Joseph R. Levinson (10.6.1920 – 6.4.1969)
This article was revised from the afterword to the author's translation of Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny, which will be published by the Republic in the near future.
In 2003, I found a bound edition of Levinson's Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny trilogy (first published in 1968) from the University of California Press in a second-hand bookstore in Berkeley, which cost only five dollars. This big red-skinned paperback book has followed me for many years, and I've roughly flipped through it and carefully studied some of it for specific issues, but to be honest, for a long time the book had more symbolism than practical significance. Levinson was Wei Feide's teacher, Wei Feide was Ye Wenxin's teacher, Wei Feide and Ye Wenxin were my teachers—if there is a so-called "teacher method" in Berkeley's Chinese history major, it probably comes from Levinson's book. Some of Levinson's famous assertions in this book are often quoted—from "the world" to the "state," the internal tensions of bureaucratic monarchies, the museumization of history, and so on—often as a starting point for new research discourses, or as "predecessor studies" that need to be criticized and revised. But the benefits of this book from nearly half a century ago to today's research are, at least for me at the time, because the way it was written was so different from today's academic works. I didn't expect that more than ten years later, I would have a deeper relationship with this book.
Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny Trilogy, University of California Press, 1968.
In January 2017, the Republic intended to publish the Levinson's Collected Works and asked me if I would be interested in participating. Out of strong emotional identification with Berkeley's "Teachings," I was naturally very happy to participate. It happened that in the spring of that year, Professor Dong Yue of the History Department of the University of Washington came to Beijing to visit, and she and six or seven North American scholars had been collectively and systematically studying Levinson's works in recent years, including Ye Wenxin, Qi Mushi, Ou Lide, etc., so the ideal country asked her to be the editor-in-chief of this collection. I had intended to pick a translation of levinson's untranslated works, which were small in length and could be completed in a few months at most.
We were faced with a conundrum: What should be done with the most important Confucian China and Its Modern Fate in Levinson's work? The book has been translated into Chinese, entitled "Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny", translated by Zheng Dahua and Ren Jing, originally published by the China Social Sciences Publishing House in 2000, reprinted several times over the years, and has had a great influence in the academic community. It has contributed to the introduction of Levinson's teachings into the Chinese academic community. However, this translation also had obvious flaws, such as the lack of a general preface to the trilogy of bounds, the preface to each volume, the introduction to the first volume, and incomplete annotations, especially the long commentaries that Levinson spent a lot of effort on. We deliberated again and again, and felt that since we wanted to systematically publish the "Levinson's Collected Works", we might as well take this opportunity to retranslate this book. At that time, I underestimated the difficulty of translating this book, so I "courageously" undertook the task of the entire trilogy, but I did not expect that it was a long journey that lasted more than two years.
Chinese translation of "Confucian China"
What bothered me most about retranslating this book was how to translate the word "Confucianism." There is a reason why the original Chinese translation translated it as "Confucianism" . Going back to the context in which Levinson wrote this book, one of the motivations that inspired him to write the trilogy was Weber's Konfuzianismus und Taoismus. In 1951, Weber's book was translated into English by H. Gerth, entitled "The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism", which caused great repercussions in the American academic community, and Levinson himself wrote a book review for it as early as 1953, offering different views on Weber's views (Joseph R. Levenson, "Review of The." Religion of China,”The Journal of Economic History, vol. 13, no. 1 [Winter, 1953], pp. 127-128）。 In the trilogy, although Levinson only mentions Weber occasionally, as Weifeld later notes in his review of Volume II, Levinson consciously used his research to revise Webb's (Frederic Wakeman Jr., "A Note on the Development of the Theme of Bureaucratic-Monarchic Tension in Joseph R. Levenson's."). Work,” inThe Mozartian Historian: Essays on the Works of Joseph R. Levenson, edited by Maurice Meisner and Rhoads Murphey [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976], pp. 123-133）。 Therefore, it seems inappropriate to translate the book as "Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny" and to translate both "Confucianism" and "Confucian" into "Confucianism" in the book, and even to suggest very wisely the special academic context of the book's writing (Ye Bin once carefully analyzed Weber's influence on Levinson, especially focusing on the inheritance and development of Weber's thought in the second volume when analyzing the "intrinsicity" of the traditional Chinese concept of imperial power, and his articles also used "Confucianism". For a translation, see his "The Intrinsicity of Confucian Politics: Clues to Weber and Levinson's Inheritance," Shi Lin, 2013, no. 4, pp. 151-161, where Ye Bin was also a student of Wei Feide and Ye Wenxin, receiving his Ph.D. in History from Berkeley.
