Eigene und fremde Welten

The series »Eigene und fremde Welten« is edited by Jorg Baberowski, VincentHouben, Stefan Beck, Thomas Mergel and Gabriele Metzler, in connection withthe Collaborative Research Center no. 640 »Representations of Changing SocialOrders: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Temporal Comparisons* based at Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin (Germany).

Volume 23

Jorg Feuchter, Friedhelm Hoffmann, Bee Yun

Cultural Transfersin DisputeRepresentations in Asia, Europe and the Arab Worldsince the Middle Ages

Jorg Feuchter, Dr. phil., is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Historyat Humboldt-Universitat in Berlin. Friedhelm Hoffmann, M.A., is a researcher atZentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. Bee Yun is assistant professor at the Depart-ment of Political Science and Diplomacy at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul.

Campus VerlagFrankfurt/New York

Transfer in Dispute: The Case of China

Heiner Roetz

China poses a particular challenge when it comes to discussing cultural transferin terms of a specific example. In comparison to other parts of the world, it seemsto be especially resistant against foreign influences, in spite of the impact of themodern West in nearly all fields from technical know-how through economics,statecraft and law to the sciences, literature, philosophy and religion. It has oftenbeen regarded as a relic of the past, with the greatest internal continuity of allcivilizations since ancient times. The Chinese like to talk of themselves as the»children and grandchildren of the Yellow Emperor«, who is traditionally datedto the third millennium BC, and speak of a unitary Chinese history going backfive thousand years. The construction of a distinct Chinese identity through theages is today officially sponsored by the political regime of the People's Republicof China, which has discovered the »culture factor« (wenhua yinsu) that figuresso prominently in Western »cultural studies* as a new source of legitimation.1What Sun Jiazheng, the Chinese Minister of Culture, had to say at the NationalPress Club in Washington in October 2005 is typical of the official Chinese pointof view:

Each country has the right to choose its own culture; and it is only up to the countryitself to determine what kind of culture is suitable. It is as obvious as the fact that the fishchooses the water it wants to live in and the bird picks the forest for its habitat. No matterhow others comment on our thoughts or system, only we ourselves know what suits usbest, just like the fact that in order to judge whether a pair of shoes fit or not, you haveto ask the one who wears them. Differences among various national cultures have existedsince the start of history, and they are the precondition for maintaining the richness anddiversity of world cultures.

1 Cf. for example the talk of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, »Ba muguang touxi-angzhongguo« (Turn the Eyes on China) (10.12.2003), http://www.people.com.cn/GB/shehui/1061/2241298.html (accessed on 05.11.2010); English translation: http://www.chinaenglish.com.cn/html/2009-08/33460.html (accessed on 05.11.2010).

2 Sun Jiazheng, »Chinese Culture Today«, URL: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Festival/ 149722.htm (accessed on 05.11.2010).

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China claims a sanctity of its political system based on unique cultural valuesthat reach back to the Stone Age. This position has Western counterparts -not always so broad-brushed but in principle similar — for example in formsof communitarianism. Civilizational analysis is a widespread tendency in thehumanities, replacing the »outdated« universalistic evolutionary schemes thatMaoist China also adhered to.3

In fact, Chinese culture, like any culture, has always been the constantlychanging result of the confluence of knowledge and experience from quite dif-ferent sources, nucleus theories having proven archeologically untenable. Manyof these influences were met with unspectacular acceptance, while others havevanished and some have brought about far reaching change, but they have notforestalled one-dimensional essentialistic theories contending a unity of Chine-seness to the present day. They have been accompanied by rejecting, playingdown, denying, or »nostrifying« foreign impacts that have in fact had a centralrole in shaping China. However, hostility has not been the primary response.The fiercer the opposition, the more successful the transfer processes have actu-ally been.

How to come to terms with a world with open borders became a particularlyurgent question for China in the face of the looming breakdown of the oldimperial order in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the traumaticaftermath of the Opium Wars, China faced the problem whether and, if so, howthe time-proven standards of its tradition could be made compatible with thenew, imported standards of an originally alien civilization that for the time beinghad won the historic contest. China soon realized that it was neither possiblenor advisable to repel the pressure from the West altogether. But there wereefforts to channel it in such a way that the social and political system wouldstay intact. The popular formula for this endeavor was zhong xue wei ti, xi xuewei yong — Chinese knowledge for the substantial issues (social relations andethics), Western knowledge for the practical things (technology, economy, and,most urgently, the military). It was intended to limit the influx of new ideas toseemingly controllable spheres where they would be of practical advantage, whileprotecting and even stabilizing the established power structure, not necessarily interms of upholding the monarchy, but upholding elite rule against the majority

3 Cf. Johann P. Arnason, »Civilizational Analysis: A New Paradigm in the Making«, in: WorldCivilizations, ed. by Robert Holton, in: Encyclopedia of Life-Support Systems (EOLSS), theUNESCO Online Encyclopedia (Oxford: Eolss Publishers, 2007), URL: http://www.eolss.net/ebooks/Sample%20Chapters/C04/E6-97-01-OO.pdf (accessed on 05.11.2010).

4 For the early phase, cf. Victor Mair, »Religious Formations and Intercultural Contacts in EarlyChina«, in: Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe in Past and PresentTimes, ed. by Volkhard Krech & Marion Steinicke (Leiden: E.J. Brill, forthcoming in 2011),and my response to this article in the same volume.

of the population. Though it has never been uncontroversial, this scheme is stillat work. The result has been the emergence of a bisected modernity. On theone hand, the triumph of instrumental rationality with mainland China as oneof the global hubs of limitless transfer of capital, economic goods, and advancedtechnology. On the other hand, the prohibition of free and public exchange ofideas and national isolation when it comes to any discourse that could call thepolitical system into question. And this system has begun to legitimize itself incultural terms, as the reality of the People's Republic of China defies the olduniversal language of historical materialism.

