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After revolution : reading Rousseau in 1990s

van Dongen, Els; Chang, Yuan

2017 van Dongen, E., & Chang, Y. (2017). After revolution : reading Rousseau in 1990s China. Contemporary Chinese Thought, 48(1), 1‑13. doi:10.1080/10971467.2017.1383805 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143782 https://doi.org/10.1080/10971467.2017.1383805

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary Chinese Thought on 14 Dec 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10971467.2017.1383805.

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Introduction After Revolution: Reading Rousseau in 1990s China Els van Dongen and Yuan Chang

Abstract

This article reviews ’s (b. 1952) writings on Jean-Jacques Rousseau against the background of the reception of Rousseau in China since the late nineteenth century. Rousseau was both an advocate and critic of the Enlightenment, and his work hence appealed to many Chinese intellectuals who struggled with the conundrum of how to modernize. During the late nineteenth century, Chinese supporters of Rousseau drew on his work to defend the viability of revolution. During the 1990s, following the tragedy of Tiananmen and the decline of socialism, Rousseau served to reflect on China’s twentieth-century trajectory and the disastrous political consequences of collective moral idealism. For Zhu Xueqin, a key question was: Why were the French Revolution and the so similar?

Rousseau and the Double-Edged Sword of Modernity

In the history of modern Western political thought, few have managed to achieve the fame and influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Yet even fewer have managed to leave a legacy as paradoxical as the great “Citizen of Geneva.” His reputation has run the gamut, from being the inspiration and leading light of the French Revolution in the view of Maximilien Robespierre to the intransigent enemy of liberty and the master thinker of “totalitarian democracy” in the writings of Isaiah Berlin and Jacob Talmon.1 The latter used the term totalitarian democracy to refer to the collective pursuit of an all-embracing vision of a perfect society where politics came to dominate all aspects of human life and social action served to realize the general good. A central figure of the Enlightenment, Rousseau was, however, at the same time a sympathizer of a primitive and pastoral past, a believer in rustic simplicity, and a passionate critic of modernity.2 once described him as the “Newton of the moral world,” while Allan Bloom wrote that “Rousseau gave antimodernity its most modern expression and thereby ushered in extreme modernity.” 3 This conflicting evaluation of Rousseau forms part of the broader conflicting evaluation of the Enlightenment philosophers. For some scholars, they were closet Christians engaged in the construction of a “heavenly city”; for others, conversely, they were Lumières who sought to replace religion with rationality.4 The ambiguity surrounding Rousseau is also reflected in the continuing discussion of that mystical concept known as the general will”(volonté générale) introduced in The Social Contract (1762), which more than any other idea has become synonymous with the Genevan maestro.5

1 Rousseau’s contemporaries, however, mostly equated him with revolutionary thinking; he was after all a thinker who believed in the “radical transformation and reformation of state and society.”6 Rousseau has been credited with influencing the French Revolution, a connection that famously made in his 1790 work Reflections on the Revolution in France. Other contemporaries such as Benjamin Constant, , and Hippolyte Taine made similar observations.7 Both the revolutionaries themselves and Robespierre appealed to Rousseau, a connection symbolized by the revolutionaries’ moving of his body to the Pantheon for reburial after his death.8 From being the inspiration for the French Revolution, Rousseau became associated with revolution tout court. It was only later that scholars began to see Rousseau in different and often contrasting lights.

What more can be said about Rousseau? The following is an attempt to explore the reception and study of Rousseau in 1990s China through the work of Zhu Xueqin 朱学勤 (b. 1952), a noted liberal scholar and historian who has published widely on Chinese culture and Western thought. Zhu became famous by and large due to his 1994 book titled The Demise of the Republic of Virtue: From Rousseau to Robespierre.9 This work, which is based on his PhD dissertation, has attracted countless readers since its publication and is still being read in the People’s Republic of China today. Before we formally analyze Zhu and his writings in depth, a description of the context of the reception of Rousseau in modern China is required in order to facilitate the discussion: Why did Chinese intellectuals engage with Rousseau in the 1990s?

During this period, China witnessed debates of Rousseau’s thought against the broader background of the crisis of revolutionary ideology and amidst the advocacy of a reformist approach to solve the problems of Chinese modernity. The 1990s is also a period of significant interest due to the post-1989 Tiananmen effect, as the liberal intellectual atmosphere of the 1980s came to a close. It serves as a microcosm of modern Chinese intellectual history because the period witnessed the return of intellectual discussions of the problem of Chinese modernity that had first come about in the late nineteenth century. This time around, however, the intellectual atmosphere was more poignant, given that the Chinese had experienced the harsh realities of the failures of repeated radicalizations and revolutions during the long twentieth century. The end of the Cold War and China’s move toward globalization following Deng Xiaoping’s famous Southern Tour in 1992 triggered new questions about China’s socialist path, the relation between the state and civil society, and the role of intellectuals in Chinese society.