Max Weber, Religion in China: Confucianism and Taoism, translated by Hans H. Gus.
However, a closer look revealed that the translation of "Confucian China" was also inappropriate. Let's go back to Weber's original intention in writing Confucianism and Taoism. Unlike Marx, Weber hopes to find the origin of capitalism at the spiritual level of man, not in the social system or material basis, and his "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" is to prove that in Protestant ethics, especially in Calvinism, there is a work ethic that transcends the actual interests of individuals, and treats the work of the world and the pursuit of wealth with religious piety, and this mentality has created the spirit of capitalism to accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth. To further demonstrate that the rise of Protestant ethics and capitalism is not a coincidence of time, but a causal relationship, Weber went on to make a comparative study of the world's other religions. Confucianism and Taoism is part of that series of studies (as well as studies of Hinduism, Buddhism, ancient Judaism, etc.). Therefore, Gus added the main title "Chinese Religion" to the English translation of the book, which is also understandable. However, as far as Weber's intention is concerned, he actually wants to investigate the question of why China, as one of the world's major civilizations, did not spontaneously produce something similar to capitalism, rather than really wanting to study Chinese religion, so half of the book is devoted to the social situation in China, showing that the similarity between pre-modern China and the West in terms of social conditions is not completely impossible to produce capitalism. As Yang Qingkun put it in his introduction to the 1968 English translation: "If the reader is too focused on the translated title of the book, 'Religion in China,'" he must be quite confused, because the scope of this book goes far beyond the realm of religion." ...... Moreover, Weber did not see Confucianism as a theistic religion, but merely as an ethical doctrine, because it tolerated the practice of witchcraft, but lacked a physical basis. ([De] Max Weber, Religion in China: Confucianism and Taoism, translated by Kang Le and Jian Huimei, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2010, p. 336)
So what level of problem did Levinson want to discuss when he wrote "Confucian China"? Let's look at the main content of the trilogy. The first part, "The Problem of Ideological Continuity," discusses the ideological transformation of modern China, from the loss of the "amateur ideal" of traditional Chinese literati to the incapacitated tension between history and value under the impact of the West, which eventually forced Chinese to change the language, rather than just enrich the vocabulary. The second part, "The Decline and Fall of the Monarchy," discusses China's bureaucratic monarchy, in which the Confucian bureaucracy and the monarch joined forces to suppress the nobility, and the enduring tension between the two kept the bureaucratic monarchy alive even after dynastic succession, until the two had to unite in the face of common challenges in modern times, and the disappearance of tension caused the decline of this political system. The third part, "The Question of Historical Importance," focuses on the role and placement of history in modern China, especially communist China: which of the Confucian traditions can be allowed to be displayed in museums, as part of the national heritage, and which need to be swept up in the garbage. In one way or another, the history of Confucian China is banished and no longer affects reality.
Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny Trilogy (1958-1965)
Overall, Levinson's trilogy's discussion of "Confucian China" is not a relatively static socio-belief system, as Weber did; he discusses not only China's past, but also its modern transformation, and the latest state of the present (i.e., the 1950s); not only the broad belief system (such as "heaven"), but also the intellectual culture, political system, and academic thought of the intellectual elite, as well as the interaction between the various levels. As he says in the preface to volume II, he hopes to write the trilogy as "the kind of panoramic painting with a wide field of view, the kind of novel that constantly changes context, in which the same group of characters appear at different perspectives and situations at the same time" (see book II, p. v of the English edition). In other words, he pursues a three-dimensional sense of observation and analysis of the same subject from all angles.