There have also been other reactions to the challenge of Western moder-nity: calls for wholesale »Westernization« without compromise and reservation;also attempts to discover older indigenous Chinese sources for modernizationprocesses, that would have led to similar results to the Western developmenthad it not been for inhibiting contingent factors. This is the point of theneo-Confucian »seeds« (zhongzi) theory (with regard to democracy) and of theSino-Marxist »sprouts« (mengya) theory (with regard to capitalism), both usingbotanical metaphors to suggest internal processes of growth. According to thesetheories, the West only stimulated or accelerated (or indeed hampered), whatwas already on the way or already there as a latent potential. For the ChineseMarxists, it was important in this connection to integrate Chinese history intothe »normal« dialectics of productive forces and relations of production, the se-quence from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialismand communism, which identifies the internal dynamics of a society rather thanexternal stimuli as the decisive driving force of development. They rejected theMarxian theory of the »Asian mode of production* which sees China stuck in adead end out of which it can only be freed from outside - namely, by the »greatcivilizing influence of capital« transported by Western colonialism.5 Endeavorslike these might in part be parochial expressions of Chinese nationalism, but asI will try to show, they cannot be reduced to that.

China had never before seen such a comprehensive challenge as it faced fromthe West from the mid-nineteenth century. But this was not the first time Chinahad been exposed to impacts from the outside world and had to deal with them.It has always done so in different ways. From the beginning, we find open and- relative to the then known world - global as well as closed and provincial per-spectives in the documents that came to form the basis of the Chinese intellectualtradition.

On the »open« side we have, for example, intense marriage diplomacy inancient China between Chinese and non-Chinese clans. We have the early in-fluential idea (eleventh century BC) of an ethnically neutral mandate of rule

Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p>. 409.

266 H E I N E R ROETZ TRANSFER IN DISPUTE: THE CASE OF C H I N A 267

bestowed by the god of »Heaven« on the most virtuous, irrespective of descent.In classical Chinese ethics we have an abstract notion of the human being andnon-racist anthropologies, and we have steps towards ethical universalism.6 Wehave cosmologies that do not privilege specific parts of the world against others,as in the notion that the dao is everywhere, even in the lowest things like »tilesand shards and shit and piss*.7 We have a number of normative criteria extend-ing beyond the authority of the inherited culture, which emerged during a deepinternal crisis of the Chinese tradition in the middle of the last millennium EC,among them the criteria of the good, of utility and of practicability, and the rec-ommendation simply to choose what is good and useful and practical, regardlessof its origin.8 Correspondingly, we find a series of anti-traditional arguments inwhich Chinese culture for the first time critically detaches itself from its own her-itage. These points of self-transcendence embodied in the classical philosophyare also the privileged points of departure to open oneself for »others«. Inter-estingly, there is also the idea that the diachronic distance between the presentand the past in Chinese history is analogous to the synchronic distance between»peoples with different customs*.9 Although this statement is not about interestin the foreign, it implies that our own past is not necessary closer to us than theexperiences of others.

On the »closed« side we have extensive warfare between Chinese and »bar-barians« during the last millennium BC, and the formation of a self-awareness ofthe »lands of the Xia« (zhuxia) and the »central states« (zhongguo, the later namefor »China«), which distinguish themselves from the surrounding ethnic groups,with the support of a corresponding hierarchical cosmology. One example ofcultural Sinocentrism can be found in the Book ofMengzi.

Mengzi (c. 370—c. 290 BC), who later became revered as the »second sage«of Confucianism, criticises a certain Chen Xiang who has given up his Confucianlearning for a new teaching that has spread to the »central states* from the south.For Mengzi, this is a betrayal of the superior way of the Xia in order to follow»shrike-tongued barbarians*. »I have heard of men using the [way of] the Xia tochange the barbarians,* he says, »I have never yet heard of any being changed bybarbarians.* And he adds, »I have heard of birds leaving dark valleys to remove to

6 Heiner Roetz, Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), pp. 126f, 234f,242.

7 Zhuangzi 22, Guo Qingfan, Zhuangzi jishi, quoted after Zhuzi jicheng (Hong Kong: Zhong-hua, 1978), vol. 2, pp. 326f; cf. Burton Watson, Chuang-tzu (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1968), p. 241.

8 Cf. for this and the following my article »Tradition, Universality and the Time Paradigm ofZhou Philosophy*, in: Journal of 'Chinese Philosophy 36 (2009) 3, pp. 359-375.

9 Cf. Liishi chunqiu 15.8, Zhuzi jicheng, vol. 6, p. 176, full passage quoted in Roetz, »TimeParadigm«, op. cit. (note 8), p. 367.

lofty trees. But I have not heard of their descending from lofty trees to enter intodark valleys.*10 This statement by Mengzi (which, it must be noted, is not fullyin accord with the central part of his philosophy, his moral anthropology, seebelow), was later repeatedly quoted by culturally conservative Sinocentries. Thesame applies to a passage from the »Analects« (Lunyu) of Confucius, although itsmessage is much less evident: »Even if the Yi and Di (Barbarian tribes) have theirrulers, they do not equal the lands of the Xia (the Chinese) without rulers.*11

What is the point of this passage?12 For the culturalists, it was the sharp dis-sociation of the cultivated Chinese from the uncultivated non-Chinese peoples.But since this reading implied a provocation of the rulers, later commentatorstried to reinterpret it: For them, Confucius praises the barbarian tribes for theirfunctioning system of rule in order to expose the political chaos of the Chi-nese states. A third interpretation, already suggested by the monk Huilin andshared by the modern reform philosophers Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao,13

reads the passage metaphorically: In this case, Confucius's statement is neitherpro-Chinese nor pro-rulership, but advocates a cultivated society that can dowithout rule, certainly without despotism.

Nevertheless, to appeal to Confucius as the cultural »patron saint* of Chinaagainst the rest of the world, although it contradicts the universalistic tenets ofhis ethics, has remained a temptation to this day. It has been part and parcel ofattempts to immunize China against unwelcome foreign influences, and has alsoaccompanied the history of Chinese Buddhism.

Prior to the intrusion of the West, the intrusion of Buddhism exerted themost massive, successful and long-lasting impact on China from abroad, prob-ably bigger than the impact of the early "barbarians*. Both impacts provoked anumber of similar reactions on the side that saw itself as »Chinese«.

Buddhism probably came to China around the beginning of the Christianera. For the first century AD, there is documentary evidence for the existence ofBuddhist communities in several different parts of China including the capital

10 Mengzi 3a4, quoted after Harvard-Yenching SinologicalIndex Series. A Concordance to Meng Tzu(Taipei: Chengwen, 1973).

11 Analects 3.5, quoted after Harvard-Yenching Sinological Index, op. cit. (note 10).12 Cf. for various interpretations Roetz, Axial Age, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 90f, Bernhard

Fiihrer, »>The Text of the Classic and the Commentaries Deviates Greatly from Current Edi-tions<: A Case Study on the Siku quanshu Version of Huang Kan's Lunyu yishu,« in: Zensur.Text und Autoritdt in China in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Bernhard Fiihrer (Wies-baden: Harrassowitz, 2003), pp. 19-38, and Li Ling, Sangjiagou: Wo du Lunyu (Shanxi ren-min chubanshe, 2007) 3.5, URL: http://book.ifeng.com/lianzai/detail_2009_03/20/291256_15.shtml (accessed on 05.11.2010).

