Editor's Note
Professor Zhang Hao, a well-known scholar of Chinese intellectual history and an academician of Taiwan's Academia Sinica, died in the United States on April 20, 2022.
Professor Xu Jilin said that there were three teachers who had the greatest influence on him, Mr. Chen Xulu let him know what historiography is, Mr. Wang Yuanhua gave him a spiritual personality, and Professor Zhang Hao told him how to study the history of ideas. This public account republishes the interview with Professor Xu Jilin in Shenzhen Business Daily to express its deep sorrow for Professor Zhang Hao.
01
Interviewer / Xia Heshun
As early as 1993, as one of the "Overseas China Studies Series", jiangsu People's Publishing House published Zhang Hao's book "Liang Qichao and the Transition of Chinese Thought". In 2002, the Shanghai Education Publishing House "Xuewen Series", included in the "Zhang Hao Self-Selected Works", curated by Professor Xu Jilin, is the earliest copyrighted Zhang Hao's works published in the mainland. Xu Jilin said in an interview with this reporter that Shanghai Sanhui Book Culture Company had planned to publish three of Mr. Zhang Hao's books: "Dark Consciousness and Democratic Tradition," "Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis," and "Liang Qichao's Transition with Chinese Thought." This time he added "Martyr Spirit and Critical Consciousness -- An Analysis of Tan Sitong's Thought," which was published by the Central Compilation and Publishing House, which presented the whole picture of Zhang Hao's works to mainland readers in a relatively complete way and aroused heated discussion in the academic circles. It is reported that the Guangdong People's Publishing House also recently published Zhang Hao's "Dark Consciousness and Exploration of the Times."
Born in 1937 in Chu County ,present-day Chuzhou City, Anhui Province, Zhang Hao graduated from the Department of History of National Taiwan University in his early years and was deeply influenced by Yin Haiguang's liberal ideas. In 1959, Zhang Hao received a master's degree and a doctorate degree from Harvard University in the United States. Among Harvard professors, Benjamin Schwartz had the greatest influence on him, and his doctoral dissertation was directed by Professor Schwartz, which was later revised and published, that is, Mr. Zhang Hao's famous work "Liang Qichao and the Transition of Chinese Thought: 1890-1907". Professor Xu Jilin believes that from this work, we can see his ideological framework, there were several doctoral dissertations overseas with Liang Qichao as the theme, and This one by Mr. Zhang Hao is the best. Later, he taught in the history department of Ohio State University until his retirement, and Xu Jilin described his quietness, using the word "from one to the end", saying that he did not change several schools like Mr. Yu Yingshi. Most of his writings and articles were written while teaching at Ohio State University. He also participated in the writing of the Cambridge History of China in the Late Qing Dynasty.
Most of Mr. Zhang Hao's original works are written in English, and his Chinese editions are translated by different translators, such as "Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis" translated by Gao Like and Wang Yue, and "Liang Qichao's Transition with Chinese Thought" translated by Cui Zhihai and Ge Fuping. Professor Xu Jilin introduced that most of the translators are scholars who study the history of Chinese thought, belong to the expert translation, basically can do Xinyada, can convey the original intention of the author, but the early books because there is no copyright, the translation is faster, and some translations are rougher. Xu Jilin believes that Mr. Zhang Hao's best Chinese writings are his later original works, and the expression of words is very exquisite, such as "Martyr Spirit and Critical Consciousness - Analysis of Tan Sitong's Thought" Most of the articles are written in Chinese, and several articles on Neo-Confucianism are translated by Taiwanese scholars, which are very powerful and expressed very well. Xu Jilin said that there is a gap between Chinese and English, and if he writes in Chinese, his grasp will be more accurate.
