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civilization occurred during the time of Confucius and not, as Schwartz argued in his latest book, The World Of Thought In Ancient China (1985), half a millennium earlier in the Western Zhou. Metzger underlines foundations for individual moral autonomy in traditional Chinese thought, a position contradicting the general evaluation (supported by Schwartz) that 'Confucian norms emphasized the importance of the group at the expense of the individual's freedom, spontaneity, creativity and moral autonomy', (p. 263). The fact that Chang's analysis uncovers no decisive break with tradition, but only a 'counter-tendency' to the cosmological myth which legitimated imperial rule (pp. 30-31), manifests the need to question the usefulness of positing an axial age when applied to pre-Qin cultures. Studies edited by Eisenstadt have recognized this methodological dilemma, noting the difficulty of identifying a period of radical metaphysical construction and social repositioning during Confucius' era. This leaves open the possibility that Schwartz's location of the major shift in the earlier period of the sage kings, in spite of oracular bone evidence to the contrary (pp. 18-19), may yet identify an important option. Metzger's challenge, on the other hand, unveils a leitmotif which weaves the polychronic essays into a single tapestry: the question of the relationship between modernity and China.
These essays being divided into four general sections entitled 'Thought', 'Literature and Culture', 'Political Theory', and 'Culture and Methodology' — tend to converge on either characterizing the process of modernization in some dimension of Chinese societies or evaluating the methods scholars have employed to illuminate China's status in the modern world. These convergences are imbedded in comparative discussions of intriguing complexity, making this thread less easy to identify at times. Nevertheless, recourse to the touchstone of modernity is a central feature of the volume. In fact, the discussion regarding it is not always complementary.
Don Wyatt, like Metzger, locates a singular continuity in Confucianism: Confucian language is "this-worldly", especially in its use of analogical arguments, (pp. 42-57). Surprisingly, perhaps, this does not mean that Confucianists (especially in the Song) did not address metaphysical, even other-worldly, ideas. Emphasizing this kind of 'language consensus' which sinologists have regularly typified as this-worldly, Wyatt goes so far as to claim that, although Confucian society was clearly stratified, no class-bound structures are evident in Confucian language, (p. 61). Whether or not this is still the case, this assertion