Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T12:07:28.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Christian Transcendence to the Maoist Sublime: Liu Xiaofeng, the Chinese Straussians, and the Conservative Revolt against Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2022

Hang Tu Open the ORCID record for Hang Tu [Opens in a new window]
Hang Tu*
Affiliation:
Department of Chinese, National University of Singapore
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: tuhang@nus.edu.sg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Liu Xiaofeng (1956–) is best known today as the founder of the “Chinese Straussian School,” a conservative intellectual movement that advocated a quasi-theological form of political leadership in contemporary China. Little attention has been paid, however, to the intertwined relationship between Liu's political authoritarianism and his meditation on religion. This article traces Liu's lifelong search for a “religious consciousness” from his youthful yearnings for Christian redemption in the 1980s “New Enlightenment,” to the utter profanation of the sacred in his recent espousal of the Mao cult. I suggest that Liu's conservative turn should not obscure the profound and troubling continuity between his earlier search for an “otherworldly” religious ethics and his later obsession with “this-worldly” political theology. By exploring the entanglement between revolution and religion throughout Liu's zigzagging journey, this article considers Liu's transition as part and parcel of a generational endeavor to come to terms with the “politico-theological” legacies of Mao's revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 323 - 344
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Zhang, Xudong, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics (Durham, NC, 2008), Chs. 1, 2Google Scholar.

2 The term “conservative revolution” has been used to describe multiple intellectual trends throughout twentieth-century China, from the ascendancy of the right-wing movements under Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing regime to the interplay between new authoritarianism and the cultural conservative redux in the post-Tiananmen era. I acknowledge the malleable and versatile nature of Chinese conservatism but emphasize that the rejection of secular liberalism lies at the heart of the conservative revival in contemporary China. For related works see Fewsmith, Joesph, China since Tiananmen, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2008), Ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dongen, Els van, Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989 (Cambridge, 2019), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsui, Brain, China's Conservative Revolution (New York, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For a critical rejoinder against Liu's Straussian turn see Marchal, Kai and Shaw, Carl K. Y., eds., Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World: Reorienting the Political (Lanham, 2017)Google Scholar; for a defense of Liu's Straussian position see Xu Jian, ed., Gujin zhizheng yu wenming zijue (Quarrels between the Ancients and the Moderns) (Shanghai, 2010); also see Wang Tao, “Leo Strauss in China,” Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2012, at https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/leo-strauss-in-china (accessed 30 April 2019); Xu, Zhang, “Shitelaosi zai zhongguo” (Strauss in China), Jishou University Journal 24 (2003)Google Scholar; Dongxian Jiang, “Searching for the Chinese Autonomy: Leo Strauss in the Chinese Context” (unpublished master's thesis, Duke University, Durham, NC, 2014).++Note 3. Please supply page span for Zhang Xu.++

4 For a definition of political religiosity see Gentile, Emilio, Politics as Religion (Princeton, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for an analysis of the quasi-religious aspects of Mao's revolutionary politics see Gossart, Vincent and Palmer, David A., The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago, 2010), 187–90Google Scholar; also see Leese, Daniel, Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China's Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Strauss, Leo, “Letters to Karl Löwith,” Constellations 16/1 (2009), 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.++Note 5. Please supply full page span. House style is to give full spans as well as numbers of pages of specific interest.++

6 See Bourg, Julian, “Blame It on Paris,” French Historical Studies 35/1 (2012), 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar.++Note 6. Please supply page span.++

7 Confronting the scandal of Heidegger's Nazi past, Habermas had undertaken to “think with Heidegger against Heidegger,” which separates the ideational significance of existential philosophy from its ideological applications. See Peter Gordon, “A Lion in Winter,” The Nation, 13 Sept. 2016; McCormick, John P., Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge, 1999), 7–8Google Scholar.++Note 7. Please supply page span for Gordon.++

8 I am inspired by Gordon's notion of “conceptual ramification,” which describes the interaction between ideas and social context as the mediatory process through which concepts branch out into the historical world. See Gordon, Peter, Continental Divide (Cambridge, 2010), 3–4Google Scholar; for a critical elaboration of contextualism see Skinner, Quentin, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8/1 (1969), 3–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Gossart and Palmer, The Religious Question, 2.

