Table Of ContentThe Self-Assertion of Chinese Academia
and Marxist Philosophy
From a Marxist philosophical perspective, this collection of essays investi-
gates the maturing self-consciousness and self-assertion of Chinese aca-
demia, especially within the humanities and social sciences, permitting more
penetrating insights and critical engagement with the social reality of China.
The author elaborates on the relationship between Hegel and Marx’s phi-
losophies and their concepts of reality, thereby accounting for the historic
and philosophical conditions of the autonomy of Chinese academia. Drawing
on intellectual resources from both Eastern and Western archives, including
phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, Western Marxism, and China’s
pacifist tradition, the book refutes Huntington’s speculation about Chinese
imperialism and delineates how China’s development can contribute to a fun-
damental critique of capitalist civilisation and a new paradigm of global
governance. In addition, the book challenges the thinking of Chinese neo-
liberals and nationalist-conservatives and their understandings of the history
and social reality of China. Hence, the author advocates a reconstruction of
the spiritual and intellectual realm within society based on Marxism, in order
to counter Sinophobia, neo-liberalism, and nationalism at the same time.
The book will appeal to readers interested in social and political philoso-
phy, philosophy of history, Marxism, and China studies.
WU Xiaoming is Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University. He specialises
in Marxist philosophy, German Idealism, philosophical hermeneutics, and
philosophy of history. He is also a leading scholar elaborating on the concept
of social reality in the context of China.
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The Self-assertion of Chinese Academia and Marxist Philosophy
WU Xiaoming
For more information, please visit https://www.routledge.com/China-
Perspectives/book-series/CPH
The Self-Assertion of Chinese
Academia and Marxist
Philosophy
WU Xiaoming
This book is published with financial support from the Chinese
Academic Foreign Translation Project.
First published in English 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 WU Xiaoming
Translated by ZHANG Yin, ZHANG Shuangli, ZHANG Zhipeng,
ZHU Xinxian
The right of WU Xiaoming to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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English Version by permission of Fudan University Press.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wu, Xiaoming, 1957- author. | Zhang, Yin (Translator), translator. |
Zhang, Shuangli, translator. | Zhang, Zhipeng (Translator), translator.
| Zhu, Xinxian, translator.
Title: The self-assertion of Chinese academia and Marxist philosophy /
Xiaoming Wu ; translated by Yin Zhang, Shuangli Zhang, Zhipeng Zhang,
Xinxian Zhu.
Other titles: Lun Zhongguo xue shu de zi wo zhu zhang. English.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series:
China perspectives | Translation of: Lun Zhongguo xue shu de zi wo zhu
zhang. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021016207 (print) | LCCN 2021016208 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032102498 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032103327 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003214830 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Learning and scholarship--China--History. | Philosophy,
Chinese--History. | Philosophy, Marxist--China--History.
Classification: LCC AZ791 .W82613 2022 (print) | LCC AZ791 (ebook) | DDC
001.20951--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016207
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016208
ISBN: 978-1-032-10249-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-10332-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-21483-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003214830
Typeset in Times New Roman
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Contents
Preface vi
1 On the self-assertion of Chinese academia 1
2 On the autonomous construction of the
contemporary Chinese academic discourse system 15
3 On the spiritual reconstruction of contemporary
China and its intellectual resources 28
4 On China’s pacifist path of development and its
world-historical significance 47
5 The “Chinese school” and its academic discourse power 68
6 How can the “Chinese school” become possible? 72
7 Marx’s conception of reality and the Chinese path 77
8 On the Hegelian origin of Marx’s doctrine 98
9 Marx’s theory of the historical path and its concretisation
programme 113
10 The “Chinese solution” and the opening up of a
new type of civilisation of global governance 134
Bibliography 149
Index 152
Preface
Thanks to the active encouragement of several friends, I have had the oppor-
tunity to compile and publish a collection of essays written in recent years on
contemporary Chinese scholarship. The thrust of these essays is to reflect on
the humanities and social sciences in today’s China in general so as to grasp
their current state in depth and to speak on that basis about the major turn
they are undergoing.