Professor Zhang Hao attended the Honorary Dinner at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2005
Xu Jilin said that about bilingual writing, Mr. Zhang Hao told him an interesting story. The famous liberal thinker Zhang Foquan, who published "Freedom and Human Rights" in Taiwan, is considered a classic of Chinese liberalism, and Mr. Zhang is also known for his meticulous logic, and he later went to Harvard University as a visiting scholar and once said to Mr. Zhang Hao: "If you write an article on the history of ideas, you should write it in English, because the Chinese is not rigorous and the expression is not clear." When Zhang Hao relayed this, he did not think so, but Xu Jilin thought that the meaning was worth pondering. Xu Jilin said that Mr. Zhang Hao received very rigorous thinking training at Harvard, and even if he wrote Chinese papers, his ideas and expressions were very rigorous and had a strong internal logic.
Xu Jilin said that Mr. Zhang Hao's works are too thick to be dissolved, the density is too high, and a 10,000-word article can do more than a dozen topics, which shows how high the density is. Although his writings are not many, almost every one of them is very influential, and there are very few water articles, which is not easy. Most of Mr. Zhang Hao's writings are short and concise, but the questions raised are very thick, and the conclusions are derived through step-by-step and meticulous logical analysis, which is his characteristic. He has left behind a series of heavy works, and the questions he raises are also topics that researchers of modern Chinese intellectual history cannot avoid today.
The dark consciousness and the era of transformation, including his exposition of Neo-Confucianism, later became classics. In 2007, on the seventieth birthday of Mr. Zhang Hao, Mr. Wang Fansen organized and published a collection of Zhushou papers, the title of which was "The Transitional Period in the History of Modern Chinese Thought", Mr. Wang keenly extracted more than a dozen topics from this paper, invited Mr. Zhang Hao's friends, students and juniors, each to do a topic, I was assigned the task, is about the intellectuals in the era of transformation, and later I wrote the article "Rebuilding the Social Center of Gravity: The Intellectual Society of Modern China".
Xu Jilin believes that Mr. Zhang Hao is a hedgehog-type scholar, the logic is very rigorous, the discussion is interlocked, Mr. Zhang Hao's works are too rigorous, just like solving mathematical equations, more professional readers will experience the meaning of chewing, and rely on their own imagination to play, but the general reader will feel boring. Because the logic is too strong, some wonderful fragment ideas have been filtered out and cannot be integrated. Xu Jilin believes that sometimes the place where the article shines is often those prism fragments. He said that during the interview with Mr. Zhang, he sometimes heard some wonderful inspirational fragments, but they were often filtered out in the article. Xu Jilin, who claims to be a scholar between hedgehogs and foxes, can learn from Mr. Zhang Hao's logical and rigorous writings, and sometimes write fox-type divergent articles. Xu Jilin hoped that Mr. Zhang Hao would write a memoir in his later years and express his ideas in another way, which he believed would be a precious historical material for the history of ideas.
02
Q
Xia Heshun: You came across Mr. Zhang Hao's book "Dark Consciousness and Democratic Tradition" in the mid-1990s, more than 20 years ago. Mr. Zhang's mentor is Benjamin Schwartz, a renowned master of intellectual history studies, who inherits the intellectual history research tradition of Harvard University. At that time, you wrote to Mr. Zhang to express your admiration for him, how did Mr. Zhang Hao's writings affect your academic research?
Xu Jilin: There are many famous scholars at home and abroad who study the history of Chinese thought, and I once wrote an article mentioning my three teachers, Wang Yuanhua, Chen Xulu and Zhang Hao. I was transferred from the study of intellectuals to the field of intellectual history, and I need to find a paradigm of research, Mr. Zhang Hao's research is very rigorous, delicate, grand in thinking, and its logical and interlocking argumentation method is exactly what I am pursuing. When I first came into contact with his writings, I felt like an electric shock: I felt that Mr. Zhang Hao's research ideas and methods were most suitable for me, so I began to communicate with him later.
