Investments in Patriotism: a Case Study of the PRC in the Post-Deng Era∗ ______

Home , Bruno Latour, Liu Xincheng, Li Xueqin, Song Jian, Xia Nai

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Investments in Patriotism: A Case Study of the PRC in the Post-Deng Era∗ ______

MICHAEL NYLAN University of California, Berkeley, USA ([email protected])

“Patriotism is not enough.” -Edith Cavell

This paper explores two types of investment in the current People’s Republic of China, both of which promote fantasies about the past and future, presumably as a way to forestall uncomfortable conversations about the present. But the author is less interested in state decisions than in what makes an unofficial person “buy into” such fantasies. Her answer is, “misperceptions about tradition” (some intentionally fostered by the Chinese Communist Party), longstanding cultural preoccupations (some distorted in the current climate), and genuine desires to secure honor and glory in an insecure world. Her largely diagnostic paper briefly considers possible responses to the question, “What, in such a dire situation, can be done to introduce more complex notions of sedimented identities?”

Key words: culturalism; naturalism; patriotism; Xunzi; glory; honor

As a scholar who divides her time between the People’s Republic of China and the United States, I am frequently reminded of how entangled the fates of these two empires have been and continue to be,1 and how similar the problems they confront today.2 Recently the leaders of both countries have tried to mobilize their parties to promote a kind of hyper-patriotism (defined as the “love of country that sharply divides ‘we’ from ‘the Other’”), even as they pour enormous resources into constructing elaborate visions of impossibly idealized pasts and futures. As a historian, I naturally ask how rooted such visions are in antiquity, how much the by-product of the modern nation-state formation conceived in Social Darwinist terms, and how much an ad hoc revisionism shaped by present needs and desires, as perceived by the Party and its citizenry. Such questions compel deeper delving into the cultural and psychological bases for fashionable retrojections onto the past, not to mention the rosy dreams for the future. Finally, as an admirer of Bernard Williams and Pierre Hadot, I have wondered, too, how much contemporary philosophy misses when it chooses to downplay the diagnostic and therapeutic functions of the academic discipline, which call out for closer examination of the emotional lives of people, indulging instead in fruitless searches for western-style “universals” to impose on non-western cases, what one philosopher has called “the normative delusion.”3 Such searches generally serve to preclude talk of “politics” altogether, as “political conditions are only exceptionally normal” and hence normative.

∗ This paper is dedicated to Herbert Fingarette, who died on November 2, 2018, a philosopher who took on questions of ethical responsibility. ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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In the end, I felt it useful to try to push beyond the rather conventional treatments on the subject of patriotism, as too many secondary studies that condemn previous generations are written from safe perches.4 My essay circles around three main questions: What resources exist, east or west, past and present, for understanding the hyper-patriotism common to nativist movements everywhere today? What, if anything, can be gleaned from the early writings in classical Chinese about the impulses people have to identify not only with the powerful, but also with strangers they believe to be more “like themselves?” And could greater resort to antique traditions possibly inject greater levels of civility into today’s harsh political rhetoric? (This last question asks, in effect, does China indeed have a useable past?) My case study naturally focuses on the People’s Republic of China, as I have been witness to so many of its “cultural fevers” (wenhua re 文化) over the years. But I write in the hope that my preliminary ruminations may spur those more qualified to conduct studies outside the People’s Republic of China, studies that could abandon the usual, rather tired dichotomies (civilized vs. barbarian, Communist vs. democratic, pragmatic vs. moral, among them). I begin with a single observation: that ordinary people often seek to invest themselves with “glory” (aka “honor” or “dignity”) in one of two ways in today’s world.5 In China, some would advance one sort of conservative cultural nationalism that glorifies “tradition”—the so-called “national essence” (guocui 國粹) discourse, frequently reduced to the slogan “China as the oldest continuous civilization.” Meanwhile, others associate themselves with the “motherland,” quite a different, if related form of patriotic identification. Unfortunately, in today’s discourse, “national essence” and “motherland” talk alike accommodates, justifies, and even celebrates authoritarian institutions, since China’s perceived rival, “the west,” is equated with “democratic ideals” and “human rights.”6 Under the guidance of President Xi Jinping, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership has skillfully played to the hilt the ahistorical link between “tradition” (cast as singular) and authoritarian government. In return for supposedly protecting the Chinese people (primarily the “Han majority”) from the “spiritual corruption” that western civilization represents, President Xi justifies ever greater allegiance to the will of the Party.7 Had I composed this essay fifteen years ago, I would have called out paleoanthropology and archaeology as the two academic disciplines that have most often slavishly served as the willing handmaidens to state-sponsored ideological projects in China, including the Cultural Revolution.8 By this point in time, however, all too many historians and philosophers have joined the ranks of those willing to abuse the past, mainly (but not entirely) because of the heavy investments that the CCP has poured into academic ventures and academic careers that cleave closely to its line. After all, the party has in its gift the heavy media exposure that so many intellectuals crave.9 But that is hardly the whole story. After all, many “ordinary people” who are less educated and less privileged also readily follow the Party line, wherever it wanders, even as the authoritarian government holds out, to a much smaller proportion of its citizens (typically non-academic and extraordinarily privileged), the promise of fulfilling their dreams of attaining real economic and psychic security. Both the past and the future are being molded, then, to suit the long-term interests of the reigning powers, via a specific “regime of truth,” if we borrow Foucault’s theory of power.10 I was careful to title this essay “a case study,” in the full awareness that many governments around the world are spearheading similar movements designed to rewrite the distant past and distract by futurist initiatives. Israel, India, and Turkey immediately spring to mind, as does the Trump administration.11 Needless to say, I do not approve of any of these nationalist movements that rely on “fake news” and “alternative facts.” As a historian, I embrace the once-pejorative characterization that I am “reality-based.”12 And yet I circle back, in my thoughts, as well as in this essay, to the importance of the imaginaries involving “honor” and “glory” to ordinary people (a ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/57 term defined as “people without extraordinary access to power”). As I discovered, much to my surprise, when preparing this essay, a recognition of the human need for “honor” and “glory” has longstanding roots within Chinese tradition, going back to some of the early political theorists such as Xunzi and the early historians.13 A minor caution: I am aware that “honor” in the western philosophical tradition is often seen as something conferred by society (even pre-political, anarchic societies) upon a person (hence “external” standing), whereas “glory” is often seen as a personal attribute (as in the “glory of God” or the “glorious monarchy”).14 However, my essay will assimilate the two words here and below precisely because the same word gui 貴 is used of both in classical Chinese, a fact noteworthy in itself. What should or can philosophy and history do about this molding of past and future in the service of power? After all, well-respected academics in the PRC have often aided and abetted the official narratives, no matter how anachronistic they are known to be (see below). As readers may recall, the historian Guo Moruo (d. 1978), who aspired to remain the “ultimate arbiter” of China’s diverse cultural spheres, repeatedly revised his analysis of ancient slave society to suit Mao Zedong’s latest pronouncements. Equally relevant is the case of Feng Youlan (d. 1990), who wrote and rewrote his History of Chinese Philosophy during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, in the vain hope of finally pleasing his masters. Inevitably, the collective voices of today’s latter-day Guo Moruos and Feng Youlans will be stronger in Chinese-speaking communities than that of a lone, Caucasian female historian protesting obvious inaccuracies.15 Faithfulness to earlier ideals of good history certainly requires historians to register such protests at appropriate intervals in appropriate venues, but is there truly nothing more to be done, by historians or philosophers? My essay reflects the belief that philosophy and history still have important roles to play in both the east and west, perhaps particularly in China. At this critical juncture in history, philosophy and history need to leave the theoretical and the anecdotal to probe the specific problems widely associated with the Chinese experience of modernity for the last century or so, and simultaneously the contemporary postmodern inability—global inability, it seems—to accommodate alternate views (e.g., that Chinese philosophy might be philosophy)16 and other negative experiences.17 Certainly, my tentative conclusions offer no magic bullet, but, ideally, I would like my work and that of likeminded historians and philosophers to reconstruct in some complexity a distinct time and place in the distant past, believing that to be a possible “third way” with the potential to avoid empty nostalgia on the one hand and indiscriminate worship of an invented past or one ethnicity on the other. Conceivably, such a practice might lead us away from both excessive assertion of identity and the possible loss of identity, insofar as any painstaking process of reconstruction entails a form of askesis: a radical ability to question ourselves and our sources, to go beyond the surface explanations to discern the underlying patterns of thought and belief undergirding presumptions. By insistently conjoining the work of personal cultivation to the careful study of past thinkers, such deep immersion in new unknowns and new potentials can build a bridge between then and now, here and there.18 After all, we are fundamentally changed by whatever we devote repeated time and energy to, or so the Ancients said. This change, more than any attempt to be “relevant,” may make our work of some use to others in their lives. Meanwhile, successive acts of deep immersion almost inevitably lead to the adoption of a particular view of each person as a sedimented history, more or less conscious of “memory, symbols, institutions, language, works of art, and all the other things to which one may legitimately be attached” (Amin Maalouf 2001: 40). To posit this richer sense of potentials than we now find in the “autonomous, rational being” model may be especially important for philosophers, I would argue.19

———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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1 Investments in Invented Pasts

Archaeology and paleoarchaeology are the two academic disciplines that have long constituted the conceptual warp and woof of China’s “racial nationalism,” an ideology which holds that each member of the “Han Chinese race” can trace his or her identity to a discrete community of biology and culture whose glorious “essence” has remained substantially the same down through time.20 More recently, it has become clear that historians and philosophers are anxious to get into the act, for a host of reasons, ranging from cultural pride to naked self-interest. I will adduce one example that is particularly relevant to early China studies, that of the so- called “Sandai” [Three Dynasties] Project,21 which seeks explicitly to establish the “origins” and hence the “essence” of the “Chinese race” in the Xia (traditionally 2700-1600 BCE) and pre-Xia period. After the direct investment of four years and $4 million in research22—a figure which does not begin to take into account huge collateral expenses, such as building a new research museum in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, to commemorate the Shang legacy—a party-appointed commission of 170 scholars somehow managed to so confuse the issues as to allege the “historicity” of the Xia dynasty in the absence of writing and the Chineseness of the pre-Xia Neolithic within the boundaries of the present nation-state.23 That the project continues to receive state support is attested by a recent essay (May 2018) in the China Daily and by a recent “study” in the foremost archaeological journal in the PRC.24 (See below.) “We have managed to provide evidence for the founding of Chinese civilization, which was for a long time only mythical and had many doubters,” says Yang Yubin, one leader of the project and a former director of Henan’s Institute of Archaeology; “The party and the people are really proud of our work,” he continued. Foreign scholars, of course, were excluded from the commission, on the grounds that they constitute the greatest pool of “Antiquity-Doubters.”

