Kang Yuwei on the origins of Western Civilisation
https://doi.org/10.53658/RW2022-2-1(3)-36-52
Abstract
The article is devoted to the research in the shaping of concept of civilizational development made by the prominent Chinese philosopher Kang Youwei (1858-1927). The vision of Western civilization from the point of view of a Confucian thinker is considered on the basis of the material “Travels to Italy” (1904). Kang Youwei argued that Unity is the basic law of history. From Kang’s point of view, the Roman Empire was an example of a state, which was founded according to the laws of the evolutionary development of nature and society. 19th century Italy was seen as a young state that which had not yet overcome the consequences of the “birth trauma”. Shaping his views within the Sino centric paradigm, Kang Youwei considered the world civilization as a single evolutionary process of ascending from barbarism to the heights of culture, respectively, the positive experience of the West can be used to correct China’s shortcomings and return a high political and geostrategic status to the country.
About the Author
D. E. Martynov
Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
DMITRY E. MARTYNOV – Dr.Sci. (History), Professor of the Department of Altai and Chinese Studies
420111, Russia, Kazan, Pushkin st., 1/55
References
1. Alimov, I.A., Kravtsova, M.E. (2014) The history of Classical Chinese literature from the antiquity to 13th century: Poetry. Prose. [Istoriya klassicheskoii kitaiiskoii literatury s drevnosti i do XIII c.: poesiya, proza,] Saint-Petersburg: St. Petersburg Center for Oriental Studies Publ. (In Russian)
2. Alitto, G.S., Liang Shuming (2010). Has Man a Future?: Dialogues with the Last Confucian. Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press.
3. Brusadelli, F. (2020) Confucian concord: reform, utopia and global teleology in Kang Youwei’s Datong Shu. Leiden – Boston: Brill.
4. Elman, B.A. (2010), “The Failures of Contemporary Chinese Intellectual History,” Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 371-391.
5. Findeisen, R.D. (2000) “In the hutong of Naples. From Chinese Travelogues of the Republican Era,” Cina, No. 28, p. 89-106.
6. Hsiao Kung-ch’üan. (1975) A modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927. Seattle, London: University of Washington Press.
7. Kobzev,A.I. (2002), Philosophy of Chinese Neo-Confucianism[Filosofiya kitaiiskogo neokonfutsianstva].. Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura. (In Russian)
8. Kuang Bolin (1980), Kang Youwei de zhexue sixiang [Kang Youwei’s Philosophical Thought]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. (In Chinese)
9. Martynov, D.E. (2010), Kang Youwei: A Biography[Kan Youwei: Zhizneopisanie . Kang Youwei: Biografiya]. Kazan: Institut Istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstan imeni Sh. Mardzhani. (In Russian)
10. Martynov, D.E. (2014), “Travels of Kang Youwei, Western civilization and modernization of China [“Puteshestvie Kan Youweiya, zapadnaya tsivilizatsiya I modernizatsiya Kitaiya” V puti za kitaiskuyu stenu. K 60-letiyu A.I.Kobzeva. Uchenyi zapiski otdela Kitaiya],” On the way to the Chinese wall. To the 60th anniversary of A.I. Kobzev. Moscow: Institut vostokovedeniya Rossiyskoy Akademii nauk, pp. 296-306. (In Russian)
11. Martynov, D.E. (2017), The Idea of Great Unity (Datong) in the History of Chinese Social Thought at the Turn of the 19th – 20th Cent. and Kang Youwei[Ideya velikogo edineniya. (Da tun) v istorii kitaiskoi obshestvennoi mysli rubezha XIX – XX vv. I Kan You Wei]. Kazan: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstan. (In Russian)
12. Wang Mingming (2019), “The Ambit of Flourishing Peace: Kang Youwei’s Perspective of Eurasian Civilizations as Seen in “The Travelogue of Italy,” Chinese Journal of Sociology, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 1-56. (In Chinese)
Review
For citations:
Martynov D.E. Kang Yuwei on the origins of Western Civilisation. Russia & World: Sc. Dialogue. 2022;(1):36-52. https://doi.org/10.53658/RW2022-2-1(3)-36-52
Views:
476
Email this article 