[
    {
        "id": 212014,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1989",
        "page_number": 429,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "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).\n\nTwo 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).\n\nThe 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",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
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    {
        "id": 212268,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 210,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "opposition to missionaries. A recent case in point is the brilliant article by Andrew Nathan on the use of value judgements in cross-cultural studies. Arguing for \"evaluative universalism\" rather than \"cultural relativism\", Nathan uncovers a number of hidden biases in the last thirty years of American sinological studies. His \"evaluative universalism\" is informed by a relatively sensitive account of the nature of value judgements. Rather than support an uncritical absolutist stance, he argues that scholars must make explicit and reasoned value judgements of foreign cultures by employing the values they believe to be valid. In this way, the validity of the values can come under legitimate scrutiny, and the beliefs of the investigator in the validity of these values can be tested by norms of rational discourse.\n\nIn the process of elaborating his position, Nathan at least three times suggests generalized criticisms against missionaries. Implicit in these generalizations is the claim that missionaries are driven by zeal, and so are incompetent and biased judges of foreign cultures, not fairly stating the value judgements of the cultures they are proselytizing. Exactly these kind of general statements, especially when embedded in the text of a notable scholar, would discourage inquisitive souls from the hope of ever finding a missionary who would be something more than a cross-cultural misfit. But Legge was precisely such an exception.\n\nPragmatic Difficulties\n\nLargely as a consequence of some of the above mentioned misunderstandings, James Legge has been generally neglected and we should ask, \"Why?\"\n\nI would like to suggest here four pragmatic reasons for this oversight.\n\nFirst, the immensity of the scope of Legge's work is simply forbidding. The sum of all his efforts included translations of nine Confucian classics, descriptions and evaluations of four religious traditions (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity), data involving materials from China, Japan, Korea, India and Europe (he was literate in Latin, French, German, Italian, English, biblical Greek and Hebrew as well as several Oriental languages). A proper\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212293,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 235,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "212\n\nKong CT. London Missionary Society Archives, South China, April 24, 1845: Legge writes to the headquarters, sending copies of Collie's work to them.\n\nC Andrew J Nathan, \"The Place of Values in Cross-Cultural Studies: The Example of Democracy and China\", in Paul A. Cohen and Merle Goldman, eds., Ideas Across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of Benjamin I. Schwartz (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 293-314. I quote here the three relevant sections.\n\n**After World War II] relativism especially recommended itself as a corrective to our society's nineteenth and early twentieth-century missionary impulses... that their way of life was not going to sweep the world.... (Ibid. p 296).\n\n**The relativist position |-| adopted in order to prevent missionary zeal from clouding our understanding of the non-Western world |. led in some cases to an equal but opposite kind of self-deception”. (Ibid. p 304).\n\n\"Evaluative universalism by no means requires a return to the missionary mode of promoting Western values. It is not a call for proselytism but an expression of the belief, first, that value differences when they exist can, and can only, be honestly expressed, and second, that beliefs originating in different societies can fruitfully be confronted with one another, compared, and judged, even though disagreement is expected to persist”. (Ibid. pp 312-313).\n\nRecorded in Legge's autobiographical account entitled \"Notes of My Life\" (pp. 25-27), kept now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.\n\n12 These books are Paraphrasis Psalmorum Davidis Poetica (n.p., 1566) and Rerum Scoticorum Historia (ed. apud A. Arbuthnetum, 1582). English translations of both were available in Legge's time.\n\nLi\n\nThis version was apparently intended as a replacement of the earlier rendition of The Book Of Poetry published by Legge in 1871. It was a completely revised text of both the verse and the commentarial notes. Because it only included the English text and not the Chinese text which appeared in the first edition, however, the later Oxford edition of 1893-1895 republished the earlier text. A comparison of this earlier rendition with the second edition (which others called Legge's \"metrical“ Shijing \"jén) would display the kind of discipline Legge had as a translator of classical texts. See James Legge, The Chinese Classics: translated into English, with Preliminary Essays And Explanatory Notes – Vol III: The She King; or, The Book Of Odes (London: Trübner & Co., 1876). See also Alfred Lister, \"Dr. Legge's Metrical Shi-King\", The China Review 5:1 (July 1876), pp. 1-8.\n\n11\n\nThis Hebrew Psalter was prepared with a twenty-seven page introductory essay which included some critical commentary, and over three hundred pages of metrical paraphrases of the Psalms. Legge's position in presenting the Psalter was primarily meditative and not textual-critical; neither did this tome contain the kind of extensive commentarial apparatus which The Chinese Classics always included. Perhaps it is for some of these reasons that the manuscript was never published. It is now kept in the library of New College at the University of Edinburgh.\n\n14 The printed text of this poetic summary of Chinese history I found in the Oriental Studies Library in Oxford. It was clearly planned and printed as part of some larger work.\n\nFor the value of \"cherishing the old\", see the Analects 2:11, The Chinese Classics: Vol 1, op. cit., p. 49. Han Yu's opposition to Buddhist and Taoist superstitions, his courageous attack on their spiritual deceptions, and his consequent punishment must have stood as a courageous example to Legge. Han's specific interest in the old style, and his influence in stimulating interest in the renewed study of ancient texts and writing styles, parallels some of Legge's own interests.\n\n17 After graduating from King's College, the young James spent time with his father",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
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]