Harsh critics say that Beijing’s attempts to rewrite history are no less compromising than those of Hitler during the Third Reich, Stalin in the USSR, and, more recently, Hindu nationalists in India.25 Outside China, archaeologists are using terms like “pseudo-archaeology” and “archaeological fantasies” to characterize the distorted and highly selective readings of the evidence.26 Meanwhile, local critics of the commission in the PRC have been silenced “through a series of ‘work report’ ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/59 meetings,” according to officials involved.27 Talk of China’s “sacred past”—linked to heightened nationalism—should meanwhile worry China’s neighbors in the region,28 and it does.29 A full report from the commission never came out, due to internal disputes among the scholars appointed to the commission, but in the fall of 2000 an abbreviated report and a “new chronological chart” for the “Three Dynasties” dating the beginning of Xia to 2070 BCE and Shang to 1600 BCE was duly issued, and early China scholars who aim to be published in the PRC must abide by that chronology. The continuing impact of that commission’s work is clear. Take, for example, the March 2016 essay appearing in Kaogu, the premier journal of the archaeological establishment of China, which insists that China’s continuous history can be “proven” to date back 7,000 years at a minimum.30 In claiming that from time immemorial China has been “One Nation, Multi-Ethnic Groups,” the slogan may seem to the uninitiated like no more than a creative adoption of the term “multi-culturalism” with “special Chinese characteristics,” despite the shoddy arguments the essay deploys. Under closer examination, the slogan relates far more closely, however, to tropes of Chinese “exceptionalism” in positing a supposedly stable population within the present-day borders of the People’s Republic China, as Google searches quickly reveal. That said, abundant evidence attests the campaign’s effect outside the PRC, as with an archaeological study hailed by Cambridge University Press as pathbreaking and recent work by Yu Ying-shih, an eminent historian.31 Inside the PRC, some eight million studies in Chinese and 361,000 in English invoke Li Xueqin 李学勤 (b. 1933), one of the leaders of the Sandai project, as the “authority” for periods and traditions for which he has no formal training. Why Li? In 1993, Li made an influential speech in which he called for Chinese intellectuals to “leave behind the ‘Doubting of Antiquity.’”32 This speech became the manifesto of the “Believing Antiquity” movement that dominates China and Chinese-speaking communities. Scholars of Li’s persuasion argue that archaeological discoveries of recent decades have generally substantiated Chinese traditional accounts rather than contradicted them, though the record is more mixed on that score than Li would admit.33 Li gives a historical overview of previous attempts to ascertain chronologies for antiquity, for example, Liu Xin’s (d. 23 CE) Shijing 世經 (Classic of the Ages) in late Western Han. Li characterizes those earlier attempts as regrettably based on “subjective suppositions,” whereas he claims scientific infallibility for the Sandai project that he has sanctioned. As Li puts it,

The special character of the research methodology used by the Chronology Project was that it subjected chronology to multidisciplinary analysis that combined archaeology, history, paleography, astronomy, and scientiﬁc dating technology. Thus, the various issues were approached from many vantage points and at many levels. Each research task and topic was, as far as possible, the common responsibility of scholars from different ﬁelds. Our main research methods included two aspects. First, all of the written information on dates, astronomical phenomena, and calendars of the Xia, Shang and Zhou in the Chinese classics of various periods, as well as in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions, were collected and processed, examined with regard to their authenticity, and then used in the Chronology Project’s research. Modern astronomical techniques and knowledge were applied to the ancient records […]. Secondly, archaeological sites, and especially materials from burials, that could serve as markers for the dating of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were systematically analyzed and periodized. Moreover, new excavations

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were undertaken to obtain series of samples that could be used in the Chronology Project’s radiocarbon dating program.34

As I have been preparing a translation of the Han-era Documents classic,35 whose chapters purport to span the dynastic periods of Xia-Shang-Zhou, I have paid particular attention to the methodology used to “determine” the chronology for Western Zhou. By Li’s own account of the project, radiocarbon dates were taken from two sites and two sites only (one in Shanxi, one in Beijing) and neither derived from the “center” of Western Zhou power, in Shaanxi province. “Back-up” for the Western Zhou chronology was supposedly derived from Zhou bronze inscriptions, plus dates given in two Documents chapters, but the dates of those bronzes (not to mention the Documents chapters) are very contested. Moreover, Li Xueqin’s “logic” is shockingly circular. The dates of the second and third kings of Western Zhou (Kings Cheng and Kang) are taken as given, and they are then used to date the other Western Zhou kings. Use of the “evidence” from artifacts was based on multiple presuppositions (if X, then Y, and if Y, then Z), with “could haves” turning into “did happens” with astonishing speed and glibness. After all, for some key events, such as the founding of Western Zhou, at least 44 different possible dates were broached over the long centuries of Chinese imperial history.36 But in the end, even for King Pang Geng, who ruled at Yin (i.e., Anyang),37 only a rough date for his reign can reasonably be calculated. Before this last Shang capital at Anyang, not much, in actuality, can be ascertained, as no writing has been found that predates Anyang. Accordingly, Li’s conjectures resort necessarily to very late traditions (often composed a millennium later, and usually written as propaganda in “systematizing texts”), whose reliability more responsible historians duly query.38 Archaeological cultures (e.g., Erlitou) once identified as pre-Shang by the authorities have been recast as belonging to the legendary Xia dynasty, and now the pre-Xia (dating back to 7,000 BCE) has also been dubbed “Chinese.” As David Nivison, one not-disinterested critic of the project, suggested, the Sandai project ignored a great deal of relevant evidence, while piling mistake upon mistake.39 In this connection, it is worth quoting an earlier expert of antiquity: to “reconstruct,” on the basis of a “vast and extremely heterogeneous body of material from all epochs [...] is worse than a caricature: it is a weird and fanciful farrago of abstruse symbolisms and semi-philosophical magic that is entirely foreign to pre-Han China” (Karlgren 1946: 347).40 Here are the stakes, which may not be immediately obvious to those outside the early China field. The Sandai Project and the related spin-off campaign, “One Nation, Many Ethnicities,” have but three aims: (1) to shore up the “sacred” identity of the majority Han Chinese, said to have a uniquely “continuous civilization,” the better to stake a claim of cultural superiority rooted in a “unitary” and “sacred” past; (2) to devalue regional and ethnic identities deemed peripheral to the main story of the Han Chinese (for example, the cultures of the ethnic groups in the so-called Autonomous Regions of the PRC, plus the Taiwanese, are, at a minimum, deemed “unimportant” or “less important”), so that the Han Chinese may “legitimately” assume a “caretaker” role supervising and re-educating them; and (3) to counter regional loyalties, by subordinating local identities to a powerful center.41 The literature connected with Sandai puts a kinder and gentler face on the patriotic literature generated in contemporary China, whose sweeping themes have been identified by the French scholar Billetier:

In all the texts there is a constant reference to external threats, whether in the form of Japanese invasion or globalization. This external menace, real or imagined, gives rise to the same internal strategic response: national salvation through unity. This all- inclusive mobilization is a strategy supported by a deep underlying Chinese way of ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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thinking: the omnipresent binary opposition between the exterior (wai), felt to be unknown, hostile, and potentially dangerous, and the interior (nei), which is reassuring, trustworthy, and supportive […]. [T]hese texts provide the key to the way in which the government thinks of the Chinese nation. And such a conception of the nation as unitary, and primordial, in biological and even racial terms, augurs ill […] (italics mine).42

While I dispute a part of Billetier’s summary,43 there is little doubt that modern Chinese identity depends upon some degree of perceived continuity with one or another pasts, and rapid social change tends to strain such perceptions, destabilizing identities and thus reinforcing patriotism (think 9/11, with its exaggerated calls for preparedness and “vigilance,” or the heavily armed “vigi- pirates” that roamed the streets of Paris under President Hollande in the wake of a series of terrorist attacks). As Xunzi observes, if people “meet with a chaotic age and acquire chaotic customs, this will add pettiness to pettiness, and chaos to chaos.”44 Through their concerted efforts devoted to “materializing identity,” the leadership of the CCP party hopes to bury in heaps of patriotic verbiage the true complexity of the inherited past in China. As far back as the Republican era, prominent conservative thinkers like Zhang Junmai had identified as one of the “problems” with China its failure to develop great systems of thought because of a preoccupation with empirical research. Today, why let facts get into the way when constructing a gratifyingly glorious past for oneself? George W. Bush’s crowd didn’t and don’t, and the Trump crowd eats up fake news. Already in the Republican era, cultural conservatives like Zhang Junmai announced, “Creative renewal inherits the past and develops the future, both emerging from the same path” (italics mine).45 In other words, the past (specifically its body politic) was to be used to an end (future development). The degree to which such slogans have subtly but significantly changed the import of classical learning can be discerned from the writings of Qian Mu, an avowed Confucian, who unlike the Confucius of the early writings, taught that all traditions should be in service to the Chinese state.46 Needless to say, Li Xueqin is hardly the only would-be Guo Moruo. I mention one other because the case is so egregious and concerns a historian of early China whose work I once deeply admired.47 While visiting in Hong Kong a few years back, I read, to my astonishment, in the local paper that Wang Zijin 王子今, a once-reputable historian at Beijing Normal University, was arguing the merits of global warming to Hong Kong skeptics. Wang Zijin specifically alleged that the relationship between temperature and “historical success” (whatever that might be) was no coincidence. His reasoning went like this: when the weather cooled, agricultural output fell, wealth contracted, widespread discontent arose, and China became more vulnerable to invasion from the north. “In the long term, warming may not be a curse but a blessing [to China],” he was quoted as saying. “If the temperature continues to rise, we may not see the return of elephants but it will be very possible that rice and bamboo can again grow along the Yellow River. Xinjiang, Gansu and Inner Mongolia will become much more habitable than today.”48 Needless to say, Wang Zijin knows better, but simply refused to apply the fine historical training he received from his teacher Wang Liqi 王利器 to honest ends. (Of course, quite recently, the PRC has nominally changed course on climate change, due in large part to pressure from its own citizens, who find it increasingly hard to breathe and are experiencing unprecedentedly high cancer rates, especially in urban populations.)

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2 Investments in Impossibly Bright Futures

Classic cases in nationalist histories do not tell the whole story. For the PRC government under Xi Jinping is covering its bets by sketching a rosy vision of a utopian future, where all ordinary problems have been obviated for its most favored citizens, or the richest among its Han Chinese majority, at any rate. The conservatives concede that targeted changes may be desirable, but change always has to be controlled, to avoid social and political upheavals.49 To conjure briefly some of the uses to which the CCP intends to put China’s future, I speak here of the so-called “Jing-jin-ji” project (hereafter JJJ, for simplicity’s sake) for “bigger, better” future megacities, first discussed in 1981 and recently revived under President Xi Jinping, who has made it his signature project.50 JJJ envisions a super-city or megalopolis that is to encompass three very different spaces: “greater” Beijing municipality, the political and cultural capital; Tianjin municipality, which is a major port; and Hebei province, where the average income is much lower, and more manufacturing and industrial processing takes place. The proposed JJJ super-megacity would embrace 82,000 square miles, about the size of the state of Kansas. Upon completion, it would house 130 million people, or a population equivalent to more than one-third of the US population. Elevation in the region varies from 2800 to 2 meters, pointing towards highly specific topographies, including a number of critical watersheds—though even before JJJ is realized, the region sports hardly any remaining wetlands and almost no “vacant, unused land” 裸地 to work with. Put another way, nearly all the land throughout the region is already under cultivation, or forested, or grasslands, if not under ecological stress. In order to build a project of this size and scope, the leadership will have to create a vast new infrastructure system, clean up polluted waters, and remove various types of lands from production altogether. In addition, the central government’s administrative functions will have to be moved from the capital at Beijing to the suburbs, in Tongzhou, to provide greater security for its functions.51 Limits on the ecological carrying capacity of the region will almost certainly be overstepped, especially as approximately one-third the area is very mountainous terrain. The salty soil of the Tianjin Binhai region constitutes a very fragile eco- system already. But, as Thomas Hahn, cultural geographer of contemporary China, states, “It should first be noted that the processes that lead to the establishment of ALL these zones and regions are first and foremost fought along political lines. Economic considerations are not the decisive factors determining what gets created when and where [in China].”52 The real competitors to JJJ are the Pearl River Delta and the lower Yangzi region, both pet projects by former presidents Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, respectively.53 JJJ is Xi Jinping’s signature project, and—to repeat—it is first political in nature, and only economic second. Downgraded from the original vision of a “fully integrated” super-city to the more modest plan of intraregional “cooperation,” any moves to implement JJJ still require an unprecedented overhaul of current government operations.54 Perhaps the most interesting aspect of JJJ that should be noted is its inland reach (i.e., away from the developed coastline). Back in 1988, Zhao Ziyang proposed a coastal development strategy, which led to the development of trading ports and cities up and down the coast. (These are now some of the wealthiest cities in the nation.) These days, more and more economic development zones are being designed for the interior of the country, in the hopes of turning specific provinces into more economically cooperative clusters after the collapse of the least economically viable and worst polluting industries.55 JJJ is a hybrid in that respect. But the projected population figures for JJJ—that 130 million—is significant. That equates to a lot of jobs, which would generate a lot of political clout, if the jobs can be produced in the project area. Unemployment in Hebei province, as distinct from Beijing and Tianjin, is very high, despite the ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/63 official numbers, largely because the number of aging state-operated enterprises in Hebei is comparatively high. There is less and less investment by the state in these industries, due to falling global and domestic demand for their products and a slowdown of the economy overall. Add that to the fact that many of those being asked to relocate to the area are state or municipal employees, whose average salary is somewhat below those of other urbanites, in addition to the large percentage of people working in low-paying agriculture and forestry jobs in the JJJ zone, then you arrive at a sizable proportion of the population whose chances for upward mobility is very limited. As the CCP leadership is aware, with current unemployment and an economy that depends largely on “state construction” (guojia jianshe 國家建設) and profits from the property market bubble, China has now reached a stage where income inequality and social justice begin to play highly unfavorable roles in public discourse. How to change the national conversation is President Xi Jinping’s main task (a task not unlike that of Trump, with equal pretensions to populism).56 Both Xi and Trump have talked up vast infrastructure projects; unlike Trump to date, Xi is prepared to put his money where his mouth is, and he can do so, because he need not be troubled by any pesky separation of powers. That said, JJJ is nonetheless a vast experiment of unprecedented scale, fraught with potential problems—precisely the kind of project that the incrementalist Confucius of the early traditions, not to mention any self-respecting Daoist, warns against. But what other options does Xi realistically have if the “new China” is to boldly stride into the “Chinese century” and realize Chinese desires for national glory? Beijing has nowhere else to go; it cannot expand further. The topography in the area is such that there is no potential for development towards the north and west of Beijing, only to the southeast and south. So Xi will try to use the JJJ concept to move things around to places outside Beijing’s confines. In essence, the planned JJJ project turns away from its Beijing workers and civil servants. In effect, the capital of the People’s Republic, a socialist worker state, no longer welcomes these two groups, just as Manhattan is no longer affordable for those at mid-level incomes. Meanwhile those with nongmin hukou 農民戶口 (registered farmers or peasants) are all to be urbanized and integrated into the urban economical matrix and housed, ideally, in new model villages. JJJ will, not coincidentally, create a huge security buffer zone around the capital, in case one of the thousands of protests taking place monthly in the countryside reaches a critical threshold that could threaten the legitimacy of the Communist Party leadership. Seen in this light, the boundaries of JJJ, which include a great number of military assets, represent a security-control cordon for Zhongnanhai, China’s equivalent to the White House and the official residence of Xi Jinping and top Party leaders.57 Clearly, a new administrative entity such as JJJ would be impossible to draw up without strategic input from the military, as well as from Xi’s economic advisors. And yet, I would maintain that this JJJ project is also designed to appeal to Chinese patriotic sentiments, just as surely as the many builders of the world’s “tallest towers” appeal to local cultural pride. If US cities are known for crumbling infrastructure and assorted urban ills, the Chinese leadership now aims to build a “China Dream” rooted in “cooperative” and bigger (aka “greater”) cities for the bold new century ahead. It is, after all, “the vice of the vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.”58 Still, to some promoting Earth Day celebrations in 2018 outside China, further investment in megacities, despite the manifold problems they have brought in the past, seems the only path forward.59

