A Pair of Contemporary Chinese Thinkers

A Pair of Contemporary Chinese Thinkers

 by Lostalley

WANG, Hui（汪暉), a history and literature professor of Qinghua University, is a scholar of international recognition. He was chosen as one of World Top 100 Public Intellectuals by the influential American magazine Foreign Policy in 2008 and received the prestigious Italian Luca Pacioli Award (named after Leonardo da Vinci’s collaborator, mathematician Pacioli) in 2013. Wang explains his antithesis on the universality of Western thought as follows:

 “This pursuit of universality is also directly demonstrated in modern thought and its schematization of knowledge. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost all fields of knowledge in China were reconstructed when confronted with Western thought. I have summed up this process of reconstruction as the replacement of the heavenly principle (tianli天理) based on Confucianism and its values by the new general principle (gongli公理) based on modern science. Nonetheless, the fall of the view of the world based on heavenly principle and the rise of the scientific world view was not a simple relationship of rise and fall, but a coexistence, with each permeating the other......This is the moment of the collapse of World History, and at the same time the moment of rethinking world history.”

I glanced over some of Wang’s best-known works and realize that he deconstructs modernity by replacing Europe-centric perspectives with China-centric ones. His main point is that China's path to follow the West is unsustainable and the remedy is not becoming another hegemony like US but choosing a benign model of development, i.e., economic rebalancing, political restructuring, military restricting via a pan-Asian cultural coercion with Chinese characteristics. Wang’s eminence may have more to do with Western purposes than Chinese applications because his theory simultaneously suits the agenda of West's left and right. His call for reinforcing socialist welfare and equality resonates with Western liberals and his appeal to soft power instead of military confrontation to incorporate China into the existing world order soothes suspicious minds of Western military-industrial complex. But for his theory to work, externally, US has to demilitarize to the point of retracting from its overseas military bases and refrain from meddling globally, thus making it possible for a non-violent framework to mediate world’s conflicts; internally, China has to overhaul its existing political structure to blend market economy with plan one, redistributing the wealth of 30 years evenly and peacefully. Unfortunately, the 21st Century Capitalism would not concede without a fight, just as WWI and WWII repeatedly proves capitalism’s triumphant path only with the interruptions of violent revolutions and wars between capitalist alpha dogs. For China alone to act as a savior in a world of increasingly globalizing capitalism enforced with its two wings: cultural indoctrination and military domination, is a battle between David and Goliath. Although I like the morality of Wang's theory, reality makes me skeptical. Wang’s “New Left” lofty idea defies the gravity of greed and can’t fly high and long, but the label wears fittingly for his academic statue in a Western mind, albeit its utility within the Chinese context.

ZHAI, Zhenming （翟振明), is a professor of philosophy at Zhongshan University and former assistant professor of philosophy at Muhlenberg College in America. I found his book titled "Get Real---a Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality" enlightening. "The Radical Choice and Moral Theory" by him is a daring philosophical endeavor. Unlike Wang whose academic training is solely in liberal arts (literature and history), Zhai's in engineering and philosophy. This cross-disciplinary training makes reading of his theory-building a joyride. His analysis of complex issues is like a hot knife cutting through cheese. He asserts with verve and argues with clarity. He makes radical claims but backs up with solid facts and lucid insights. I quote: 

 “We can never recreate the human mind through artificial intelligence. But we can recreate the whole empirical world through VR (Virtual Reality).......We have to die regardless. But we can achieve immortality in a mitigated sense: our personhood as composed of meaning-complexes goes beyond experiential contents of our life. Since VR makes us more creative, it also enables us to project a richer personhood beyond our lifetime. Cyberspace is therefore a habitat of humanitude. It will allow us to participate in a process of the ultimate re-creation of our entire civilization.”

Prof. Zhai’s intellectual prowess was demonstrated when he confronted Neo-Pragmatism (or Linguistic Pragmatism) founder, Richard Rorty with his own Transcendentalism in 2004 at Zhongshan University of China.

04/13/2015, Maryland