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Social Sciences, Humanities and Liberal Arts: China and the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2018

Liu Kang
Liu Kang*
Affiliation:
Institute of Arts and Humanities, ShanghaiJiao Tong University, Shanghai, China Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Email: liukang@duke.edu
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Abstract

For the most part, modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge have been shaped and predominantly influenced by the West. Since the modern Chinese knowledge system is an integral and inseparable part of that dominant western system, an immanent critique will view Chinese problems not as extraneous, but as intrinsic to modernity, to the world-system or globalization. This article traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’, as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to question the relationship between (Eurocentric) universalism and Chinese exceptionalism within the dominant modern Western institutions and modes of knowledge today.

Type
Conflicts and Dialogues between Science and Humanities
Information
European Review , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 241 - 261
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2018 

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References

Notes and References

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