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3 What China-Watchers See

We know that populations yearn for a stronger identity under certain conditions, chiefly when they perceive threats. We know, too, that, in the case of China, all public discourse, sooner or later, circles back to the “Century of Humiliation” from the 1840 Opium War to 1949, with “Liberation,” experienced by China at the hands of the Great Powers and Japan.60 (This beats talking about Mao’s mistakes, and neatly places all the blame for the Party’s excesses squarely on the imperialist powers and the United States, which came late to imperialism.) And when globalization is now often conflated with Americanization, much inevitably circles around the topic of patriotism. The misinformation, denials of access to information, and the various punishments for non-compliance with the CCP can then all be justified by “love of country,” “love of the motherland,” and the CCP’s right to prescribe for its people what is patriotic or non-patriotic behavior.61 (However, ideas about the special/exceptional development character of the “Chinese people,” it should be noted, long predate leadership by the Party, and Mao and his successors have largely adhered to Republican-era notions.)62 The philosophical and historical literature on patriotism in the west is better developed than in China, where “patriotism” is nonetheless considered a “core value.”63 Western philosophers and historians recognize that “patriotism is characteristically political: it involves a special concern for ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/65 people you will never meet and might not like, if you did. It involves a particular, substantive, morally charged point of view; it may well involve dubious epistemic habits and commitments; and it is by nature open to manipulation by the powerful.”64 Thus “a major issue in [EuroAmerican] political philosophy is the extent to which one or another version of nationalism or, by contrast, cosmopolitanism, is morally justified.”65 The EuroAmerican literature takes it for granted that patriotism keeps bad company (Napoleon, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Stalin all spring to mind), as patriotism is “the propagandist’s stock-in-trade” (Chapell 2014: 169).66 By contrast, I have never seen a discussion by any academic in China who has openly (i.e., in a public forum of any sort) discussed possible down-sides, let alone hazards to zealous patriotism (aiguo). (Private discussions admit as much.) However, overseas Chinese, who are tenured in EuroAmerican settings, freely discuss the “tensions” and “potential conflicts” between one form of patriotism and others. At the same time, judging from what I have seen and read, most Chinese academics, at home or in the diaspora, seem to take it for granted that Chinese nationalism is “indispensable” for China’s national autonomy, unity, and identity in the global nation-state system, where the “winner takes all.”67 When thinking about this mixed picture of responses to patriotism on the Chinese scene, I surveyed the EuroAmerican literature devoted to patriotism, in both history and philosophy, to give me some guidance on the single question whether a “morally apt” patriotism can exist and play a useful function in society and in the individual, as opposed to the “blind patriotism” (aka jingoistic patriotism, nativism, or xenophobia) that has been roundly condemned since 1950, at least.68 And while there is no consensus on this matter, the philosophical literature seems to evince an emerging consensus: to wit, that there should be a role for “morally apt” patriotism in the nation-state, even if those debating the definition of “good” patriotism fall into four rival camps.69 Of course, patriotism eludes neat framing in terms of the moral vs. prudential, or the altruistic vs. egoistic, the two tools that are the stock-in-trade of post-Kantian philosophers, because patriotism is not “universal” (but partial) and often it is far from “rational” in its origins or expressions.70 Nor does patriotism fit a neat dichotomy pitting independence against dependence. Freedom from dependence (from servile status) is what Aristotle and many other thinkers celebrate, but do we not all realize by this point, with Martha Nussbaum (passim), that the goods we individually seek in life are inevitably fragile, especially in late-stage capitalism, as Picketty and others have emphasized?71 Then, too, is it not this acute sense, conscious or not, of that fragility which prompts many a yearning for submersion into a larger, and presumably more long-lasting, whole? Equally, glory—no matter how glorious—requires extreme social approbation (here attached to patriotic expressions), sooner or later (more on glory below). Despite the complexities attached to such absolute dependence on others, there is no possibility for glory and honor to exist without such adulation. The problem, as Durkheim already noted, is this: logical conformism is the usual result when homogeneous conceptions of time, space, number, and cause make it possible for quite different intellects from different backgrounds to reach agreement on the immediate meaning of the world,72 and here, I venture, “cause” translates readily in the Chinese case into the perceived need for “populist” patriotism to compete successfully in a competitive world still conceived largely in Social Darwinists terms of survival of the fittest.73 For if patriotism is a complicated issue in EuroAmerica, it seems infinitely more complicated in present-day China. There “love of country” is now widely touted as one of the “basic virtues” along with the more traditional “Confucian” virtues, such as benevolence, attention to duty, trustworthiness, and filial piety, by analogies constructed between filial duty to one’s parents and unswerving loyalty to the state.74 Never mind that the early “Confucian” and “Legalist” analogies constructing “love of the ruler” on the model of “love of one’s parents” share nothing with today’s teachings enjoining slavish duty owed to an homogeneous Han-centric culture with primordial ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/66 origins.75 Not to mention yet a further complication, however: “love of the nation” in the case of China since Mao has four overlapping definitional targets or spheres: (1) the PRC state and its territory; (2) the Han majority ethnicity; (3) Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, in addition to the PRC; and (4) all people in the diaspora who identify with China. These competing definitions can and do exercise academics, east and west, but primarily, it is the Han Chinese who are the main focus of national sentiment in the PRC, inside and outside the Party.76 China’s “cultural nationalism,” which relies on tropes of “national spirit” and “national essence,” occasionally comes into theoretical tension with the political nationalism advocated by the CCP, whose leadership ostensibly aims to see China becoming stronger on the world stage, but which also seeks simply to maintain its privileged role via the status quo.77 Up to now, such “tensions” have never escalated to the level of open conflict, and frankly, they do not seem to trouble “populist” patriots much in China. What complicates matters in the PRC for the proponents of hyper-nationalism is not the theoretical, but the fact that, in the real world, no fewer than four groups contend for the substantial prizes and benefits that come with state-sponsorship: (1) the conservative national historians; (2) the Confucians, many of whom place themselves in terms of warring factions; (3) the opponents of language reforms since 1949 (the “cultural linguists”); and (4) the post-colonialists. These four groups emphasize different degrading aspects of the Chinese historical experience, yet all of them agree on one principal: to restore the glorious imperial legacy of dominance within East Asia, if not the world, should be China’s paramount concern, which means reversing key aspects of modernity, while moving ahead in pursuit of other features, usually higher per-capita incomes and super-power status. To do nothing is never an option for these groups; their grievances compel urgent action, even if action entails risks, in that “contentment and complacency may lead to death.”78 In general, the CCP-led campaigns have been expressly designed to suck the breath out of any movements seeking a “morally apt patriotism.” Dissident voices are drowned out via the state- approved media and activists can be jailed as well. Meanwhile, there can be little doubt that the CCP occasionally stokes “bad” patriotism, defined as “patriotism that requires attribution of inferiority to other groups or aggressive action against Others,” mainly by continual talk of national threats, either to national security or to national culture or to both. The sense of threat to China’s integrity has been underscored by exhibitions, TV shows, and a wide spectrum of public events that highlight the “Century of Humiliation,” especially the Sino-Japanese War, and the post-war isolation and poverty of the Cold War era.79 Recent TV newscasts, not surprisingly, play up the Trump threats to national sovereignty, as delivered through tariffs and an escalating trade war. It is unclear to me the extent to which the current “use and abuse of history” is calculated to underpin such appeals to “bad” patriotism, or to supplement appeals to “good” patriotism (the desire to “improve” conditions in China, in hopes of “saving” her from further humiliation). Where does good patriotism end and bad patriotism begin? To be fair, the governing elites in many countries cannot decide whether patriotism requires the patriot to erase or whitewash all potentially objectionable aspects from history of the country, or to admit the objectionable legacies from the past, in an effort to improve the country for all in future.80 (This inability to decide on this crucial matter was clear in the “culture wars” over textbooks in China.) The leadership itself may not know or agree on strategic aims, but the popular patriotism to which it has contributed sometimes seems more in charge than the Party, thanks to social media. No honest China-watcher can think popular patriotism to be merely a function of cynical manipulation by the Party, if only because unofficial nationalism draws upon a much wider reservoir of support. The persistence of many longstanding problems (the Taiwan question, Tibetan resistance, and Japan’s refusal to apologize for occupation atrocities, to take three examples) keeps many hot-button ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/67 issues alive enough to feed the victim-narrative beast, even while popular fiction and the academic establishment agree to (mis)identify imperial China and the East Asian order it dominated for two millennia as uniformly benign and beneficent.81 The question is, then, to what degree is this a tiger that the Chinese government has unleashed, but which may come back to feed on the hand of its “handler”? It matters, in other words, whether the “beliefs, memories, values, practices, and characteristics shared by the members of the nation find expression in the state’s articulation and whether or not the members of the nation actually identify with it.”82 I myself am not a very patriotic person. Still, I am someone who devoutly believes that true love of country is nurtured best by “looking squarely at the past, warts and all.”83 I am a typical arm- chair socialist, who came of age during Vietnam and Watergate. But I also hail from the same state as Mitch McConnell, the wily Senate leader who has succeeded, again and again, in making “My Country, Right or Wrong” the main issue in Kentucky in election years, despite the pressing economic, legal, public health, and social issues that Kentucky struggles with in off-election years.84 So I find myself wrestling with the same questions: Is it always true that the greater the nationalism, the more nationalism overrides other ordinary human concerns, including justice? What grounds sociopolitical obligation, beyond real-life constraints? If it supposedly is Americans’ support of duly enacted laws (a rosy American fiction becoming much harder to maintain of late), what holds true in China, where there are few final appeals to the rule of law, even in state-sponsored theories and legal rulings, not to mention daily life? My first task as a historian living in two worlds is to understand what need patriotism addresses in the people who are the core constituency of Mitch McConnell and Xi Jinping, and Trump as well. I remain unconvinced by the Freudian interpretations advanced to date that patriotic attachment to a larger “big daddy” or “mommy” is needed to offset separation anxiety, once the maturing child begins to recognize that he or she is not a part of the parent. (This vulgar interpretation has been pushed by Julia Kristeva, I regret to say.)85 I have been mulling, for the foregoing reasons, over “glory,” the notion that it is conceivable for human beings to acquire added luster by undertaking a worthwhile or valued form of activity in public. 86 Alasdair MacIntyre talks about “practice” in terms of “technical skills [being] … transformed and enriched by these extensions of human power and by that regard for its internal goods.”87 What he means is that some practices create their own standards of value and goodness, standards that are internal to the practice and irreducible to any external standards. As the ethicist Timothy Chappell comments, “The practice opens up for its practitioners ways of excelling, and so of flourishing, which would not exist—would not even be describable—without it.”88 Politics is the ultimate practice, or at least it has seemed so since Plato’s Crito and Aristotle’s Politics.89 Glory in the political world is a matter of perspective, and so it may be as much in us as in the polity, let alone the outside world, as when we exult in the story told about the brave resistance put up by a prisoner-of-war who is, in the eyes of his captors, as in his objective status and role, little more than an animal. Glory is the hope that patriotism feeds upon, I suspect—the hope of casting ordinary life, shapeless and fragmentary, into something “worthwhile” because it has been elevated, as part of a larger glorious whole, and has thus acquired added meaning and significance. I have spoken above of the rampant fears that globalization poses to local identities; it increasingly asks us, for instance, to rely exponentially more on impersonal trust, instead of personal ties with people we share repeated exchanges with.90 I suspect two other factors are at play here: we seem to be continually at war (and War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning),91 and increasing numbers of family members live too far apart or are too constantly on the move for them to derive much meaning from “family” and “home,” even if their families are not dysfunctional. And scenes of forced and voluntary dislocation are everywhere. As not all of us can go to war, and all of us face constant ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/68 disruptions (some first-hand and some second-hand), patriotism may be the next best thing when it comes to trying to imagine that one’s life is meaningful, or trying to have others judge it to be so. Certainly, there is no question that the ideal of glory propels people to do things, even if many of those things happen to worry me today. Indeed, the desire for “glory” was counted as a major factor prompting the wise to devote themselves to the community good by such brilliant thinkers as Xunzi (late third century BCE), as was the fear of “humiliation,” “disgrace,” and the ridicule of others, the negative emotions harped upon continually in the early writings that, implicitly or explicitly, speak to glory. To give some idea of the age-old options offered to men and women of good will in classical Chinese, I will quote here two relatively lengthy passages from the Xunzi that discuss “glory” and “humiliation” in terms of the leadership’s ability to unify the state before relating these very concepts to “inner vs. outer.” (For those unacquainted with Xunzi, he is the most influential political thinker of the period leading up to unification in 221 BCE, and his influence continued strong for the first millennium of imperial history in China.)