Looking back, I have a conscious idea that doing academic research can have innovation and breakthroughs, but you must inherit a certain tradition, carry forward on this basis, and create your own style, and any really valuable innovation is not groundbreaking. There are various traditions in the history of ideas, and what I cherish the most is the research tradition pioneered by Professor Schwartz of Harvard University, which I call the history of ideas in the question. The study of intellectual history includes those who pay attention to historical documents, such as Mr. Ge Zhaoguang; there are also those that are combined with cultural history, such as Mr. Wang Fansen, Shi Huaci's research method is problem-oriented, and each of his articles and books has clear problems, developing ideas around the problems, and finally drawing conclusions. Such research has formed a strong tradition in the United States, and he has a group of outstanding students, such as Mo Zike, Tian Hao, Li Oufan, Lin Yusheng, etc., who are all researchers of Chinese intellectual history, and in my opinion, the person who can best get his Shi Huaci's true biography and carry it forward is Mr. Zhang Hao. My three teachers, Mr. Chen Xulu, gave me a lot of guidance during my graduate school years, Mr. Wang Yuanhua's influence on me was mainly on the spiritual level, and Mr. Zhang Hao had the greatest influence on me in the paradigm of intellectual history research. I think that Schwartz's problematic study of intellectual history has already broken its roots in the United States, and when Zhang Hao, Mo Zike, Lin Yusheng, and others retire, there will be no third-generation students, because after the end of the Cold War, the Chinese studies circles in the United States will not study intellectual history, but will turn to social history, cultural history, and other aspects. It is precisely this kind of problem-centered research that China needs, because China is still in a period of transition, and many issues are unresolved, which in turn can prompt us to think about China's social thought and history for more than a century, and this kind of intellectual history research method still has its value in China, which is also the value of Mr. Zhang Hao's work.
In 2005, Professor Zhang Hao and his wife were at the emeritus dinner
Q
Xia Heshun: You worked at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong for a year, when Mr. Zhang Hao happened to be teaching at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, so you had the opportunity to ask Mr. Zhang for help during this time and get the essence of his knowledge. What is your impression of Mr. Zhang? What type of scholar do you think he is?
Xu Jilin: Mr. Zhang Hao is not the same as Mr. Lin Yusheng, Tu Weiming and others, he is a pure scholar, very low-key, does not like to show his face, does not take the initiative to deal with the media, does not like to speak everywhere, and even attends academic seminars and publishes papers rarely, he just quietly does his own research. He stayed in Hong Kong for more than a decade, obscurity, and he was basically not seen in the media. But this is only the appearance, you can not say that he is a scholar in the study, from his writings you can feel a strong feeling, in my words, the Chinese intellectuals' home and country care. He was a historian of ideas, a Kantian contemplative philosopher.
I first met him in Hong Kong in 1988, when he retired from Ohio State University and was hired as a chair professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was busy and troubled by trivial matters, but he was constantly thinking about his own problems. In 1999, I worked at Chinese University for a year, and I took the subway from Chinese University to the University of Science and Technology on the Shores of Clearwater Bay to visit him, usually in the afternoon, where I had dinner and chatted with him. His life is very regular, because he has had heart surgery, and he can only eat a bowl of noodles without oil and salt, which everyone jokingly calls "Zhang Gong Noodles". Although he never wrote a chapter, I can feel the care in his heart, and he has always been concerned about the situation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and the world. He is polite to people, always maintains a kind distance, and is not the kind of scholar who makes people feel like a spring breeze, but when you have in-depth contact with him, you can feel the heat in his heart.
Q
Xia Heshun: Mr. Zhang Hao seems to rarely return to the mainland, and it seems that you have invited him to Shanghai.
Xu Jilin: In 2002, with the help of "Zhang Hao's Self-Selected Works" published in Shanghai, I invited him to East China Normal University to give a lecture, he also did a discussion at the Shanghai People's Publishing House, I accompanied the couple to Suzhou to play, that time he "indulged" himself once, enjoyed the food of Shanghai and Suzhou. During their time in Hong Kong, they quietly went to Hangzhou and other places, but they did not want to trouble anyone, they did not like the kind of style that echoed before and after, and he liked to live a kind of philosopher-style peaceful life. Mr. and Mrs. Zhang Hao now live in Washington, D.C., usa, and live with their daughter. They are very low-key, and he did not go to the meeting of academicians of the Academia Sinica this year. But his writings have remained, immortal, and few who do the history of modern Chinese thought can circumvent the questions he raises.