13 Huilin is quoted in Huang Kan (488—545), Lunyu jijieyishu (Taipei: Guangwen shuju, 1968),vol. 1, chapter 2, p. 4b: »It is better to have civility (li) without a ruler than to have a rulerwithout civility.« For Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, cf. Roetz, Axial Age, op. cit. (note 6), p.91.

268 H E I N E R ROETZ TRANSFER IN DISPUTE: THE CASE OF C H I N A

Luoyang, and for an interest in the new teaching within the imperial family.14

It was probably this success that sooner or later stimulated opposition; we maysafely assume that in every case critical reactions to cultural transfers are indica-tive of a de facto acceptance, or at least the imagined threat of such an accep-tance, of the transferred good by relevant parts of the receiving population. Infact, in the course of time, the foremost reaction to Buddhism in China was thatChinese became Buddhists themselves. Buddhism had something to offer thatmade it attractive, above all its religious benefits (Weber's Heilsgiiter, salvationgoods), a theodicy that rationalized human suffering, the promise of salvation,an escape, if necessary, from family ties, and a philosophical explanation of theworld in new terms. Moreover, becoming a Buddhist did not necessarily meana total conversion to another faith as it did in the case of Christianity or Islam.Given the absence of strong doctrines of exclusiveness in the East Asian religiousfield, being a Buddhist was and is compatible with remaining faithful to Daoistand even Confucian convictions. This facilitated the transfer of Buddhism toChina in the most important transfer prior to the influx of Western knowledge.

Let us now take a closer look at a document from the time between 200 and400 AD, the Mouzi lihuolun - Master Mou on the Dispelling of Errors, written bya Chinese convert who is defending Buddhism against the attack of an unnamedChinese traditionalist.15 It is perhaps the earliest elaborated Chinese text forthe theme of this volume - cultural transfers in dispute - and it contains sometypical topoi of this dispute that are still in use today.

Master Mou's traditionalist opponent puts forward three basic objectionsagainst Buddhism:

He appeals to the Confucian canon as a source of authority and a yardstickfor evaluating Buddhism. He asks Master Mou why his words differ from thoseof Confucius and on what grounds Buddhists do not follow the Classical Con-fucian texts although they are the epitome of wisdom.

He dogmatically reproaches the Buddhists for offending against the prescrip-tions of Confucian orthopraxis, above all with regard to the family. Buddhistmonks shave their heads, which contradicts the virtue of filial piety as taughtin the Confucian Classics (the body is received from our parents and, therefore,should not be injured). They practice celibacy, though by Confucian standards»being without offspring is the greatest impiety« .

269

14 Kenneth Chen, Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1972), pp. 33-36, and Houhanshu 42 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1973), vol. 5, p. 1428.

15 In Hongmingji, Sibu beiyao (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1927-1936) 202, Chapter 1, pp.la-13a. Cf. John P. Keenan, How Master Mou Removes Our Doubt. A Reader-Response Studyand Translation oftheMou-tzu Li-huo-lun (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994).

16 Mengzi 4a26.

He attacks Buddhism as something »alien« and barbarian, inferior to theestablished culture of the Chinese.

It is the assumption of an orthodoxy established by the Confucian Classicsand a corresponding orthopraxis as expression of Chineseness, then, which mo-tivate the criticism of Buddhism. These arguments, above all the rejection of theforeign because it is foreign, have been repeated again and again by conservativedefenders of Chinese tradition, not only Confucians but also Daoists, despitethis contradicting the culture-critical stance of early Daoist philosophy.

Master Mou's pro-Buddhist response is partly on the same level as the anti-Buddhist attack of his opponent: he defends Buddhism by a dogmatic apologysimilar to the one his opponent brings forward for Confucianism. And he claimsthat India is the center of the world - which is what the Chinese culturalists claimfor China. What makes Master Mou interesting for our topic, are his indirectarguments in which he transcends a simple inversion of the »centric« pattern ofthought.

Instead of quoting primarily from the Buddhist literature, Master Mou usesnon-Buddhist Chinese texts extensively for his own purpose, in order to demon-strate that they represent a higher level of insight than that of their contemporarydefenders. He manages to show that central tenets of the classics contradict theattempt to turn them into a bulwark of cultural conservatism. One of theseis Confucius' idea of »weighing« (quan),17 of making decisions under specificcircumstances where standard prescriptions of behavior would fail to meet therequirements of the situation. There is some latitude, then, and the Buddhistchoices, for example in favor of celibacy or shaving the head, are not as unac-ceptable from a »Chinese« standpoint as they might appear at first glance. MasterMou also mentions Confucius's practice of learning from many people and notonly from one teacher,18 which even led him to accept lessons from Lao Dan,the founder of Daoism.19 Therefore, according to Master Mou, the true »gentle-man«, the protagonist of Confucian ethics, »selects from a large number of goodthings in order to support himself«, and »follows what corresponds with what isappropriate". This principle, he says, is no different from acknowledging thatwhat actually cures a disease is a good medicine.20

Master Mou thus argues with the Chinese classics against their later dogma-tization by discovering an abstract layer in them where general notions of thegood and the just and methodical aspects like choosing and learning become

17 Lunyu 9.30, cf. Roetz, Axial Age, op. cit. (note 6), p. 152.18 Lunyu 19.22.19 Lao Dan is mentioned as Confucius's teacher in Luski chunqiu 2.4, p. 20, Shiji 63 (Hong

Kong: Zhonghua, 1969), vol. 7, p. 2140, Kongzijiayu 3.11 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan,1940, p. 71), and other texts. The historicity of these accounts is doubtful.

20 Lihuolun, p. 3b.

270 H E I N E R ROETZ TRANSFER IN D I S P U T E : THE CASE OF C H I N A 271

more important than, as he says, »being bound by minor things*.21 It turns outthat the receiving culture, China, is much less averse to new ideas and much lessfixed to an inflexible orthodoxy and orthopraxis, if it is measured by the stan-dards of its cherished early thinkers rather than the parochial horizon of theirepigones. Obviously, reading the Chinese texts open-mindedly and in respect toan open future is more congenial to them than reading them with an exclusivistattitude towards other cultures.