10 Chloë Starr and Zhuo Xinping divide contemporary Chinese theological writings into three major clusters: official church theologies, academic theology, and house-church writings. See Starr, Chloë, Chinese Theology: Text and Context (New Heaven, 2016), 224–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Xinping, Zhuo, ed., Christianity: Religious Studies in Contemporary China (Leiden, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See Lai, Pan-Chiu and Lam, Jason, eds., Sino-Christian Theology: A Theological qua Cultural Movement in Contemporary China (Berlin, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huilin, Yang and Yeung, Daniel H. N., eds., Sino-Christian Studies in China (Newcastle, 2006)Google Scholar; also see Starr, Chinese Theology, Ch. 9.

12 For representative works see He Guanghu, He Guanghu zixuanji (Selected Works of He Guanghu) (Guilin, 1999); Huilin, Yang, Zai wenxue yu shenxue de bianjie (At the Boundary of Literature and Theology) (Shanghai, 2012)Google Scholar.

13 The value of the category of “mainland Confucianism” remains controversial. For a summary of the debate see Angle, Stephen C., “The Adolescence of Mainland New Confucianism,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 49/2 (2018), 83–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For a comprehensive study of the Confucian revival in the Chinese and sinophone intellectual discourse see Makeham, John, Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse (Cambridge, MA, 2008)Google Scholar; for the role of the developmental state in the Confucian revival see Dirlik, Arif, “Confucius in the Borderlands: Globalization, the Developmental State, and the Reinvention of Confucianism,” in Dirlik, Culture and History of Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity (Hong Kong, 2011), 97–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a discussion of the revival of national learning see Schneider, Axel, “Bridging the Gap: Attempts at Constructing a ‘New’ Historical–Cultural Identity in the People's Republic of China,” East Asian History 22 (2001), 129–44Google Scholar.

15 Proposals to enshrine Confucianism as a national religion dated back to Kang Youwei's creation of the Confucian Association (孔教會) in 1912. For a historical overview of Confucian religion see Sun, Anna, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton, 2013)Google Scholar; Chen, Yong, Confucianism as Religion: Controversies and Consequences (Leiden, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 For representative works see Jiang Qing, Zhengzhi ruxue (Political Confucianism) (Beijing, 2003); Jiang, A Confucian Constitutional Order (Princeton, 2016); Chen Ming, “On Confucianism as a Civil Religion and Its Significance for Contemporary China,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, vol. 44(2) (Jan. 2013), 76–88.

17 For a study of the demise of Confucian canon and the emergence of modern historiography in the late Qing and the early Republican period see Chen Bisheng, Jingxue de wajie (The Collapse of Confucian Classics) (Shanghai, 2014); Luo Zhitian Guojia yu xueshu: qingjieminchu guanyu guoxue de sixianglunzheng (Nation and Learning: Quarrels Concerning “National Studies” in Late Qing and Early Republican China) (Beijing, 2003).

18 Liu Xiaofeng, Zhengjiu yu xiaoyao (Salvation and Easiness) (1988) (Shanghai, 2011).

19 Liu, Zhengjiu yu xiaoyao, 158.

20 Critics have questioned Liu's Christian faith because Liu approached his topic primarily through the works of Scheler, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky, rather than through a direct engagement with biblical scriptures. See Fredrik Fällman, “Hermeneutical Conflict? Reading the Bible in Contemporary China,” in Chloë Starr, ed., Reading Christian Scriptures in China (London, 2008), 49–67, at 58.

21 See Xiaofeng, Liu, “Wenhua jidutu xianxiang de shehuixue pingzhu” (A Sociological Study of Cultural Christianity), in Zheyidairen de pa he ai (The Fear and Love of Our Generation) (1996) (Beijing, 2012), 171–81Google Scholar; also see Starr, Chloë, Chinese Theology: Text and Context (New Haven, 2016), 244CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 See Chloë Starr, “Yang Huilin: An Academic Search for Meaning,” in Starr, Chinese Theology, 240–62.

23 See Liu Xiaofeng, “Hanyushenxue yu lishizhexue” (Sino-Theology and Philosophy of History), in Liu, Shengling jianglin de xushi (A Narrative about the Coming of the Holy Spirit) (2003) (Beijing, 2017), 102–4.

24 Barth, Karl, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. C., Edwyn Hoskyns (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar.

25 See Gordon, Peter E., “Weimar Theology: From Historicism to Crisis,” in Gordon, Peter E. and McCormick, John P., ed., Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy (Princeton, 2013), 158Google Scholar.

26 See Liu Xiaofeng, “Qianji” (Preface), in Liu, Shitelaosi de lubiao (Leo Strauss as Guidance) (Beijing, 2013), 1–2, at 1.

27 For a study of Strauss's critique of the modern intellectual see Wurgaft, Benjamin Aldes, Thinking in Public: Strauss, Levinas, Arendt (Philadelphia, 2015), Ch. 1Google Scholar.