Still, the question remains: Why Rousseau? What makes his thought so engaging to Chinese intellectuals, not only in the 1990s but throughout the entire modern period? What lies behind the allure of his philosophy? Because the quest for modernity in China was at the same time an attempt to resist the Western powers—what Hui has referred to as “anti-modern modernization”—Rousseau was particularly appealing to the Chinese audience given his dual role as advocate and critic of modernity.10 During the late nineteenth century, Rousseau became interpreted in China in the context of Western expansion, and supporters referred to his work to advocate a revolutionary Chinese modernity. During the 1990s, however, after a century of upheavals, Rousseau helped scholars analyze the limits of Chinese modernity and the vicissitudes of revolution in China’s long twentieth century. Now, connecting the French Revolution to the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China, intellectuals tried to come to terms with the realities of post-1989 China. The stance of Chinese intellectuals toward this philosopher hence symbolizes China’s continuing struggle with the conundrum of modernization and the quest for a Chinese modernity.

2

The Reception of Rousseau in China

Given the above, we hence first need to return to the period of crisis that was the late nineteenth century. In the span of less than a hundred years, China had gone from being a dominant civilization in Asia to a weak and fractured society. By the end of the nineteenth century, many of the leading writers of the day expressed the fear that Chinese civilization would eventually dissipate under the weight of European imperialism. The mounting pressure from the West led to new thinking and reflections on the status of Chinese culture and to the increasing study of Western literature, philosophy, and history. As the situation within the country worsened and as the failure of the Self-Strengthening Movement became apparent with the loss to Japan in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, Chinese intellectuals began to call for political reforms of the highest order.

Modern China’s exposure to Rousseau began during this very period of Western intrusion and the quest for modernization. Historical records show that in 1878, Guo Songtao (1818-1891), the Qing ambassador to Britain, made a note in his diaries about a French thinker named Rousseau who was resented and feared by the church. Another diplomat mentioned Rousseau in the same year as well, indicating that his work was influential in Europe.11 The literatus-scholar Wang Tao (1828-1897) wrote about Rousseau in 1890 and called him a “famous sagely man.”12 In 1899, a partial translation in classical Chinese of The Social Contract by the Japanese scholar Nakae Chomin (1847-1901) was published in . This was probably the first time that Rousseau’s work was formally introduced to Chinese audiences. Other translations of The Social Contract soon followed, and along with it, commentaries and discussions of the text by the prominent figures of the day, including Yan Fu (1854-1921), Zou Rong (1885-1905), Liang Qichao (1873-1929), and Zhang Shizhao (1881-1973), among others.13

While some scholars such as Zhang Xirou (1889-1973) devoted time to study the content of Rousseau’s thought, more scholars seemed to prefer to use Rousseau to express their own view on the affairs of the day. This was especially so for the topics of individual liberty and the viability of political revolutions.14 According to Max Ko-wu Huang, Rousseau was popular during this period because of the fear that China would perish, which led intellectuals to embrace theories that required drastic action. Hence, in this environment, Rousseau’s utopian theory became coupled with revolution. Second, drawing on Thomas Metzger, Huang argues that Rousseau’s utopian ideals were a natural fit given the Chinese people’s optimism regarding epistemology and human nature.15

The selective appropriation of Rousseau to support political positions rather than a critical engagement with his thought is not unique to the reception of Rousseau in China; modernity is overall “a process of emulation and borrowing.”16 The use of Western theories in support of existing worldviews was already present in China at the turn of the twentieth century. It was no different during the 1990s, when even critical theory became employed in China to add legitimacy to intellectual positions.17 The appropriation of Rousseau is hence exemplary of the cachet of Western thought in political debates in China. Given these features, more common than studies that systematically engage with the content of Rousseau’s thought are studies on the reception of Rousseau in China.

3 In an article on the introduction and translation of Rousseau’s works in early twentieth- century China, Wang Xianming and Shu Wen explain how this process of reception was intertwined with the use of Rousseau in the works of many Chinese writers.18 They argue that there were three types of interpretation of Rousseau at the time. The first type refers to the wholesale confirmation of his theories in the service of rescuing China, with an emphasis on elements related to sovereignty of the people and political revolutions. The second type refers to the group of writers who supported Rousseau in order to confirm their own views, particularly the strand of Rousseau’s thought that advocated that all men are born equal. Finally, there were those who rejected Rousseau’s theories because they considered them unhistorical and unrealistic and hence not useful for China. Zou Rong’s The Revolutionary Army (1903) represents the first type, whereas the “national essence” scholar Liu Shipei’s reference to Rousseau’s advocacy of equality in his defense of anarchism represents the second. Finally, Yan Fu’s criticism of Rousseau’s theory represents the third type.