Admittedly, Master Mou himself selects from the texts to suit his purpose.Nevertheless, he convincingly undermines a one-dimensional view of the clas-sics, and could have made his case even stronger by a more comprehensive andconsistent »postconventional« reading of the Chinese texts. For there are manymore theorems in the classical philosophical literature that call into question thelogic of traditionalism, which is structurally akin to the logic of rejecting theforeign. These theorems have also been cast in graphic parables. Sanctifying thestate of things is, for example, compared to throwing a baby into a river becausethe father is a good swimmer.22

Master Mou, the Chinese convert to Buddhism, also directly addresses thereproach of spreading »the art of the barbarians« in China. This reproach is basedon the two passages in the Mengzi and the Analects mentioned above. Convinc-ingly or not, Master Mou argues that these passages cannot be interpreted interms of Sinocentrism. He points out that Confucius himself wanted to go andlive among the nine wild tribes of the Yi. When someone asked him, »Theyare rude, how can you live there?«, Confucius answered, »What rudeness wouldthere be, where a gentleman lives?*23 Master Mou denies that a meaningful di-vision between China and the »Barbarians« can be drawn in the first place, sincein fact China has always been not unitary but multicultural, and the real valueof a person has never depended on descent. He points out that Yu, the cele-brated founder of the Xia dynasty, to which the Chinese owe their very name(see above), came from a proto-Tibetan tribe, the Xi Qiang. Youyu, the hege-mon of the Chinese state of Qin, was born in the lands of the Di. Gusou, theChinese father of the pre-dynastic cultural hero Shun, was a criminal, and Guanand Cai, the Chinese younger brothers of the founders of the Zhou dynasty,were slanderers. What does it mean, then, to be of Chinese or non-Chinese de-scent? And why should it not be possible to honor the Chinese sages togetherwith Buddha, just like »gold and jade do not harm each other*?24

21 Ibid., p. 4b.22 Ltishi chunqiu 15.8, p. 177. Cf. Roetz, »Time Paradigm«, op. cit. (no23 Lunyu9.\4.24 Lihuolun, p. 6a.

Master Mou's defense of Buddhism as an originally foreign teaching bybuilding bridges from out of the receiving culture was only one phase in anongoing polemic between established Confucians and Daoists on the one sideand Buddhists on the other.25 Anti-Buddhist propaganda frequently used thepattern of argument first formulated by Master Mou's opponent, according towhich Buddhism is alien and hence barbaric and inferior. As the popularity ofBuddhism grew, the controversy became more heated. New treatises were writ-ten, many of them intellectually serious, others crude in their simplistic attackon everything non-Chinese, among them Gu Huan's Yixialun — »On Barbariansand Chinese* (fifth century AD).26 A curious debate started between Daoistsand Buddhists, also conducted before the Chinese emperors, as to which teach-ing predated to the other. The Daoists cited an old legend according to whichtheir founding father Laozi had left China over the Western passes. The [Laozi]Huahujing (»[Laozi's] Cultivation of the Barbarians*) claims that he went to In-dia where he became the Buddha and civilized the barbarians.27 The Sanpolun(»On the Three Destructions Brought about by Buddhism*) adds that becausethe Indians were evil by nature, Laozi, as the Buddha, invented celibacy for themin order to stop them reproducing.28

The Buddhists paid back in their critics' own coin, inventing sutras accordingto which the early Chinese philosophers Laozi, Confucius and the latter's disci-ple Yan Yuan were originally pupils of the Buddha.29 The three had been sent tothe East to teach and cultivate (jiao hua) the Chinese. The debate is bizarre, tobe sure. However, the identification of Buddha and Laozi was, as far as we know,not originally a tool to fight Buddhism.30 It was rather an argument that helpedmake it acceptable in China, and was based on the discovery of evident similar-ities between the two teachings. It appears for the first time in a memorandumXiang Kai submitted in 166 AD to the Han court, where Buddha was already

25 Cf. for this topic Kenneth Chen, »Anti-Buddhist Propaganda during the Nan-Ch'ao«, in:Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 15 (1952) 1-2, pp. 166-192, Eric Zurcher, The BuddhistConquest of China (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1959), Chapters 5 and 6, Richard Mather, »Chineseand Indian Perceptions of Each Other between the First and Seventh Centuries«, in: journalof the American Oriental Society 112 (1992) 1, pp. 1-8, and Guang Xing, »A Buddhist-DaoistCon-tro-versy on Filial Piety«, in: Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (2010) 2, pp. 248-260.

26 Chen, Buddhism in China, op. cit. (note 14) pp. 136-137, and Guang Xing, »Contto-versy«,op. cit. (note 25), pp. 254-256.

27 For the Huahujing cf. Zurcher, Conquest, op. cit. (note 25), pp. 293-307. For the huahu topic,cf. also Kristofer Schipper, »Purity and Strangers. Shifting Boundaries in Medieval Taoism*,in: T'oungPaeLXXX. (1994), pp. 61-81.

28 Sanpolun as quoted in Miehuolun, Hongmingji 8, p. 6b. Cf. Chen, Buddhism in China, op. cit.(note 14), p. 137.

29 Chen, Buddhism in China, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 185f.30 Zurcher, Conquest, op. cit. (note 25), p. 193.

272 H E I N E R ROETZ TRANSFER IN D I S P U T E : THE CASE OF C H I N A

a holy figure worshipped together with Laozi.31 Buddhism was not regarded asan alien element in China, but as a »foreign branch of Daoism«.32 Daoist termi-nology was also used in the first translations of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese,before being replaced by phonetic transcriptions of Buddhist concepts.

It is interesting to see this kind of a reaction reappear later in response tothe transmission of Western knowledge into Ming and Qing China by Chris-tian missionaries.33 Not unlike the Buddhist monks, what the Christian Jesuitsmissionaries brought to China was primarily a religious message of salvation.However, what they also had in their baggage was new scientific and technicalknowledge to prove the superiority of the Christian culture and the practicalpromises of its faith. It was »an essential part of the enterprise of convertingpagans to Christianity*.

