Kang Zixing, Associate Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beihang University
In 1905, he took a photo in London
In 1895, after the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, Yan Fu published a series of articles such as "On the Urgent Need for World Change". Yan Fu wrote at the beginning of "On the Urgent Need for World Change":
alack! Looking at today's changes in the world, Gai has not had the urgency of Ruosi since qin. The change of the husband's world is also unknown to it, and the strong and famous is known as the Lucky Society. The Games are complete, and although the saints can do nothing, the saints are also one of the things in the Games. If it is one of them, it is unreasonable to transfer it without taking the luck. The saints know the direction of the Games, and see their flow to the extreme. Only when he knows his tendencies, he will serve the heavens the day after tomorrow; but he will see his flow to the extremes, so he will not violate the heavens. So it was cut into a supplementary phase, and the world was placed in peace. Later generations thus view its success, so that if the saint can really transfer the plebeians, but do not know that the saints did not have anything to do at the beginning. That is, in today's day and day, the reason for the construction of the womb is the cause of the husband overnight!
In the face of the fierce historical impact, Yan Fu's lament for the world is quite similar to adam Ferguson's lament in "TheSis on the History of Society". Yan Fu's so-called "urgent need for world change" has more or less two meanings. First of all, the Battle of Jiawu, "the decisive rout, as far as it is impossible to control" (Yan Fu: "The Continuation of the Original Qiang", "Wenku YanFu volume of modern Chinese thinkers", Huang Kewu, Chinese Min University Press, 2014, 2014, 20 pages), the defeat in the war was tragic, and the consequences were unprecedented. Secondly, the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War was the most representative event of the "thirty years of frequent disasters", and the crisis of civilization reflected by the disaster of war was unprecedented. That is to say, the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War was rooted in the differences between Chinese and Western cultural and legal traditions. To this day, the people of the country must admit that "those who are westerners cannot be used in harmony with the Dhamma, but all have those who overcome us" (ibid., p. 12). China's encounter with the West (and even the East) is not just an encounter on the battlefield, but an encounter between two major civilizational traditions. Therefore, the defeat on the battlefield not only means military and weapon weakness, but also highlights the gap between the two sides in terms of people's strength, people's wisdom, and people's morality, or the difference in Montesquieu's so-called "universal spirit". To a large extent, the "urgent need for world change" is also beyond the usual understanding. Therefore, if we stick to the old sayings and habits, and this drastic change, people "do not know the reason for it, and the strong name is known as the Lucky Society", believing that it is beyond human reason and is not controlled by human beings. In the face of such a major crisis, if the future of the nation and civilization is entrusted to the "Games", it is necessary to abandon any positive efforts and completely abandon the responsibility for the nation and civilization. In this regard, Ferguson commented at the end of The Treatise on the History of Society: "When they appeal to most affairs to their fate, they feel the reversal of fate to the greatest extent. We tend to make these observations law-making, and when we are no longer willing to act for the sake of the state, we seek a presumed fate in human affairs as an excuse for our own weakness or stupidity. ”（Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.264）
Yan Fu, of course, opposes the simple understanding of this world change as the "Games". As he says in this commentary, true courage and wisdom should be done as "the saints of peter, who know the direction of the movement, and look at its extremes." Only when he knows his tendencies, he will serve the heavens the day after tomorrow; but he will see his flow to the extremes, so he will not violate the heavens. So he cut it into a secondary phase, and placed the world in peace." Yan Fu believes that the current drastic changes in the world have their historical roots. Regarding order and governance, Chinese and Western understandings are different. In the course of historical evolution, over time, differences in concepts eventually shaped different political, economic and military forms, resulting in a difference in national strength. Therefore, in order to get rid of the current predicament and crisis, the saint (or legislator) must go beyond the so-called "games" and make an external and objective examination of it, understand its causes and consequences, origins and trends, and understand the causes and roots of the changes in the world. That is to say, the "Games" are by no means clueless and incomprehensible irrational forces, but are dominated by the natural path. Only by understanding this way of nature can the saints not become "one of the things in the Games", but can they conform to the heavens and the times, actively act, and achieve great governance. On the contrary, whoever abandons this effort to understand is willing to be deceived into what Ferguson calls "weakness or stupidity." However, how can we understand this avenue and find the root cause of the rise and fall of chaos? Yan Fu pointed out that we should seek inspiration from history, to "know the direction of the Games, and to see its flow." That is to say, we should do some historical research on the changes in the world, and examine the source of the flow, so that we can trace the "flow pole" and find the cause and way out of today's predicament. Therefore, Yan Fu's thinking implies a certain "genealogical" approach: he is committed to examining the changes of the world from a long period of time, fully unfolding the encounters of a moment in history, and understanding the essence of the "Games" in the comparison between China and the West.
