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Historical Significance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Joseph R. Levenson
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Extract

Intonation matters, in English as well as in Chinese. We may describe an item in the human record as historically (really) significant, or as (merely) historically significant. The distinction is between an empirical judgment of fruitfulness in time and a normative judgment of aridity in the here and now.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 8 , Issue 32 , December 1960 , pp. 17 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. Fukui Kojun, Gendai Chugoku shiso ("Recent Chinese Thought") (Tokyo, I955), p. I5.

2. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History (New York, I957), p. 45.

3. See Joseph R. Levenson, "The Amateur Ideal in Ming and Early Ch'ing Culture: Evidence from Painting," in John K. Fairbank (ed.), Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago, I957), pp. 320-4I; and Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley, I958), chap. ii.

4. See Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, "Tai Tung-yüan sheng-jih erh-pai nien chi-nien hui yüan-ch'i" ("The Origins of the Conference To Commemorate the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Tai-Chen"), Yin-ping-shih ho-chi ("Collected Works of the Ice-Drinker's Studio") (Shanghai, I936), wen-chi XIV, 38-40.

5. See Lu Hsün, "A Madman's Diary," Selected Works of Lu Hsün (Peking, I957), I, 8-2I.

6. Nietzsche, p. I7.

7. Lu Hsün, "Random Thoughts (47)," Selected Works, II, 47.

8. Lu Hsün, "Sudden Notions (6)," Selected Works, II, I22-23.

9. See Levenson, "The Suggestiveness of Vestiges: Confucianism and Monarchy at the Last," in David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright (eds.), Confucianism in Action (Stanford, Calif., I959), pp. 244-67.

10. See Joseph R. Levenson, "Redefinition of Ideas in Time: The Chinese Classics and History," Far Eastern Quarterly, XV (May, I956), 399-404; and Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, pp. 90-94.

11. For a fuller discussion of historical scholarship as historical evidence, the "placing" of the Chinese Communists by their studies of the past (including—incidental to their con cern with periodization, that is, process, and the isolation of a "people's tradition"—their rehabilitation of non-Marxist radical iconoclasts' old antipathies, like Chinese medicine and classically enshrined institutions), see Joseph R. Levenson, "History under Chairman Mao," Soviet Survey, No. 24, April-June, I958), pp. 32-37; and Levenson, "Ill Wind in the ‘Well-Field' : The Erosion of the Confucian Ground of Controversy," in Arthur F. Wright (ed.), The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford, I960).

12. C. P. Fitzgerald, Flood Tide in China (London, I958), pp. 20-2I.