Author: Susan Chan Egan
Publisher: Chinese University Press
ISBN: 9789629963415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 564
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Book Description
A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit portrays the unconventional love of Hu Shi, a Chinese social reformer and civil rights pioneer, and Edith Clifford Williams, an American avant-garde artist of the early twentieth century. Hu studied at Cornell University, where he first met Williams, and Columbia University, where he worked with the famous pragmatist John Dewey. At the time of his death in 1962, he and Williams had exchanged more than 300 letters that, along with poems and excerpts from Hu's diaries and documents (some of which have never before been translated into English) form the center of this book. In Williams, Hu found his intellectual match, a woman and fellow scholar who helped the reformer reconcile his independent scholarship with cultural tradition. Williams counciled Hu on the acceptance of an arranged marriage, and she influenced his pursuit of experimental vernacular poetry through an exposure to avant-garde art. In 1933, the two became lovers, although their romance would eventually dwindle. Nevertheless, Williams maintained a devoted and honest correspondence with Hu throughout his tumultuous life. Hu's work touched on virtually every crucial aspect of twentieth-century Chinese society, particularly Chinese liberalism and the use of vernacular Chinese. A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit explores the lesser-known side of this major philosopher while reconstructing his romance with Williams. Not only does the volume place Hu within the larger social, economic, and political context of his time, but it also provides readers with a multifaceted portrait of China's dramatic modern history. Hu Shi: Father of the Modern Chinese Renaissance*1891: Born in a suburb of Shanghai; 1962: Died in Taipei.* Married with three children.* Possibly the most documented life in modern China.* Earned a B.A. and M.A. at Cornell University; Earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he studied with the famous pragmatist John Dewey.* Became a leading figure of the Chinese Literary Revolution of 1919, advocating the use of vernacular Chinese and the importance of intellectual individualism.* Become a civil rights advocate who promoted the empowerment of women.* Served as the Republic of China's Ambassador to the United States from 1938 to 1942.* Installed as president of Peking University from 1946 to 1948.* Worked as curator of Princeton University's Gest Library from 1950 to 1952.* Became the target in absentia of a massive political denunciation campaign launched by the Chinese government between 1954 and 1955.* Served as president of Academica Sinica, Taipei, from 1958 to 1962.* Quoted as saying: "Be bold in your hypothesis; be meticulous in your verification." Edith Clifford Williams: A Woman Ahead of Her Time* 1885: Born in Ithaca, New York; 1971: Died in Barbados.* Claims to have followed her father's advice: "Don't marry unless you can't help it."* Studied at Yale University School of Art and the Académie Julian in Paris.* Became a pioneer of abstract art and a member of Alfred Stieglitz's inner circle.* Worked as the first full-time librarian of Cornell University's Veterinary Library from 1923 to 1946.* Completed two modernist works of monumental importance: Two Rhythms (1916), a painting now housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Plâtre à toucher chez de Zayas (1916), a sculpture made for touching that was featured in Marcel Duchamp's 1917 journal, Rongwrong, and used as the subject of a lecture by Guillaume Apollinaire in Paris.
Author: Paddy McMahon
Publisher: Auricle Enterprises
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 97
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Book Description
Margaret Anna Cusack (1829 - 1899) was internationally famous as The Nun of Kenmare. She was an Anglican nun who converted to Roman Catholicism and founded an order of nuns called Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. She was a dogged and compassionate champion of the underprivileged and a pioneering spirit in the cause of equal rights for women. Due to her public profile, she was in continuing difficulties with Church authorities and reverted to Protestantism in 1889. Since 1978, Paddy McMahon has been aware of Margaret communicating with him as a spirit guide. Early in July 1998 she intimated that she wished to collaborate with him in writing a book. This book is a record of the dialogue between them. In a wide-ranging exploration of the life in all its aspects, she says: "I want to shout a big YES to life, to the death of death, if I may put it like that, so that anybody and everybody can say - 'I know my body is going to die, but I know, too, that there's nothing to fear in that - it's a celebration of continuing transformation in life'. I want to go into detail about how I express myself in my present state and what life in spirit, generally, is like..."
Author: Carlos Yu-Kai Lin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004424881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Read an interview with Carlos Yu-Kai Lin. Remembering May Fourth: The Movement and its Centennial Legacy is a collective work of thirteen scholars who reflect on the question of how to remember the May Fourth Movement, one of the most iconic socio-political events in the history of modern China. The book discusses a wide range of issues concerning the relations between politics and memory, between writing and ritualizing, between fiction and reality, and between theory and practice. Remembering May Fourth thus calls into question the ways in which the movement is remembered, while at the same time calling for the need to create new memories of the movement.
