Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea

Shuchen Xiang

Published by Princeton University Press 2023

Chinese Cosmopolitanism

The History and Philosophy of an Idea

Shuchen Xiang

Volume 13 in the series The Princeton-China Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691242712

Overview
Contents

About this book

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference

Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism.

Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race.

Author / Editor information

Shuchen Xiang is assistant professor in the Institute of Foreign Philosophy and the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Peking University. She is the author of A Philosophical Defense of Culture: Perspectives from Confucianism and Cassirer, the coeditor of The Islamic-Confucian Synthesis in China, and the translator of History of Chinese Philosophy Through its Key Terms.

Reviews

“The author succinctly connects Eurocentric metaphysics and ontology to the racialized discourses that shaped European imperialism, and she compellingly shows how Chinese philosophies provide alternative frameworks for cosmopolitanism. One of the book’s most original contributions is the author’s critique of sinological methods through the lens of critical race theory. This book is timely and important.”—Leah Kalmanson, University of North Texas

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. A Brief History of Chinese Cosmopolitanism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
2. The Barbarian in the Western Imagination and History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
3. Chinese Processual Holism and Its Attitude toward “Barbarians” and Nonhumans Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
4. Race, Metaphysical Determinism, and the Great Chain of Being Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
5. The Metaphysics of Harmony and the Metaphysics of Colonialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
6. The Metaphysics of Harmony in Practice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
A note on the type Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258