While the Christian mission itself was a failure, measured by the hopes andexpectations of its protagonists, the »lesser« knowledge deployed to support it inthe fields of calendar making, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, cartography, etc.quickly met with enthusiastic acceptance on the Chinese side, albeit not withoutconservative opposition. Why was this so? On the one hand, the new knowledgeproved practically superior to contemporary Chinese scholarship. On the otherhand, its acceptance did not presuppose any conversion or radical break with thepast on the Chinese side. On the contrary, China had a long scientific or proto-scientific tradition of its own which shared fundamental assumptions with dienewly introduced Western one: belief in the measurability of the world, in thevalidity and perfectibility of theoretical computations and in the mathematicalpredictability of cosmological manifestations »free from the hold of astrology*.35

As Mei Wending (1633-1721), one of the great mathematicians of the time,

273

31 Houhamhu 30b, vol. 4, p. 1082: »Someone says that Laozi entered the lands of the barbariansin order to become the Buddha.«

32 Ziircher, Conquest, op. cit. (note 25), p. 193.33 For the repetition of patterns cf. Liu Chun, »Cong >Laozi hua hu jing< dao >Xi xue zhong yuan<

- >Yi Xia zhi bian< beijing xia wailai wenhua zai zhongguo de qite jingli« (From >Laozi Cultivatesthe Barbarians< to >The Chinese Origin of Western Learning< - The Peculiar Experience ofForeign Culture in China against the Background of the distinction between Barbarians andChinese), in: Faguo hanxue 6 (2002), pp. 538-564.

34 Catherine Jami, »>European Science in China< or >Western Learning^ Representations of Cross-Cultural Transmission, 1600-1800«, in: Science in Context 12 (1999) 3, pp. 423-434, in par-ticular p. 422. Cf. also id., »lmperial Control and Western Learning: The Kangxi Emperor'sPerformances in: Late Imperial China 23 (2002) 1, pp. 28-49.

35 I follow Jean-Claude MartzlofFin this list of aspects. Cf. his »Space and Time in Chinese Textsof Astronomy and of Mathematical Astronomy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries*,in: Chinese Science 11 (1993-94), pp. 66-92, in particular pp. 67f.

put it: »Without ever having served Jesus, I can master their [the Westerners']techniques.*3

The Chinese found a clever solution to explain both the affinity betweenEastern and Western knowledge and the advancedness of the Western side: an-cient Chinese knowledge had spread to the West in antiquity, where it was keptand developed and finally brought back to China in an enriched and refinedform. China had retrieved her own heritage by a detour through the West.This is the famous theory of the »Chinese origin of Western learning* (xixuezhongyuan). It was advocated by the Mandju emperor Kangxi himself, allowinghim to sponsor Western scholars with their valuable expertise and at the sametime set himself up as the protector of Chinese culture. In the eyes of later mo-dern commentators, this attitude was a mixed blessing: It facilitated the transferof ideas, but prevented the necessary radical break with the »outdated writings*of the past.37

Nevertheless, the argumentative pattern of the xixue zhongyuan theory graspsa point that is easily overlooked in a modular conception of cultural transfer interms of an exchange of older parts of a culture for novel ones. Its weaknessconsists in maintaining a genealogical link between the imported good and theearlier indigenous knowledge but not in identifying affinities in the first place.The identification of resemblances, which helps to tear down cultural barriers,appears even more plausible if it is not loaded with the construction of a pseudo-history of dependence but considers material and structural similitudes.

A weaker and less adventurous variant of the xixue zhongyuan approachwas put forward in the twentieth century by Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang,1886—1969), one of the eminent philosophers of modern New Confucianism.Zhang Junmai, who studied politics and international law in Berlin from May1913 to September 1915,3S argued that the "Declaration of the Rights of Manand of the Citizen* of the French Revolution was inspired by the ancient Con-

36 Quoted after Li Tiangang, »Zhongguo de >wenyi fuxing<: Qingdai ruxue he >xixue<« (TheChinese >Renaissance<: Confucianism and >Western Learning! in the Qing Dynasty), in: Ziyou-zhuyi yu zhongguo chuantong (Zhongguo jinxiandai sixiang de yanbian yantaohui lunwenji, vol.1), ed. by Li Qingfeng & Cen Guoliang (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2002), p. 79.

37 Xi Zezong, »On the Mistakes of Emperor Kangxi's Scientific Policy«, in: Historical Perspectiveson East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, ed. by Alan Kam-leung Chan, Gregory K.Clancey & Hui-Chieh Loy (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2001), pp. 69-78, inparticular p. 76.

38 Cf. Howard Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1967), vol. 1, p. 33.

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fucian philosopher Mengzi.39 This would mean that the idea of human rights,when it later came to China, was returning like her own grown up child.

The Book of Mengzi had been translated into Latin at the beginning of theeighteenth century and was among the key texts of classical Confucianism thatcame to Europe as part of an influential culture transfer. This transfer stands forthe fact that Western culture at large has been the product of a global confluenceof ideas from very different sources - which has not made it immune againstits own myths of offspring maintaining a cultural continuity from the Hebrewand Greek beginnings till modern times, not unlike the Chinese myth of theYellow Emperor. Mengzi, notwithstanding the negative side mentioned above,brought forth a political concept of »humane rule« (ren zheng) and an ethic ofrespect for the human being as an ens morale (moral being) by virtue of its verynature. Although Mengzi knew neither the idea of democracy nor the concept ofhuman rights, modern Confucians have, to my mind convincingly, argued thathis »demophile« theory can be developed in this direction.40 They maintain thatConfucianism contains the »seeds« of both, but, due to historical circumstances,above all the liaison of the later Confucian literati with the imperial state, thesewere not able to sprout in China itself. But they could possibly do so in anothersetting like the European eighteenth century, which would also prove that thelater historical disaster of China was not due to a lack of ethical and intellectualsubstance. This is Zhang Junmai's idea.

As a matter of fact, China did exert a considerable radicalizing influenceon the European Enlightenment, above all as a welcome corroboration for theclaim that a well-ordered society was possible without religious tutelage and evenwithout religion itself. Central tenets of the Enlightenment philosophy obtainedbacking from China, such as its universal naturalism and rationalism, and itssecular and even its anti-feudal tendencies. The Chinese influence on the En-lightenment demonstrates that certain ideas can unfold their latent potentialonly after transfer to another cultural and historical setting. In this case, transferis not a mechanical transport from here to there, but a medium of developmentby the change of the milieu.