This turn is, most briefly, the breaking away of our humanities and social
sciences from their long-standing “apprenticeship” and their achieving self-
assertion. Because of the absolute right of modernity at this particular stage,
Chinese academia since modern times has generally entered an apprentice-
ship to foreign scholarship. There is no doubt that this apprenticeship has
given rise to an unprecedented process of massive learning from abroad, and
that the resulting achievements have been for our scholarship not only highly
beneficial but also fruitful. But the true maturity of any academia is always
accompanied by its ability to gradually break away from its apprenticeship
and begin to acquire its own self-assertion, thus becoming a so-called auton-
omous or self-authorised academia.
In what way are we to understand this major turn? Obviously, it cannot be
a goal that can be achieved easily, in a pompous weave of rhetoric. If the
greatest motivation for such a turn comes from the magnificent historic prac-
tice that China has carried out since modern times, then, for the humanities
and social sciences in today’s China, to get rid of apprenticeship and to
acquire self-assertion cannot but be a difficult intellectual task, one that can
only be achieved through the hard training of the “uniting of cultures.” When
this intellectual task remains completely in obscurity, it is impossible for the
humanities and social sciences in China to put forward authentic projects for
the future.
This intellectual task manifests itself first of all as a critical departure from
the position of subjective consciousness, which is most intensively repre-
sented by “external reflection” in contemporary forms of knowledge.
So-called external reflection is always a raisonnement that moves hither and
yon without ever penetrating the substantial content of things; nonetheless,
it knows general principles and knows how to apply them abstractly to any
content. It is not difficult to see that external reflection, which only knows
Preface vii
how to impose abstract principles a priori on any content, is what we usually
call dogmatism. If we witness such things in previous dogmatic Marxism,
external reflection is not only still prevalent in Chinese academia today but
has almost hardened into an intellectual norm extensively. This situation
stems partly from the untouched nature of intellectualist metaphysics and
more from the long apprenticeship of Chinese academia. For apprenticeship,
while it makes us obtain all kinds of ready-made knowledge uncritically, also
makes us most liable to form and consolidate external reflection divorced
from substantial content. Although abstract principles of external reflection
seem to have the most solid appearance of objectivity, their essence is pre-
cisely the subjectivism that separates “ought” from “is.” Just as he rightly
understands dogmatism as subjectivism, Hegel calls those who only know
external reflection “laymen” and sees it as a modern form of sophism, an ill-
ness of the Romantic mind and its feeble inwardness.
For the academic turn in today’s China, if the first step of this intellectual
task is to get rid of its apprenticeship, to depart critically from the position of
subjective consciousness, then the fundamental requisite for its acquiring
self-assertion lies in deeply penetrating and capturing the social reality of
today’s China. This is an even more important and difficult intellectual task,
because “reality” is never something that can be given to us directly through
perception (which is merely common “existence” or “facts”), as some easy
and groundless opinions assume; on the contrary, reality /Wirklichkeit/ refers
to the unity of existence and essence, to the necessity in the course of devel-
opment. Therefore, Hegel’s logic places the concept of reality in the “Doctrine
of Essence” rather than in the “Doctrine of Being.” In Marx’s view, if the
appearing forms /Erscheinungsformen/ and the essence of things are to merge
directly into one, then all science will be superfluous. It is easy to see that, in
order to grasp what is essential in existence and what is necessary in the pro-
cess of unfolding, theory is needed and should reach the principled height. It
is also easy to see that, when the pivot of Chinese academia’s self-assertion is
established on the basis of the “social reality of today’s China,” this reality
cannot but be decisively linked to both the contemporary world and the
Chinese tradition, for it is in these links that the reality itself begins to acquire
its essential and necessary determinations. In this sense, the self-assertion of
Chinese academia means not only that “scholarship that speaks the Chinese
language” should study Chinese issues and grasp Chinese experiences, but
also that this scholarship should truly penetrate the realm of essentiality and
necessity so that the social reality of today’s China can strike /treffen/ us in its
revealed form.