If the superior broadcasts clarity and light, his subordinates will be orderly and regimented (i.e., remain in their proper ranks). If he is principled and epitomizes integrity, they will be conscientious and honest. If he is fair and without bias or favoritism, they will be easy to straighten. And if subordinates are orderly and regimented, then they will be easy to unify. If they are conscientious and honest, then they will be easy to deploy. If they are easily straightened, then they will be easy to understand. If the subordinates are easy to unify, then their superior will be strong. If the subordinates are easy to deploy, then their superior will accomplish great things. If his subordinates are easy to understand, then their superior will be brilliant. This is what order is born from (italics mine).92

Xunzi argues for orderliness and regimentation in subordinates, although he argues equally for good leadership from above. Perhaps the most important “takeaway” message from this paragraph is that “unity” of purpose between the leadership and its subordinates is the necessary precondition for strength, and order is always preferable to disorder or even less order. In theory, the CCP could concur with every sentiment found in the instrumentalist preceding paragraph by Xunzi.93 In a second passage that follows below, Xunzi responds again to a set of mistaken ideas about governing well, those put forward by a Master Songzi, who urges those in power to see that “suffering insults is no disgrace.” Songzi argues this paradox because he hopes to dissuade the insulted from fighting back. Xunzi disagrees, arguing that it is not the perception that one has been insulted that drives people to fight those who insult them. What makes them fight is their strong hatred of ill-treatment of any type, a much deeper and more elemental sentiment, apparently. Here, it is unlikely that the views and aims of Xunzi concur with those of Xi Jinping.

These things [honor and disgrace] have two bases. There is honor in terms of one’s “just deserts” (yi 義) and honor by virtue of one’s circumstances, and the same goes for disgrace and humiliation. When one’s intentions and commitments are highly cultivated, when one’s conduct is fully virtuous, and when one’s understanding is clear, then honor will emerge from this, from within. This is honor that is “well- deserved.” When a person enjoys high rank and privileges, when his official salary is hefty, and when he has power over others. [Xunzi here lists those of high rank, from ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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the emperor down to his court counsellors] [...] this is a case where honor comes from outside; we call it “honor by virtue of circumstances.” And when a person is corrupt and transgressive, when he rails against his lot and disrupts the proper order, when he is brazenly violent and greedy for profit, this is a case where humiliation and disgrace emerge from what is within; we say such disgrace is “well-deserved.” And when a person of the requisite virtue may be cursed at or insulted, dragged by his hair or pummeled, he may be caned or have his feet cut off, he may be decapitated or drawn and quartered, and he may have his family records destroyed and his descendants eradicated, but this is a case where disgrace comes from external causes, by virtue of circumstances. These are the two bases and origins of honor and disgrace. And so it is possible for man of standing (a junzi) to suffer disgrace, by virtue of his circumstances, but he cannot suffer disgrace, as his “just deserts.” And it is possible for a despicable man of no virtue to have honor, by virtue of his circumstances, but he cannot have “well-deserved” honor. Only a man of virtue [in an ideal political order] may have honor in both senses, as his just deserts (yi 義) and by virtue of his circumstances. And only a man of no virtue may suffer humiliation in both senses. That is how honor and disgrace divide up.94

Whereas we “in the west” most typically tie glory to competitive sports or war, as in Beowulf and World Soccer competitions, Xunzi has no problem locating the source of honor and glory (the same graph gui means both in classical Chinese) in an internal quality that confers “outer” (i.e., palpable, visible) charisma on the person, regardless of external circumstances and temporary perceptions, regardless of the person’s current sociopolitical standing. And, by giving honor and disgrace or humiliation the two bases, disambiguating the superficially similar states, Xunzi allows for both the nobility of failure and the potential for noble remonstrance and rebellion against immoral or inept powerholders. In doing so, Xunzi, the most logical of early thinkers, sets up the highly questionable, if not downright implausible expectation that somehow glory will be conferred in this life or in the next on the worthy, regardless of the ignominy the heroic experience entails in the real world, on the grounds that at least one of the four types of glory comes from what is within and so is impervious to external threat and likely to command respect.95 Were we to rephrase Xunzi, we probably would arrive at a variation on George Kateb’s formulation of “stature”: “Status is a largely negative concept, defined by what assaults or even effaces it; stature can be defined only positively, by what is humanly achieved.”96 As Xunzi’s way of framing the issue does not seem so strange to thinkers today, including Kateb, Xunzi’s notions can afford an excellent vantage point from which to regard present-day Chinese formulations. While the CCP rather straightforwardly aims primarily to impose domestic unity and conformity as necessary preconditions for both domestic and international strength, the cultural nationalists, without overtly diverging from the CCP line, attend more carefully to the humiliation-glory, inner-outer dichotomies, readily attributing well-deserved glory to the Han ethnicity and their nation (construed as the Han Chinese civilization), irrespective of the present standing of the state, domestic or foreign. Indeed for them past humiliations may only highlight the contrast between “true” glory (such as theirs) and undeserved glory (principally that of the United States). Naturally enough, the cultural nationalists would prefer that China be as strong as possible, believing such a condition or outcome to be just in its own right, insofar as it restores China to its rightful place as leading power in East Asia, if not the world. And so the language that Xunzi used ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/70 of the person of integrity can be retrofitted to apply to an entire civilization down through history, from which each member may derive due honor and glory (though this construction would have struck Xunzi as bizarre and contrary to morality).97 Even so, the early Chinese sources, including the Xunzi, impart a far richer notion of the relation between glory and honor than we find today in many discussions of patriotism as a “core value.” For example, the Xunzi sharply distinguishes superior loyalty from mere obedience to the ruler’s will (tiao 調, elsewhere shun 順), arguing that the truly loyal above all must be mindful of the long-term interests of his ruler and country, as well as the people’s long-term welfare.98 Moreover, careful examination of the “biographies” of the early exemplary rulers and administrators likewise reveals members of the governing elite in early China seeking to discern and exemplify the appropriate limits on loyalty, and to decide at what precise point loyalty becomes counter- productive.99 Every student of the classical tradition can recite the stories about Gugong Danfu 古公亶父/甫, the ultimate progenitor of the Zhou royal house (ca. 1050-256 BCE), who supposedly set the “tone” for his descendants, and thereby assured their rise to supreme power for hundreds of years. The “Old Duke,” as he was called, worrying that his fertile lands in Bin were a magnet for invaders, refused the advice of his well-intentioned ministers, who urged him to fight for his hereditary lands and ancestral tombs to the death. Danfu countered, “The people enthrone a ruler in order to benefit from him. The people would fight back against the invaders for my sake, but I cannot bear to kill fathers and sons in order to remain as their ruler!” So Danfu forsook his ancestral lands, and moved his own family to less fertile holdings. Then, to his astonishment, “the entire populace of Bin, bearing their old on their backs and carrying their children in their arms,” followed him on foot to the new location, at which demonstration of loyalty many neighboring states sought alliances with Danfu.100 This legend touches upon a number of the values that relate to patriotism, early or modern: most obviously, the state as shared possession of those who reside in it (rather than the possession of the ruler or the ruling house); the ruler as stable center of community life, but also the (real) moral inconsequence of fixed boundaries, and the ever-present potential for expansion (in this case, of authority and power) beyond a state’s original boundaries. There are, of course, exemplary figures whose service-ethic proved far more problematic, for instance, Guan Zhong’s service to the king of Qi.101 During the early part of his career, Guan Zhong served loyally and well, with the result that his prince, Lord Huan of Qi (r. 685-643 BCE) became hegemon, or recognized leader, of the many kingdoms in the North China plain, and for a time a just and welcome peace came upon the land. For those signal achievements, many early texts, including the Analects, praised Guan Zhong as “meritorious official.” However, even in his early days of service, Guan Zhong sometimes put his own career advancement above the best interests of his liege lord. And after he had served for a long time, he began not only to arrogate to himself the powers and privileges of Lord Huan, but also to work harder to acquire honors for himself than to see that justice was done.102 Then, in old age, Guan Zhong grew too comfortable with the status quo, enjoying his fabulous palaces and his concubines, with the result that he failed to remonstrate with Lord Huan about his faults, either because Guan didn’t want to create a fuss or because he couldn’t be bothered. Nominally, he supported his ruler, but, in actuality, he took the easy way out and accommodated his faults (調君而輔之). As a result, Lord Huan’s death was hastened, and his encoffining and funeral grotesquely delayed by mismanagement at the Qi court, leaving him without the proper obsequies for months.103 History finally categorized Guan Zhong as a “stopgap” minister, rather than a great one, defining a “stopgap” minister as he who attends to the exigencies of daily administration, but lacks due attention to the question of how best to benefit others.104 One wonders how many “stopgap” officials are in high places today in China and elsewhere, people who do well ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/71 enough in their careers, but who lack a sense of how to work on behalf of a true community and the possibilities such cooperation offers for a better life.