39 Zhang Junmai, Zhong Xi Yin zhexue wenji (Essays on Chinese, Western and Indian Philosophy)(Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1981), vol. 1, p. 386. Cf. my articles »Rights and Duties: Eastand West«, in: Chinese Thought in a Global Context: Moral Bases of Contemporary Societies,ed. by Katl-Heinz Pohl & Anselm W. Miiller (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), pp. 301-317, and»Menschenrechte in China - ein Problem der Kultur?« (Human Rights in China - a Problem ofCulture?), in: Wege zu den Menschenrechten. Geschichte und Gehalte eines umstrittenen Begriffi,ed. by Hamid Reza Yousefi et al. (Nordhausen: Bautz, 2008), pp. 177-196.

40 Li Minghui (Lee Ming-huei), »Rujia chuantong yu renquan« (Confucian Tradition and HumanRights), in: Yuandao 7 (2002), pp. 36-55.

The Enlightenment philosophers proclaimed a consensus gentium beyond thebloody struggle of the Christian confessions to which precisely pre-Christian andextra-Occidental thought was to bear witness. China fulfilled both these condi-tions, and Confucianism in particular became a prime authority for the moralpower of »natural« human reason that the philosophers wanted to substantiate.Christian Wolff (1679—1754), one of the great figures of the time, writes in hisfamous Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica (for which he paid with the lossof his chair at the University of Halle):

But who will doubt what has been affirmed by so much experience [ . . . ] , that one canmake the test in this case with no other people better than with the Chinese who haveneither a natural nor a revealed service of God and never have paid attention to externalreasons. Since they only relied on internal reasons derived from the nature of humanaction itself, their example can clearly show how far those internal reasons can take us.

For Wolff, China demonstrates the »capacity of nature«, since the Chinese »onlyused their natural powers and did not receive anything by contacts with otherpeoples*. They simply followed »what according to their insight correspondedwith human reason*. »They insisted on reason, because one must have a clearperception of good and evil if one wants to dedicate oneself to virtue withoutfear of one's superiors and without hope to get a reward by them, but one willnot achieve a perfect perception of good and evil if one has not exactly examinedthe nature and reasons of things.*

China thus becomes the witness for the existence of an autonomous humancapacity of moral judgment and action unreliant on external authority. Doesthis prove the particular effect of the transfer of ideas from China to Europe thatZhang Junmai had in mind, a transfer without which European history wouldhave taken a different direction? Strictly speaking, there is no possibility toverify such a claim, but in view of the great influence of Wolffs school and hisimpact on Kant (Kant's dismissal of Wolffs Stoic naturalism notwithstanding)it is not without all plausibility. In any case, whatever role China played forEurope, a »we were first* claim on either side would oversimplify the entwinedconstellation that in fact existed.

Let us take a closer look at Wolff and his own position in this issue. Onthe one hand, he concedes that »Confucius, and before him the Chinese, have

41 Christian Wolff, Rede von der Sittenlehre der Sineser (German translation of the Qmtio, togetherwith Wolffs commentaries), in: id., Gesammelte kleinephilosophische Schrifften, vol. 6 (Halle:Renger, 1740), 125-127, pp. 219f; own translation.

42 Ibid., pp. 21 If.43 Without mentioning the role of Wolff or China, Charles Taylor, in his A Secular Age (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 257, identifies the »discovery of the intra-human sources of benevolence* as the decisive turning point to the »secular age«.

276 H E I N E R ROETZ TRANSFER IN DISPUTE: THE CASE OF CHINA 277

found the foundation of natural law which I have shown, and that is, that thefree actions should be determined by those general reasons to which the natural[actions] conform to.«44 On the other hand, he stresses that he has found his»invention« himself »by his own reflections and not only after learning aboutthe Chinese sources. To the contrary, he was able to »learn to recognize the in-ventions of the Chinese the more precisely* since they correspond to his ownones.45 So what he concedes is the historical priority of Confucius in the dis-covery of the principle of »free agency« rather than a dependency on him in thestrict sense. What we have is not a one-sided borrowing but shared authorshipacross the ages, a joint corroboration of the truth and a mutual process of de-tection of what is already there, taking place in another mode of time than acausal sequence. This is in accord with the universal naturalism of Wolff and theeighteenth century in general, which anyway gives priority to the eternal unityof nature over historical processes. The consensus gentium (the consent of all peo-ples) of the philosophers of Enlightenment does not come into existence by adiffusion of ideas but is rooted in notiones communes, the common sense sharedby all human beings by virtue of human reason before any »contacts with otherpeoples«46. We should not read this as a strict counter-model to the theory ofcultural transfer, but as a reminder against unilinear cross-border diffusionism.It calls to mind the fact that successful transfer between cultures depends on thepresence of a pre-existing commonality, not necessarily in the form of innateideas, as the Stoic wing of the Enlightenment assumed, but of accommodatingcognitive and societal structures. I will return to this essential point below.

Can what Wolff claims for himself, an active personal role in discovering aprinciple that has already been discovered in China, also be claimed in reverseby the Chinese side? I would like to discuss this question using the example ofthe problem which occupied Zhang Junmai and other New Confucian philoso-phers of the twentieth century: the problem of democracy and human rights.Democracy and human rights were neither practically realized nor theoreticallyconceptualized in pre-modern China. Both ideas are imports from the modernWest, although, as we have seen above, perhaps already with a Chinese ingredi-ent. It was the achievement of philosophers like Zhang Junmai, Mou Zongsanand Tang Junyi to reinterpret the Confucian ethics in such a way that they couldincorporate these ideas and go together with and sustain a modern society. Indoing so, they tried to show that democracy in principle is more akin to classicalConfucian tenets, for example Mengzi's moral anthropology, than the feudalistmonarchy which the historical Confucians in fact supported. Thus seen, the

knowledge from the West helped Chinese knowledge to come into its own, torediscover the potential of China's own intellectual tradition, to make the »seeds«sprout and initiate a »self-transformation« of Confucianism — this is at least theNew Confucian perspective. 7 Is this just a transparent attempt to present whatis in fact a mere borrowing from abroad as a continuation of one's own cultural»heritage«? It cannot be denied that most New Confucians have a culturally pa-triotic self-image which does not exactly foster an open-minded, cosmopolitanperspective. They assume a unity of Chinese culture from the very beginningsthat constitutes a »basic difference between the Oriental and Occidental culturalpatterns*. Nevertheless, I think that their reaction to the challenge from theWest in the form of a recollection of their tradition is more than merely an ex-pression of such cultural narcissism. Why is this so?

