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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 CHINA ENCOUNTERS WESTERN IDEAS (1895-1905): A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF YAN FU, TAN SITONG, AND LIANG QICHAO DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Xiaosui Xiao, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1992 Dissertation Committee: Sonja K. Foss Mary Garrett Co-advj Chang Hao Department of Communication ACKNOWLEDGMENTS After two years, a vague thesis has now developed into a complete dissertation. This dissertation would not have been possible without the knowledge, encouragement, and friendship of my thesis advisor, Dr. Mary Garrett. Her suggestions, which were always insightful, led to my substantially enriching the themes of this study. I am also grateful to the other two members of my advisory committee, Drs. Sonja K. Foss and Chang Hao, who provided me with a critical audience and valuable comments. I did not always follow all of their suggestions, and thus I would like to take personal responsibility for any problems of commission or omission in this work. A special thanks goes to Professor David Jamison, my Master thesis advisor at the University of Akron, who inspired and encouraged me to become a rhetorical critic, an intellectually challenging choice which I will never regret having made. My wife, Peng Jiayi, has remained emotionally supportive through this tense period. I sincerely apologize for the fact that during the . past two years she has ii sometimes shouldered more than her fair share of the household duties. In these two years, I grew frustrated and became lost so many times, but we have made it. iii VITA December 18, 1953 Born - Guangzhou, P. R. China 1978-1982 B.A., Jinan University, Guangzhou, P. R. China 1982-1985 Instructor, Jinan University 1986-1988 M.A., University of Akron, Akron, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Communication Studies in Rhetoric, Intercultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Mass Communication, Philosophy of Communication iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii Vita iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER PAGE I. THE RHETORICAL SITUATION 22 The Emerging Rhetorical Exigency 22 Constraints on the Choices of Audience and of Others 40 II. YAN FU'S HEAVENLY EVOLUTION 60 A Fitting Response to the Rhetorical Situation 61 A Tendency toward Creative Translation . 73 The Preference for the Traditional Modes of Argumentation 81 An Understandable Natural Phenomenon ... 92 A Meaningful Means to the Conventional End 104 Implicit Critique of the Political System. Ill III. TAN SITONG'S A STUDY OF HUMANITY 117 An Active Response to the Rhetorical Situation 121 Equality, Ether, and Their Chinese Counterparts 125 Arguments for an Egalitarian Principle of Humanity 132 IV. LIANG QICHAO'S A NEW PEOPLE 154 Moral Revolution as the Ultimate Solution. 157 Arguments for Public Morality 159 CONCLUSION 191 LIST OF REFERENCES 207 v INTRODUCTION The Rationale As scholars today are increasingly aware that the way we approach and understand an idea is cultural-bound, a question that becomes extremely significant is: how are foreign ideas, especially those at odds with the traditional values and world views of a culture, made comprehensible when introduced into that culture? Not long ago people tended to believe that the intelligibility of some ideas in cross-cultural settings was attributable to the ultimate rationality of human beings or to the very nature of these ideas, ideas which transcended time and culture. Joseph R. Levenson, for example, believed that the persuasive power of Western thought lay in its "general validity." A rational mind ought to make an intellectual commitment to Western values. Thus for modern Chinese intellectuals, the question was only how to overcome their emotional attachments to their tradition.1 Even today, the practices of international politics, economic, religion, and so 1 Levenson concluded: "The modern Chinese commitment to the general, of which I have spoken, is the commitment to seek the answers that are 'true'; these thinkers' commitment to the special is their need of answers that are somehow 'theirs.' The first commitment brings many men to intellectual alienation from Chinese tradition, while the second leaves them with an emotional tie to it" (1958, xviii). 1 2 forth in the West are still affected, consciously or unconsciously, by the view that the Western ideals and approaches to them are the only correct ones to be followed by the world. The acceptance of the Western standards of freedom and human rights, for instance, is considered part of the fair price the developing countries should pay for receiving generous Western economic aid. In the field of intercultural communication, scholars who study the rhetorical traditions of non-Western cultures in the past few decades have found convincing evidence for a position that may be called rhetorical pluralism. Robert Oliver, one of early advocates of this view, suggests that if the speech profession is to make a helpful contribution to internationalism it has to stop using rhetoric in the singular and start using it in the plural. I think the facts of life indicate that there is not just one rhetoric-instead, there are many different modes of thinking, and many different ways in which influence must be exerted if it is to be effective (1962, 79-80). Huber W. Ellingsworth makes a similar observation: "Each culture has its own styles, and standards which make its system unique." He proposes to view national or cultural rhetoric as the communication styles of a particular culture, including appropriate themes, modes of expression, standards, purposes, sources, and receivers of communication. Each culture has its own styles, and standards which make its system unique (1969). After examining a body of riViorical discourses in the Asian traditions, Mary Garrett concludes: 3 Many of these materials differ in substantial and provocative ways from the Western tradition; they assume a different audience psychology, value different modes of reasoning, recommend different strategies of persuasion, are grounded in a different cosmology, and espouse different goals and standards for the rhetor (1991, 295-96). How then can we account for those historical cases of intellectual developments and transformations that resulted from interaction with foreign ideas? The answer can only be found in careful studies of such historical cases. So far intercultural communication has not engaged in such historical studies. A survey of the past fourteen volumes of Communication Abstracts (1978-1991) revealed that many scholars have approached intercultural communication from a mass media standpoint. They have concerned themselves with issues such as the effects of international broadcasting, the new world information order, the use of new technologies for the instantaneous worldwide transmission of information, the international telecommunication marketplace, and so forth. There are many others, like Samovar and Porter, who have focused on the "interpersonal dimensions of intercultural communication" and have examined "what happens when people from different cultures interact face-to-face" (Samovar & Porter 1991, 2). However, I did not come across any study on the intellectual transaction between a foreign doctrine that was being introduced into a culture, in the form of written discourse, and the audiences of that culture, —an approach that looks at intercultural communication more from a rhetorical discourse point of view. The interaction with another culture's intellectual sources of socioeconomic, political, philosophical, religious, and ethical discourses is an important, usually deeper, stage or aspect of cross-cultural interaction. 4 It is this stage that grants us access to the rational structures and justifications of a foreign