4 What Is To Be Done?

I would like to put forward a few ideas. The first is extremely simple: if we believe that it is better not to stoke the fires of “bad patriotism,” we had better begin rectifying some habits that are endemic to philosophy and history departments in EuroAmerica, for these very habits understandably enrage smart and well-meaning people from China and the diaspora and beyond. I refer to the dismissive attitudes that some hold towards Chinese history or Chinese philosophy. In my own discipline, I have yet to meet a single professional “world historian” or “global historian” who has delved into the study of China using such basic Sinological tools as Wilkinson’s Manual of Chinese History, Needham’s multi-volume Science and Civilisation, or the Bibliography of Asian Studies database.105 (My fears about world history or global history as triumphalist narratives are shared by many Chinese intellectuals, especially as “global history” often ignores non-western historians or characterizes countries outside EuroAmerica as “undeveloped” or “less developed.”)106 As Xunzi wrote, “Hurtful words cut people more deeply than spears and halberds [and drive them to fight].”107 Is not “collective self-celebration” antithetical to the examined life that we say we value in the humanities? Analyses of any sort in academia ideally require more than blame, moral outrage, and overt bias. Second, the discipline of philosophy has posited in ethics one version of a human being that many thinking Chinese find odd, if not pernicious, that of the “individual, autonomous rational being” who can and should operate behind a “veil of ignorance,” according to John Rawls. Alternative visions of the human being in early China generally depict a radically different sort of human being, one whose resonant and permeable body is the meeting ground for a diverse collection of identities that ideally enable her to “become a fully developed human being” (cheng ren 成人). In early China, the binomial phrase cheng ren has three discreet meanings: (1) adjective + noun, describing a “completed” (i.e., “adult”) person, whose ritual accession to adulthood is signified, in the case of males, by the ritual cap, and with females, by pinning up the hair; (2) verb + direct object, “to complete others,” an activity associated with the good tutor and the good court adviser; and, most importantly for our purposes, (3) a two-character adjective or stative verb, meaning “developing oneself in such a way as to fulfill one’s potentials entirely.” All of these three senses imply “completion” (of years, of others, of oneself), and while the vast majority of classical citations invoke the first meaning, quite a few passages tie the first meaning to the second or third.108 For instance, one administrative text flatly states that the person who “completes others” and thereby achieves merit should be honored as a “complete and completed person.”109 By definition, then, a “fully developed human being” has a mature sense of her own desires, experiences, and potentials, a strong sense of integrity, and an equally strong sense of her obligations to the communities that have fostered her unique set of potentials.110 This view of the human being sees personal identities nourished and sustained by deep roots in several collective bodies, including the family, local community, and the nation-state.111 If ethical understanding is based on and rooted in the imaginative appreciation of what it is like to be and do all the kinds of things that humans have been and done in the past, and could be and do in the future, however wonderful or terrible, ethics and ethical academics will have to take seriously the non-European propositions about human flourishing.112 A theory, as Bernard Williams reminded us, is “frivolous” ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/72 and woefully inadequate if it does not represent experience or represents only an impoverished experience.113 An alternative or supplementary mode of seeing the person vis-à-vis society and the nation-state is badly needed today. I quote my colleague Martin Verhoeven here: “Early Western interpreters of Asian thinkers asked, ‘What can we learn about them?’ In the early twentieth century a more enlightened group of scholars began to ask, ‘What can we learn from them?’ This is the more philosophical or ‘problem- solving’ stance, inquiring into ‘universal questions and problems’ and transposed in meaningful and useful ways to a contemporary context. A new [and still better] approach, however, might ask: ‘What and how can we learn through them?’” The classical Chinese texts can teach us much, inasmuch as their resonance theories, like those of medieval Europe, draw attention to some important dimensions of the world that the dominant scientific and pseudo-scientific paradigms do not capture.114 For this reason, I teach a course on the Chinese bodies and resonance theory at UC- Berkeley, and I have colleagues within the University of California system who are moving in similar directions.115 Moreover, their keen appreciation of precise situations can help us jettison Kantian and post-Kantian appeals to categorical imperatives that cannot loosen the knots in a messy world replete with massive uncertainties and invented traditions.116 Turning to the Asian and comparative philosophers and historians, I would hope that promoters of Confucian values would cease enabling the PRC’s misuse of Confucian values. Stunningly absent from most of today’s literature is reference to the many critiques that Confucian figures and texts leveled against the prevailing political arrangements and the “vulgar” careerists among their ranks. Also absent is a reconsideration of the multiple streams of thinking that together make up Confucian learning. 117 Over-attention to a few virtues such as “filial piety” and “compassion”— thought to school the person in habits of obedience and selflessness—inevitably distorts the “full picture” of Confucian political realism and renders opaque the deep structures that informed early Chinese beliefs and practices. (Here I highly recommend that interested readers begin with the work of Yang Lien-sheng on bao 報, “reciprocity” and “due requital.”)118 Instead, we have had a surfeit of talk about the need to instantiate the abstract “virtues,” almost always conveniently ill-defined, sometimes in truly Orwellian ways. I believe at UC-Berkeley, with the project undertaken by the philosopher Kwong-loi Shun, we may be starting to put some flesh on the vagaries and the vagueness, and de-center the current accounts.119 For Mencius and Xunzi knew well, by all accounts, “honoring one’s parents” (and by analogy, one’s “motherland”) can be the beginning of ethical reflection and practice, if it quickens certain attitudes, but a beginning is nothing more than a beginning. Philosophy and history as disciplines would do well to take up the endless problems generated by “memory,” not to mention what Marianne Hirsch calls “post-memory”: the experiences of those “who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated.”120 Neuroscientists have shown how deeply flawed are our memories, given that the process of carving of neural pathways, accomplished by cumulative experiences and secondhand experiences, requires a considerable expenditure of effort, if people are to rethink and revisualize what we see in life or in the mind’s eye.121 Historians for too long have allotted “memories” (personal and cultural) important roles in their story-telling, without troubling to explain how those memories interact or accumulate and can change on a dime. But historians of China who are cognizant of the history of their field cannot fail to notice how quickly perceptions of China in the United States have swung from good to bad over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.122 As even distorted perceptions typically reflect bundled desires for self- ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/73 respect, outrage over anticipated or retrojected humiliations, and a refined or dim political awareness, should we academics not problematize memory and post-memory for our students and peers alike? And should we not dare to ask what is the proper statute of limitations for such “reflections,” which are as often rooted in outright myths and naked fears as in historical events and facts? And since it is but a very short step from “My Country, Right or Wrong,” to “My Culture, Right or Wrong,” should we not press for greater precision when speaking of “identity”? As others have noted before, “identity” is a false friend conceptually, insofar as it seems clear, but isn’t.123 In the course of a single lifetime, the person will likely reshuffle and re-prioritize national or religious affiliations, class or professional allegiances, strong attachments to a particular place, a partner, a clan, a team, and so on. If we academics do not encourage an awareness of the multiple identities that might complicate our narratives, do we not fail in our jobs to counter the reductionist? Should we not work equally hard against policies, wherever they rear their ugly heads, that seek to re-nationalize international modes of communication (e.g., the Internet) and international law? And should we not tirelessly protest the presentist claims that only events and thoughts that postdate the EuroAmerican “Age of Discovery” are the most suitable subjects for reflection, as the most “relevant” or most “enlightened”? (Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern queries the suitability of the subject of post-colonial history for deep reflection, as does the work of two Harvard professors in their History Manifesto.)124 After all, if we want and need a place from which to rethink the operating principles of the contemporary world (Foucault’s “regimes of truth”), that place is not likely to be found in the contemporary world. There is, as Bernard Williams noted in 1993, a major gap between what we think about ethics, and what we think we think about ethics, since elements of our moral theories (many with unholy antecedents) often contradict our ethical reflections. And it behooves us, no doubt, to realize that conceptual clarity may never come to words like “patriotism,” “nationalism,” and “identity,” as these come in too many flavors in situations that are too protean and impossible to track. Most of all, I would hope that we move from our present self-satisfied state to recall our disciplines’ roots in “inquiry.” We are sorely in need of a careful diagnostic turn and new models in our fields, and the healing they may bring.125

Michael Nylan (Princeton PhD, 1983) is Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley, where her primary field is early China and her second field is the modern reception of antiquity, its “use and abuse.” Her most recent books detail the role of classical learning in China (early to contemporary), the history of the Western Han capital at Chang’an (Augustan Rome’s equal in size and organization), and a famous letter ascribed to Sima Qian, China’s most admired historian; as well as pleasure theory in China from the fourth century BCE to the eleventh century CE. Current projects include an English translation of the Documents classic, the prime repository of political thinking in early China, as well as essays on manuscript culture, resonance theories, great libraries, and the future of comparative philosophy. Cross-cultural analysis (especially with Ptolemaic Egypt and classical Greece and Rome) remains important to her thinking and writing.

1 I would here also register profound thanks to Hans Sluga and Loubna El-Amine for their helpful comments on my paper, and to the journal editors Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach and Amy Donohue, who took the time to craft finely-gauged editorial comments. 2 Regarding “empires”: some might not deem them “empires,” but I disagree. China’s recent “One Belt, One Road” activities, especially in Africa, as well as China’s aggressive stance in the South ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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China Sea, highlighted in the landmark case brought to the Hague Tribunal by the Philippines, shows that the PRC is an imperialist empire intent upon colonizing or dominating other countries. The United States, needless to say, has long acted as a colonial empire. 3 As Hans Sluga reminds us, the “normative delusion” has tended to disdain the specifics of the historical time and place. See Hans Sluga, Politics and the Search for the Common Good (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), chapter 1. A lengthy critique of supposed “universals” (often thinly disguised Anglo-American or Continental truisms presented in gratifying Enlightenment guises) has been offered by many before me, and need not be repeated here. Richard Rorty’s decision to turn philosophy into a specifically modern Enlightenment project has drawn repeated criticism, as in James Tartaglia, “Rorty’s Thesis of the Cultural Specificity of Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West 64, no. 4, (2014): 1018-38. Jörn Rüsen, “How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition in the Twenty-First Century,” History and Theory 43, no. 4, (2004): 118-29, points out a typical case: an introduction to “global history” in the international historians’ meeting at Oslo in 2000 presented no non-western examples to the assembled (Rüsen 2004: 120). Certainly, as Richard Wolin has observed, “‘Europe’ remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call ‘Indian,’ ‘Chinese,’ ‘Kenyan,’ and so on”; see Wolin’s “Modernity: The Peregrinations of a Contested Historiographical Concept,” American Historical Review 116, no. 3, (2011): 742-51 (especially p. 742). The supposed “universalism” of calls for human rights has been debunked by Samuel Moyn’s work, contra that of Lynn Hunt. 4 While I found a number of philosophers asking good questions about patriotism, their answers to those questions did not probe very deeply, in my view, probably because many were satisfied that the strong “need to belong,” even submit, is not a major problem today. One of the most helpful essays for me was that by Peg Birmingham, “Arendt and Hobbes: Glory, Sacrificial Violence, and the Political Imagination,” Research in Phenomenology 41, no. 1, (2011): 1-22. 5 See the discussion below for the reason why I associate, as the classical Chinese does, “honor” with “glory.” 6 “Asian values” have often been posited as non-democratic, when, of course, “democracy” came very late to the world stage, in the east or west. Many will trace democracy to the early Greeks, of course, especially to Periclean Athens, but “rule by the demos” did not ensure representation to any but a small number of privileged males, nor was it “liberal” in the sense of being associated with ideas of liberty. Athens, as Thucydides shows us, was more often an oligarchy than a democracy, and one wonders what “Athenian democracy” means, given the large number of people excluded from most forms of political participation in classical Athens. Notably, America’s own Founding Fathers greatly feared the mob, and therefore opted to found a republic (on the model of Rome) rather than a democracy (founded on the Athenian model). For many reasons, then, I cast “democracy” as a late concept, redolent of the French Revolution. 7 This CCP project began in many ways, after Tiananmen (June 4, 1989), when Jiang Zemin and Song Jian (then head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) began to collaborate. But Xi has carried this project further, and new “players” (including historians) have entered the ranks of the CCP’s party faithful. 8 Ian Glover, “Some National, Regional, and Political Uses of Archaeology in East and Southeast Asia,” Archaeology of Asia, ed. Miriam Stark (New York, Oxford: Blackwells, Singapore, NUS, 2005), 17-32, esp. pp. 17-21. See also Barry Sautman below. I was a graduate student at the Institute of Archaeology in Beijing in 1980; the entire institute was undergoing political re-education, and Xia Nai had just been restored to his position as director, from which office he issued multiple retractions of politicized claims. In recent times, I have worked closely with a group of fine archaeologists based in Chang’an, so I have no wish to tar the entire discipline of Chinese archaeology with this remark. But

