Connections Between Confucianism and Democracy in Xu Fuguanʼs Thought: An Intercultural Hermeneutics

Title

Connections Between Confucianism and Democracy in Xu Fuguanʼs Thought: An Intercultural Hermeneutics

Author

Diana Arghirescu

Page

129-172

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.201812_15(2).0005

Abstract

This essay investigates the cultural presuppositions of the innovative way in which Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, answers a major question concerning Chinese culture, asked by Chinese intellectuals since the May Fourth Movement: how best to approach the modernization of China. In the present analysis, I argue that to this end, Xu Fuguan systematically undertook a two-dimensional research project: first, coming to a genuinely reconstructive understanding of the initially Western notion of democracy from within the core of Chinese tradition (Confucianism); second, based on this understanding, building a new historical interpretation of the Chinese past (Confucian thought), thus redefining the Contemporary New Confucians’ relation with their own tradition. Both dimensions are cross-cultural, and my intention is to explore in particular a facet of his work, which has not been previously addressed: Xu Fuguan’s project as an act of cultural hospitality.

Keyword

Xu Fuguan, Hsiao Kungchuan, Paul Tillich, Charles Taylor, Cultural Presuppositions, Interculturalism, Confucianism, Democracy

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