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Abstract:
Maruyama Masao is the most influential post-war Japanese intellectual historian. He transcends the dichotomy between Eastern and Western thought, uncovering the “insistent bass” in the “ancient layers” of Japanese thought and examining how it has recreated the universality of modern Japanese thought. He views the study of the history of thought as an “art of representation” similar to the performance of music, in which re-creation is achieved within the confines of a text. He relativizes universal thought in a specific historical context, presenting the richness and diversity of thought itself.

Xu Jilin is a modern Chinese intellectual historian and chair professor of history at East China Normal University in Shanghai, as well as Executive Deputy Director of the China Institute of Modern Thought and Culture, and Specially Appointed Zijiang Scholar. He is also a member of the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Sciences Federation and the Chinese History Society.

He has worked as visiting scholar or guest professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the National University of Australia, the National University of Singapore and Harvard University, as well as Aichi University, Tokyo University, Academia Sinica, University of British Columbia, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on Chinese intellectuals and Shanghai urban culture.

His publications include (but are not limited to) Public Communication of Modern Chinese Intellectuals (co-author, 2008) and How the Enlightenment was Reborn (2011), Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique (2018); The Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment in Contemporary China (2011), and Ten Essays on Chinese Intellectuals (2003), which won the first Wenjin Award from the National Library in 2005. Some of his writings have been translated into English.

This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.