Professor Zhang Hao and Professor Xu Jilin
Q
Xia Heshun: Zhang Hao paid attention to the intellectual history of China's modern transition period, and wrote a series of shocking works such as Liang Qichao and China's Thought: 1890-1907, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Seeking Order and Meaning, 1890-1911, and Dark Consciousness and Democratic Tradition.
Xu Jilin: After he moved to Taiwan with his father in 1949, he always had a strong sense of greater China, and he has been thinking about a question: How did the Kuomintang lose the mainland and how did the Communist Party win the victory in the end? This is related to his family lineage, to his personal life experience. He once told me that when he studied in the history department of National Taiwan University, he could see very little mainland material, and when he went to Harvard University to study for a doctorate, he could see all kinds of mainland materials, and he was suddenly attracted and even fascinated by Mao Zedong's utopian ideals. When he met Lin Yusheng in the United States, he said to Lin: "Runzhi's thought is very attractive! Lin Yusheng was not quite impressed. Among the Chinese scholars in the United States, most of the more profound early years had a leftist experience, and later they suddenly woke up and realized that the revolution not only had a beautiful utopian side, but also a cruel and realistic side, and Zhang Hao also had such an emotional experience and mental journey.
After the Cultural Revolution on the mainland began, Zhang Hao began to reflect on the revolution, because he was doing research on the history of modern Chinese thought, and the question he was thinking about was also the question of Schwartz's research: Why did the Chinese revolution happen? Why are utopian ideals so appealing? During the Cold War, foreign scholars generally believed that the Chinese revolution was imported from the Soviet Union, and that it was the October Revolution that sent Marxism to China with the sound of a cannon, as if it had nothing to do with Chinese history. The work Schwartz and Zhang Hao had to do was to try to unearth the historical origins of the revolution. Zhang Hao's thinking about the Chinese revolution began in the late Qing Dynasty, and his later influential articles on the transitional years in the history of Chinese thought told that the late Qing Dynasty faced two crises - the social and political crisis and the crisis of spiritual order, under which the revolutionary passion and idealism of Chinese intellectuals were induced, from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Ming Dynasty, the Xinhai Revolution, the National Revolution and the CPC Revolution, these three revolutions had an internal development context, not a revolution imported from the outside.
Q
Xia Heshun: The Transition of Liang Qichao and Chinese Thought: 1890-1907 is a famous work by Mr. Zhang Hao, which was revised and published on the basis of his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. From the perspective of intellectual history, there are many works on Liang Qichao, and you think that he is the best among them, why?
Xu Jilin: Levinson, an authority on the history of Chinese thought at the University of California, Berkeley, is an authority on the study of Liang Qichao, and his famous view is that Liang Qichao's generation of Chinese intellectuals is intellectually oriented to the West, emotionally staying in tradition, and separating tradition from modernity, reason and emotion. Zhang Hao challenged this dichotomy, and through his research, he believed that Liang Qichao was not only emotionally but also intellectually contradictory in the face of Chinese and Western cultures, and he made a very delicate and layered analysis, which is Mr. Zhang Hao's superiority.
Q
Xia Heshun: Liang Qichao is an unavoidable figure in China's modern history, and Mr. Zhang Hao wrote "Liang Qichao's Transition with Chinese Thought" in addition to "Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis", which shows his importance to Liang. At the time of Liang Qichao's death, Hu Shi's elegy was "The Merit of Writing, the Shenzhou Revolution; Life Promise, Chinese Xinmin." He believed that Liang's "life's works are the most immortal" and "it is quite difficult to name one book after another", and he concluded that the "New People's Theory" can be regarded as the greatest contribution of Liang's life. Mr. Zhang Hao has a special chapter in his work to discuss Liang's Xinmin Theory, which is extremely heavy and the commentary is extremely complex, which can be said to be the same as Mr. Hu Shi's insight. Briefly speaking, how should we understand Liang Qichao's Xinmin Theory and how it affects our civic thinking today?
