Joachim Kurtz

The discovery of Chinese logic

This book analyzes the discovery of Chinese logic as a paradigmatic case of the epistemic shifts that have shaped interpretations of China’s intellectual heritage. Reconstructing the transcultural genealogy of a modern discourse, it adds a neglected chapter to the global history of philosophy.

Chinese Dreams of the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Utopia, Propaganda

Dreams of a return to a golden age in remote antiquity were common tropes in imperial Chinese philosophy, literature and art. But such yearnings could also relate to the more recent past of a diffuse ‘Middle Period’ situated flexibly between the time of the legendary sage kings and the respective present. This article illustrates how evocations of this unwieldy era were re-signified through its association with Europe’s ‘Middle Ages’. Far from producing a unified image, the uneasy coupling opened up a space in between the normative poles of ‘antiquity’ and ‘modernity’ that served as a platform to negotiate competing visions of China’s past, present and future. Alternately romanticised or demonised, the Chinese medieval could be enlisted as a site of cultural nostalgia, social utopia or a tool of political propaganda. By reviewing a selection of these diverse uses, I aim to understand the limited but persistent appeal of medievalism in modern China. At the same time, I will explore what this example can teach us about the ways in which ‘colligatory concepts’ such as the Middle Ages and the obsessions that may be attached to them travel across cultural and linguistic boundaries.