First, it is at least of pragmatic and rhetorical advantage if a link of the kindcontended by the New Confucians between the »giving« and the »receiving« sidescan be established. It will enhance the chances of the ideas of democracy and hu-man rights being implemented in practice if they can be shown to be somehowpart of one's world already and not only foreign inventions. At the same time,the »foreign« ideas themselves can throw a light on one's own tradition and helprediscover the connecting factors that link the indigenous past to the present andfuture global tasks. In the case of China, this applies above all to two domainsof »postconventional« thinking that were long ago developed in classical philos-ophy and are part of the Chinese intellectual heritage: The critique of powerand detachment from tradition, both of which have become second-order tra-ditions themselves.49 Whereas the critique of power contains aspects that canunderpin the modern ideas of human rights and human dignity, detachmentfrom tradition contains formal or meta-aspects that from the beginning contra-dict an exclusivist relocation of one culture against the other. In both respectsChina long ago entered into reflective self-questioning. This self-transcendenceembodied in the classical philosophy is also the privileged point of departureto enter into communication with others and respond productively to culturaltransfers — points of departure that may have fallen into oblivion in the intel-lectual mainstream but can always be regained. From this perspective, any truly

44 Wolff, Rede, op. cit. (note 41), pp. 175f, n. 84.45 Ibid., p. 224.46 Ibid., p. 211, cf. above.

47 Li Minghui (Lee Ming-huei), Dangdai ruxue zhi ziwo zhuanhua (The Self-Transformation ofContemporary Confucianism) (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1994).

48 Carson Chang, Hsieh Yu-wei, Hsu Foo-kuan, Mou Chung-san & T'ang Chun-I, »A Mani-fes-to on the Reappraisal of Chinese Cultures, in: T'ang Chun-I, Essays on Chinese Philosophy andCulture (Taipei: Student Books, 1988), p. 504.

49 For these traditions, cf. my articles »Die Kritik der Herrschaft im zhouzeitlichen Konfuzia-nismus und ihre aktuelle Bedeutung« (The Critique of Power in Zhou Confucianism and ItsCurrent Meaning), in: Deutsche China Gesellschaft, Mitteilungsblatt 1 (2008), pp. 95-107, and»Time Paradigm«, op. cit. (note 8).

278 H E I N E R ROETZ TRANSFER IN DISPUTE: THE CASE OF CHINA 279

»modern« recourse to tradition would have to free itself from a traditionalisticself- (mis) understand! ng.5 °

Second, what the West has »given« to China in the first place is a complex andcontradictory package in itself. As far as democracy is concerned, not only didthis concept make its way from the West to East Asia; so did the argument, stillalive today, that democracy is not appropriate for the Chinese. Democracy hasnot only met with Chinese conservative resistance. The West itself has not alwaysshown interest in erecting this alleged cornerstone of its identity in the colonizedworld. Hong Kong is a telling example: When in 1953 the UK extended theEuropean Convention on Human Rights to forty-two of its overseas dependentterritories, its Chinese crown colony was a »significant omission*. It is obvi-ously not the case that all liberal conceptions of politics were brought to EastAsia by the Europeans while authoritarianism only emerges from Asian sources.This would mean overlooking not only the manifold colonial and Stalinist influ-ences, but also the impact of Western Darwinist and positivist (anti-natural-law)legal theory on modern Chinese political thought. Illiberal tendencies in Chi-nese constitutions not only have their Western counterparts; they are interwovenwith them.52

How paradoxically entwined these interconnections are becomes apparentfrom the example of Indonesia. According to the social and cultural anthro-pologist Tilman Schiel, the Platonic model of the organic corporative state wasbrought to the Dutch East Indies, the later Indonesia, by the Leiden school oflaw. In the colony, it served the ideologists of European supremacy to construct

[... ] an organic wholeness of rulers and ruled which would feel like one, based on thepatriarchal family where love and harmony prevail rather than strife, controversy andopposition against the legitimate leader. This would shape the political and legal thinkingof the natives. Therefore, the European conceptions of a distinction between state andsociety, control of government by the citizens, a legal opposition, in short, European law,would be completely unsuited to the organic world of the Indonesian villages. 3

50 Cf. for this topic ibid.51 Johannes Chan & Yash Ghai (eds.), The Hong Kong Bill of Rights: A Comparative Approach

(Hong Kong: Butterworths Asia, 1993), p. 55.52 An example is Article 23 of the 1946 Chinese Constitution, which allows restrictions by ordi-

nary laws of the freedoms and rights mentioned in the preceding articles in order to "maintainsocial order or advance public welfare« and for other reasons. Although there is a similar re-striction in the 1912 Provisional Constitution, the insertion of this article can be traced backto influences from positivist, anti-natural-law trends in US liberalism. Thomas E. Greiff, »ThePrinciple of Human Rights in Nationalist China: John H. C. Wu and the Ideological Originsof the 1946 Constitution", in: The China Quarterly 103 (1985), pp. 441-461, in particular p.447.

53 Tilman Schiel, »Moderner >Gartenstaat< und Menschentechte. Siidostasien zwischen kul-turellem Partikularismus und rationalisierendem Universalismus« (The Modern >Garden State<

Postcolonial Indonesia, rather than fighting this construct, adopted it as thegenuine Indonesian tradition, allegedly re-appropriated against colonialism, andmade it the core of the state ideology »pancasila«. It was later directed against theWest as an »Asian value« in the notorious propaganda campaign of the 1990s inwhich Indonesia played a leading role.

Such curious mixtures and circular claims challenge any one-dimensionalpicture of cultural transfer, in this case of democracy transfer from the West tothe East. Democracy was a negative factor, even a threat to the West's own masterplans for Asia, and it was conveniently declared as detrimental to »Oriental lifeand ideas«. If it was to put down roots in China, this could not occur withoutdrawing on her own resources, both together with and against Western theoriesand interests. One can be sure that Western capitalism today, although regularlypaying rhetorical tribute to democracy, is still not unappreciative of the servicesof Chinese political authoritarianism, for example the suppression of a free labormovement.

The aforementioned endeavours of modern Confucian philosophers to re-construct Chinese intellectual history as a virtual pre-history of the ideas ofdemocracy and human rights, then, cannot be sufficiently explained as culturallychauvinistic attempts to repress China's indebtedness to the West in the centralaspect of modern politics. They are not superfluous reinventions of the wheelbut necessary accomplishments of own merit.