Xu Jilin: The influence of Liang Qichao's new people's theory on China was as profound as the influence of Fukuzawa's "Outline of Civilization" on the Meiji Restoration in Japan, and his series of articles influenced two generations of intellectuals, from the late Qing dynasty to the May Fourth generation. Looking back now, the various issues we are discussing today, all kinds of modern ideas, such as the masses, the state, the victory and defeat, freedom, autonomy, rights, obligations, public morality, private morality, etc., Liang Qichao has a pioneering exposition in the Xinmin Theory, and it is not copied from the Western concepts, but expounded in the context of the Chinese ideological system, some of which are creative misreadings, this is a text that cannot be bypassed, Mr. Zhang Hao made a key discussion of the Xinmin Theory in this book, and the truth is also here. Even today, "Xinmin Theory" is not outdated, I once opened a course, that is, to read "Xinmin Theory", every time I discussed one of the sections, that is, a problem, let the graduate students have a detailed discussion, the effect is very good. Classics are worth playing with over and over again.
Q
Xia Heshun: The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was a period of transformation for China, which is what Liang Qichao called "a change that has not occurred in a thousand years." With the expansion of the West, intellectuals are not only facing the collapse of the social and political order, but also facing the collapse of the traditional world, so the image of traditional knowledge molecules and their ideological connotations have undergone major changes. Zhang Hao's "Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis" selects Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, what are their typical significance and differences?
Xu Jilin: The case (case) studied by Mr. Zhang Hao is carefully selected, and there will definitely be conclusions after the study. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis examines four Chinese intellectuals of the transitional generation—Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei—each of whom represents a worldview that has allowed their ideas to develop beyond the reformist and revolutionary nationalism prevalent in China's intellectual circles. Their worldviews are characterized by a fusion of moral and spiritual intellectual tendencies. In the case of Kang Youwei and Liu Shipei, moral tendencies dominate their worldviews, while for Tan Sitong and Zhang Binglin, the main difference is spiritual tendencies. Mr. Zhang Hao's conclusion is refined, and these four people are two-two comparison cases, that is, four cases of comparative type. Even if you make a case, you must finally form an ideological structure, which is Mr. Zhang Hao's method of governance. This also inspired me a lot, when I instructed students to do doctoral dissertations, I repeatedly emphasized that there must be a whole explanation of individual cases, and cannot be randomly selected.
This book is highly abstract, Mr. Zhang does research on the history of modern and contemporary Chinese thought, the most admired in the industry is that he studies the changes in the history of ideas from within, he is very familiar with the history of ancient Chinese thought, from Song Ming Lixue, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming has a very clear understanding, not an informative fragment, but the overall context. I think that to do learning, we must have a sense of context, and how this context has developed must be understood in past lives and in this life. Although Mr. Zhang does not do the history of ancient Chinese thought, his understanding of ancient Chinese thought is very profound and penetrating. In this book, he analyzes the ideas inherited by these four people very thoroughly and is worth playing.
Q
Xia Heshun: Tan Si is also one of the "Six Gentlemen of Penghu", he once said: "All countries change the law, all of them are made from bloodshed, and there is no one in China today who bleeds because of the change of law, and the reason why this country is not prosperous." Yes, please start with the same heir! "We only know from traditional textbooks that he was a revolutionary martyr, but Mr. Zhang Hao, by analyzing the context of his ideological development, pointed out that he was not a nationalist, and his martyrdom was more out of piety to the illusion of reality, so he fearlessly went to death by opposing the existing socio-political order. What is the significance of his research method for the academic community?