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there are disturbing trends in the foremost archaeological journals, as well as in China Daily, as discussed below. 9 Here I think first of Yu Dan, for example, and also of Li Xueqin (see below). The conservatism of “cultural historians” goes back to Qian Mu and Wang Guowei, but in early times, Qian was not regarded as a historian, but as a philosopher, and Wang worked in several disciplines, but he was most famous for his work on paleography. 10 As Foucault wrote, “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value [...].” I would add that these regimes of truth conveniently occlude less salutary realities, designedly. 11 To take one recent example: the Los Angeles Times (July 12, 2017), A5, reports that “India’s fake news fuels nationalism.” The novelist Arundhati Roy was quoted by pro-government websites as criticizing the Indian army, but she never made those comments; they were “fake news.” “The hoaxes are used by politicians to glorify the country and put down critics,” say the authors Parth M.N. and Shashank Bengali. Hindu nationalism targeted many fine historians (e.g., Romila Thapar) long before they targeted the white academic Wendy Doniger. And I do not mention Trump in this connection for frivolous reasons. He, above all, has understood “The Political Payoff of Depicting White Identity as Under Siege.” See The New York Times, Tuesday, August 8, 2017, p. A17 (National Edition). Even those less crazed than Trump seem to echo him at points. Thomas Friedman wrote on the Op-Ed page in The New York Times, Tuesday, August 9, 2017, urging the following: “to be comfortable expressing patriotism and love of country when globalization is erasing national identities.” But is globalization erasing identities or creating stronger identities? For a much more nuanced view, I recommend Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Arcade, 2001). 12 The phrase “reality-based” was first used by members of the George W. Bush administration to criticize their opponents in higher education and the media. 13 Significantly, perhaps, the Mencius and the Annals (Chunqiu) do not preoccupy themselves with these concepts. 14 As Hans Sluga has reminded me, for Hobbes glory is a personal status characteristic that people can have even in the pre-political and anarchic state of nature (Leviathan, chapter 13). 15 I learned this when I went to edit the factual mistakes in the entry on Confucius on Wikipedia, which I soon learned was semi-locked by the CCP, according to Wiki editors. I was no less shocked to learn that the top prize in the PRC for historians is the “Guo Moruo Chinese History” prize 郭沫若歷史學獎, since Guo was a byword for disgraceful pandering to the powers-that-be. In return, the CCP duly awarded him the Lenin Prize in 1951, and high positions as first President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a position he held from 1949 until his death in 1978. 16 Here I am thinking of Richard Rorty’s unfortunate dictum that philosophy cannot be non-western in its origins, and so, presumably, no non-western peoples can contribute to it. See Tartaglia (2014). While some of Bryan van Norden’s claims about the discipline of philosophy are less than compelling, others have merit. 17 See note 3 above, for the “normative delusion.” Sluga (2014: 22) writes, “The precondition for the appeal to any norm is a state of normality, but political conditions are only exceptionally normal. Rules presuppose regularity, as Wittgenstein has so vividly taught us. If things are in constant flux, no rule will help us.” Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, trans. Erik Butler (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015) gives a compelling account of our increasing inability to confront negative experiences via ever-greater resort to fantasies. ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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18 This practice is best known, in all likelihood, in the work of Foucault, but Pierre Hadot also advocated it with respect to the Neo-Platonists, and Daniel Boyarin, with respect to the Talmud and Josephus. Many of the practices I will examine that avoid askesis are not limited to China, needless to say. In the US, the three-minute Ted Talks purport to take on serious subjects seriously, but the reductionist premises and questions imposed by the techies in charge make history little more than a cartoon. All of the “history” talks I reviewed on the Internet discuss history in terms of unilinear progress and stark either/or, good/evil distinctions. They fail any methodological test, such as that offered by David Hackett Fischer, in his classic Historians’ Fallacies (New York: HarperCollins, 1970). 19 Some in the US are inclined to view professional philosophy as “irrelevant” and dismiss its practitioners as mere “eggheads,” as noted in Robert Frodeman, “Philosophy Dedisciplined,” Synthese 190, no. 11, (2013): 1917-36, here, p. 1918. 20 See Ian Glover (2005), for example; also Barry Sautman, “Peking Man and the Politics of Paleoanthropological Nationalism in China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 60, no. 1, (2001): 95-124. 21 “Sandai” means “Three Dynasties,” so the project was to provide secure chronologies for the “traditional” Three Dynasties of Xia (entirely mythical), Shang (partly mythical, and partly historical), and Zhou dynasties (historical). 22 Bruce Gilley, “Digging into the Past: Chinese Nationalism,” Far Eastern Economic Review (July 20, 2000): 1. 23 Li Xueqin, in an interview entitled “The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project: Methodology and Results,” published in The Journal of East Asian Archaeology (JEAA) 4, (2002): 1-4, 321-33, speaks of “more than 200 scholars” from “about 30 institutes and universities” consulted for the project, which aims to provide “scientifically based” absolute chronologies for Xia-Shang-Zhou. 24 See Wang Kaihao, “Physical Evidence Found for 5,000 Years of Civilization,” China Daily (May 29, 2018), found at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201805/29/WS5b0c97cba31001b82571cc73 _1.html; also Li Xinwei 李新伟, “Zuichu de Zhongguo zhi kaogu xue rending” 最初的中国之考古学认定, Kaogu 3, (2016): 86-92, which claims that “Primitive China” (Li’s words, not mine) or proto- Chinese culture dates back to 5000 BCE. 25 See ed. Garrett G. Fagan, Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudo-Archaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public (New York, London: Routledge, 2006), esp. p. 226. 26 Fagan (2006: Foreword, xii-xvi) defines the term “archaeological fantasy” or “pseudo-archaeology” as “the nonscientific misapplication, misinterpretation, and/or misrepresentation of the archaeological record. Archaeological interpretation intended to foster either nationalism or racism is a form of propaganda that falls within the realm of pseudo-archaeology.” Curiously, Fagan’s characterization of Chinese archaeology as still in the thrall of Marxist laws of economic development is largely outdated, but the problem of racial nationalism persists in both archaeology and history. One example is Li’s readiness to equate “signs” on pottery in 7000 BCE with “writing,” suggesting that the proto-Chinese culture should date back to 9000 BCE. See Li’s “The Earliest Writing?” Antiquity (March 1, 2003): 31-44. Li’s misuse of the Documents classic led the leading scholar in that field, shortly before his death, to label Li as “corrupt.” See Liu Qiyu 刘起釪, “Liu Qiyu xiansheng lun gaoxueshu fubai de Li Xueqin zhulu lun tan,” 刘起釪先生论搞学术腐败的李学勤涿鹿论坛, bbs.zhangjk.com/simple/?t396845.html (May 17, 2012), excerpted from two essays: “Guanyu ‘Zou chu yigu shidai’ de wenti” 關於走出疑古時代的问题 and “Guanyu liguding yu Hetu Luoshu wenti,” 關於隸古定與河圖雒書問題, in Cuantong wenhua yu xiandai hua 傳統文化與現代化 2, (1995): 22-8, and Cuantong wenhua yu xiandai hua 傳統文化與現代化 4, (1997): 38-46. Liu points out the profound illogicality of Li’s xingu 信古 (“believe antiquity”) stance, insofar as it asks us to dismiss the reliability of the very documents Li relies upon when transcribing pre-Qin documents. Li’s readiness to cast

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certain excavated and “found” manuscript as “Confucian” has also greatly muddied the academic waters. 27 Gilley (2000: 1). Li Xueqin characterizes these meetings as “internal meetings of the various research groups.” 28 According to reports, an elderly deputy premier, Song Jian, suggested the project as a way of mining the country’s past to shore up its present leadership. Cash-starved archaeologists quickly took up the project as a way to secure funds for long-stalled digs. By Li Xueqin’s account, Song Jian then collaborated with the Head of the Academy of Social Sciences in China, Li Tieying. See Li Xueqin, “account,” in Li Min, Social Memory and State Formation in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 29 China’s “One Belt, One Road” projects looks more imperialist by the day, as China demands 99- year-old leases on valuable lands, in Pakistan and elsewhere (shades of the British in Hong Kong!), in return for hefty investments made ostensibly to the local economies, but in many cases to corrupt powerholders who find the money useful and are willing to sell their countries out. 30 See Li Xinwei (2016). 31 See Yu Ying-shih, Chinese History and Culture, Seventeenth Century Through Twentieth Century (vol. 2), trans. Josephine Chiu-Duke, and Michael S. Duke (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016): “Even today, when archaeology argues favorably for a Xia civilization either antecedent to the Shang Dynasty or contemporaneous with both Shang and Zhou in their predynastic antiquity, many specialists—historians and archaeologists alike—still hesitate to confirm the historicity of Xia because of the absence of direct written evidence comparable to the Shang inscriptions” (Yu 2016: 286). A new book by Li Min (2018) explores “how legacies of prehistoric interregional interactions, state formation, urban florescence and collapse during the late third and the second millennium BCE laid the critical foundation for the Sandai notion of history among Zhou elite [sic].” The book argues for the historicity of the Xia, and locates the specific sites where “events” supposedly took place in the “life” of the entirely legendary Yu, the Flood-Queller, in the present-day landscape of the People’s Republic China. The book slithers and slides from theoretical statements which seem to be true and modifications of those statements suitably adjusted to current propaganda. 32 For this speech, widely reported and cited, see “Walking Out of the Doubting-Antiquity Era,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 34, no. 2, (2002-2003): 26-49. For another view, see Li Yung-ti, “The Politics of Maps, Politics, and Pottery in Bronze-age China,” Art and Archaeology of the Erligang Civilization, ed. Kyle Steinke, Dora C.Y. Ching (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 137-46. 33 The Shang king lists derived from the oracle bone inscriptions found in or at Anyang (modern Henan province), the site of the last Shang-Yin capital, to take one often-overlooked example, only partly match the received traditions in such early histories as the Shiji. 34 Li Xueqin, interview, trans. Sarah Allan. For the committee report, see Xia Shang Zhou Duandai (Gongcheng: Zhuanjiazu, 2000). 35 In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, some well-meaning Chinese citizens began to call the Documents classic, composed of a series of vignettes implying good vs. bad political rule, a Book of History. The name Shujing 書經 goes back at least to Song times; in Han times, the moralizing text was known as the Shangshu 尚書 (“Venerable Documents”). This conscious push to recast the moralizing classic as an accurate history of the distant past is well-documented. 36 In Li’s group are Zhu Fenghan and Zhang Rongming, compilers of Xi Zhou zhuwang niandai yanjiu (Research on the chronology of the various Western Zhou kings), Guizhou: Guizhou Renmin chubanshe, 1998.

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37 No oracle bones mention the Yin kings Pan Geng, Xiao Xin, and Xiao Yi. The oracle bones begin with King Wuding, sometime after the move of the Shang-Yin dynasty to the site of its last capital, near present-day Anyang. 38 Bernhard Karlgren introduced the distinction between “systematizing texts” and non-systematizing texts (these he called “free texts”) in his influential essay entitled “Legends and Cults in Ancient China.” There he defined “systematizing texts” as those that are the result of conscious attempts to create a uniform picture of the ancient society and its institutions. Although the distinction is clearer in theory than in practice, Karlgren was right to query how well the systematizers knew their antiquity. See: Bernhard Karlgren, “Legends and Cults in Ancient China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquity 18, (1946): 199-365. 39 See David Nivison, “The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project: Two Approaches to Dating,” Journal of East Asian Archaeology 4, no. 4, (2002): 359-66. Nivison himself proposed an alternate chronology, based in his belief in the accuracy of the Bamboo Annals. He rejected all but two absolute dates in the abbreviated report and chronological chart issues in the fall of 2000. Nivison rightly objected that the committee had characterized as “safe evidence” only the evidence that seemed to confirm their prior assumptions (2002: 362). 40 Bernhard Karlgren, “Legends and Cults in Ancient China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquity 18, (1946): 347. 41 For the regional paradigm and the challenge it presents to the CCP, see Michael Franz, “Regionalism in Post-Mao China: The Problem of Ideology,” Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology: Section on History and Archaeology (Taipei: Chungyang Yenchiuyuan, 1981), 1335-46; also Richard Kraus, “Transcending the Political Barrier of Beauty: Cultural Authenticity and the Chinese State,” in Articulations: Undefining Chinese Contemporary Art, ed. Jerome Silbergeld and Dora Ching (Princeton, Princeton University in association with Princeton University Press, 2010), 112-19; Fumiko Ikawa- Smith, “Construction of National Identity and Origins in East Asia,” Antiquity 73, no. 281, (Sept. 1999): 626-29. 42 Térence Billeter, “Chinese Nationalism Falls Back on Legendary Ancestor,” China Perspectives 18, (July/Aug. 1998): 44-45, 47-51, esp. 50. 43 I do not believe, for example, that there was before Buddhism and neo-Confucianism such a strong dichotomy between “inner” and “outer.” The work of my former student Yang Shao-yun, as well as work by myself and Jane Geaney, have suggested more porous boundaries between inner and outer, even in Northern Song. 44 Xunzi, juan 4 (Glory and Disgrace); Eric Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 28 (modified). 45 Zhang Junmai, Mingri zhi Zhonghuo wenhua (Chinese Culture Tomorrow) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936), 123. Zhang drafted the Constitution of the Kuomintang, which was adopted in 1946. 46 Qian Mu, A General History of China (1940) made some dubious claims, first among them this: that the Qin and Han dynasties allowed “literati” to enjoy the right of political participation; the imperial system, he said, was not devoid of “democracy”; it was neither “dark” nor “autocratic.” China had gone from a feudal state to a unified state, and gradually developed into a meritocracy marked by the civil service exams, recruitment of talents by recommendation, and a board of officials. Qian Mu’s reverence for the state (by which he meant a Chinese monarchy) is frequently expressed in his writings on xin xue (learning of the heart). Qian Mu defines “the heart of history” as the ability to (1) always place the long-term benefit of the state in one’s heart; and (2) read history not for the sake of criticizing the past; instead, one should be able to situate historical facts in the specific historical

