{"id":47354,"date":"2022-04-11T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=47354"},"modified":"2022-04-11T11:16:32","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T10:16:32","slug":"from-christian-transcendence-to-the-maoist-sublime-liu-xiaofeng-the-chinese-straussians-and-the-conservative-revolt-against-modernity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2022\/04\/11\/from-christian-transcendence-to-the-maoist-sublime-liu-xiaofeng-the-chinese-straussians-and-the-conservative-revolt-against-modernity\/","title":{"rendered":"From Christian Transcendence to the Maoist Sublime: Liu Xiaofeng, the Chinese Straussians, and the Conservative Revolt against Modernity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This blog accompanies Hang Tu\u2019s Modern Intellectual History article, From Christian Transcendence to the Maoist Sublime: Liu Xiaofeng, the Chinese Straussians, and the Conservative Revolt against Modernity<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese political thinker Liu Xiaofeng is widely considered a key figure in the formation of the \u201cChinese Straussian School,\u201d a loose intellectual faction that preached anti-liberal doctrines and advocated a quasi-theological form of authoritarian leadership in contemporary China. Taking inspiration from the conservative teachings of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt, Liu and his allies promoted classical learning, created elitist \u201cliberal arts\u201d educational institutions, and waged cultural wars to eradicate the \u201ccorrosive influence\u201d of Western liberal values lurking in Chinese academia and beyond. In 2010, Columbia Professor Mark Lilla published an article entitled \u201cReading Strauss in Beijing<\/a>\u201d and expressed his confusion about China\u2019s \u201cstrange taste\u201d in Weimar conservatism, which he interpreted as \u201ctyrannophilia\u201d\u2014a narcissistic embrace of authoritarian politics. Similarly, numerous Chinese and Western critics have noted the illiberal tendency of Strauss\u2019s self-proclaimed Chinese heirs. After all, what could possibility have induced Liu to abandon the \u201cunfinished project\u201d of enlightenment and justify ancient and modern tyranny?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this new article<\/a>, I suggest that Liu\u2019s fascination with political theology was rooted in his earlier search for a \u201creligious consciousness.\u201d Before his conversion to Strauss, Liu was particularly well-known for his participation in the Sino-Christian theology movement, a collective scholarly endeavor to promote the study of Western faith traditions in mainland China and Hong Kong in the early reform era.\u00a0 The young theologian was alarmed by how the collapse of Mao\u2019s socialist utopia had brought a \u201ccrisis of faith\u201d among Chinese cultural elites and citizens, many of whom embraced materialism and cultural relativism in the age of global capitalism. Therefore, Liu struggled to carve out a space for religion\u2014especially Christianity\u2014as a privileged moral-political remedy for a post-Marxist Chinese society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this perspective, Liu\u2019s turn from Sino-Christian theology to political theology was not merely motivated by political utilitarianism. . Throughout his circuitous intellectual journey, Liu was consistently guided by a single question: what kind of \u201creligious consciousness\u201d could compensate for the secularist myopia of modernity and provide moral-political instruction in a postrevolutionary age? Tracing Liu\u2019s transformation from a passionate cultural Christian to a neoconservative guru, I explain how his thirst for transcendence beyond<\/em> politics paradoxically aroused the desire for an absolute ground for<\/em> politics. While Liu had yearned for an utterly transcendent God to redeem the Chinese mind, Strauss and Schmitt taught him that true divinity is too remote to provide any concrete, immediate instructions for the Chinese people. By comparison, the dark legacy of political theology\u2014the investment of secular politics with the charisma of sacred authority\u2014seems to be a more attractive, though dangerous, option. In the end, Liu turned away from the remote God of Christianity and celebrated Mao Zedong as a mythic \u201cfounding father\u201d who could provide spiritual solidarity and social cohesion for the divided Chinese nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admittedly, Liu\u2019s Kierkegaardian \u201cleap of faith\u201d from Christiaan transcendence to the Maoist sublime shocked Chinese liberals as a scandalous tale of political regression. Yet I propose that Liu\u2019s dubious political undertaking should not inhibit us from analyzing the development of his thought from within its own categories and systems. Therefore, this article elucidates the deeply contradictory nature of Liu\u2019s thinking as a combination of metaphysical rumination and opportunistic intent, philosophical insight and political dogmatism, sincerity and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chinese political thinker Liu Xiaofeng is widely considered a key figure in the formation of the \u201cChinese Straussian School,\u201d a loose intellectual faction that preached anti-liberal doctrines and advocated a quasi-theological form of authoritarian leadership in contemporary China. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":822,"featured_media":47391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[1933,2148,5066,9363],"coauthors":[9746],"class_list":["post-47354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-humanities","tag-asian-history","tag-chinese-history","tag-east-asian-history","tag-modern-intellectual-history"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/822"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47354"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47476,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47354\/revisions\/47476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47354"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=47354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}