Xu Jilin: There are many famous scholars at home and abroad who study the history of Chinese thought, and I once wrote an article mentioning my three teachers, Wang Yuanhua, Chen Xulu and Zhang Hao. I was transferred from the study of intellectuals to the field of intellectual history, and I need to find a paradigm of research, Mr. Zhang Hao's research is very rigorous, delicate, grand in thinking, and its logical and interlocking argumentation method is exactly what I am pursuing. When I first came into contact with his writings, I felt like an electric shock: I felt that Mr. Zhang Hao's research ideas and methods were most suitable for me, so I began to communicate with him later.
Looking back, I have a conscious idea that doing academic research can have innovation and breakthroughs, but you must inherit a certain tradition, carry forward on this basis, and create your own style, and any really valuable innovation is not groundbreaking. There are various traditions in the history of ideas, and what I cherish the most is the research tradition pioneered by Professor Schwartz of Harvard University, which I call the history of ideas in the question. The study of intellectual history includes those who pay attention to historical documents, such as Mr. Ge Zhaoguang; there are also those that are combined with cultural history, such as Mr. Wang Fansen, Shi Huaci's research method is problem-oriented, and each of his articles and books has clear problems, developing ideas around the problems, and finally drawing conclusions. Such research has formed a strong tradition in the United States, and he has a group of outstanding students, such as Mo Zike, Tian Hao, Li Oufan, Lin Yusheng, etc., who are all researchers of Chinese intellectual history, and in my opinion, the person who can best get his Shi Huaci's true biography and carry it forward is Mr. Zhang Hao. My three teachers, Mr. Chen Xulu, gave me a lot of guidance during my graduate school years, Mr. Wang Yuanhua's influence on me was mainly on the spiritual level, and Mr. Zhang Hao had the greatest influence on me in the paradigm of intellectual history research. I think that Schwartz's problematic study of intellectual history has already broken its roots in the United States, and when Zhang Hao, Mo Zike, Lin Yusheng, and others retire, there will be no third-generation students, because after the end of the Cold War, the Chinese studies circles in the United States will not study intellectual history, but will turn to social history, cultural history, and other aspects. It is precisely this kind of problem-centered research that China needs, because China is still in a period of transition, and many issues are unresolved, which in turn can prompt us to think about China's social thought and history for more than a century, and this kind of intellectual history research method still has its value in China, which is also the value of Mr. Zhang Hao's work.
In 2005, Professor Zhang Hao and his wife joined Professor Wang Fansen and Professor Xu Jilin at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Xu Jilin: Comparatively speaking, I personally prefer his "Martyr Spirit and Critical Consciousness- An Analysis of Tan Sitong's Thought", and his other books present ideological concepts, which are more dynamic and vividly written about Tan Sitong. He studied intellectuals and, in addition to the scenes of thought and history, made special mention of the scenes of life. Life scenarios are life backgrounds, especially early life experiences. Regarding the spiritual order, Zhang Hao was inspired by Voegelin, an authority on the history of Western thought, who believes that behind the social and political order, there is a deeper spiritual order, and Mr. Zhang Hao was influenced by him to combine the history of political thought with the spiritual history and spiritual history of intellectuals.
Tan Sitong had the most religious sense among Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao's group of Wu Shu Reform Fa Zhizhi, so he had a strong sense of martyrdom. This involves his attitude towards life and death, which is related to his early experiences, especially the influence of Buddhism, and Mr. Zhang Hao's exploration of his inner spiritual level is very thorough. This is a very noteworthy research method, in the past two years I have particularly emphasized the study of spiritual history, thoughts and concepts are dead, intellectuals are living people, they not only have reason, but also emotions, not only brains, but also souls, we must combine the two to write the spiritual world of intellectuals. In his later years, Mr. Qian Liqun also began to study the spiritual history of intellectuals, and I agreed with his ideas on this point.
Q
Xia Heshun: The experience and thought of Liu Shipei as a character are also quite complex, and the average reader may only know that he taught the "Three Rites", the "Book of Shang" and the Study of Exegesis at Peking University in the later period, but does not know his revolutionary thoughts and practices in his early years. Mr. Zhang Hao's "Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis" only wrote until 1911, if you connect the two stages, you can see the whole picture of him. When Liu Shipei died of illness in 1919, the funeral was presided over by Chen Duxiu, does this suggest that his ideas have a potential continuity trajectory with future communism?