Wang and Shu explain this difference in terms of a generation gap: Those who were critical of Rousseau were born in the 1850s and 1860s; those who praised Rousseau to save China or who referred to Rousseau to advance their own views were born in the 1870s and 1880s and after. The former were educated in Europe and also more immersed in traditional learning than the latter. Furthermore, most of the Rousseau supporters, namely members of the 1870s and 1880s generation, spent time in Japan instead of the West. They were exposed to socialism, which in a Japanese context meant the tradition of liberty, political rights, and revolution. On the other hand, those educated in Europe, especially the famous translator Yan Fu, had learned about the critique of the Romantic tradition and the more popular theories of the day: Social Darwinism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism.19

In another article, Fan Yun has used the term “Rousseau as an approach” to describe the various instrumental readings of Rousseau’s political philosophy to support debates of the day.20 Critical of this approach, Fan Yun argues that it was marked by a “spatio-temporal dislocation” and “oversimplification.” 21 Fan therefore looks at the reception of Rousseau as emblematic of the understanding of Western knowledge in China since the late nineteenth century. In the “strong form,” this meant that Rousseau became nothing more than a symbol, “a study of Rousseau without Rousseau.” 22 In its “weak form,” Rousseau also became appropriated to analyze problems of the day. Similarly, Yan Deru has argued that the “Rousseau fever” of this period was nothing but “the worshipping of ‘revolution’” (‘geming’ chongbai); few intellectuals really understood what Rousseau’s thought was about, but they “distorted” (waiqu) him within the framework of saving the country and saving the people.23 Even though we would understand the Chinese engagement with Rousseau as a creative reinterpretation rather than a “distortion”—since there is no single “true” meaning that is subject to “distortion”—it is nevertheless important to understand this interpretation in relation to the burning questions of the day in China, and the discourse that surrounds these questions.24

Rousseau and the Legacy of Revolution During the 1990s

During the 1990s, the struggle with modernity was particularly intense in the context of a number of relevant economic, political, social, and cultural events. These included the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Tiananmen incident, all of which

4 challenged the official ideology and the legitimacy of the CCP. Following reform and opening up, China also increasingly interacted not only with the West, but also with the capitalist economies of the “Mini Dragons” (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea). Intellectually, this played a role in the revival of Confucianism from the 1980s onwards, among others. Commercialization and marketization after a second round of reforms in 1992 also signified the transformation and diversification of the role of the Chinese intellectual, who now also became an expert rather than a servant and critic of the Chinese state.

It was against this background that intellectuals criticized what they referred to as the tradition of “radicalism” (jijin zhuyi), the belief that progress could only be rooted in total and rapid change, be it in the form of revolution or utopian reform schemes.25 During the early 1990s, conservative and liberal criticisms of revolutionary radicalism gained ground. The publication of Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu’s Gaobie Geming (Farewell to Revolution) in 1995 represents the era’s critique of revolution as an omnipotent God capable of curing China’s illnesses.26 During the second half of the 1990s, liberalism also became a force in Chinese academia, with 1998 being a year of “Hayek craze.” ’s works had already been introduced to Chinese audiences as part of the “culture fever” (wenhua re) of the 1980s, but he gained popularity in the 1990s as China was transitioning to a market economy.

Overall, the early to mid-1990s was a period during which many intellectuals reflected on the issues of “Enlightenment” and Westernization of the 1980s, famously depicted in the 1988 documentary River Elegy (Heshang), which called for the Yellow River to flow into the Blue Ocean that was Westernization.27 Now, influenced by liberal philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin and Friedrich Hayek, some Chinese liberal writers emphasized that there was a difference between the two traditions of liberty, namely, the British and the French traditions. The British tradition considered freedom to be the absence of coercion. It was empiricist in its understanding of change: It believed that institutions had spontaneously grown and that change was the product of trial and error. The French tradition, on the contrary, was rationalistic and considered freedom to be the realization of a grand collective purpose that was to be designed rather than inherited.28

Relevant in the spread of this distinction in China was the scholar (b. 1952), who wrote an article on English and French liberalism in 1989.29 Especially noteworthy in this context are the parallels Chinese intellectuals drew between the Cultural Revolution and the French Revolution. For Chinese intellectuals, Rousseau represented an intellectual lineage that connected to the revolutionary trajectory of modern China and that was now under scrutiny. In this trajectory, there was a direct link between the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Chinese Communist Revolution. In their criticism of the French Revolution, some intellectuals would also resort to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, further adding to the praise of the English model instead of the French model with which Rousseau was associated.30

Chinese scholars were not the only ones to discuss the connection between Rousseau and the Chinese Revolution. In 1968, Benjamin Schwartz wrote an article on “the reign of virtue” in which he analyzed some of the similarities between Rousseau and .31 Both Rousseau and Mao Zedong, Schwartz wrote, connected ethics to politics, and both believed that man could only realize his true moral potential by becoming a part of a larger moral whole. However, Schwartz also noted differences between the two, such as Rousseau’s distinction between legislative and executive power, which did not exist in Maoism.