28 Liu Xiaofeng, “Ciwei de wenshun” (The Docility of the Hedgehog), in Liu, Shitelaosi de lubiao, 11–85.

29 Chinese original: “可與言，而與之不言，失人。不可與言而與之言，失言。知者不失人，亦不失言。” See “Wei Ling Kung,” in The Analects of Confucius, trans. James Legge (Digireads Publishing, 2017), 71–4; Liu Xiaofeng, “Liuyi shengren zan” (In Honor of the Sage), in Zhe yidairen de pa he ai 這一代人的怕和愛 (The Fear and Passion of Our Generation) (Beijing, 2007), 162–3; for an analysis see Jiang, “Searching for the Chinese Autonomy,” 26–7.

30 Strauss, Leo, Philosophy and Law (Albany, 1995), 120Google Scholar.

31 Pippin, Robert B., “The Modern World of Strauss,” Political Theory 20/3 (1992), 448–72, at 448CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss–Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago, 2000), 196.

33 Fewsmith, China since Tiananmen, 83–112.

34 Gan Yang, Tong Santong (Reconciling Three Traditions) (Beijing, 2007).

35 Liu Xiaofeng, Rujiao yu minzuguojia (Confucian Religion and Nation-State) (Beijing, 2007), 85–194.

36 Ibid., 116.

37 See Liu Xiaofeng, Xiandairen jiqi diren (The Modern Man and His Enemy) (Beijing, 2006); Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Chicago, 2006).

38 See McCormick, John P., “Fear, Technology, and the State: Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and the Revival of Hobbes in Weimar and National Socialist Germany,” Political Theory 22/4 (1994), 619–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 McCormick, John, “Post-Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority: Biblical Atheism, Political Theology, and the Schmitt–Strauss Exchange,” History of European Ideas 37 (2011), 175–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 See Liu, Rujiao yu minzuguojia, 225–44.

41 Liu Xiaofeng, Bainian gonghezhiyi (The Significance of Republicanism) (Shanghai, 2011), 68–95.

42 Deng Xiaomang, “Ping Liu Xiaofeng de xueli” (A Critique of Liu Xiaofeng's Scholarly Reasoning), at www.aisixiang.com/data/69423.html (accessed 25 Oct. 2018).

43 See Mark Lilla, “Reading Strauss in Beijing,” New Republic, 17 Dec. 2010, at https://newrepublic.com/article/79747/reading-leo-strauss-in-beijing-china-marx (accessed 25 Oct. 2018).

44 Pocock, J. G. A., “Prophet and Inquisitor: Or, a Church Built upon Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield's ‘Strauss's Machiavelli’,” Political Theory 3/4 (1965), 385–401, at 385Google Scholar.

45 Sheppard, Eugene, Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher (Lebanon, 2007), 1Google Scholar.

46 For a critique of the problem of intentionality in Strauss's hermeneutics see Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” in Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 2002), 57–89.

47 See Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago, 1995), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Christopher Nadon (New Heaven, 2011), 4.

48 See Leo Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?”, in Hilail Gildin, ed., An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays (Detroit, 1989), 311–20.

49 Walter Berns, Freedom, Virtue, and the First Amendment (Westport, 1969); Martin Diamond, “Democracy and ‘The Federalist’: A Reconsideration of the Framers’ Intent,” American Political Science Review 53/1 (1959), 52–68.

50 Jaffa, Harry, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln–Douglas Debates (Garden City, 1959)Google Scholar.

51 See Liu Xiaofeng, Yimei weijian 以美為鑒 (America as a Mirror) (Beijing, 2017), 225.

52 Xiong Shili, Lun Liujing (On Six Classics) (Beijing, 2006).

53 Zhuang Zi, “All under Heaven,” in Chung Wu, trans., The Wisdom of Zhuangzi on Daoism (New York, 2008), 423–39, at 425, quoted in Liu Xiaofeng, Gonghe yu jinglun (Republic and Statecraft) (Beijing, 2012), 280.

54 Liu, Gonghe yu jinglun, Ch. 4.

55 Liu, Bainian gonghezhiyi, 93.

56 Ibid., 94.

57 M. F. Burnyeat, “Sphinx without a Secret,” New York Review of Books, 30 May 1985, at www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/05/30/sphinx-without-a-secret.

58 Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.

59 For a critique of this psychoanalytic frame see Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick, “Introduction: Weimar Thought: Continuity and Crisis,” in Gordon and McCormick, Weimar Thought, 1–11, at 3–4.