From the Machiavelli moment to the yanfu moment
At the end of the nineteenth century, political modernity matured in the West and gradually evolved into a "civilized empire" theory with a global political vision. The western ships and cannons carry the concept of free trade, the logic of civilization evolution, and even the concept of world empires across the ocean, impacting eastern civilization like a tidal wave. Modernity is then shown in the hearts of Chinese with Yan Fu's "world changes".
"World change" was a crisis facing China in the late Qing Dynasty, and it was also a war between the traditional order and modern society. "Know thyself and know the other, never lose a battle". Yan Fu knew in his heart that in order to defuse the crisis and win the war, it is necessary to conduct a profound reflection on tradition, face up to and deeply understand the surging tide of modernity, change civilization under the new historical conditions, and realize the new life of the old state. Yan Fu's thinking and exploration represents the beginning of China's political modernity. This is a momentous historical moment, and Professor Hsiao is modeled after J. Bocock. G. A. Pocock) concept of the "Machiavelli moment", called the "strict repetition moment". Xiao Gaoyan also stressed that just as the "Machiavelli Moment" represents a political discourse structure developed by Western republicanism in the face of a particular political world, the "Yanfu Moment" is not just a specific historical era, but a key moment to shape future political discourse (Xiao Gaoyan: "Exploring Political Modernity: From Machiavelli to Yanfu", Lianjing Publishing Co., Ltd., December 2020, p. 559, the following page numbers only).
Xiao Gaoyan's Exploring Political Modernity
In the introduction and conclusion, Xiao Gaoyan repeatedly stated the two major issues that drove him to write "Exploring Political Modernity": "How did the values of political modernity, such as freedom, democracy, rights, constitutionalism, and national sovereignty, come out of modern Western thought? And "Which core classics of Western political theory influenced the formation of modern Chinese political values?" How can these classic vocabularies and ways of understanding and proof be transformed into tools for argumentation, persuasion, and ideological struggle in the Chinese context through local knowledge and action? (pp. 5, 18, 719)
Influenced by the Cambridge School's "contextualist" approach, Xiao Gaoyan is committed to analyzing political discourse and exploring the core issues of modern politics and its development and flow. These two major questions point to the genealogy of political modernity in the West and China, and correspond to the "Machiavelli moment" and the "strict restoration moment" one by one.
Questions determine the method, and even the way the author asks questions itself implies his way of understanding political ideas. When asking questions, Xiao Gaoyan used a series of verbs such as "to open up", "to form", "to transform", and "to struggle". This shows that in his view, the development of the value of political modernity in the West and its influence on China have gone through a long historical period, and even experienced quite complex debates and struggles. Of the two big questions he tried to answer, the question of "strict restoration" was more fundamental, and even included the first question. There are two reasons for this. First of all, the second question shows Professor Xiao Gaoyan's questioning and concern about the fate of Chinese civilization, which is the foothold of his "exploration of political modernity". Second, only by fully answering the first question and fully understanding the historical context (or context) of the classics of Western political theory can we fully and truly understand their shaping of China and what kind of modern vision they bring to yan fu. That is, the "Machiavelli moment" establishes the context of modernity that the "solemn moment" seeks to respond to, and they in a sense constitute the relationship between the other and the self. Therefore, the reinterpretation and genealogical combing of the Machiavelli moment constitute part of the premise of understanding the yanfu moment. Of course, the "Machiavelli moment" and the "strict restoration moment" are themselves contextualist concepts with strong Cambridge School overtones. They place special emphasis on the meaning of political thinking and discourse in the historical context, and regard them as a kind of historical action. They imply that the particular "deliberative structures" represented by them are formed in concrete political arguments, and that only by understanding the object of their arguments can we truly understand the intent and meaning of those arguments. Therefore, he focused on exploring the genealogy of the "Machiavelli moment" and the "strict restoration moment", rather than making a "systematic" narrative of the structure of political thought.