The meaning of Confucianism and Confucian in English is inherently ambiguous, and it does not have to be clearly sorted out to encompass religious, cultural, ideological, social, political, and other meanings, so Levinson can use the word without psychological burden when writing this book: he can either compare "Confucian China" to "Christian West" or "feudal/monarchical West" or "humanistic West". If we use the word "Confucianism" to translate "Confucianism" into modern Chinese, it will inevitably strengthen its meaning as a religion and belief system, and even if it is explained, it is difficult to avoid the reader from making unconscious associations.
More importantly, in the late Qing Dynasty, there were a number of conservatives who hoped to improve the tradition, such as Kang Youwei and his disciple Chen Huanzhang, who had planned to adopt "Confucianism ( Confucianism) as the state religion " , and "Confucianism" in this sense was obviously a modern product influenced by the West. If "Confucian China" is directly translated as "Confucian China", I am afraid that it will cause too much ambiguity and misunderstanding, obscuring the transformation from tradition to modernity that Levinson repeatedly emphasizes in his book.
Therefore, after much deliberation, I decided to use "Confucian China", maintaining the inherent ambiguity in the original text, and more in line with the original face of Chinese history—confucianism did not exist purely in the form of religion as we understand it now, and The particularity of China is precisely reflected in this conceptual framework that cannot correspond to Western history. However, in some specific contexts, I will also use different translations: for example, in the case of the people's initial adoption of Confucianism as the state religion mentioned earlier, it will be translated as "Confucianism" or "Confucianism" as appropriate; for example, when discussing the changes in Confucianism and knowledge system from the Han and Tang Dynasties to the Song Ming and then to the Qing Dynasty, it will be translated as "Confucianism" as appropriate. It must be noted that choosing the translation of "Confucianism" is only my personal judgment, and does not mean that other translations are wrong. Cross-linguistic and cultural translations often lead to diversity of translation methods due to the inherent gap between the two systems of thought that cannot be tightly sewn together. This is a free space for opinion, and it is also one of the charms of the translation itself.
Re-read Levinson's meaning today
Levinson's Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny was, after all, a work from more than half a century ago. What is the point of re-translating this book today and rereading Levinson? As mentioned earlier, before the Republic proposed the publication of the Levinson's Collected Works, several North American scholars had formed the "Reread Levinson Group". At the annual meeting of the Asian Society in March 2013, they organized a panel discussion on "Reading Levinson", which was full. In June of the same year, Professor Ye Wenxin was invited to participate in the International Symposium on "Reinterpretation of Modern China" held at East China Normal University, where he reported the group's experience of re-reading Levinson, and his speech was later published in the twelfth series of the Intellectuals' Series, "What is Modern, Whose China?" : Reinterpretation of Modern China".
In this article, Ye Wenxin mentions that we now re-read many of the meanings of Levinson. First of all, this is a cleansing and inheritance of the previous Western sinology research context. Levinson can be said to be one of the pioneers of the Mainstream Academic Community for American Chinese Studies, his work is grand in scale, but there are many imperfections, today's research can make up for its shortcomings, correct its mistakes, and also think about the direction of the road by "looking back at the road". Second, Levinson, as a representative of the field of Chinese studies in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, also became the key to understanding the context of his time and thought, and the way he raised questions, his unspoken assumptions, and his opponents who intended dialogue and debate all provided us with clues to analyze that era. Finally, some of the issues raised by Levinson at that time are still open to the present, which attracts us to think further: the interaction between ideology and politics, the significance of writing a long period of history, the interaction between the connotation of thought and the outer edges, the continuation and rupture of modern China and contemporary China, and so on. In Ye Wenxin's words: "We seem to have demolished his Qibao building platform." However, in addition to dismantling, it is also believed that there is still no lack of insight in his works. (Ye Wenxin, "Rereading the Western Han Classics: Starting from Levinson's "Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny", edited by Xu Jilin and Liu Qing, eds., Intellectuals Series, 12th Series, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2014, p. 15)
However, for me personally, re-reading Levinson is not only a continuation in the sense of academic history and the sense of recycling and reusing old things, but also a reflection and enlightenment on the way knowledge is produced in today's historical disciplines. I was tired of the gluttonous empirical research, the production of knowledge in the form of writing academic journal papers, and Confucian China and Its Modern Destiny poetically brought me into a vibrant intellectual challenge. It covers a period that dates back to confucius's Spring and Autumn period, and then to the latest developments in China in the 1950s, the "present" in which Levinson lived. Imagine how many historians today would write about China today? He compared China to Japan, the Soviet Union, Germany, France, and Britain at different levels, and Confucianism with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
Those of us historians who are rigorously disciplined in the academy system often consciously or unconsciously avoid such intellectual challenges, which will make us appear to be "professional" enough—and will also give us a glimpse of the poverty outside of our expertise. But can historians really legitimately not discuss the present, or even the future? Is it really possible to focus on one place and one country without understanding the history and culture of other countries? Or we can ask another question, if we go beyond the professional academic field of historians, are we still qualified to express our opinions as intellectuals? Will our professional history training make us think more wisely about the present, plan for the future, and understand the world? Or will it make us more narrow-minded and ignorant in our intellectual lives in general?