For the humanities and social sciences in China, the two above-mentioned
intellectual tasks are not separate from each other; rather, they are actually
one and the same thing, just as the breaking away of Chinese academia from
apprenticeship is one and the same thing as its acquiring self-assertion. Social
reality simply cannot come into view anywhere where the subjective position
of external reflection has not been suspended. Likewise, subjectivist scholar-
ship in which external reflection is a fundamental feature is inevitable when
viii Preface
social reality is yet to be grasped; in such scholarship, Chinese issues and
Chinese experiences cannot even be truly constituted. Therefore, the turn of
Chinese academia towards self-assertion must be accompanied by a depar-
ture from the subjective position of external reflection and, through this
departure, the active blossoming of the substantial content of social life in
our scholarly activities. The intellectual resources for this purpose will be
related above all to Hegel and Marx, for it is these two thinkers who blaze a
way to understanding human social reality through their most uncompromis-
ing and continuous critiques of the viewpoint of subjective consciousness.
Although Marx thoroughly corrects Hegel on the question of reality itself, it
is precisely this correction that saves the great legacy of Hegelian philoso-
phy—a legacy whose core lies for us in the escape from the subjectivism of
external reflection through the substantial content of social life and its com-
prehensive concretisation. If the historic practice of the present China is urg-
ing that academia built on it gradually get rid of its apprenticeship and
acquire self-assertion, and if this self-assertion can never be satisfied with
empty and loose bravado, then the legacies of Hegel and Marx—as a certain
philosophical orientation or methodological marker—will be essentially
important for this turn.
The above account can be seen as an outline, a basic approach that the
various discussions gathered in this collection largely follow and sometimes
repeat. Although the content of the essays is mostly tentative and explor-
atory, I still wish to participate in the historic project of Chinese academia’s
major turn in this way. For I sincerely believe that as long as this turn takes
place and develops, the humanities and social sciences in China will be able
to firmly assert themselves, thus making the learners thoughtful and critical,
and ushering in the blossoming of Chinese civilisation in all academic fields
in the course of its rejuvenation.
WU Xiaoming
Midsummer 2016
1 On the self-assertion of Chinese
academia
For the humanities and social sciences in the present China, a significant
reflective self-awareness is gradually taking form. This still-developing reflec-
tion is most intimately concerned with the self-understanding of Chinese
academia, namely the basic appraisal of its present situation and overall
nature: Is it autonomous or heteronomous? Is it self-assertive or reliant on
foreign authorities? While such questions are indeed deeply rooted in the his-
toric practice of the present China, they will with no doubt directly become
major issues for theory which will be increasingly attended to by the humani-
ties and social sciences in China and be constantly tested.
One
Every authentic academia has its own developmental trajectory. Almost
every mature academia with great achievements will undergo a decisive turn
in its course of development, that is, it will gradually get rid of its “appren-
ticeship” to external academia and thus propose self-assertion or its own
appeal for autonomy. What we call self-assertion or the appeal for autonomy
means that certain academia has critically got rid of external authorities and
is “self-authorising.” Obviously, only when academia has got rid of its
apprenticeship to its external counterpart does it begin to embark on a
mature stage. It is equally obvious that only when academia has firmly
acquired self-assertion are its achievements essentially its own and thus pos-
sibly great.
Modern Western philosophy begins with Descartes's “cogito.” What does
this decisive beginning mean? It means no more than that philosophy has got
rid of its dependence on philosophical theology and has allowed thought—
rational thought—to acquire self-assertion. Thanks to this, Hegel regards
Descartes as a bold spirit “who re-commenced the whole subject from the
very beginning and constituted afresh the groundwork on which philosophy
is based.”1 Descartes's principle is thought, or the thought that proceeds from
itself. It is on the basis of this cornerstone that modern philosophy acquires
self-assertion and enters its prosperous time. In stark contrast to medieval
philosophical theology, modern philosophy takes the thought that proceeds
from itself (or internality as such) as the most fundamental foothold, and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003214830-1