J. G. A. Porcock's Machiavelli Moment
Xiao Gaoyan chose Kirk and Schmidt as representatives and criticized the systematic interpretation of political thought. Both Kirk and Schmidt were influential academic masters, but they both shaped the history of political thought according to their "prejudices," making their analysis and clues "quite monolithic" (p. 720). For example, Kirk, because of his excessive attachment to a certain "correct" social contract theory, used Althusius' theory as a criterion to criticize all theories before and after him (pp. 720-721). Schmidt, for his part, because of his "emphasis on political decisions, sovereignty, and Hobbesian representation," made his account of the deliberate suppression of the "political" elements developed in liberalism and the formation of the constitutional state (p. 723). Therefore, this kind of systematic intellectual history is essentially an "anti-historical" narrative of political thought, and cannot truly present historical and political modernity.
Xiao Gaoyan abandoned systems theory and chose genealogy, trying to return ideas to history and restore their complexity and richness. As he has repeatedly emphasized, thought is action, and ideological debate is about the future of nations and civilizations. That is, only by understanding thought historically can we develop a deep insight into reality. In the genealogy he presents, the process of Western political modernity is divided into two waves. The first wave began in Machiavelli and ended with social contractists such as Pfendorff and Locke. The second wave began in Montesquieu and ended in the nineteenth century in civilization and imperial liberalism (represented by Tocqueville and J. S. Mill).
Both waves of modernity have undergone a long and complex evolution, but both have their own internal unifying themes. The first wave of modernity referred to the question of the form of government, which eventually transformed the principle of government from a teleology of virtue and common goodness to the equality of the individual. The core issue of political science has also shifted, from how to build a moral governance system to how to establish the legitimacy of political authority. The first wave of modernity brought the principle of popular sovereignty to root and became the basic spirit of modern politics.
The second wave of modernity highlights the "business society" element. Since Montesquieu, political thinkers have paid full attention to the shaping of the social order by commerce and its impact on the human heart. Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, commercial societies gradually arose in Europe and prompted Europe to break away from the medieval feudal system and give birth to a modern state system. That is, commercial society is a real history, not an abstract theoretical construction. Therefore, the emphasis on commercial society also means that political thinkers have begun to have a realistic and historical vision in understanding the changes of ancient and modern times and political modernity. Thinkers began to abandon the static social contract theory model and instead adopted the historical perspective of the evolution of civilized society to think about the generation and regulation of order. "The discourse of civil society or civilized society developed from commercial activities, and its relationship with the state, formed the core issues of Western political thought from the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. Commercial society has not only caused changes in the concept of the state, but also created a variety of different social possibilities, such as the theory of the stage of civilization, the theory of the state organism, and the nation as the basis for the formation of the state, which have become new theoretical topics. (p. 15) In the second wave of modernity, the individualism presented by the "social contract" has not been abandoned, and the egalitarian, universal individual remains the basis for contemplation and understanding of the social order. However, in the theory of social contract, there is a static antagonistic relationship between the state of nature and civilized society. But in the second wave of modernity, this antagonistic relationship evolved into a dialectical relationship between the "theory of human nature" and the "theory of the history of civilized society" (the dialectic of nature and history).
Compared with Strauss and Foucault's outline of the genealogy of modernity (pp. 12-13), Xiao Gaoyan's division has its own uniqueness. Hsiao's use of "commercial society" to dominate the second wave of modernity is undoubtedly the most notable point (in this regard, Istvan Hont gave him a great inspiration, but he greatly advanced Hunt's argument). Of course, this is also a very instructive point. It is for this reason that the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers (especially Adam Ferguson) have a very prominent position in the genealogy of modernity they have compiled (it is in the political economy pioneered by the Scottish Enlightenment and its theory of historical evolution of social development that the second wave of modernity, initiated by Montesquieu, developed to a more mature state). We can safely say that Xiao Gaoyan rediscovered Ferguson. By combing through Ferguson's influence on Yan Fu, he went on to rediscover Yan Fu.