Levinson, 1968.
In these reflections that go beyond the specialized field of history, what inspires and confuses me the most is Levinson's discussion of "particularity" and "universality". He believed that "universality" existed in the adherence to "particularity", neither a simple mixture of "specials" nor a common "universal law" on top of various parallel "special" histories. He expects that cross-cultural studies of "particularity" can lead to the formation of a common "world" in mutual communication and understanding. He says this in the preface to the second volume of the book:
Something really called "world history" is emerging, and it's not just the sum of separate civilizations. Historians who study China can help create this kind of world history when writing about the past. Historians who stay away from any de facto and imaginary cultural "aggression" and cultural justification can help unify the world on a level that goes beyond technology by bringing China into a universal world of discourse. We should never create a hodgepodge, nor should we distort Chinese history to adapt to a Western model. On the contrary, when the understanding of Chinese history does not harm its integrity and uniqueness, and this understanding of Chinese history and the understanding of Western history complement each other, it will create a "world". China and the West belong to each other not because they reproduce each other (which is not true), not because economic expansion, political disputes, or ideological influences bring them into contact with each other (although this is true), but because the mind of the observer can think of each other's problems in a different position (rather than transplanting each other's problems).
...... Studying Chinese history should be not just because of its exoticism, or its importance to Western strategy. It is studied because we are trying to understand the discourse world of the West and can also be used to understand China, without insisting that the two have the same pattern. If we can understand China and the West in this way, perhaps we can help create such a common world. The act of writing history is itself a kind of historical action. (See volume II of this book, pages xiii-ix of the English edition, in bold.)
This is the passage that touched me the most in the whole book, and it is also the most frequently quoted passage when discussing Levinson's approach to historiography. Levinson is a devout contemporary American, but his belief that his religious beliefs and cultural identity do not hinder his understanding of Chinese culture and modern Chinese intellectuals. He believed that people of different cultures, beliefs, and ethnic groups could understand each other because all people could share "a universal world of discourse" whose universality was based on human empathy ("empathy for each other's problems"). Dong Yue summed up Levinson's attitude as "dialogue historiography": "He treats the object of historical research as a second person and engages in dialogue with it, rather than commenting on it as a third person." In this case, the participants in the dialogue acquire a deeper understanding of each other and themselves, unlike in later cases, where the commentator (the historian) holds the authority and superiority of historical and moral judgment. ”（Madeleine Yue Dong & Ping Zhang, “Joseph Levenson and the Possibility for a Dialogic History,” Journal of Modern Chinese History, 8 [2014], no. 1, p. 17）
But Levinson's "historiography of dialogue" has a distinct subject-object distinction, and China is not only the object of his dialogue, but also the relatively weak side in his eyes. He believes that after the disintegration of the "Tianxia" order in modern China, Confucianism and way of life have no social and political external environment to match it, so it inevitably declines; and any attempt to save Confucianism is a futile effort of traditionalism, only preserving China's "national essence" in the sense of nationalism, which in turn can only prove the increasing withering of universal Confucianism. In his view, the modern fate of Confucian China has only one dead end, and tradition in today's China is only the result of "museumization". As Levinson said in the epilogue of the first volume of Confucian China, the West changed the Language of China, and China only enriched the vocabulary of the West. How can an equal dialogue be generated on the basis of this unequal reality? If China's "particularity" only enriches the Vocabulary of the West, then is Levinson's so-called "universal discursive world" just the discourse world of the West, and where is China's place in the common "world" built on this basis?