5 After the Cultural Revolution, during which Western works on humanities and social sciences had been denounced as “bourgeois,” new translations of Rousseau’s work emerged with the “culture fever” of the 1980s. During the 1990s, international scholarship on Rousseau also appeared in Chinese translation.32 Against this background, the posthumously published essays of Gu Zhun (1915-1974), often referred to as an individualist and liberal thinker, inspired criticism of Rousseau in the 1990s.33 An accountant and a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Gu Zhun had been labeled a “Rightist” and was sent to labor camps during the 1950s. In the early 1970s, Gu criticized Rousseau’s “direct democracy” within the broader framework of global revolutionary history, and the line that connected the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, the October Revolution of 1917, and the Cultural Revolution.34

In France, Russia, and China, Gu argued, “direct democracy” was nothing but a paradox: far removed from actual democracy, with power concentrated in the hands of the few. At the outset, according to Gu, revolutionaries were democrats, but it was their concern with “ultimate goals” (zhongji mudi) that led them to sacrifice democracy and turn to dictatorship instead.35 In the view of the liberal writer (b. 1947), Gu embodied the liberal turn of those intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s who had participated in the Communist Revolution.36 In the end, what appealed to Chinese intellectuals in the early 1990s was Gu Zhun’s criticism of direct democracy and utopian revolutionary ideals.37 It was also this critique of radicalism that made Gu prominent and helped to establish his fame as an independent thinker.

Perhaps a good representative of the Chinese reception of Rousseau in 1990s China is Wang Yuanhua (1920-2008), Zhu Xueqin’s academic advisor and also one of the major figures of the so-called “New Enlightenment” of the 1980s.38 Although Wang initially approached the topic of the social contract from the angle of political philosophy, by the late 1990s, he was also concerned with how the philosophical notion of the “general will” could lead to an autocratic political system.39 For example, in a letter to Wu Jiang that was published in Kaifang Shidai (Open Times) in 1998, Wang critically engaged with Rousseau’s notion of the “general will.” The crux for Wang was how to differentiate “general will” from the mere sum of particular wills, the “will of all” (volonté de tous). Here, Wang focused on Rousseau’s introduction of the figure of the Legislator.40 Rousseau’s belief that a Legislator of the highest intelligence could magically distinguish between the two “wills” and guide the people toward becoming a collective was, in Wang’s view, to regard the Legislator “as a God.”41 Rousseau might have used “romantic language” without the intent of “encouraging a personality cult,” but the disastrous consequences of this were clear from the history that followed.42

Wang’s criticism of the Legislator was, however, not unique. General criticism of Rousseau had also focused on how the “general will” could arise. Rousseau had partly suggested that contemplation would suffice, and that the transition from individual to “general will” was merely procedural, but he had also indicated that virtue was required to overcome self-interest. This virtue in turn also had to be instilled by the exemplary individual of the Legislator, but it remains unclear where the Legislator himself obtained his moral qualities.43 Wang’s take was unique, however, in that it focused on the personality cult that derived from the figure of the Legislator, which we can understand in relation to the context of reflections on the Cultural Revolution and the personality cult of Mao Zedong.

Elsewhere, Wang argued that Rousseau’s utopian vision went far beyond the partial transfer of sovereignty that had envisioned. The legitimacy of Rousseau’s political power was also not based on the systematic protection of the people’s rights. Rousseau’s

6 distinction between the “general will” and the “will of all” was overtly mechanistic. Like Gu Zhun before him, Wang criticized Rousseau’s direct democracy, which, “as if history entered the wrong room,” had ended in autocracy. Wang further connected Robespierre’s “creation of the new man” to Rousseau’s belief in the transformation of human nature.44

Overall, Gu Zhun and Wang Yuanhua both discussed the paradox of Rousseau’s thought from the perspective of “direct democracy,” the transformation of human nature, and the “general will.” Gu Zhun had focused on the Soviet Union and Stalinism in order to deconstruct Rousseau’s “direct democracy,” whereas Wang Yuanhua criticized the “general will” from the angle of the tragedies of extreme Leftism during the Cultural Revolution in China.45 In the transitional years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the question of the discrepancy between ideals and practice gained relevance. Gu Zhun had already addressed this in a work published posthumously in 1992, titled From Idealism to Empiricism, to which Wang Yuanhua wrote the preface.46 Zhu Xueqin, as we will see, was also influenced by the themes that Gu Zhun had discussed decades earlier, but these themes acquired new importance in the context of the 1990s.

Zhu Xueqin’s Rousseau and Debates of the Time

Within the reception of Rousseau in 1990s China, this issue focuses on Zhu Xueqin, one of China’s most well-known liberals. Born in 1952 and a native of Shanghai, when the Cultural Revolution took off, Zhu spent several years doing rural work and then a decade as a factory worker, both in province, as part of the rusticated youth movement. During this time, he became interested in Rousseau via Chinese translations. In the early 1980s, Zhu became a graduate student in the History Department at Normal University in Xi’an, focusing his studies on and the French Revolution. His education was interrupted in 1989, with the Tiananmen Incident. When Zhu resumed his studies, he faced criticism about his dissertation on the French Revolution, which was considered “bourgeois right-wing.” 47 Zhu then earned a PhD in history from in the early 1990s and quickly became a leading public intellectual in the PRC. Currently, Zhu is a professor at and continues to be a leading voice on the various social and cultural issues of the day.