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contexts and develop a historical insight that allows one to see the connection between the past, the present, and the future. 47 Other prime candidates for discussion would include He Fangchuan, former Vice-President of Peking University, a historian, who authored the deeply misleading “Hua Yi Zhixu Lun” [“On the Tributary System”], Beijing Daxue Xuebao [Journal of Peking University] 6, (1998): 30–45. 48 See http://news.cleartheair.org.hk/?p=1570; cf. South China Morning Post, quoted in “Strange Climate of Neglect,” The Australian (Dec. 12, 2009), reporting on a climate change conference in Hong Kong. 49 Sun Yat-sen had added the goal of democratization, but political conservatives wanted none of that. Already in the Republican era, three goals were articulated: to improve the standard of living for the people, to develop the national economy, and to win the struggle for national survival. 50 The PRC has suffered greatly from such signature projects of its top leaders as the Three Gorges’ dam, the signature project of Li Peng, which brought dislocation to millions, the submersion into water of many “historical relics,” and threatens to produce massive flooding in future. Readers are urged to see the documentary “Manufactured Landscapes” (Media Films, in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada), which highlights the photographs of Edward Burtynsky taken especially in the PRC. See notes 52-56 below. 51 This is already happening in Tongzhou, the site to which the Beijing political and administrative functions are being removed. 52 Thomas H. Hahn, private communication, spring and summer 2017. Hahn has summarized much of the information and generously shared that information not only with me, but also with our students in an “Urban History in China” course (jointly taught). Nearly all of the relevant literature is in Chinese, and perhaps the best source on Jing-jin-ji is Yu Hong, “China’s Regional Development Policies,” in ed. Gungwu Wang, and Yongnian Zheng, China: Development and Governance (Singapore: World Scientific, 2013), 139-47. On Youtube, see http://www.documentarytube.com/articles/ project-jing-jin-ji-how-china-wants-to-merge-beijing-tianjin-and-hebei-into-a-supercity-with-130- million-citizens. 53 In the meantime, two other, related “economic schemes” (经济圈) have been devised and at least partially implemented, namely, the Bohai Region Economic Rim (modeled after the Great Lakes Region in the US and Canada, planning design and execution out of TJ), and the Binhai New Region (sponsored by Wen Jiabao). 54 Scholars of modern China outside China increasingly emphasize the continuities between pre-1949 Republican-era China and post-1949 China. For one example, see Glenn Tiffert, “Epistrophe: Chinese Constitutionalism and the 1950s,” in Building Constitutionalism in China, ed. Stéphanie Balme and Michael W. Dowde (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009), 59-76. 55 Chai Jing’s “Under the Dome” (2015) documentary, a self-financed project produced by a former China Central Television journalist, is surely one of the most compelling indictments of the Chinese state’s continued support for polluting coal industries. 56 I myself object to the term “populism” applied to either leader, as both have made it abundantly clear that they do not place a high priority on the improvement of the lives of many of their most enthusiastic supporters without economic or political clout. 57 One of the most balanced accounts of control mechanisms in today’s PRC is China Story Yearbook 2016: Control, ed. Jane Golley, Linda Jaivin, and Luigi Tomba (Canberra: Australian National University, 2017). 58 See E.M. Forster, Howard’s End for this aphorism. 59 I think of Richard Conniff, “Despairing on Earth Day? Read This,” in The New York Times (April 21, 2018), who admits that “Unfortunately, urbanization imposes short-term costs, including an increase ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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in overall consumption. But it also leads to reduced per capita energy consumption, as well as reduced birthrates, and it reopens old habitat in abandoned rural areas to wildlife.” In Conniff’s view, “If we can hold on into the next century, [increased] urbanization could set up the conditions for that sort of recovery worldwide” (citing another author). Conniff concedes, “Holding on for another century is of course no easy thing.” I was not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this; as political satire, it’s right up there with “A Modest Proposal,” although the satire may be unintended. 60 Geremie Barmé, in numerous publications, including his China Blog 2010 (housed with China Heritage Quarterly), has spoken of China’s “Century of Humiliation,” and the driving factor it represents for Chinese initiatives. He writes, “The Chinese Party-state, with the support of many citizens nurtured by a guided education and media industry, is now investing massively in presenting what it calls the ‘Chinese story’ (Zhongguode gushi 中国的故事) to the rest of the world. However, in doing this, it constantly limits and censors the variety of stories and narratives that make up the rich skein of human possibility in China itself.” Barmé is one of the most respected thinkers on the fraught relations between culture and politics in the People's Republic of China. See him in action in http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=014_worryingChina.inc&issue=014; https://worldpolicy.org/2013/07/18/dream-of-the-red-future-will-the-chinese-dream-become-an- enduring-classic/. 61 Patriotism describes a trait of character, an emotion (pride in their country), and a position: that one owes loyalty to one’s country. Obviously, it admits degrees, and it can vary, depending on the context that “activates” it. Regarding the use of phrases like “motherland,” there is no doubt that analogies constructed with partiality towards the family remain the dominant justification for legitimacy of patriotic sentiment, though the analogy is wrong. “The collectivity of the nation is unlike the collectivity of the family in numerous morally significant ways,” says Harry Brighouse, “Justifying Patriotism,” Social Theory and Practice 32, no. 4, (Oct. 2006): 555. 62 The philosopher Qian Mu (1894-1990), leader of the Sinicization (Zhongguohua) movement, with no training in history, wrote the influential A General History of China (1940) to give readers a sense of the special/exceptional developmental “character” of China’s culture. Mao did not differ in his orientation; “use the past to serve the present” was his slogan, even as he was attacking the Four Olds. As one expert says, “Mao Zedong was full of praise for the history of ‘this great country.’ He glorified the essence of Chinese culture while condemning its ‘feudal trash,’ and gave voice to the ‘soul of China’ in literature and art.” Edmund S. K. Fung, “Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China,” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 3, (May, 2009): 777-813, quoting p. 805. 63 My “Administration of the Family” discusses the metaphor of the state as the family writ large during the early empires in China. See China’s Early Empires, supplement to The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, Ch'in and Han, co-edited with Michael Loewe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chapter 10. At the same time, I have discussed the limitations of that metaphor in another essay entitled “Confucian Piety and Individualism,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, (Jan.–March 1996): 1-27, and more substantially in a forthcoming paper for a June 22nd conference on Chinese ritual (Paris, Collège de France, 2018). 64 Simon Keller, “Are Patriotism and Universalism Compatible?” Social Theory and Practice 33, no. 4, Special Issue: Virtue and Social Diversity (Oct. 2007): 609-24, esp. 624. 65 Robert Audi, “Nationalism, Patriotism, and Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Globalization,” The Journal of Ethics 13, no. 4 (2009): 365-81. Special issue on patriotism. 66 Timothy Chappell, Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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67 Cf. Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity Under Reform (London: Routledge, 2004), xiii. 68 “Blind patriotism” was the object of condemnation in 1950, by the joint authors of the psychology book The Authoritarian Personality, whose authors included Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, and others. These authors were concerned with the “blind patriots” rejection of other nations as outgroups, and uncritical conformity with prevailing group ways. 69 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1981), advocated a “strong patriotism,” where the person must be loyal to whatever the state or community mandates, lest patriotism be “emasculated.” Four major objections/modifications: (1) Maurizio Viroli’s (1995) neo-classical or Republican patriotism is defined as love of political liberty and just laws; (2) Charles Taylor’s modern communitarian patriotism (aka “civic humanism”) expressly allows for multi-cultural diversity; (3) Stephen Nathanson’s modern liberal patriotism posits patriotism as a “middle way” between liberal universalism (which denies membership loyalties and local solidarities) and hyper-nationalism; and (4) Jurgen Habermas’s constitutional patriotism implies allegiance to a particular constitutional frame and decries as “pathological” “pre-political” tribalism. For more details, I recommend two works in particular: Andrew Vincent, “Patriotism and Human Rights: An Argument for Unpatriotic Patriotism,” The Journal of Ethics 13, no. 4, Patriotism (2009): 347-64; and Robert T. Schatz, Ervin Staub, and Howard Lavine, “On the Varieties of National Attachment: Blind versus Constructive Patriotism,” Political Psychology 20, no. 1, (1999): 151-74. Many theorists seem to believe that survival of the state requires the “bonds of patriotism.” As MacIntyre put it, “Good soldiers may not be liberals.” 70 Sidgwick (1907) is clearly happy also to reduce things to these same dichotomies. My hunch seems to be corroborated by Harry Brighouse, “Justifying Patriotism,” Social Theory and Practice 32, no. 4, (Oct. 2006): 547-58 (Special Issue: Cosmopolitanism and the State). Judith N. Shklar (1993) wrote, “What distinguishes loyalty [from commitment] is that it is deeply affective and not primarily rational […] [L]oyalty is evoked by nations, ethnic groups […] and by doctrines, causes and ideologies […] that form and identify associations.” To my mind, “blind patriotism” is closer to a physical/biological drive than “affective care,” since affective care for one’s county and compatriots is likely more concerned with expressing and externalizing one’s core values. For Shklar, see “Obligation, Loyalty, and Exile,” Political Theory 21, no. 2, (May, 1993), 181-97; for Henry Sidgwick, see his The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907). 71 Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Éditions du Seuil), trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014). 72 Émile Durkheim, Textes, ed. Victor Karady (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1950), vol. 3, esp. Introduction (written 1888). 73 Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 74 By definition, the “basic virtues” are believed to be innate, yet Elie Kedourie, among others, has proven to the satisfaction of many that “patriotism” and “nationalism” are nineteenth-century inventions, specific responses to specific social and political problems. Whereas cultural conservatism was born in Europe in response to the French Revolution of 1789, cultural conservatism was born in China in response to the iconoclastic May Fourth Movement of the years 1914-1925. Nearly all the groups identified in China agree that they are responding, as Trump supporters are, to “excessive scientific rationality” in their lives. At the same time, we are also fairly certain that patriotism shifted so decisively from the political left to the political right in the late nineteenth century, again as the result of a conjunction of historical factors.