This is the confusion of modern Chinese, and I am afraid it is also the confusion of Levinson himself, a modern Jew living in the United States. As many scholars have already pointed out, Levinson did not analyze Confucian China in a simple Structure of Chinese and Western duality, and his Jewish beliefs and Jewish identity were indispensable third factors in it. This allowed him to resonate with the modern Chinese who had lost "the world" on the one hand (just as the Jews lost their country) and, on the other hand, to refuse to fully identify with the universal discourse based on Western civilization or the patchwork of civilizations (his Jewish identity was also incorruptibly "special"). It is on the basis of the recognition that the existence of special subjects is absolute and unconditional that his discourse on modern China is different from other explanatory frameworks that focus on modernization or Westernization, such as Fairbank's "shock-response" model (see cit. Madeleine Yue Dong & Ping Zhang, pp. 8-9）。 He has sharp criticisms of tradition as a fragment used by traditionalists to decorate nationalism, and for the "rootless cosmopolitanism" of Westernized intellectuals. Behind this criticism is his reflection on his own situation, not the western sense of superiority over Chinese.
When we read Levinson today, we must realize that the China in his eyes is not necessarily the real China, and the "universal discursive world" in his eyes may not be the truth that everyone agrees with. But recognizing this does not detract from levinson's value and insight, because "objectivity" and "universality" were not his goals. His emphasis on "particularity" encompasses the "particularity" of the writers of history themselves, and it is the inclusion of "particularity" that makes it possible and desirable to believe that a common "world" is possible and desirable (see madeleine Yue Dong & Ping Zhang, pp. 16-18）。
So Levinson's inspiration for me was not just his own understanding of Chinese culture and history (which today seems to be debatable), but the way we should look at China and the world. "Historians who stay away from any de facto and imaginary cultural 'aggression' and cultural justification can help unify the world on a level that goes beyond technology by bringing China into a universal world of discourse." When we re-read this sentence from Chinese standpoint, we will feel differently. This is not to deny that "cultural aggression" does exist, nor to belittle the significance of "cultural defense", but to hope that historians will consciously challenge the line between "mine" and "your" (not to cancel such a distinction) and try to get rid of the limitations of this kind of solidified identity. If Levinson, a Boston Jew, could understand Confucian China, why can't today's Chinese understand ancient Rome, medieval Germany, the Ottoman Turkish Empire, Revolutionary France, Meiji Japan, and contemporary Muslims? And Chinese who knows a lot about other cultures and histories, does he see China as it was?
Today's Chinese is different from the Chinese of the late Qing Dynasty, and the tradition has long lost its integrity and become a fragment of life. When we talk about tradition today, it is as if we are capturing the shadow of tradition. The "tianxia" of Confucian China has become the dust of history, and with it a whole set of lifestyles and cultural values. In this sense, Levinson's judgment is not wrong, Confucian China is dead, and tradition has entered the museum. So, apart from "China" in the sense of a nation-state, what else can we define "China"? Today, China has pursued prosperity and strength, but it seems to have lost Its unique culture and values. In the face of a value system that claims to be more universal (that is, Western culture), can we still maintain the "particularity" unique to China, and where should the anchor of China's "particularity" be?
The answer to this question should not be sought only within China, but should be looked at the world. Levinson quotes a passage from Whitehead in the introduction to Volume I: "A lost traveler should not ask 'where am I', what he really wants to know is 'where else'." He knows where he is, lost elsewhere. In the same way, we should not only insist on asking "what is China", but should use a "dialogue" mentality to understand what people outside Of China are doing, how they think, and what they have experienced. This process of discovering the "other" is also a process of self-discovery. If we can tell not only the Chinese story, but also the American story, the Japanese story, the Iranian story, the Rwandan story, the Argentine story, and the Egyptian story, then we can prove that we have indeed entered the "universal discourse world", providing not only vocabulary, but also language.
If we have any reason to read this book from more than fifty years ago today, this sincere willingness to "dialogue" and the cosmopolitan vision are probably one of the reasons.
About the translation of this book
I have always had a strong interest in academic translation. I have benefited from academic translations, and the large number of overseas Chinese studies published in the 1980s and 1990s gave me the opportunity to come into contact with different perspectives outside of China, and it was also an opportunity to attract me to travel westward. The experience of studying in the United States has made me realize that the huge differences in Chinese and English language expressions are not only in vocabulary, but also in syntax and even way of thinking. When I attended my PhD graduation ceremony in 2009, every graduate had to say what he planned for the future. What I said was: "I want to work in academic translation and promote academic exchange Chinese and the English-speaking world." "It's been exactly ten years since that sentence, and I finally got a wish of that year. It is hoped that this translation will live up to the original author and Chinese readers, become a bridge between the two, and enrich our common intellectual world.
Nowadays, people often question the value of academic translation – limited readers, poorly paid, often not recognized by academic evaluation systems, and laborious and unflattering. But I always feel that academic translation has its own value and charm. For translators, translation is a special way of intensive reading, and the process of academic translation is not only an in-depth learning and understanding of foreign Chinese, but also a useful attempt and bold exploration to enrich the expression of the mother tongue, and sometimes even needs to create new vocabulary. And one of the most fascinating things about translation is "freedom with limitations." Although the original text presupposes restrictions, the different translation concepts, knowledge backgrounds, and writing habits of translators will still bring many possibilities for translation. The basic principle of my translation is still to take "faith" as the primary goal, and to combine "da" and "ya", and the most important goal is to let Chinese readers more accurately understand Levinson's original meaning.
Meissner et al., eds., The MozartIan Historian: The Collected Writings of Joseph R. Levinson, University of California Press, 1976.
Levinson is hailed by scholars as a "Mozart historian", and this trilogy is particularly reflective of his "Mozart".) dexterity and brilliance. He is knowledgeable and memorable, with ancient and modern Chinese and Western allusions at hand, and loves to use puns, metaphors and other word games, and translating his trilogy is particularly challenging. What impressed me most was the French sentence at the end of the second chapter of volume THREE: "Les poiriers sont coupés," which literally means "the pear tree has been cut down." At first, I couldn't understand the meaning at all, and I went to consult my friend Ma Jun, who was teaching in France, and he had no clue, and could only be sure that the French meaning was correct. Fortunately, it has now entered the era of search engines, and when I searched for the keywords of "pear tree" and "slash", I finally found that the ninth story of the seventh day in the Decameron was related to it in a large number of miscellaneous information, and the moral of this story also coincided with the meaning levinson wanted to express. So I boldly added a translation note to illustrate the relationship between the two. But is this really Levinson's intention? I still have no bottom in my heart. If he did use allusions from the Decameron, why did he use French to relay an Italian story? It's like an Easter egg buried in a game that's surprising and gratifying. "Easter eggs" like this abound in the book, challenging not only the reader but also the translator.
I began translating the book in May 2017 and completed the first draft of the translation in May 2018. After the first draft was translated, I revised it three times, and after the typography was completed, I read through and revised the translation again to make it more in line with the reading habits of the Chinese. In the process, I received help from many teachers and friends. At the beginning of my translation, Dong Yue revised the translation of the general preface, the first volume of the preface and the introduction word by word, and put forward many suggestions for the translation of the specific terms in the book. After the first draft was completed, my friend Wei Zhou read through and checked all the translations with reference to the original text, and put forward a large number of very good revision suggestions. Mr. Lu Xinggang, the responsible editor of this book, carefully helped me restore Japanese references, find the original citations of some uncommon documents, polish the text, correct the mistranslations, and make up for my many deficiencies. I also received help from teachers and friends such as Tang Hao, Ye Bin, Ma Jun, and Paul Pickowicz. They made the translation of the book avoid many possible errors, but the errors that still exist in this translation are due to my own omissions and ignorance.
Finally, I would like to conclude with the words of a previous scholar and translator, Li Kang: "The way to preserve the honor and pride of the translator is to keep the translator humble himself." There is no complete copying, and it is impossible to boast of any transmission, he just feels the necessity of labor in the face of differences in language systems, under the powerlessness of conversion, and in the lack of native language ability. "This is by no means a perfect translation, but the product of a painstaking effort. I look forward to the criticism and correction of the vast number of readers after the book is published, so as to make it more perfect.