This issue presents selections from two of Zhu Xueqin’s writings on Rousseau. The first is his influential 1994 book The Demise of the Republic of Virtue: From Rousseau to Robespierre, which is based on his dissertation. In the book, Zhu argues that Rousseau’s influence demonstrates the dangerous replacement of social and political revolution with moral revolution through the notion of the “general will” and the social contract.48 In his own words, he focuses on three issues in Rousseau’s thought in particular:

The first of these was the way Rousseau’s conception of the General Will swept away two of the foundations of a modern secular society and political system: the private space for individual existence and the aggregated space of the ‘collective will’—unofficial schools and parties. Secondly, I considered the danger that his construction of the social contract in practice leads, under normal circumstances, to a moralized omnipotence in which the expansion of the political state takes over civil society and the individual—and, in unusual circumstances, to an anarchy in which political participation is suddenly expanded and no institutional channels within the state can absorb the consequences, setting off a revolution. The third topic was his linkage of moral intention to political power, and his idea that politics

7 might function as a religion, which transformed concepts of political science into those of political philosophy, and so justified a massive invasion of civil society by the state.49

Similar to criticism of the reception of Rousseau a century earlier, critics have argued that Zhu Xueqin’s interpretation of Rousseau might have been too much influenced by the political and social issues of the day, leading one scholar to argue that Zhu Xueqin’s Rousseau was but “one man’s Rousseau.”50 However, this also means that Zhu’s writings on Rousseau provide us with a unique window into what intellectuals considered to be the main problems of the era and what solutions they envisioned. Overall, the moral collective idealism and grand social designs of Rousseau were analyzed from the angle of their consequences in a Chinese context, namely, the politicization of society under Mao and the failure of the liberal movement of the 1980s.

The first part of this issue consists of the translation of sections of this book, namely the preface, the introduction, and the afterword. Zhu Xueqin explains in the preface that he belongs to the “third generation” of those born after 1949 for whom 1968 served as a spiritual awakening. This is also the generation that was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Even though they had a “non-intellectual status,” they nevertheless reflected on “intellectuals’ issues.” 51 For Zhu, the most perplexing question regarding 1968 was why the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution were so similar. Interest in the French Revolution during this period needs to be seen against the backdrop of the unfinished Enlightenment project of the 1980s, which was in itself a response to the ideological rigidity of the Cultural Revolution. Zhu further indicates the influence of Karl Marx and on his approach to Rousseau. Marx’s influence leads him to focus on the relation between the political state and civil society in analyzing the paradoxes in Rousseau’s thought and the tension between the French Revolution’s lofty ideals and its dramatic outcome. Inspired by Weber’s three types of legitimate rule (traditional, charismatic, and legal authority), Zhu looks at elements of the second in both Rousseau and Robespierre and identifies the issues in the transition process from one form to the next. He adds, however, that his focus on Rousseau and Robespierre does not mean that the practices of the latter can be attributed to the theories of the former. In fact, a much more complex process is at work here.

In the introduction of the book, entitled “From Theological Politics to Political Theology,” Zhu Xueqin elaborates his thesis regarding the relationship between politics and morality in Rousseau. With Rousseau, the theologized politics of the Middle Ages became transformed through the emphasis on the moral ability of men. Zhu argues that with Rousseau, original sin, which was in the past carried by the individual and which could not be undone, now became the attribute of society—it became externalized. Political revolution became extended to social and moral revolution. In other words, human nature was to be remolded through moral laws, through the figure of the Legislator, or through a civil religion that served to induce the “general will.”

Finally, in the afterword of his book, Zhu is quick not to reject the French Revolution and Rousseau outright as he discusses a set of binary concepts. He criticizes those who condemn Rousseau’s “apriorism” (xianyan zhuyi) from the perspective of empiricism (jingyan zhuyi) and argues that the forces of apriorism and empiricism have jointly created history since the French Revolution. Then he discusses the relation between deconstructionism (jiegou zhuyi) and constructionism (jiangou zhuyi) in Rousseau, arguing that both play a role in the progress of civilization. It was the failure to balance the two that led to the tragic consequences of the French Revolution. This shows, according to Zhu, that we should not simply categorize Rousseau as “irrational” as compared to other Enlightenment thinkers. Influenced by Max

8 Weber, a third set of oppositions that Zhu discusses here is that of value rationality (jiazhi lixing) and instrumental rationality (gongju lixing). “Instrumental rationality,” according to Weber, is a type of rational action in which the actor calculates how to reach a certain end. “Value rationality” refers to an action that is “determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake,” as for example a religious calling or some higher cause.52

Even though the book discusses the negative consequences of value rationality, which Zhu uses here to refer to the moral idealism of Rousseau, Zhu argues that the emphasis on instrumental rationality in Anglo-American political thought had led to political apathy and a crisis in belief. Hence, we should not only emphasize instrumental rationality; for value rationality still has a role to play, but its boundaries should be clearly defined. Finally, Zhu discusses avenues to end political theology, and here he envisions a role for intellectuals, who should move toward a more empirical stance and who should focus on reforming the system in separating moral idealism from the political state.53