Rediscover Adam Ferguson
Regarding the genealogy of the second wave of modernity, when discussing Montesquieu's theory of the form of government, Xiao Gaoyan made a very brief but relatively complete outline (p. 261). In this genealogy, Montesquieu is the unquestionable pivot, offering many aspects of responses and debates to his theory. These aspects include Rousseau's view of revolutionary politics, the Scottish Enlightenment thinker's view of the history of civilization and progress, the distinction between ancient and modern freedom in Gunsdown, and the German philosophy of history and the organic state. They all revolve around the vision and problems established by Montesquieu.
Ferguson unreservedly confided in his admiration and inheritance of Montesquieu: "When I recall what President Montesquieu wrote, I say with sadness why I am discussing human affairs... In his writings, we can find not only the original ideas I quote from him in order to be clear, but also the source of many observations. (An Essay on the History of Civil Society, p. 66) Of course, on the basis of Montesquieu's doctrine, Ferguson made his own original contribution. Xiao Gaoyan fully attached great importance to the creative transformation brought about by Ferguson, emphasized its important position in the history of ideas, and closely related it to the "Moment of Strict Restoration". "Humboldt inherited Ferguson's theory of the progress of civilization ... In other words, the virtues and rights of republican liberalism played by Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment, through the aesthetic individualism and Faust spirit reconstructed by Humboldt's 'Neo-Greekism', became an important political philosophical discourse in Müller's liberal system, and its influence extended to the yanfu thought of modern China" (p. 434).
To a large extent, Shaw went beyond Pokock's "Wealth and Virtue" framework (J. G. A. Bocock, The Machiavelli Moment, Translation Forest Press, 2013, pp. 525-530), dedicated to interpreting Ferguson from the perspective of civil society, thereby rediscovering the "republican liberal" tradition he pioneered.
Adam Ferguson
Based on the history and anthropology of various peoples accumulated in the Age of Enlightenment, coupled with the rational analysis based on the laws of nature and human nature, Ferguson completed a whole history of human development, which is the "history of civilized society". He divided civilized society into four stages: primitive peoples, barbarian peoples, political states, and commercial societies. Xiao Gaoyan noted that Ferguson tried to combine different discourses such as socio-economic development, classical republicanism, Montesquieu's theory of government, and Rousseau's theory of the origin of inequality, and adopted a rather complex historical staging standard. "In short, he distinguishes 'rough' and 'civilized' peoples by virtue of whether they have highly developed art: the former is bounded by stable property rights, and then divided into two stages, 'primitive' and 'barbaric'; the latter is divided into a stage with a political establishment and a commercial society after the highly developed social division of labor" (p. 307).
In Ferguson's writing, the idea of the four stages of civilized society is both a philosophical historical framework of universal significance and a summary of his world historical experience, providing a theoretical fulcrum for his reflection on Europe's past and present. For example, his interpretation of the history of political establishment and commercial society is quite realistic. Ferguson used the example of the expulsion of the king by the nobility at the end of the Roman monarchy to express a new beginning in the political establishment. In his view, the republican establishment took Rome out of its barbaric period and into a new stage of development. Since then, the history of Political Establishment in Europe has gone through four stages: the Roman Republic, the formation of the European nation-state during the Roman Empire, the medieval feudal system, and the modern representative government. Of course, the evolution of the political establishment did not stem from the great wisdom of legislators, but from the constant breakdown and re-establishment of equilibrium by the various forces. Eventually, by protecting the people and encouraging commercial activity, the modern monarchs of Europe formed a representative system that became the most important political establishment in the new era of commercial society (p. 314).
This system of representation is a mixture of monarchy and republic, which is exactly the British political system praised by Montesquieu. However, in Montesquieu's classification of political systems, it is an ideal polity with freedom as its own. But Ferguson placed it in the chronological sequence of historical progress, seeing it as the institutional crystallization of Western modernity. Because of the development of commerce, the European countries have achieved a balance between monarchs, nobles and peoples based on different circumstances and following different paths. At the same time, the Balance of Power among the European Nations was maintained, and thus the "Happy Policy System" (An Essay on the History of Civil Society, P. 129).
