Metzger's approach is essentially Western in identifying values promoting Western forms of modernity (as in the writings of the Hong Kong historian, Lau Siu-guang p. 289), while overlooking some other important alternatives—a point made by Andrew Nathan (p. 310).
Two outstanding articles extend further the methodological issues in evaluating modern China, suggesting an important lacuna in reflecting on Schwartz's academic achievements. Germaine Hoston's tour de force, a comparative study of Chinese, Japanese, South American, and African Marxisms, rests not only in the cultural pluralities she has in her grasp but also in her reassessment of the spiritual dimensions of Marxist, and specifically Chinese and Japanese Marxist, theories (pp. 169-220). Asian Marxists uncovered a wealth of sympathy for certain spiritual dimensions, much like Liberation theologians, including the full absorption by Japanese Marxists of elements of kokutai ('national polity', pp. 193-195). A similarly admirable essay by Andrew Nathan untangles the conflict between cultural relativism and ‘evaluative universalism’, that is, forming judgements in cross-cultural studies on the basis of values the investigator believes to be valid (p. 295). The arguments against imposing 'foreign' values on China are dismantled with great precision and insightful thoroughness, covering issues raised over the last thirty years in sinological circles. Although one laments the failure of Nathan to explicitly respond to the tainting of values by ideologically-laden choices—an issue of which he, as a political scientist, is certainly aware—perceptive readers should be able to extrapolate the arguments presented to include this dimension. Both Hoston and Nathan suggest a logical and/or spiritual dimension which is not explicitly located in Schwartz's thought (except in passing by the editors, p. 3).
The relation of Schwartz's Jewish faith to his Chinese interests as a historian and political scientist is worthy of reflection because this is a somewhat unusual junction of ideas in itself and because it may provide a key to at least one aspect of Schwartz's restlessness with any unquestioned scholarly assumption. Schwartz's critical awareness of the connections between Mao and Confucianism may find some parallel in his confrontative effort in locating a connection between Hannah Arendt's Marxism and her Jewishness (see Dissent 17:2 (March/April 1970), pp. 144-161). Ideological commitments may overshadow traditional inheritances, but they cannot by that means necessarily avoid all influences and misjudgements. Schwartz's sensitivity to the distortion of Judaism evident in Arendt's 'religion of politics' may well reflect a