Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism

Description

The surprising story of how Greek classics are being pressed into use in contemporary China to support the regime’s political agenda As improbable as it may sound, an illuminating way to understand today’s China and how it views the West is to look at the astonishing ways Chinese intellectuals are interpreting―or is it misinterpreting?―the Greek classics. In Plato Goes to China, Shadi Bartsch offers a provocative look at Chinese politics and ideology by exploring Chinese readings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and other ancient writers. She shows how Chinese thinkers have dramatically recast the Greek classics to support China’s political agenda, diagnose the ills of the West, and assert the superiority of China’s own Confucian classical tradition. In a lively account that ranges from the Jesuits to Xi Jinping, Bartsch traces how the fortunes of the Greek classics have changed in China since the seventeenth century. Before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese typically read Greek philosophy and political theory in order to promote democratic reform or discover the secrets of the success of Western democracy and science. No longer. Today, many Chinese intellectuals use these texts to critique concepts such as democracy, citizenship, and rationality. Plato’s “Noble Lie,” in which citizens are kept in their castes through deception, is lauded; Aristotle’s Politics is seen as civic brainwashing; and Thucydides’s criticism of Athenian democracy is applied to modern America. What do antiquity’s “dead white men” have left to teach? By uncovering the unusual ways Chinese thinkers are answering that question, Plato Goes to China opens a surprising new window on China today. Cover Contents Preface Editions and Translations Introduction: The Ancient Greeks in Modern China I. Why the Ancient Greeks? II. What’s in It for the West? III. From “Master Li” to Chairman Xi 1. Jesuits and Visionaries I. Missionaries with Greek Characteristics II. Aristotle and a New Nation III. To Tiananmen Square, But Not Back 2. Classics after the Crackdown I. Thucydides Warns the West II. China’s Model Democracy III. A Dissident Echoes the Past 3. Thinking with Plato’s “Noble Lie” I. Justice, Big and Small II. A Not So Noble Lie III. Hierarchy for the People 4. Rationality and Its Discontents I. The Soul-less West II. Ren Stakes a Place III. A Farewell to Binaries 5. A Straussian Interlude I. The Prophets of Strauss II. An Esoteric Paradox 6. Harmony for the World I. Harmony Contains Multitudes II. The Uses of Confucius III. Whose Republic Will It Be? 7. Thoughts for the Present I. Classics II. Cultures III. Myths Notes Bibliography Index