The second part of this issue contains the translation of Zhu’s article “The Institution of Church and State as One—An Analysis of Rousseau’s Political Philosophy,” which appeared in the influential Hong Kong-based journal Ershiyi Shiji (Twenty-First Century) in 1993.54 The article’s title refers to Voltaire’s dictum that a system in which the church and state act as one is the most fearful. It is relevant because it outlines in more detail the main points that are presented in the selected book chapters above. In the article, Zhu focuses on the concept of the “general will,” the social contract, the main traits of Rousseau’s political philosophy in which politics and morality are intertwined, and the consequences of this intertwinement. Regarding the social contract, Zhu compares Rousseau to Locke and Hobbes. Drawing on Althusser’s notion of “discrepancies” in Rousseau, Zhu argues that in the former, the second contracting party is not clear; the inheriting party of the social contract is not present; the transfer of sovereignty is a tautology; and, finally, the difference between public good and private interest is blurry.55 With regard to the contracting parties and the transfer of sovereignty, what Zhu is referring to here is that, unlike in liberal contract theory, in Rousseau, rights are not transferred to an external body—the social contract is with the community through the “general will.” As for the difference between public good and private interest, he refers to the question, also discussed by Wang Yuanhua above, of how to ensure that the “general will” is more than the “will of all,” which is the sum of particular wills.

For Zhu Xueqin, the problem with the “general will” is that it has no systematic form, and hence reliance on an omniscient and charismatic demigod becomes necessary. As such, Rousseau transforms political rule into moral rule. Following Althusser, Zhu emphasizes the discursive shift to a moral vocabulary in the discussion of politics. Especially in the last section, we see how Zhu connects the moral utopia he discerns in Rousseau to the fate of Chinese intellectuals. Following the Cultural Revolution and the abrupt ending of the liberal movement of the 1980s in 1989, we can understand why liberal thinkers such as Zhu Xueqin concentrate on the notion of moral perfectibility in Rousseau and the dangers of this emphasis on morality to reshape the political and social orders. Zhu concludes by stating that “political history cannot be simplified into intellectual history, but clearing up intellectual history can come before political history.” 56

Before we conclude, a note is needed regarding the controversy of plagiarism that has surrounded Zhu Xueqin’s book The Demise of The Republic of Virtue introduced here. In 2010, an internet poster by the alias of Isaiah claimed in various lengthy online essays that massive portions of The Demise of the Republic of Virtue had been plagiarized from the works of other

9 scholars, most notably the American scholar Carol Blum’s 1986 book Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue.57 Since just months earlier, another prominent scholar, , had also been accused of plagiarism, Zhu’s case naturally became headline news. Because Zhu’s book was based on his dissertation at Fudan University, the university eventually formed a committee to investigate the nature of the claim and in the end cleared Zhu of the accusation. The committee, however, did find that Zhu’s book contained citation errors and related problems but declared that these issues did not constitute acts of plagiarism. Zhu’s detractors were unsatisfied with the investigation, but because no further evidence was presented, the controversy soon died down.

Regardless of the validity of the plagiarism accusation, The Demise of the Republic of Virtue remains an influential work that is certainly indispensable in the study of the Chinese intellectual community’s reception of Rousseau from the 1990s onward. Overall, the reception of Rousseau in 1990s China reveals the concern with the limits of Rousseau’s attempt to reconcile individual freedom with the authority of the state. For liberals, following the devastating effects of the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen incident, it was clear that man could not be “forced to be free.” Beyond the specific content of Zhu’s book, it is also relevant because it reflects the self-perception of the Chinese intellectual as an actor who discerns, analyzes, and solves China’s problems in order to create a more perfect order.58 Zhu’s writings on Rousseau are highly moralistic and seek to offer solutions to the perceived “problem” of “ideology.” His call for a more empirical approach also needs to be understood as a response to the moral idealism of the 1980s’ “New Enlightenment,” which had ended in bloodshed.

Finally, it needs to be noted that this liberal interpretation that emphasized the disastrous practical consequences of Rousseau’s utopia, even though influential, was not the only interpretation of Rousseau in 1990s China. Some New Left intellectuals highlighted the continued value of Rousseau’s moral vision under unchecked economic development. , for example, emphasized the Rousseauan correction to the Lockean vision of the social contract that served to protect property and that was hence exclusionist. In his view, Rousseau’s vision was a more inclusive form of the social contract that served social justice. In a 1996 article in the influential journal Dushu (Reading), Cui sought to rescue Rousseau from interpretations of being the forerunner of “totalitarianism” and to restore him as the founder of modern democratic theory.59 In Cui’s view, Rousseau sought to eradicate social inequality and was “the earliest advocate of ‘socialist democracy’.” 60

Even though the liberal reading of Rousseau that Zhu Xueqin follows is certainly prone to criticism, the New Leftist reading also leaves us with some questions. For example, as Ernst Cassirer notes, Rousseau was only concerned with inequality of property where it affected moral equality. Rousseau was not an advocate of the welfare state or the power state, but rather, he supported the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat). Therefore, whether Rousseau was the “earliest advocate of socialist democracy” is definitely up for debate.61 In spite of these perhaps unbalanced readings of Rousseau, what matters is that Rousseau became a mirror that reflected a view on twentieth-century Chinese history: for some, this revolutionary history had to be overturned, whereas for others, the seeds of revolution had to be replanted in different soils.

