relations come to be perceived between the two strains. Yet, he suggests that such relationship is much more accidental, equivocal, haphazard, and mutable that is generally assumed in the bland religion of modernization. The problem of relations between the two is not just the problem for Yen Fu and China but for every modern society.
In his book, Benjamin Schwartz discusses two hypostatized entities, “Western culture” and “Chinese culture.” He follows the conscious responses of one individual, Yen Fu, to the cultural and historic situation of China at the turn of the 20th century. Yen has been chosen because he relates himself with peculiar directness to the confrontation of traditional China with the ideas of 18th and 19th century Europe. Unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, Yen is profoundly interested in what Western thinkers have thought about issues like military, economic and political power. To Schwartz, Yen does not respond to the “West” as an integral entity but to certain definite strands within the complex of eighteenth and nineteenth century thought, and thus he shed light on which is problematic in both cultures.
The questions that Yen concerned were “what does the West have which China lacks? Where does the crucial difference lie?” The questions are thrust forward by an urgent, overriding concern with the woeful debility of the Chinese state – its lack of wealth and power. In seeking the ultimate sources of the West’s power Yen Fu has driven far beyond the domain of the political to an inquiry into the very essence of modern Western civilization. Schwartz points out that two strands of modern Western development can be distinguished in Yen Fu’s writings. The first is the Faustian-Promethean strain – the exaltation of energy and power both over non-human nature and within human society. Yen believes that the crucial difference between the Western and Chinese culture is not a question of matter but a question of energy. The West has exalted human energy in all its manifestations – intellectual, moral, and physical. The Faustian-Promethean nature of Western civilization has produced the West’s enormous output of wealth and power.
The second strain might loosely be called the stream of social-political idealism, represented by terms like freedom, equality, democracy and socialism. Yen is convinced by many Western scholars that the energies which accounted for the West’s development are stored up in the individual and that these energies can be realized only in an environment favorable to individual interests, which is provided by liberty, equality, and democracy. Yen looks into the nature of relations among men within the larger macroscopic structures of political and social life.
Schwartz considers these two strains as the machinery of wealth and power, and the social political ideals. He argues that it is only in the early 19th century that close functional relations come to be perceived between the two strains. Yet, he suggests that such relationship is much more accidental, equivocal, haphazard, and mutable that is generally assumed in the bland religion of modernization. The problem of relations between the two is not just the problem for Yen Fu and China but for every modern society.
posted by TSUI CM at 6:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home