"As a British scholar, Ferguson did not make Montesquieu's mistake of interpreting British constitutionalism with 'separation of powers'" (p. 314). In Ferguson's writing, the exemplary significance of the British political system is not in its "separation of powers", but in the balance of confrontation between the various classes, in a more realistic sociological sense of the balance of power. "In a properly mixed government, the interests of the masses find the antidote in the interests of the monarch or the nobility, and a true balance is established among them in which public freedom and public order can be sustained" (An Essay on the History of Civil Society, p. 158). In Ferguson's view, only such a balance of power can shape a "government based on the rule of law," can good laws be enacted, individual rights guaranteed, and "the prosperity and growth of national wealth and power" (pp. 315-316).
However, the balance of power and even interests of the various strata is an external description of the state of society, which originates from social evolution and may also be destroyed and disintegrated by changes in the social structure. So how can liberal governments fight against the vicissitudes of history, overcome corruption, and avoid falling? Ferguson argues that the true roots of political freedom lie in the "power of the mind," in the public spirit and virtues inspired by the balance of confrontation between strata. If the people are allowed to pursue wealth, luxury, and even pleasure, and neglect the concern for virtue and the public good, the nation will inevitably fall into laziness, and freedom will be captured by tyranny. "When citizens in a commercial society maintain only the role of policy-making and entrust the task of waging war to others, the commercial society faces the possibility of a military junta usurping political power" (p. 319). In this crisis, the people, corrupted in their hearts, ignore class confrontation, covet pleasure, surrender the arms that defend themselves to others, and eventually suffer enslavement. Therefore, only when people transcend their personal interests, are driven by "compassion" and virtue, actively participate in political and military actions, and pursue common good (no harm, spread happiness, public utility), will they have the strength to defend law and freedom.
Ferguson's emphasis on positive virtue underscores the republican spirit. It is worth noting that Ferguson's republican spirit is deeply rooted in this stage of civilization in commercial society. For political freedom, commerce has both a positive shaping effect and can cause corruption and destruction. Ferguson made a dialectical analysis and critique of this, emphasizing the moral basis of liberal government. Hsiao argues that Ferguson formed a new theoretical synthesis of republicanism and created republican liberalism, making it the beginning of modern liberalism (pp. 327-328).
Yan Fu and the Fate of Modern China
In the context of the second wave of modernity outlined by Xiao Gaoyan, Montesquieu is the hub and Ferguson is the sub-center. Montesquieu's historical consciousness and his thinking on the ideal political system of commercial society have thus developed into a more complex and mature theoretical form, which is presented as Ferguson's historiography of civilized society. Ferguson achieved a critical transformation of Montesquieu and further influenced the political theories of Gunsdown, Humboldt, and even Müller. Not only that, in the inheritance and evolution of Ferguson's historiography of civilized society, it has increasingly lost its inner exquisite balance and its universal human theory foundation, and has become more and more ideological. If Montesquieu was the beginning of the second wave of modernity, then Ferguson was its crest and could constitute a frame of reference for reflecting on the theory of later generations.
Ferguson inspired the political doctrines of Germany and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and thus further shaped Yan Fu's political discourse. In Hsiao's pen, Humboldt represents the "Jena moment" of German thought. He was a signpost theorist with a profound influence on modern Western liberalism. In the genealogy of the second wave of modernity, Humboldt marked that German thinkers, influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, began to reflect on the issues facing modern commercial society and the division of labor, and developed unique discourses. Xiao Gaoyan focused on his "On the Limits of the Role of the State" and emphasized the origins between this work and Ferguson. "The structure of the book, profoundly influenced by Ferguson's Treatise on the History of Ming Society, examines the relationship between modern society and the state by comparing the differences between ancient and modern times, and proposes its theoretical analysis of modern individuality, and finally concludes the discussion with the competence of the state" (p. 429).
Humboldt
In On the Limits of the Role of the State, Humboldt cites Ferguson's comments on Lycugus as approaching the customs of barbaric societies. After this quotation, the inscription on the title page of Mill's On Liberty appears in the next paragraph: "According to the whole inference that precedes it, in general, everything is essential to cultivate educators in the most diverse way. (p. 429, note 28) From this passage of Humboldt's discourse, Xiao Gaoyan found a clear line of thought. This thread connects Ferguson with Yan Fu through Humboldt and Mueller.