10 Notes

1. See, for example, Isaiah Berlin, Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 28-52; Jacob Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960). 2. For different readings of Rousseau and some of the main paradoxes in Rousseau’s thought, see John T. Scott, ed., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, 4 vols. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006). 3. For Kant’s view, see John T. Scott, “General Introduction,” in idem, ed., Jean- Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, Vol. 1, 3- 4; Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs: Essays, 1960-1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 210. 4. See, for example, Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: Vol. 1, The Rise of Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1966). 5. See, for example, James Farr and David Lay Williams, eds., The General Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 6. Ernst Cassirer, “The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. John T. Scott, Vol. 1, p. 66. 7. See Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event: In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris (London, 1790). Reprinted in Frank M. Turner, ed., Reflections on the Revolution in France (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2003). 8. John T. Scott, “General Introduction,” in idem, ed., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, Vol. 1, 3. 9. Zhu Xueqin, Daode lixiangguo de fumie: Cong Lusuo dao Luobosibi’er (The Demise of the Republic of Virtue: From Rousseau to Robespierre) (Shanghai: Shanghai sanlian shudian, 1994). The references we use in this introduction are based on the 2003 edition (Shanghai: Shanghai sanlian shudian). 10. Wang Hui, “Dangdai Zhongguode sixiang zhuangkuang yu xiandaixing wenti,” Tianya (Frontiers) 5 (1997): 133-150. Translated by Rebecca Karl as “Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity,” Social Text 55, no. 16.2 (Summer 1998): 9-44. 11. Wang Xianming and Shu Wen, “Jindai Zhongguoren dui Lusuo de jieshi” (“Modern Chinese Explanations of Rousseau”), Jiandaishi Yanjiu (Modern Chinese History Research) no. 3 (1995): 16-17. 12. Yan Deru, “Lusuo yu wan Qing geming huayu” (“Rousseau and Late Qing Revolutionary Discourse”), Xuehai (Sea of Learning) no. 1 (2005): 21. 13. Xianming and Wen, (cfr. fn. 18), “Jindai Zhongguoren dui Lusuo de jieshi,” 17-18. 14. Yan Deru, “Lusuo yu wan Qing geming huayu,” 21-28. 15. Some of Huang’s articles have been translated in a previous issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought. See Max Ko-wu Huang, Special Issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought 47, no. 4 (2016); see Thomas Metzger, A Cloud across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005).

11 16. Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), p. 10. 17. Gloria Davies, “The Self-Made Maps of Chinese Intellectuality,” in Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry, ed. Gloria Davies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 17-46. 18. Wang Xianming and Shu Wen, “Jindai Zhongguoren dui Lusuo de jieshi,” 16-33. See also the compendium in which this article is included: Bainian Lusuo: Lusuo zai Zhongguo (Hundred Years of Rousseau: Rousseau in China), ed. Yuan He and Tan Huosheng (Changchun: Jilin chuban jituan youxian zeren gongsi, 2009). 19. Wang Xianming and Shu Wen, “Jindai Zhongguoren dui Lusuo de jieshi,” 19-23, 27- 28, 31-32. 20. Fan Yun, “Zuowei fangfa de Lusuo: xiandai Zhongguo bainian Lusuoxue de fansi” (“Rousseau as an Approach: Reflections on a Century of Rousseau Studies in Modern China”), Zhejiang daxue xuebao (Journal of Zhejiang University) 43, no. 2 (2013): 160-168. 21. Ibid., 160. 22. Ibid., 161. 23. Yan Deru, “Lusuo yu wan Qing geming huayu,” 23-24, 26. 24. Timothy Cheek has referred to this as “ideological moments,” or “the intellectuals’ experience of historical context that shapes the questions of the day.” Timothy Cheek, The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 7. 25. On this discussion, see Els van Dongen, “Chongxie Zhongguo jindaishi: ershi shiji jiushi niandai zaoqi dui xiandaixing de huiying” (“Rewriting Modern Chinese History: Grappling with Modernity during the Early 1990s”), in Fudan daxue wenshi yanjiuyuan, ed., Minzu rentong yu lishi yishi: shenshi jinxiandai Riben yu Zhongguo de lishixue yu xiandaixing (National Identity and Historical Consciousness: Investigating Historiography and Modernity in Modern China and Japan) (: Zhonghua Shuju, 2013), 213-225. 26. Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, Gaobie geming: huiwang ershi shiji Zhongguo (Farewell to Revolution: Looking Back at Twentieth-Century China) (Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi, 1995). 27. On Heshang, see Su Xiaokang and Wang Luxiang, Heshang (River Elegy) (Beijing: Xiandai chubanshe, 1988). 28. See Friedrich A. Hayek, “Chapter Four: Freedom, Reason, and Tradition,” The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 49-62. 29. Gan Yang, “Ziyou de diren” (“The enemy of freedom”), Dushu (Reading) no. 6, (1998): 121-128. 30. See for example Jiang Yihua, “Jijin yu baoshou: yu Yü Ying-shih xiansheng shangque” (“Radicalism and Conservatism: A Discussion with Yü Ying- shih”), Ershiyi Shiji (Twenty-first Century) 10 (April 1992): 134-142; Yü Ying-shih, “Zailun Zhongguo xiandai sixiang zhong de jijin yu baoshou: da Jiang Yihua xiansheng” (“Again on Radicalism and Conservatism in Modern Chinese Thought: A Response to Jiang Yihua”), Ershiyi Shiji (Twenty-first Century) 10 (April 1992): 143- 149. 31. Benjamin Schwartz, “The Reign of Virtue: Leader and Party in the Cultural Revolution,” in idem, China and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 169-186. See also his “The Rousseau Strain in the Contemporary World,” ibid., pp. 208-226.