The third reason why I hesitate to subscribe to a simple borrowing thesiswith regard to the New Confucian philosophy of democracy concerns the verypossibility of cultural transfer. Transfer entails an active role of both parties, es-pecially of the receiving side, not only in the sense that the transferred good isoften remoulded and changed by the receiver, perhaps with a repercussion on thegiving side. Even if such a modification does not take place, there are »goods« thetransfer of which is better understood in terms of production or reconstructionby the receiver's own means rather than reproduction or adoption, if they areto become a more than marginal part of the new milieu. This certainly appliesin the case of complex conceptions that cannot simply be docked onto anotherenvironment like ready-made modules, all the more so if they lead to a deepintervention in an existing social setting. Stressing the importance of externalrelations for the development of societies is certainly a remedy against solipsis-

and Human Rights. Southeast-Asia between Cultural Particularism and Rationalizing Univer-salism), in: Peripherie 73/74 (1999), p. 17; own translation.

54 Jiirgen Osterhammel & Niels P. Petersson, »Ostasiens Jahrhundertwende. Unterwerfung undErneuerung in west-ostlichen Sichtweisen« (East Asia's Turn of the Century. Submission andRenewal in Western and Eastern Perspectives), in: Das Neue Jahrhundert. Europiiische Zeit-diagnosen und Zukunftsentwilrfe um 1900, ed. by Ute Frevert (Gottingen: Vandenhoek &Ruprecht: 2000), pp. 265-306, in particular p. 286 (quoting Max Miiller).

280 H E I N E R ROETZ T R A N S F E R IN D I S P U T E : THE CASE OF C H I N A 281

tic notions of identity and a nation-focussed historiography that tends to »treatpeoples like primordial units«.55 Nevertheless, if cross-border influences did notfall on receptive »internal« ground, they would remain futile (if not be positivelydestructive for society as a whole). That transfer can be productive in the firstplace is due to the fact that it is borne by the same universals which already lie atthe base of any form of human sociality: the unfolding of relations of exchangeand the accumulation of learning. Cultural transfer »touches« these structuresand can set them in motion. Its logic is identical with the logic of societal devel-opment. It is not by accident that resistance against »foreign« influence routinelygoes together with a conservative, protective stance with regard to existing socialrelations.

From this perspective, it appears problematic to set external transfer againstinternal structure as an alternative and even more important resource of devel-opment; this frequently highlighted opposition, which has been in the discus-sion since Francis Galton's critique of Edward Tylor, at least cannot occupyparadigmatic status.57 Transfer depends on and cannot be set against the innerdevelopmental potential of societies, which are already laid out for it. In thecase of democracy and human rights, the interconnection pointed out here is avery direct one: Their attainment is based on learning processes that may wellbe spurred by external stimulation, but are much more deeply rooted in the ex-perience of the structures of reciprocity that constitutes all human sociality andalways exerts a latent compulsion for the acknowledgment of the other.

If this is true, what is a borrowing on the surface (the possibility of »simple«borrowings, especially in the technical field, notwithstanding) is on a deeperlevel better understood in terms of musical metaphors like resonance, echoing,or touching a chord, and epistemologically in terms of maieutics or, to avoidthe technicism of this expression, anamnesis — re-cognition. »Anamnetic effects«

55 Friedrich H. Tenbruck, »Gesellschaftsgeschichte oder Weltgeschichte?«, in: Kolner Zeitschriftfur Soziologie und Sozialpsycbologie 41 (1989), pp. 417-439, in particular p. 429; own transla-tion.

56 Cf. Raoul Naroll, »Galton's Problem: The Logic of Cross-Cultural Analysis", in: Social Research32 (1965), pp. 428-451.

57 The importance of transfer in relation to social structure is stressed by Tenbruck in his»Gesellschaftsgeschichte«, op. cit. (note 55), and »Was war der Kulturvergleich, ehe es denKulturvergleich gab?«, in: Zwischen den Kuhuren? Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem desKulturvergleichs, ed. by Joachim Matthes (Gbttingen: Schwartz, 1992), pp. 13-35. JiirgenOsterhammel pleads more cautiously, but in the same vein for a "perspective on history thatdoes not unambiguously give preference to structures over processes*; see his article »Trans-fer und Vergleich im Fernverhaltnis«, in: Vergleich und Transfer. Komparatistik in den Sozial-,Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. by Hartmut Kaelble & Jiirgen Schriewer (Frankfurton the Main: Campus, 2003), pp. 439-468, in particular p. 443. Cf. for this topic HartmutKaelble, »Die interdisziplinaren Debatten iiber Vergleich und Transfers, in the same volume,pp. 469^93.

help novel ideas to prevail by recalling their prehistory in the old and the prehis-tory of the foreign in what is one's own. Here lies a prime task of the humanities.

Under these conditions the theoretical attitude towards tradition can onlyassume the form of reconstruction rather than conservative restoration on theone hand and unrealistic complete abandonment on the other. A reconstructivehermeneutics would mean interpreting and critically adopting »cultural heritage*on the level of the demands of a modern society. This is the only alternative tothe vain attempt to import human rights and democracy like technical inven-tions, which is condemned to failure, or ban them as foreign bodies. BogdanKistiakowsky, a Russian scholar of constitutional law, said at the beginning ofthe last century:

They can object that it does not make sense for us to formulate independent theories of

freedom and individual rights, of a legal order and a constitutional state, because all of

this has long been said. All that we have to do is to adopt it. But even if this were true,

we would have to experience these ideas ourselves. It is not enough to borrow them from

others, one has to be completely captured by them for a certain moment in life.58

58 Quoted after die tageszeitung, taz mag II (24.725.10.1998): »Man kann uns entgegenhalten, essei fur uns sinnlos, selbstandige Theorien von der Freiheit und den Rechten des einzelnen, vonder Rechtsordnung und vom Verfassungsstaat auszuarbeiten, all das sei langst gesagt. Und unsbliebe nur iibrig, es uns anzueignen. Selbst wenn dies so ware, miiis'ten wir diese Ideen selbsterfahren; es reicht nicht, sie nur zu iibernehmen, man muf? in einem bestimmten Augenblickdes Lebens vollstandig von ihnen erfaKt sein.« (Own translation).