Xu Jilin: Liu Shipei was anarchist in the late Qing Dynasty, and so was his wife, He Zhen, who was one of the earliest anarchists in China. Anarchism has an intrinsic spiritual and intellectual connection with later revolutionary thought. Liu Shipei's thinking later changed, and he studied the national history at Peking University and even participated in the activities of the Preparatory Committee. Mr. Zhang Hao only studied his thoughts in the late Qing Dynasty, and he chose this case not out of interest in Liu Shipei himself, but to establish a type of thought, and later he rarely touched Liu Shipei again.
I found that the older a scholar is, the easier it is to return to his youth, which is also the context of Mr. Zhang's ideological development. Scholars of his generation have been pondering a big question: Why is chinese history in the twentieth century like this? The twentieth century is the century of revolution, and in the past decade or so, Mr. Zhang Hao has paid more and more attention to the mythological problem of revolution, and he has studied the problem of "original people" in the era of Axial civilization, which is related to this. Every civilization needs a spiritual and personal bearer, the so-called "person entrusted by civilization." All major civilizations have a primitive consciousness. In Chinese civilization, because there is no concept of God, the saints are constantly mythologized, and in the modern revolutionary period, the mythical phenomenon of the unity of the saints and kings has emerged. Zhang Hao's study of the Chinese revolution in the twentieth century does not praise or disparage, neither praise nor demonize, but through rigorous analysis, he tries to explain why the revolution happened, and he seems to have spent most of his life thinking about this issue. His thinking has not ended, and some of the questions he has raised are worth continuing to study by our future generations and even generations of scholars.
In 2002, Professor Zhang Hao and his wife were invited to visit East China Normal University
The accompanying people were Luo Gang, Xu Jilin and Mao Jian
Q
Xia Heshun: The concept of "dark consciousness" was proposed and applied in research, which may be Mr. Zhang Hao's greatest contribution to the study of Chinese intellectual history. Dark consciousness originates from the Christian idea of original sin and is also the root of Western democratic and legal thought, and Zhang Hao has made the conclusion that "dark consciousness" is also implicit in the Chinese tradition through the excavation of Confucianism and Song Ming's theory. How should we understand the theory of dark consciousness? Why is it that there is also a dark consciousness, but China has not produced a democratic system?
Xu Jilin: There is also a story about Mr. Zhang Hao's concept of dark consciousness, when he was a doctoral student at Harvard, probably in 1962, he took a class by the religious thinker Niebull. It was a winter, Mr. Zhang went to the Harvard Auditorium early to prepare for the lecture, and found an old man at the door who also arrived early, and the two talked, and he realized that this was Mr. Niebull who was going to class. Mr. Zhang listened to Nibüll's one-semester class, which was very helpful for the formation of his concept of "dark consciousness".
Niebüll famously said, "Democracy is necessary because human nature is evil; democracy is possible because human nature is good." "Democracy is related to human nature, and human nature has both a divine side and a fallen side, and this depravity is insurmountable in the finality, which is a deep-rooted dark consciousness. Therefore, the concept of rule of law and constitutionalism was born, and the restrictions on the power of mortals, even if they are great and saints, always harbor a hint of distrust, Mr. Zhang Hao was influenced by Nibbur to think about the foundation of democracy from the perspective of human nature. He noticed that Confucianism also acknowledged that there was a depraved side of human nature, but Confucianism believed that this tendency to degenerate was overcome, that human nature was good, and that it was only blinded by desires. Influenced by Confucianism, Chinese history finally believed in man, regarded saints as gods, and hoped for good emperors and qing officials, which was politically a kind of moral idealism of the inner saint and the outer king, and failed to develop an objective rule of law order, and ultimately relied on people rather than systems.
Published in October 2016, Shenzhen Business Daily Book Review Weekly
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