The Dawn of Contemporary China: Conflicting Interpretations of the Late Ming Thoughts

Title

The Dawn of Contemporary China: Conflicting Interpretations of the Late Ming Thoughts

Author

Rur-bin YANG

Page

1-44

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.201906_16(1).0001

Abstract

　　When contemporary scholars deal with issues concerning Chinese modernity, they tend to trace back to the late Ming discourses. Examples include the Chinese left-wing scholars’ sprouts of capitalism, the Neo-Confucianists’ development of conscience, and Shimada Kenji and Mizoguchi Yūzō’s “the theories of modern thinking”.
　　This article examines “the sprouts of capitalism” and “the development of conscience” and reveals the important social-economic background of the two accounts. It also manifests the underlying relations between mode of economic production and intellectual history. My research, moreover, takes the perspective of Neo-Confucianists and discusses their standpoint on the plurality of modernity. Finally, I argue that Neo-Confucianists proposed more comprehensive ways of looking at Chinese modernity.

Keyword

The Sprouts of Capitalism, The Development of Conscience, The Theories of Modern Thinking, Hou Wailu, Shimada Kenji, Mou Tsung-san

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