12 32. See for example Lusuo, Shehui qiyuelun (The Social Contract) (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983); Lusuo, Aimi’er (Emile) (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983); Kaxi’er (Ernst Cassirer), Lusuo, Kangde, Gede (Rousseau, Kant, Goethe), Liu Dong trans. (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1992). 33. See Gu Zhun, Cong lixiang zhuyi dao jingyan zhuyi (From Idealism to Empiricism) (Xianggang: Sanlian shudian, 1992); Gu Zhun, Gu Zhun wenji (Collected Works of Gu Zhun) (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1994). 34. Xia Zhongyi, “Lusuo zai dangdai Zhongguo de yingxiang: cong sixiangshi kan Wang Yuanhua chonggu ‘shehui qiyuelun’” (“The Influence of Rousseau in Contemporary China: Reading Wang Yuanhua’s Revaluation of the ‘Social Contract Theory’ from Intellectual History”), Tansuo yu Zhengming (Exploration and Contention), no. 1 (2011): 10. 35. Ibid., 11-12; Xia Zhongyi, “Lusuo zai dangdai Zhongguo de yingxiang: cong sixiangshi kan Wang Yuanhua chonggu ‘shehui qiyuelun,’” part 2, 56. 36. Xu Youyu, “The Debates between Liberalism and the New Left in China since the 1990s,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 34, no. 3 (2003): 6-17. 37. Gu Zhun, Gu Zhun wenji, p. 370. On democracy in the Greek city-state, see his Xila Chengbang zhidu (The Greek Polis System) (Beijing: Zhongguo kexue shehui chubanshe, 1982). 38. Fan Yan, “Zuowei fangfa de Lusuo: xiandai Zhongguo bainian Lusuoxue de fansi,” pp. 160-168. 39. Xia Zhongyi, “Lusuo zai dangdai Zhongguo de yingxiang: cong sixiangshi kan Wang Yuanhua chonggu ‘shehui qiyuelun,’” part 1, 9-10; part 2, 56. 40. See chapter seven of The Social Contract. 41. Wang Yuanhua, “Tan shehui qiyuelun,” p. 41. 42. Ibid. 43. Christopher Bertram, “Jean Jacques Rousseau,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/rousseau. Accessed 2 November 2016. 44. Xia Zhongyi, “Lusuo zai dangdai Zhongguo de yingxiang: cong sixiangshi kan Wang Yuanhua chonggu ‘shehui qiyuelun,’” Tansuo yu Zhengming (Exploration and Contention), no. 2 (2011): 57-59. 45. Xia Zhongyi, “Lusuo zai dangdai Zhongguo de yingxiang: cong sixiangshi kan Wang Yuanhua chonggu ‘shehui qiyuelun,’” Tansuo yu Zhengming (Exploration and Contention), no. 3 (2011): 60. 46. Gu Zhun, Cong lixiang zhuyi dao jingyan zhuyi (From idealism to empiricism) (Xianggang: Sanlian shudian, 1992). 47. Zhu Xueqin, “For a Chinese Liberalism,” 87-93. 48. Ibid., 93. 49. Ibid. 50. Yuan He, “Yige ren de Lusuo: Ping Zhu Xueqin de Lusuo yanjiu” (“One Man’s Rousseau: Criticizing Zhu Xueqin’s Rousseau Research”), Kaifang Shidai (Open Times), no. 1 (2004): 64-74. 51. Zhu, Daode lixiangguo de fumie, p. 12. 52. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds. Gü nther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 24- 25. Weber discerned two other types of action, namely, “affectual” and “traditional” action. See ibid., pp. 4-5. 53. Zhu, Daode lixiangguo de fumie, p. 317.

13 54. Zhu Xueqin, “Jiaoshi yu diguo yizhi de zhidu: Lusuo zhengzhi zhexue fenxi” (“The Institution of Church and State as One—An Analysis of Rousseau’s Political Philosophy”), Ershiyi Shiji (Twenty-first Century), no. 10 (1993): 106-118. 55. See Louis Althusser, , Rousseau, Marx: Politics and History (London: Verso, 1982). 56. Zhu, “Jiaoshi yu diguo yizhi de zhidu: Lusuo zhengzhi zhexue fenxi,” 118. 57. Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). 58. Gloria Davies, Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 59. Cui Zhiyuan, “Lusuo xinlun,” (“New Discourse on Rousseau”), Dushu (Reading) no. 7 (1996): 45-55. 60. Ibid., 54. 61. Ernst Cassirer, “The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. John T. Scott, Vol. 1, pp. 62-63, 68, 72.

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