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805092501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 705
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Book Description
"Our relationship with China remains one of the most complex and rapidly evolving, and is perhaps one of the most important to our nation's future. Here, John Pomfret ... takes us deep into these two countries' shared history, and illuminates ... every major event, relationship, and ongoing development that has affected diplomacy between these two booming, influential nations"--
Author: Liu Jianmei
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190493402
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
This is a powerful account of how the ruin and resurrection of Zhuangzi in modern China's literary history correspond to the rise and fall of modern Chinese individuality. Liu Jianmei highlights two central philosophical themes of Zhuangzi: the absolute spiritual freedom as presented in the chapter of "Free and Easy Wandering" and the rejection of absolute and fixed views on right and wrong as seen in the chapter of "On the Equality of Things." She argues the twentieth century reinterpretation and appropriation of these two important philosophical themes best testify to the dilemma and inner-struggle of modern Chinese intellectuals. In the cultural environment in which Chinese writers and scholars were working, the pursuit of individual freedom as well as the more tolerant and multifaceted cultural mentality has constantly been downplayed, suppressed, or criticized. By addressing a large number of modern Chinese writers, including Guo Moruo, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Fei Ming, Liu Xiaofeng, Wang Zengqi, Han Shaogong, Ah Cheng, Yan Lianke, and Gao Xingjian, the author provides an insightful and engaging study of how they have embraced, rejected, and returned to ancient thought and how the spirit of Zhuangzi has illuminated their writing and thinking through the turbulent eras of modern China. This book not only explores modern Chinese writers' complicated relationship with "tradition," but also sheds light on if the freedom of independence, non-participation, and roaming and the more encompassing cultural space inspired by Zhuangzi's spirit were allowed to exist in the modern Chinese literary context. Involving the interplay between philosophy, literature, and history, Liu delineates a neglected literary tradition influenced by Zhuangzi and Daoism and traces its struggles to survive in modern and contemporary Chinese culture.
Author: Mark O'Neill
Publisher: 三聯書店(香港)有限公司,聯合電子出版有限公司代理
ISBN: 9620449185
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Doctor Hu Shih was the most remarkable Chinese intellectual of the 20th century. He was the leading pioneer of vernacular, rather than classical, Chinese. It was widely adopted by schools and the media during the 1920s. His lectures at Beijing University and elsewhere, books and articles influenced tens of thousands of Chinese. From 1938-1942, he served as China’s ambassador in Washington DC and played a key role in persuading President Franklin Roosevelt to enter World War Two on the Chinese side.
Author: Roger T. Ames
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824884558
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the “idea” of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey’s “idea” of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a “Confucian democracy.” Just as Dewey’s “idea” of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi’s Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process “starting here and going there” through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century.
Author: César Guarde-Paz
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811043167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
This Pivot reconsiders the controversial literary figure of Lin Shu and the debate surrounding his place in the history of Modern Chinese Literature. Although recent Chinese mainland research has recognized some of the innovations introduced by Lin Shu, he has often been labeled a 'rightist reformer' in contrast to 'leftist reformers' such as Chen Duxiu and the new wave scholars of the May Fourth Movement. This book provides a well-documented account of his place in the different polemics between these two circles ('conservatives' and 'reformers') and provides a more nuanced account of the different literary movements of the time. Notably, it argues that these differences were neither in content nor in politics, but in the methodological approach of both parties. Examining Lin Shu and the 'conservatives' advocated coexistence of both traditional and modern thought, the book provides background to the major changes occurring in the intellectual landscape of Modern China.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900469790X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Why did the "Shandong Question" vanish in the May Fourth narrative? How did conservatives and traditionalists endure admist the progressive wave of the new culture movement? What role did Confucian ritualism and religion play in shaping May Fourth literature? Is an uncanny connection hidden between “Return Qingdao” and “Liberate Hong Kong”? This volume, edited by Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair, and with contributors from across the fields of intellectual history, literature and languages, philosophy, and Asian studies, answers these questions and offers new insights into the May Fourth movement. It explores this pivotal historical event both as a singular occurrence and as a sustaining cultural-intellectual campaign. The new volume is brimming with fresh perspectives, uncovering these enigmas, and unveiling the nuanced and intricate world of the May Fourth to its discening readers.
Author: John Pettegrew
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847690626
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
In this volume, a host of distinguished scholars examine Richard Rorty's influence on twentieth-century American pragmatism and its commitment to achieving social democracy. Rorty's reclaiming of the pragmatist tradition and his contribution to the discipline of intellectual history are highlighted; at the same time, each essay finds Rorty's pragmatism (most fully enunciated in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity) lacking in its privatist vision of the good life. This criticism is drawn out through explicit comparisons between Rorty and his grandfather Walter Rauschenbusch, William James, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, Richard J. Bernstein, and other twentieth century pragmatist thinkers. This volume offers the most complete historical treatment of this controversial intellectual to date.