Regarding the characteristics of the classical city-state and the modern state, Humboldt adopted the Ferguson method and made a historical analysis and comparison of them, arguing that "the ancient state pursues virtue, and the modern state pursues happiness." Consistent with Ferguson, this contrast between ancient and modern times also makes it aware of the crisis that lurks in the modern commercial society: if one pursues wealth excessively, one will neglect virtue and the development of man himself. In order to resolve this crisis, he tried to reconcile the differences between ancient and modern times, implanting classical educational elements in commercial societies and the political systems corresponding to them. Therefore, he stressed that on the one hand, the state should pay attention to the perfect and harmonious development of people, emphasize "physical, intellectual and moral abilities" in education, and on the other hand, build a free political system and reduce state interference in society. In a commentary, Shaw revealed to the reader that Humboldt's ideas of political education had a profound influence on Mueller. Müller accepted both Humboldt's emphasis on the educational function of the state and his exposition of the goal of education, namely, the comprehensive cultivation of man's "physical, intellectual, and moral faculties." This discussion in turn influenced Yan Fu backwards, leading him to develop the concept of "people's strength, people's wisdom, and people's morality" (p. 430, note 29).
Xiao Gaoyan realized that this clue was significant. He was able to focus on Mueller's theory of civilization with a unique academic vision, and to explain the close connection between his concept of civilization and the concept of political system. He believes that although Mueller inherited Ferguson's framework of civilization history, he weakened its moral connotation and equated the standard of civilization with national prosperity, thus ideologizing it. That is, Mill's concept of civilization served his imperial vision. European countries are rich and powerful commercial societies, at an advanced stage of civilizational progress. Therefore, these countries (especially Britain) should adopt free representative government and give higher weight to the intellectual elite in parliament, so that the people can be educated in public debate and their individual abilities can be fully developed. However, for the barbaric and backward peoples, which lack the endogenous motive force for the progress of civilization, it is necessary for European countries to send super-intelligent governors or ruling groups to adopt "civilized despotism" and assume responsibility for their civilization.
It is also because of this clue that when interpreting Yan Fu's writings, translations, and even political paintings, he can break new ground, highlighting Yan Fu's interpretation of the "New Holy King's Way" and his ideological intervention in constitutional monarchy. These two point to the virtue of the people (people's strength, people's wisdom, and people's morality) and free government, which are also the two major issues that Ferguson focuses on.
In 1878, Yan Fu took a photo in Paris at the age of twenty-six.
In the nineteenth-century Western vision of civilization, China had fallen into a "stagnation" dilemma, falling into a state of corruption and poverty. Yan Fu also realized that the Western martial arts were better than mine. Yan Fu compares the political and religious traditions of China and the West, and deduces the reasons for this, summarizing the living water of the source of Western civilization's superiority as "taking freedom as the body and democracy as the use" (p. 564). However, freedom and democracy are preceded by the talents of the members of society, that is, "the strength of blood and gas", "the strength of wisdom and wisdom", and "the strength of virtue and benevolence". The fundamental problem of Chinese politics is that under the new changes, the traditional art of scripture carried out by the way of the Chinese Holy King is no longer enough to promote the strength of the people, the wisdom of the people, and the morality of the people.
Xiao Gaoyan noticed that by translating Huxley's "Theory of Heavenly Speech" and writing "Breaking The Han", Yan Fu deduced the "Way of the New Holy King" to deal with the changes in the world. Huxley's "TheOry of Heavenly Speech" challenged Spencer's social Darwinism, and also provided a space for Yan Fu to express himself, enabling him to reconcile China and the West and implant the way of the Holy King on the basis of the evolution of civilization. In describing the formation of the ethical world, Huxley proposed a metaphor for the "horticultural process", that is, the gardener could create a concrete and subtle delicate garden in the natural evolution of the sky. In interpreting this horticultural metaphor, Yan Fu derived two major techniques of governance from the gardener's art of gardening. Yan Fu stressed that there are two important things for the gardener to govern the garden: one is to "set up a suitable environment and live from things", and the other is to "remove the evil seeds and save their good seeds"; for society, the former means "the matter of protecting the people and raising the people", and the latter is "the matter of the evolution of the good group". These two techniques of governance implicitly point to two of Mill's major functions of government: "arrangements for the collective affairs of the community" and "functioning as a national educational institution" (p. 587). The "evolution of the good group" is valued in the "people", that is, taking the people's "people's virtue" and "good energy", expanding and filling it up, and becoming "the pleasure enjoyed by the group" (p. 576). In this way, Yan Fu emphasized the endogenous motivation provided by saints (and even the intellectual elite) for social progress, so as to realize the rule of saints who "hold the heavens with man" and "compete with the heavens".
