Joseph Richmond Levenson

To really get the most out of this book, it feels like one needs an education on classical to modern (20th Century) Chinese history. This includes philosophical and political development, the reaction to Christianity, social turmoil periods such as the Taiping Rebellion (over 10 million dead!), the Boxer Rebellion and more including classical painters. There are small, B&W reproductions of some kep painting, but that is not enough. One interesting part for me was the parallelism of through show more with Greek development. I particularly reacted to the growth of idealism in Chinese philosophy, particularly nominalism, and the contrasting views of realism. Now the issues there confound me and I don't feel I have the acumen and knowledge to delineate let along decide, but it did give me the idea that there is a natural development in philosophical thought that occurs in stages natively only for the first civilizations to reach that point. (Eventually others can just "read the book" and miss the opportunity of de novo though evolution.) That is, the ideal must be conceived of in a non- or post-religious sense and organized schools defining and refuting its reality must develop. Very few civilizations have proven that capability. show less

Department of History
University of Hong Kong

香港大學歷史系