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75 I have dealt with these analogies between filial duty and loyalty to the ruler in several writings, in particular “The Administration of the Family,” chap. 10, in China’s Early Empires, eds. Michael Nylan and Michael Loewe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 266-92; “Confucian Piety and Individualism,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, (Jan.–March 1996): 1-27. I put “Confucian” and “Legalist” in quotations because the thesis of Harry Hsin-i Hsiao proved, beyond a shadow of the doubt, that the Xiaojing (Classic of Filial Piety) is more likely Qin-era and driven by the throne’s concerns than Confucian. I thank Amy Donohue for the language of primitive origins here. Compare Sautman (2001, note 20 above) and James Leopold, “Competing Narratives of Racial Unity in Republican China: From the Yellow Emperor to Peking Man,” Modern China 32, no. 2, (April 2006): 181-220. 76 James Townsend, “Chinese Nationalism,” in Jonathan Unger, ed., Chinese Nationalism (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1996): 7, 23. Cf. Guo (2004: 17 n40). “The civilizational state stretched to incorporate the minority-dominated areas of Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Taiwan” during the Qing; this still defines the “Sinic world” for many today. See Abanti Bhattacharya, “Chinese Nationalism and China’s Assertive Foreign Policy,” The Journal of East Asian Affairs 21, no. 1, (Spring/Summer 2007): 235-62, esp. 238. Mao built the PRC on culturalist notions, as he needed the minorities to forfeit the right to self-determination. Culturalism assumes the superiority of the Chinese Han culture, to which others accommodated or willingly assimilated. Deng Xiaoping was particularly adept at implanting “patriotism” (literally, “love of country”) in Han Chinese, through concerted efforts beginning in 1980, and accelerating in 1993-94. The land, people, and culture were to become three joint objects of devotion. 77 Patriotism is likely to involve appeals to political notions defined in terms of the patriot’s particular country: Athenian democracy, French secularism, American freedom, and so on. National “greatness” (as in the “longest continuous civilization”) is typically invoked when patriots of a particular country do not see any political ideal as a special object worthy of devotion. This makes the “cultural nationalism” of the PRC particularly strong. 78 Compare Mencius 6B/15: “a sense of insecurity brings out the survival instinct, while contentment and complacency lead to death” 然後知生於憂患而死於安樂也. 79 It is certainly relevant that Deng promoted a nation-wide exhibition of Sino-Japanese atrocities to appease hard-liners in the party who objected to financial deals with Japanese in the Special Economic Zones. 80 In 1988, the “culture wars” erupted at the National Endowment for the Humanities (then under Lynne Cheney), with the historians Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn objecting to Cheney’s “guidelines.” The historians’ 1997 History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past is a salutary reminder of censorship in the US, if we needed one. 81 Haiyang Yu speaks of four “core beliefs” of the popular patriots: (1) that the imperial Chinese government always conformed to “benevolent rule”; (2) that it engaged only in just war; (3) that it embodied ritual courtesy and the tribute system, rather than exploitative practices targeting domestic minorities and foreigners; and (4) that it never embraced “imperialism,” but instead employed “culturalism.” Meanwhile, the official and unofficial stories agree that China is a victim, always, because of both internal and external threats. Geremie Barmé says that what underlies this victim narrative is the “sentiment that the world (that is, the west) owes China something,” and there is no question that past humiliations are somehow “used as an excuse to demand better treatment from the West.” See Barmé, “‘Living the Heritage,’” China Heritage Quarterly 18, (2009): 1-6. 82 Guo (2004: 11). The distinction between “nation” (minzu, meaning “ethnicity” or “race”) vs. “state” (guojia in modern Chinese) is extremely important here. 83 Here I quote Gregory Nash’s famous response to Lynne Cheney’s attack on the NEH New Standards Commission, in the 1990s, which claimed the Commission members were “insufficiently ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 55-86 Copyright © 2019 Michael Nylan. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.04

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attentive to the activities of great Americans” (all white males, by the way, including the Confederate general Robert E. Lee). 84 Kentucky, like its sister state West Virginia, is at the heart of the opioid crisis. 85 See Mary Caputi, “National Identity in Contemporary Theory,” Political Psychology 17, no. 4, (Dec. 1996): 683-94. 86 Chappell (2014: 161). Chappell, to my mind, unduly complicates the notion of “glory,” for he presumes it can only come “through an excellent performance-qua-spectacle.” I am not at all certain that publicity is needed, although publicity is often part of the motivation for seeking glory. Timothy Chappell talks about glory being on a “parallel spectrum” with what is beautiful or noble, with the two spectrums often conflated. I distinguish “worthwhile” from “valued” because I do not think the Kim Kardashians of this world engage in “worthwhile” activities, but the public accords them value. 87 MacIntyre (1981: 193). 88 Chappell (2014: 162). 89 Chappell cites Politics 1252a1-7. The implication of the Crito is this: after we have done all we can to convince our compatriots of their moral and political obtuseness, we still owe some form of allegiance to the culture that nurtured us as critics. The question is, what form of allegiance, and how much? (And do those less powerful, those excluded from power, have the same obligations to feel allegiance?) 90 Ergo, ATMs and call centers in India and elsewhere to discuss problems with American computers or accounts. 91 This was the title of Chris Hedges’ book in 2002, published just as the US was about to begin the Iraq War. 92 Xunzi, “Zheng lun,” juan 18 (my translation). My understanding of this passage derives from the commentaries to it. 93 Cf. the Daxue which seems, in both the neo-Confucian or Jesuit reading, to presuppose that the intention of the ruler is always correct, and so the requirement of loyal service is all the stronger in those who are moral. The Ming commentator Zhang Jucheng has spoken of, “the good/moral man, who is completely loyal to the kingdom” (jin zhong wei guo de shanren 盡忠為國的善人). See Thierry Meynard, “The Translation and Interpretation of the Daxue in Europe: the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus 1687,” in Lectures et Usages de La Grand Étude, chief editor Anne Cheng, with Damien Morier-Genoud (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études, 2015), 197-216, esp. 216. I have been largely sympathetic to the notion, by modernists like Benedict Anderson, Ernst Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and others, to understand the nation-state and nationalism as modern constructs. However, there were clearly events in the distant past that led groups to consider their identities as a way of determining their priorities, when it came to loyal service. As a result, I do not see the nation- state and nationalism as a “purely” modern novelty. See John B. Duncan, writing on Chosŏn Korea, in Lectures and Usages, p. 235: “Pre-modern scholars have been skeptical of the claim by modernists that the nation, as a social, cultural, and sometimes political collectivity, is a modern novelty.” Duncan's brief observation derives from his research more fully reported in The Origins of the Chosŏn dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000). 94 Xunzi, “Zheng lun,” juan 18 (my translation). 95 I identify this expectation as unrealistic, since glory depends upon social approbation, as noted above. 96 George Kateb, Human Dignity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 9. 97 This view is consonant with that expressed in Xunzi, juan 4 (On Glory and Disgrace): “those who place what is just before what is beneficial [in the short term] will attain honor [in the end].”

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98 Compare Jia Xi, Xinshu, juan 9, “Dazheng, shang” 大政上 chap.: 故君以知賢為明。吏以愛民為忠. 99 I discuss these limits on patriotism at much greater length in a paper delivered for a conference at Renmin daxue, July 7-10, comparing early Greek and classical Chinese tropes. See: Michael Nylan, Allyson Tang and Wang Zhijian, “Patriotism in Early China,” Frontiers of Chinese Philosophy 14, no.1, (2019): 47-74. 100 For this story, see Odes 緜 (Mao #237); Mencius 1A/5; Shiji 4.113; Liu Xiang, Xinxu 3.1, and so on. I discuss this also in “Boundaries of the Body and Body Politic in Early Confucian Thought,” Boundaries and Justice, ed. David Miller and Sohail Hashmi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 112-35. Carnegie Council and Ethikon Institute series. This was reprinted in a new edition entitled Confucian Political Ethics, ed. Daniel Bell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 101 The name of Guan Zhong is coupled with that of Zichan in Shuoyuan 2.4 (“Chen shu” 臣術). For further information, one may consult Michael Nylan, The Chinese Pleasure Book (New York: Zone Press, 2018), note 128, from Rickett. 102 Xunzi, juan 27 (“Da lue” 大略): 管仲之為人，力功不力義. 103 See Lunheng, pian 55 (“Gan lei” 感類). 104 This definition comes from Analects 11/23. 105 Kenneth Pomeranz, who is not on Berkeley’s campus, is a China expert in his own right, and he would be one of the obvious exceptions to my sweeping statement. I did not know (and should have known) that “world history” and “global history” grew out of the “philosophy of history,” and can be traced to Immanuel Kant, who argued that human beings are destined to develop their naturally endowed potentials in a progress that obeys laws. See Liu Xincheng, “The Global View of History in China,” Journal of World History 23, no. 3, (Sept. 2012): 491-511, esp. 494-95, on Kant and his successors. As Liu remarks, Kant’s theory “unites the three principles that are most eminent in modern western philosophy of history: teleology, progressivism, and stage theory” [i.e., seeing history in terms of stages]. 106 Xincheng (2012: esp. 494), reports: “They further warn that Chinese scholars should be cautious about a possible neocolonialist ‘discourse strategy’ of the global era in global history,” an updated version of “modernization studies in the West, which gave birth to structural functionalist approaches that sustained concepts of Western hegemony.” Western academics would do well to read Jack Goody, The Theft of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For one example where the international proponents of “global history” neglected to consult anyone but historians of EuroAmerica, see Jörn Rüsen, “How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition by History in the Twenty-First Century,” History and Theory 43, no. 4, (Issue Theme: Historians and Ethics) (2004): 118-29, esp. p. 120. 107 Xunzi, “Rong ru” (Honor and Disgrace), juan 4 (my translation). 108 See the “Pan geng” chapter of the Shangshu/Documents classic, for example, where cheng ren refers not mainly to generic adults but to the “mature men” who are capable of guiding the ruler. Meanwhile, the Liji/Record on Rites says that it’s becoming a mature adult that allows one to be able to act as a good official, a good brother, and a good son; also that a mature adult is formed when he learns ritual activity and acquires a fully ritualized body. See the “Li qi” chapter (juan 10.22) that says that the person who lacks a fully ritualized body cannot be deemed a fully-fledged adult: 禮也者，猶體也。體不備，君子謂之不成人. Analects 14/12 concedes that whereas a “complete person” (cheng ren) would require the consummate strength built up painstakingly through the exercise of all the virtues, generally a lower standard of excellence is enough to be considered a “complete person.”

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109 Hanguan liu zhong: 聖王之法，追祭天地日月星辰山川萬神。皆古之人也。能〔紀〕天地五行氣，奉（成）〔其〕功以成人者也。The text continues, somewhat surprisingly, to assert that all objects of worship were originally, in antiquity, human beings, not transcendents or high gods. 110 For the body as radically permeable, one might consult Nylan (2001: 112-35); also the work of Jane Geaney and Deborah Somers. 111 Earlier, of course, it was to one’s local community. 112 Some, at this point, would invoke Rawls. I would invoke other philosophers, especially Fingarette, since I disagree with some of Rawls’ views of the human being. I take this up elsewhere, in another forthcoming publication. 113 See Bernard Williams, “Replies,” in World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, eds. J.E.J. Altham and Ross Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 217. 114 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993). See also Karine Chemla and Evelyn Fox Keller, Cultures and Culturalism: The Making of Scientific Knowledge (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017). 115 For example, Butch Ware at the University of California-Santa Barbara, on African spirituality; and Daniel Boyarin, in Near Eastern Studies, on Talmud. 116 On this, see Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), which says that the Ancients are “in better shape” than those of the Kantian and post-Kantian persuasion, as they did not think moral activities differ from pragmatic activities. 117 As a feminist, I have tried to draw attention also to the great gap between early ideas of women and those of late imperial China. 118 Yang Lien-sheng, “The Concept of Pao as a Basis for Social Relations in China,” Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 291–309. 119 Eric Hutton, University of Utah, plans a similar de-centering sets of studies in contrast and comparison. 120 Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 22. 121 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011) summarizes much of the neuroscientific literature on the clash between the body’s autonomic, automatic, and effortful systems of thought. One may also consult with profit Zenon Pylyshyn’s Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003). I distinguish “experiences” from “secondhand experiences” because we have learnt that dreams and secondhand experiences (e.g., seeing things on TV and in movies and visualizing them while reading) also tend to affect the body in much the same way as palpable first-hand experiences. 122 Here Harold R. Isaacs’ classic Scratches on our Mind (1958; updated 1980) is useful, as is Christian de Pee’s “Cycles of Cathay: Sinology, Philology, and Histories of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) in the United States,” Fragments 2, (2012): 35-67. 123 Maalouf (2001: 9). 124 David Armitage and Jo Guldi argue in their manifesto, The History Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), that only in the post-World War II era has there been so much attention to contemporary history and so little to antiquity and medieval times (with the latter type of history more likely to challenge thinking and presumptions). They argue that the shifting priorities of history departments have been shaped by government and by corporations, and also by deans who wish to demonstrate efficient graduation rates.

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125 See Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002) on the therapeutic value of inquiry; cf. Hans Sluga (2014).