"The Evolution of Heaven"
In the face of the invincible Games, the new Saint King should "know its tendencies and see its extremes", educate the people accordingly, cultivate and enhance "people's strength, people's wisdom, and people's morality", and cultivate the basis of self-government. In the political dimension, the goal of the Way of the Holy King is to create a constitutional form of government that is "autonomous" with the people, because "the freedom of the people is also the place of heaven." In addition, Yan Fu also actively introduced Xi Lai's "Introduction to Political Science" at the time when the Qing court was preparing for the constitution, taught "political science" based on history and evolution, wrote "Political Lecture Notes", intervened in realpolitik, and promoted the reform of the political system. That is, Yan Fu focuses on positive political action, rather than letting him let his thinking about the evolution of civilization stay at the ideological level.
epilogue
In the genealogy of political modernity outlined by Xiao Gaoyan, Yan Fu is also in a key position where the crowd converges. Not only the Chinese and Western traditions meet here, but also the many branches of political theory originated by Montesquieu and Ferguson, which stir up each other and inspire Yan Fu to think about the fate of Chinese civilization. "Genealogy" is both historical writing and comparative study. Through the combing of political modernity, it is not difficult to find that Yan Fu's "Games" are actually the "commercial society" that the second wave of modernity tries to understand and tame. Since the eighteenth century, the commercial society has flourished in the West, which not only constructed the actual political and social order, but also triggered deeper theoretical reflections, giving birth to the theory of "history of civilized society", which enabled the West to gain a new vision of understanding and constructing a world order. When this "new order and way" came to the East with merchant ships and warships, it also triggered the traditional Confucian mind to think about modern civilization and produced a Chinese-style theory of civilized society.
Xiao Gaoyan noted that in the yanfu moment, "all the Western classics eagerly translated are the works of the second wave of modernity called in this book, and the representative theories of Britain and Germany in the nineteenth century." Therefore, the process of Chinese political modernity, which began as a self-imposed restoration, is the unfinished continuation of the second wave of modernity. Therefore, the reflection on commercial society and civilization becomes particularly critical. It is worth noting that Xiao Gaoyan's intellectual history narrative implies a critique of the nineteenth-century theory of civilization. In the genealogy of intellectual history that he presents, the second wave of modernity experiences a certain decline: the theory of civilized society became ideological by the nineteenth century, losing its critical nature of realpolitik, so that it cannot be found that China has an endogenous dynamic to emerge from a state of "stagnation.". From this point of view, Yan Fu's efforts first mean a critique of the theory of civilization in the nineteenth century. Yan Fu did not blindly accept the Western political doctrine that prevailed in the nineteenth century, but reflected on it in two ways: on the one hand, he traced the source of the theory of civilized society, systematically translated and interpreted the classic works of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and Montesquieu; on the other hand, he creatively transformed the concept of civilization evolution based on China's own civil rule tradition. In emphasizing the ideological origins between Yan Fu and Ferguson, Xiao Gaoyan also criticized the civilization theory of Mueller and others to a certain extent.
The Scottish Enlightenment philosophers saw "civilization" as a historical process that could explain the differences in development between peoples and even the changes that the same people underwent in different epochs. Moreover, because different stages of civilization share the same theory of human nature and moral philosophical foundations, Ferguson's theory of civilized society has a universal critical force that transcends history. Mill's theory of civilization has become ideological, neither able to understand the ancient and modern changes of the nation itself, nor trying to make a universal interpretation of the differences in civilizations in different regions, but only to justify the imperial order that has been formed and is still expanding. Today, the concept of civilization has become further narrowed, inward-looking and closed, which can only reflect a conflicting state of world politics. Looking back on the past, can people not sigh?
Editor-in-Charge: Ding Xiongfei
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang