1st Edition

Confucianism and the Continuation of Anti-Enlightenment

By Xiaojie Chen Copyright 2025
180 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

180 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

In 18th-century Europe, before the “Counter-Enlightenment,” two coexisting perspectives emerged within the Enlightenment: the first was the belief that humans were endowed with the capacity to think independently, which led to the possibility of egalitarianism; the second was the restriction of the faculty’s scope of application, which argued that the people must rely on intellectuals as their... Read more

Chapter 1 Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment: The Convergence of Chinese Neo-Confucians and 18th- Century European Philosophers  Section1  Is 啓蒙(けいもう) (Enlightenment) a mistranslation and a fundamental misunderstanding?  Section 2  The Seduction of the Anti-Enlightenment: The “Dual Truth Principle” or the “Pious Fraud”  Section 3  Tang-Song Transformation and the Birth of Zhuzi School: Chinese Aufklärung at least 500 years before Europe?  Section 4  The End and Repetition of Chinese Aufklärung: “illustrate bright virtue” and “renovate the people” in 20th century  Section 5  The continuation and convergence of the Anti-Enlightenment  Chapter 2  Benevolence and Fraternité: On the various forms of social intergration  Section 1   Fraternity’s Journey: From the West to China via Meiji Japan’s Benevolence  Section 2   Fraternité in the early Revolutionary France (17891790)  Section 3   The Ren as benevolence and the vertical “love”  Section 4   Perspectives on Social Intergration

Biography

Xiaojie Chen is Assistant Professor at the School of Philosophy, Wuhan University. He holds a PhD from Kansai University in Japan and was a visiting scholar at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in France. He mainly researches on Neo-Confucianism, Enlightenment, and French Revolution. He has published one monograph and two translations.