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Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia Edited by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROW M A N & L I T T L E F I E L D P U B L I S H E R S , I N C .

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LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Western political thought in dialogue with Asia / edited by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman. p. cm. — (Global encounters--studies in comparative political theory) Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2378-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7391-2378-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3141-1 (electronic) ISBN-10: 0-7391-3141-9 (electronic) 1. Political science—Asia—History. 2. Political science—Europe, Western—History. 3. Political science—Philosophy. 4. Europe, Western— Relations—Asia. 5. Asia—Relations—Europe, Western. 6. Comparative government. 7. Globalization—Political aspects. I. Shogimen, Takashi, 1967- II. Nederman, Cary J. JA84.A73W47 2009 320.01--dc22 2008029076 Printed in the United States of America

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American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.

Contents

Introduction Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman Part I: Comparative Approaches to Political Thought

1 11

1

Comparative Political Theory: What Is It Good For? Fred Dallmayr

13

2

Toward a Global History of Political Thought Antony Black

25

Part II: Western Conversations with Asia 3

4

Varieties of Dialogue: Dialogical Models of Intercultural Communication in Medieval Inter-religious Writings Cary J. Nederman

45

Asia and the Moral Geography of European Enlightenment Political Thought c. 1600–1800 Bruce Buchan

65

5 The Ebb and Flow of Peoples, Ideas, and Innovations in the River of Inter-civilizational Relations: Toward a Global History of Political Thought Brett Bowden 6

43

Viewing Islam through Enlightenment Eyes Vicki A. Spencer v

87 109

vi

7

Contents

Dealing with Inequality: A Conversation with Islamic Economics Philip Nel

Part III: Asian Dialogues with the West

135 161

8

Islamic Responses to Europe at the Dawn of Colonialism Nelly Lahoud

163

9

From Political Thought in India to Indian Political Thought Anthony J. Parel

187

10 Indian Alternations: Aurobindo, Ambedkar and After Makarand Paranjape 11

Chinese Conceptions of the State during the Late Qing Dynasty (1860–1911) Peter Zarrow

12

Is There a Confucian Perspective on Social Justice? Joseph Chan

13

Imagining the Body Politic: Metaphor and Political Language in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan Takashi Shogimen

14

Meiji Intelligentsia’s Riposte Alistair Swale

209

235 261

279 301

Further Readings

315

Index

321

Contributors

327

Introduction Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman

There can be no doubt that the current trend toward globalization warrants the introduction of cross-cultural understanding into all fields of the human sciences. Of course, diverse human cultures have always had some contact and interaction. But at no time in the past has there been such vast inter-cultural communication as in the twenty-first century, occurring at multiple levels and in all human communities from neighborhoods to global society. Unfortunately, the current global interconnectedness often does not lead to a harmonious, tolerant utopia, but instead can generate political conflicts that jeopardize global peace and order. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 and beyond, in particular, throw into sharp relief the fact that there still are ideas and belief systems that remain utterly alien to the West. Moreover, increasing population mobility makes cultural and ethnic patterns of political and social interaction extremely complex in many countries and societies. The possibilities of miscommunication and the popular awareness of mutual differences among various cultural groupings multiply and magnify. Thus, maintaining diversity within unity is high on the agenda for many policy-makers around the globe. The inhabitants of the global village cannot live their civic life without confronting alien political and social values and discourses that remain alive outside the Western world. In view of these globalized realities, it is ironic that the study of the history of political thought in English-speaking universities (and elsewhere) anachronistically employs an Occident-centered approach, almost entirely confining itself to the Western intellectual traditions of Greco-Roman antiquity, medieval Latin Europe, modern Western Europe, and the New World. Classroom instruction focuses on the development of quintessentially 1

2

Introduction

Occidental concepts such as democracy, rights, individualism, freedom, and so forth. Likewise, the classic texts in the history of political thought employed in undergraduate and postgraduate classrooms are usually restricted to ideas and authors associated with the West. In the past, only a handful of scholars have even questioned the fact that research and teaching in the history of political thought customarily focuses exclusively on the Western “canon” and ideas. Yet recently some scholars around the world have begun to express dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, with the result that there are now serious efforts underway to articulate and explore a new research and teaching field that has come to be called “global” or “comparative” political thought. This “border-crossing” in the historical study of political thought aims to redefine the scope of the history of political thought and broaden our knowledge of the past experience of political theorizing beyond the Occidental world. The appearance of such an approach is not, however, intended merely to shift the focus of research from Western political thought to “non-Western” ones. Indeed, the study of “Islamic,” “Indian,” “Russian,” “Chinese,” or “Japanese” political thought has already existed for some time and continues to develop. Such historical inquiries into the political thought of a “non-Western” cultural, ethnic, or regional unit are capable of revealing unfamiliar intellectual worlds to Western audiences. Yet these studies themselves tend to be insular, rather than designed to show how political vocabularies, discourses, and doctrines in the non-Western world actually differ from those in the West. Likewise, the well-established field of “comparative politics” within the discipline of political science generally adopts a wholly empirical framework that highlights institutional and behavioral differences in various states without considering intellectual foundations and doctrines. To the extent that traditional comparative politics leaves aside the ideas and discourses that historically underpin the minds of individuals who operate within divergent socio-political orders, it fails to grasp important differences in the ways in which distinct cultures think about “politics.” Thus, the “comparative” history of political thought seeks to fill a gaping chasm: it aims to identify the differences in the conceptualization of “the political” and inquires historically into how contemporary global diversity in political theorizing came about. Clearly, this new frontier is vast. The enterprise may even appear to run counter to the current state of scholarship, where more and more is known about less and less. But as students of political life, we need now more than ever to approach our subject with a grand, global picture in mind. A primary concern here is to identify viable methods for comparison through case studies of two (or more) differing traditions of political thought. In order to do so, we need first to situate European political discourse in a global and/or comparative context. “Comparative” historians of political

Introduction

3

thought strive to demonstrate that exclusive focus on the Western traditions of political thought is inadequate even for the understanding of the origins, characteristics, and indeed achievements of the West. It was precisely this concern that once drove Max Weber into an ambitious exploration of economy, society, law, and religion in Europe, Middle East, and the Far East. Few attempts of a similar sort have since been made. The present volume should be considered a contribution to this effort. Specifically, the contributors share a “comparative” approach to political thought that illustrates one or more of the following points: (a) the role of Asian traditions in the making of medieval and modern Occidental political discourse, (b) the dissemination of Eurocentric political thought in the Asian world, especially the ways in which the Western traditions of political ideas were accepted, rejected, or transformed in contact with the vernacular intellectual traditions, and (c) the comparison of European and Asian historical processes at work in the construction of political discourses. Enquiries into these issues among others will offer reappraisals of the achievements and significance of Western traditions of political discourse in a wider, global context. Such an endeavor will hopefully call for action to globalize the scope of research and teaching in the history of Eurocentric political thought. It should be noted that there are profound disciplinary and professional barriers to this kind of inquiry. Researchers in the field of non-Western political thought generally have found no niche in history or politics departments and are largely confined to the departments of “Islamic,” “Slavic,” or “East Asian” studies. The institutional segregation of experts in non-Western political thought from “mainstream” research units in history or political science makes their mutual communication, and also communication with experts in Western political thought, extremely difficult. The main outlet for the research output of “area studies” scholars also tends to be confined to journals in the field of regional focus, while the mainstream journals in history and political science often limit their scope to the Western world. The scarcity of such opportunities for experts in Western and non-Western political thought to communicate with one another forms a major obstacle to be overcome. Opportunities for scholarly dialogue are still rare. The following chapters derive from one such rare opportunity: an international symposium on “Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia,” held at Saint Margaret’s College in the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, on December 13–15, 2006. The chapters demonstrate that the study of comparative political theory, which is increasingly gaining solid footing in the discipline of political science, is a philosophical as well as an historical endeavor. The contributors are a mixture of political theorists, area scholars, and intellectual historians. Thus, this book (like the event that gave rise to it) offers a challenging opportunity for a cross-disciplinary “dialogue” and mutual fertilization.

4

Introduction

The book opens with Fred Dallmayr’s account of the significance and relevance of comparative political theory. In response to the prevalent skepticism about the cross-cultural comparative approach to political theory, Dallmayr argues that there are at least three “goods” resulting from comparative political theory: a pragmatic good, a pedagogical good, and an existential and ethical good. By studying other cultures and traditions, we gain useful information which enables us to participate more effectively in global interactions and communications in our shrinking world. In addition, by studying other cultures we become more aware of the character of our own culture, its limitations and prejudices, and thus become better able to engage in a dialogical search for truth and the “good life.” Furthermore, by engaging in comparative studies, we are better equipped to assess our own place in the world and our responsibilities toward others; hence, we may come to understand the ethical need to promote global peace based on justice and mutual respect. But how do we theorize politics cross-culturally? How should we understand political thinking in other cultures? Antony Black contends that we ought to study the traditions of political thought historically. The aim of what he calls “a global history of political thought” is to present as complete a view as possible of the varieties of political thought produced in different cultures, to identify what was distinctive to each tradition, and to examine inter-cultural influences. We may learn from non-Western sources about concepts of humanity, society, government, and political morality that are absent in the Western tradition, especially given its present liberaldemocratic consensus. In spirit kindred with Dallmayr, Black concludes that an understanding of non-Western thought is desirable for civic reasons, both within particular states and in international society, as people from different cultures work out (one hopes) how to live together without conflict. But does cross-cultural dialogue necessarily promise the peace and order of the communities involved? Does dialogue always take place for a single reason, namely, what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the “fusion of horizons”? Cary J. Nederman argues that cross-cultural dialogue can take a variety of forms informed by a diversity of purposes. Part II, which examines European reactions to Asian political thought or more generally to Asian culture, begins with Nederman’s historical exploration of five models of inter-religious dialogue (usually between Latin Christians and members of Asian cultural and religious groups) evident in medieval Europe. He classifies them as: 1) dialogues of rational demonstration or conversion; 2) dialogues of mutual edification; 3) dialogues of mutual incomprehension; 4) dialogues of critical self-reflection; and 5) dialogues of mutual accommodation and respect. These ideal forms of dialogical encounter all impart lessons for scholars who strive for success in the comparison of political ideas. The Gadamerian hermeneutical strategy that dominates current

Introduction

5

studies of comparative political thought is not the only (and perhaps not always the best) path toward the realization of the salient goal of cross-cultural dialogue. The following three chapters examine early modern European encounters with Asian culture. Bruce Buchan argues that early modern European political thinkers’ attitudes toward Asia were primarily determined by their desire to assert the superiority of their own civilization to the Asian counterpart. After surveying the European depiction of Asia as a wealthy land under despotic rule, Buchan examines the criticism by the Abbé Raynal and Edmund Burke of the contemporary European perception of Asia. According to Buchan, Burke was not advocating what we call today “the recognition of differences”; Burke’s critique of the activities of the British East Indian Company reveals that his attack on “moral geography”—the view that moral duties and obligations do not have universal application—ultimately rested on a assumption that the laws of morality are universally the same. While Buchan challenges the moral universalism he discerned in Burke, Brett Bowden questions the alleged European monopoly on modern political values. While “continental chauvinism” is manifest in many figures within the Western “canon”—including Kant, Hegel, James Mill and Marx—who deny “both the contribution and the capacity” of the Eastern intellectual traditions, Bowden acknowledges that some European thinkers, such as Burke, Voltaire, and Herder, were appreciative of Eastern ideas. Contrary to European chauvinism, Bowden contends, many political and social ideas, such as democracy, whose ancestral origins are often ascribed to Europe alone are in fact shared by many other cultures. A different picture emerges from Vicki Spencer’s study of works in the Enlightenment period on Islam. It would be misleading, Spencer contends, to depict the Enlightenment as having a homogeneous perception of Islam that rendered Christian Europe as invariably superior. Some French intellectuals, such as Bayle and Voltaire, ostensibly asserted European superiority; however, a closer analysis of their works reveals that behind the Eurocentric façade lies self-criticism of European society and Christian morality: French Enlightenment thinkers’ appreciation of Islam’s rationality was the reverse side of their attack on Christian hypocrisy. Just as Buchan did for Burke, Spencer discerns “hegemonic arrogance” in the Enlightenment thinkers’ approval of Islam due to its conformity to their own moral values; however, in Mary Wotley Montagu’s writing on the Ottoman Empire she finds a dialogical engagement with Islam. Part II concludes with Philip Nel’s attempt to engage with Islamic economics. It is often overlooked that Muslim countries “tend ... to have lower inequality levels than their non-Muslim peers.” The chapter examines how Islam is responsible for the redistributive effect, thereby seeking to establish Islam’s distinctive contribution to social justice. Nel highlights

6

Introduction

that for Islam, which knows no distinctions between private and public and between religious and secular, benevolence is not merely a private moral obligation but also a public responsibility, as exemplified by the institutional practice of zakat and waqf. While Nel acknowledges the limits of redistributive effects within Islam, he stresses the significance of understanding the Islamic concept of distributive justice in order to question the premises that underpin the Western political and economic concept of distributive justice. Part III sees things from “the other side”: It explores some of the ways in which Asia engaged with Western political thought. Nelly Lahoud’s chapter highlights the volte-face in Islam’s self-understanding before and after the arrival of European colonialism. Before the dawn of colonialism, Islamic intellectuals criticized both European colonizers and fellow Muslims who confronted them in the light of their own religious and intellectual traditions. Once colonization was launched, however, Islamic intellectuals began to see themselves through the European Orientalist lens. Islam’s internalization of an Orientalist outlook is traced by a historical account of the writings of Abdul Rahman al-Jabarti (1753–1825) and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1837/9–1897). From this case study, Lahoud raises an intriguing dilemma for comparative political theory: While a comparative political theorist, who is positioned in a particular cultural tradition, aims to benefit from cross-cultural dialogue with the “other,” the “other” in the colonial encounter with Islam in the late eighteenth century cannot be studied as an “authentic agent” because the post-colonial self-understanding of Islam was a creation that conformed to a set of European assumptions. The following two chapters by Anthony Parel and Makarand Paranjape explore Indian responses to European political ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Parel’s chapter highlights two contrasting reactions to Western political ideas in India. One is the position that argues for the assimilation of “anything but Indian” to overcome the alleged backwardness of Indian society and politics. The other position endeavors to preserve the ancient Indian intellectual framework and to assimilate non-Indian political values harmoniously. Parel calls the first “political thought in India” and the second “Indian political thought.” After surveying “political thought in India” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was anchored in Spencerian sociology, ethnic nationalism, and Marxism, Parel offers an analysis of Gandhi’s redefinition and rehabilitation of the traditional Indian intellectual framework represented by Kautilya’s Arthasastra, into which he introduced Western political ideas selectively and creatively. However, the creation of “Indian political thought” was not Gandhi’s monopoly: a number of other Indian intellectuals attempted to shape modern political thought through dialogue with the West in a distinctively Indian fashion. Makarand Paranjape illustrates this by looking at two contrasting

Introduction

7

ideas of Indian nationalism in the writings of Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) and B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956). Marginalized by the mainstream Indian nationalist movement led by Gandhi, Aurobindo promoted spiritual nationalism, while Ambedkar’s counter-nationalism attacked the dominance of the upper class based on the caste system. Both men’s political views resonate in twentieth-century Indian politics, but particularly noteworthy is the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing, Hindu nationalist party in recent years. Thus Paranjape’s chapter not only illuminates other dimensions of Indian nationalist movements in the twentieth century, but also offers a broader framework of comparative analysis to understand India’s encounter with Western thought. One of the key issues in the cross-cultural history of political thought is the process of translating Western political concepts into Asian languages. Peter Zarrow tackles this problem by tracing the development of the concept of the state at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The central issue is translating the term “state” into Chinese. Assimilating vocabulary such as “sovereignty” and “the body politic” from Japanese rather than from missionary translators, Late Qing intellectuals, including Liang Qichao, destroyed the old imperial cosmology. They no longer needed the emperor or any other human who transcends the people. Thus, they turned to the construction of a new secular theory of state based on an unstable mix of national identity, popular sovereignty, and raison d’état. The modern Chinese concept of the state, a hybrid of both Western and traditional intellectual resources, emerged as a fiction which alone transcended the people. Joseph Chan’s chapter engages in a philosophical dialogue with classical Confucian texts of the Analects, Mencius and Xunzi in order to rehabilitate the Confucian idea of justice in the context of contemporary philosophical debate on the egalitarian idea of justice and its alternatives. Chan identifies and reconstructs the idea of distributive justice in classical Confucianism by singling out three basic principles: sufficiency for all, priority for the badly off, and merit and contribution. Chan’s reconstruction of the Confucian “doctrine of sufficiency” not only seeks to contribute to the contemporary Western debate from a Chinese perspective, but, along with Nel’s chapter, provides a new insight into the idea of distributive justice from non-Western outlook. Takashi Shogimen’s chapter offers a cross-cultural comparison of medical metaphors in medieval European and Tokugawa Japanese political thought. Drawing on recent cognitive linguistic theories of metaphor, which considers that metaphor is not a linguistic, but a conceptual, phenomenon of “mapping” between two conceptual domains, Shogimen examines the metaphor of the head and the heart as representing the ruling office of the body politic in the two historical worlds. While in medieval Europe the

8

Introduction

medical debate over the most important organ of the natural body had significant impact on the contemporary metaphorical language of politics, the assimilation of Western anatomical knowledge in late Tokugawa Japan did not metaphorically restructure the contemporary language of the body politic. The ostensibly rapid shift from Confucian political language to modern Western language in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods was not matched by a similar transformation of metaphorical imagery, thus suggesting that the traditional conceptual frame persisted. The resistance to, and the transformation of, imported Western ideas in Meiji Japan (1868–1912) is illustrated by Alistair Swale. The introduction of Western political thought into Japan engendered an intense initial phase of translation of Western works, with the adoption of the new concepts and terminology. This new lexicon became the standard by which intellectuals distinguished themselves as being genuinely progressive and “enlightened.” However, this early phase rapidly gave way to a far more reflexive and critical phase of inquiry, one that confronted the inadequacies and perceptual gaps in Western political thought in ways that were not always apparent to intellectuals observing Japan from the outside. Swale demonstrates this by focusing on the ways in which various members of the Meiroku Society responded to Western philosophical canons. The essays comprising this volume thus reveal the diversity, ambivalence, or even lack of cross-cultural dialogue in the global history of political thought. The past experience of cross-cultural encounter in the time of Western colonialism rarely took the form of what Nederman calls “dialogues of mutual accommodation and respect.” Furthermore, identifying “traditions” of Asian political thought in the post-colonial age is also problematic, since Western political values have become an integral part of Asian political thinking in a variety of ways. Yet the happy and harmonious marriage of Western and Asian political ideas is exceedingly rare. The inter-cultural dialogue between Western and Asian political thought will probably continue to take a variety of forms. For this, comparative political theory will benefit from the historical insight in the past experience of cross-cultural dialogues. This book would not have appeared without generous support from a number of institutions and individuals. The Japan Foundation and the Marden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand offered generous financial assistance. The Fulbright Senior Specialist Award sponsored Cary Nederman’s keynote lecture at the Dunedin symposium, and the University of Helsinki and Australian National University provided Vasileios Syros and Brett Bowden with financial assistance in support of their travels. The editors wish to express thanks to Koichiro Matsuda and Vasileios Syros, who spoke at the symposium but who were unable to contribute chapters to this book. Had it not been for Martha Bell and Stuart Barson of the Centre for

Introduction

9

Innovation at the University of Otago, the symposium project would have been impossible or at least far less significant than it was in both scale and content. The academic and administrative staff of the Department of History in the University of Otago have aided in many ways to bring this project to fruition; special thanks go to Barbara Brookes, Brian Moloughney, Tony Ballantyne, Sue Lang and Kyle Matthews. Kim Sullivan, a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Otago, offered valuable assistance to ensure the smooth running of the symposium, and Rowena Fraser of St. Margaret College in the University of Otago provided help in setting up the event at the College. Finally, we are grateful to Joseph Parry and the staff of Lexington Books for their skillful management of the publication process.

I COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO POLITICAL THOUGHT

1 Comparative Political Theory: What Is It Good For? Fred Dallmayr

A welcome sign of our times, in my view, is the emergence of a new field of inquiry variously labeled “comparative” or “cross-cultural” political theory (or philosophy). The sign is welcome as an antidote to the widespread talk of a “clash of civilizations” and as a counter-move to the real-political evidence of inter-cultural confrontations and violent conflicts. For these and other reasons, people of good will are likely to applaud the new enterprise more or less intuitively or spontaneously—a reaction which itself merits applause. Yet, a new mode of inquiry cannot be entirely left to intuition or common sense. It is incumbent on us to go beyond vague hunches and to investigate the topic carefully and reflectively. So we need to ask, or I want to ask here: What is the point of comparative or cross-cultural political theorizing—an inquiry whose birth-pangs we are witnessing today? Precisely at the present juncture, at this auspicious moment of the birth of a new initiative, it seems appropriate and timely to raise the “why?” question, the question: What is this type of inquiry good for? It was above all Aristotle who has reminded us that everything has a telos, serves a purpose, or aims at some “good”—where the “good” is not necessarily something we can capture and appropriate but rather what lays claim to us. So again my question: What is comparative political inquiry good for? It will be my contention that such inquiry is good for a number of things, but mainly three. The guiding thread of my discussion will be: good for what or for whom? In a first approximation one might answer this question by saying that the inquiry is good for the “self”—where the latter term, however, turns out to be highly complex and nearly elliptical. In ordinary parlance, the self is often taken to be the empirical individual, and the “good” for that self is said to be everything that serves individual self-interest. A good 13

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Chapter 1

deal of modern social theory—including economic theory—is built on that foundation. The problem is that there is not one individual, but a great multitude of individuals in the world with all of them pursuing their particular self-interests. In this situation, the danger of inter-human clashes—what Thomas Hobbes called the “war of all against all”—is immense. To obviate this danger, complicated mediating structures have been erected and a variety of formulas—ranging from legal contracts to emotional empathy—have been proposed to bridge the gulf between particular selves. Although valuable for legal or procedural purposes, all these structures have one serious defect: they hover in mid-air and hence are fortuitous and unreliable unless they are anchored in a shared good in which all participate and find a more than passing “interest.” At this point, another and deeper notion of the “self” comes into view—something the Indian scriptures call “atman,” but which from another angle might also be called “no-self” (anatman, anatta). On this level, crosscultural or comparative inquiry is no longer good for something else, but is itself part and parcel of the good.

IN PURSUIT OF THE GOOD Before turning to the “good” or “goods” of comparative political inquiry, it seems appropriate to reflect briefly on the meaning of goodness and its relation to human activities. Here the most helpful starting point is Aristotle’s discussion in his Nicomachean Ethics. The very first book of the Ethics is devoted to the exploration of goodness, the different types of goods, and the notion of a “highest (or complete) good.” According to the opening lines, every inquiry as well as every action or pursuit “seems to aim at some good”; hence, the notion of the “good” is that “at which everything aims” or toward which everything is directed. Given that there are different kinds of actions, inquiries or pursuits, it follows that the aims or “goods” will also vary. Hence, the good in matters of health care is the right medicine; the good in seafaring is a seaworthy boat or ship; the good in economic dealings is proper financial management. There is a further difference that needs to be considered. In some cases, the good or aim lies outside the actions or pursuits, in the sense that the actions are performed for an ulterior motive; in some other cases, however, the actions or pursuits carry the goodness in themselves. In this case, the action or inquiry is undertaken for its own sake or “because of itself” and not for the sake of something else. If we can find a situation in which the latter fully prevails, then Aristotle suggests we are face to face with what may be called the “best good” or the “highest good.”1 Following some remarks regarding methodology, Aristotle returns to the issue of the highest good, that is, the aim undertaken for its own sake. In his characteristic manner, he does not start his discussion from the top (or

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first principles) down, but rather from the bottom up, that is, from the level of ordinary or common-sense beliefs. As he notes, the common belief of people is that the highest good in life is “happiness” or a life well lived (eudaimonia)—although there is considerable disagreement about the nature of happiness. For a large number of people, happiness coincides with pleasure and a life well lived with a “life of gratification” or self-indulgence. Echoing Plato, Aristotle finds this definition entirely inadequate and in fact demeaning. Such self-seeking or pleasure-seeking people, he writes, are “completely slavish” in their addiction to pleasure and live like “grazing animals.” Unfortunately, they often find support in high places among people “in positions of power” who likewise live like gluttons (or like the Assyrian King Sardanapallus). Among more cultivated people, especially those “active in politics,” one finds a more elevated conception: one which equates happiness with honor, or rather with honor bestowed because of a display of “virtue”—which renders virtue the more complete good in comparison with honor. It is the latter conception with which Aristotle ultimately agrees. In his words, to be truly complete, a good must be “choiceworthy in itself” and not because of something else. Properly defined, namely as a life of goodness, happiness qualifies as the highest or complete good because it is not pursued “for the sake of anything else at all.” Genuine happiness, however, resides in a virtuous life or a life ethically well lived: “The [highest] human good turns out to be the soul’s activity that manifests virtue.”2 Significantly, in terms of the Nicomachean Ethics, a life well lived is not confined to a moment or a passing episode, but rather refers to a “complete life,” an entire life story displaying virtue not accidentally but in a sustained manner. As Aristotle says pointedly: “For one swallow does not make a spring, nor does one [sunny] day. Nor, similarly, does one day or a short time make us blessed and happy.” Moreover, to lead a good life it is not sufficient simply to know the good or have a hearsay knowledge of it, but rather requires to act well and do the good. “The belief,” we read, “that the happy person lives well and does well in action also agrees with our account, since we have said that the end is a sort of living well and doing well in action.” Again, happiness requires virtuous conduct in a complete life, and not episodically. Hence, eudaimonia or a life well lived displays a certain steadiness, stability or reliability which provides a sheet anchor against rash fluctuations of temper: “It follows, then, that the happy person has the stability we are looking for and maintains the character he or she has throughout the entire life.” A further qualification needs to be added here: the aspect that virtuous conduct is not inherently a solitary activity, but a practice performed toward and in the company of others. Hence, genuine happiness is not a private enjoyment, but a felicity shared with others, especially with friends. Such sharing even contributes to a higher level of goodness. As Aristotle states, toward the end of his Ethics, in friendships,

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people “seem to become still better from their activities and their mutual correction. For each moulds the other in what they approve of, so that ‘you will learn what is noble from noble people.’”3 With some variations, the Aristotelian accent on goodness, and the quest for the complete good, finds parallels in South Asian and East Asian classical texts. Among Indian classical scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita deserves particular attention because of its linkage of action and virtue—the latter seen as a steady liberation from narrow self-seeking or self-interest. In line with Aristotle’s departure from common belief, the Gita agrees that many or most people find the goal of action in pleasure, identifying a happy life with a “life of gratification” or the fulfillment of desires. This view retreats or vanishes, however, as soon as life is seen from an ethical perspective and action as pursuit of an ethical path or ascent (karma yoga). As Lord Krishna instructs his pupil Arjuna, there are people “who have no vision” and whose heart and soul is “warped with selfish desires”; their wishes and ambitions are only “prayers for pleasure and power” and even “their heaven is a selfish desire.” By contrast, people with insight and ethical sensibility follow a different path: the “yoga” of liberating ascent. Addressing these kinds of people, Krishna offers these guideposts or road markers: “Set your heart upon your work (karma), but never on its reward ... Do your work in the peace of yoga and, free from selfish desires, be not moved in success or failure.” Action performed in the spirit of yoga is not done for the sake of an ulterior motive, but carries its end or good in itself. In Aristotelian language, the yardstick here is genuine virtue, and the latter in turn is the complete good and the emblem of happiness. In the more spiritual language of the Gita, the intrinsic good of action is its sacredness or “consecration,” for it is in harmony with the divine that humans can attain the “supreme good.”4 Perhaps more strongly than Aristotle’s text, the Gita emphasizes the liberating role of yoga, its contribution to human freedom from spurious bondage or attachments. In Krishna’s words: “Great is the person who, free from attachments and with a mind ruling its powers in harmony, works on the path of karma yoga, the path of consecrated action.” As he adds, those who pursue this path and show good will “find through pure work their freedom.” Quite in accord with Aristotle’s teaching, on the other hand, the Gita presents action not merely as an isolated individual performance, but as conduct practiced in community with and for the well-being of others. In the terms of one of the text’s famous verses: “Even as the unwise work selfishly in the bondage of selfish works, let the wise man work unselfishly for the good of all the world (lokasamgraha).” Another prominent parallel between the Nicomachean Ethics and the Gita resides in the emphasis on continuity and stability of action, as contrasted with occasional or episodic practices. Probably the most celebrated part of the Gita is the concluding section of Chapter 2 where Krishna instructs Arjuna about the person of “tranquil wisdom,” the person endowed

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with stable virtue and “steady insight” (sthitha-prajña). In his words: “When a person surrenders to me all desires that come to the heart and by the grace of God finds joy in the divine, then his or her soul has found stable peace.” Untroubled by sorrows and beyond passion, fear and anger, such a person is a “sage of unwavering mind” having reached the supreme good. In his admirable study of the Indian paths of life or yogas, Anthony Parel presents the mentioned section as the book’s “great saying” (mahavakya), a saying so central that Gandhi recited it steadily as part of his daily evening prayers. The verses, he writes, were “engraved” in Gandhi’s heart and embodied for him “the essence of dharma” (or the virtuous life).5 Similar teachings—though again couched in a different idiom—can also be found in East Asian classics, especially the sayings ascribed to Confucius. In the Confucian tradition, goodness (jen) refers both to genuine virtue and to the character of a virtuous person (or junzi); such virtuous character is again differentiated from selfish desire—although pursuit of self-interest is widespread and valued in common opinion. “Wealth and rank,” we read in the Analects, “are what everybody desires. Yet, if they can only be obtained in violation of the ‘way’ [tao, dharma, yoga], one must abandon them.” On the other hand, “poverty and obscurity are what everybody detests”; however, “if they can only be avoided in violation of the ‘way,’ one must accept them.” Asked about the intrinsic quality of virtue or goodness, Confucius is reported to have replied: “In private life courteous; in public life diligent; in relationships loyal.” Together with Aristotle and the Gita, the Analects puts an emphasis on steadiness or stability of conduct: “Never for a moment does a good person (junzi) quit the ‘way’ of goodness. He or she is never so harried as to abandon it; never so tottering as to forsake it.” Again, in concurrence with the Gita and Aristotle’s Ethics, good conduct is not presented as an isolated individual practice removed from social bonds. Among the most famous and admirable passages in the Analects is the following statement regarding the qualities required in a good person: “I would describe goodness like this: You yourself desire rank and standing; then help others to obtain rank and standing. You yourself want success in your pursuits; then help others to attain success. In fact, the ability to take one’s own feelings as a guide—that is the sort of thing that lies in the direction of goodness.” To this statement one may add this other observation attesting to Confucian sociability: “I will not be grieved if other people do not know me; I will be grieved if I do not know other people.”6

THE GOOD(S) OF COMPARATIVE POLITICAL INQUIRY Having discussed the quest for goodness—in a comparative or crosscultural perspective7—the question now becomes how this discussion can

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be relevant to comparative political theory or philosophy. As it seems to me, the relevance resides in a certain progression of the good or goods served by comparative political inquiry. At an initial level, the good of such inquiry can be found in its utility for the self or the pursuit of self-interest; and one can hardly deny that in the “common belief” of most people (to use Aristotle’s turn of phrase) this kind of good is of primary importance. One may call this a “pragmatic-utilitarian” good or end, an end readily intelligible on a common-sense level. We all live in a complex world and have to make our way in the face of many hazards and uncertainties. It is surely advantageous for ourselves, for the pursuit of our concrete self-interest, if we know more about the world and the people with whom we are dealing or have to contend. This is particularly true in our shrinking or globalizing world today—a world exhibiting a great diversity of cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions. As long as we are mired in ignorance or blinded by coarse prejudices, we are likely to go astray or to encounter roadblocks which can frustrate or obstruct the unhampered pursuit of our interests and preferences.8 The benefit of cross-cultural studies is particularly evident to economists and business people. When planning to invest or open a business in Africa, India or Asia, Western corporations make it a practice to become acquainted—at least to a certain extent—with local customs, tastes, and consumer preferences. This is done not for the sake of local people, but to advance economic self-interest and the corporate margin of profits. Yet business people are not entirely alone in this attitude. Intellectuals and even theorists or philosophers can find the approach attractive. Thus, in some instances, foreign cultures or traditions may be studied not for the sake of genuine learning, but for the purpose of gaining a strategic advantage or bolstering one’s own sense of superiority. In other cases, foreign cultures or traditions may be reduced to quaint relics of the past, to satisfy certain consumer tastes in folklore. In all these situations, the strategy is directed at subsuming or appropriating the “other” in a unilateral fashion without reciprocity. What has been termed “Orientalism” corresponded basically to such a policy of appropriation and domination on the part of Western intellectual elites.9 As we know, the intellectual agenda was often and even commonly associated with, or buttressed by, far-flung political ambitions, especially the projects of imperialism and colonialism. Needless to say, self-interest in the latter cases takes the extreme form of pure selfishness or self-centeredness—which is a perversion of what one may call pragmatic “prudence” or the ordinary concern with one’s own well-being (cura sui). It is precisely in order to curb the perversion of selfinterest that comparative or cross-cultural inquiry may be placed in the service of another end or “good”: the good of finding truly universal principles or yardsticks of human conduct. As one may note, comparative study

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here is not totally severed from self-interest; rather, an effort is made to balance or calibrate self-interest against the legitimate interests of others. This means that the “other” is studied not primarily in his or her difference, but with a view toward what is common or shared in humanity. I call the end served here a “moral-universal” good. Basically, we are here in the arena of the so-called “golden rule”—variations of which can be found in virtually all cultural traditions. Thus, the Gita speaks of the need to treat all people equally, whether friends or enemies, and to give to all their proper due. And the Analects formulates a general principle termed “shu,” which translates into a version of the golden rule: “Never do unto others what you would not like them to do unto you.”10 As we know, the “golden rule” as such is somewhat abstract or vague and permits many interpretations. However, the domain of the “moraluniversal” good extends beyond this rule and includes many maxims or principles which are more specific and concretely applicable. The most prominent example is modern international law—a system of legal rules which, despite many gaps or lacunae, is today recognized as binding by the vast majority of states and peoples.11 International law in the modern sense includes rules regarding warfare (ius ad bellum and ius in bello), crimes against humanity (such as genocide, wanton killing of civilians), treatment of prisoners of war (Geneva Conventions), and many similar topics. In this domain, mention must also be made of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as subsequent or supplementary conventions regarding political, social, and cultural rights, the treatment of refugees, and the like. It would be pointless, of course, to neglect the limitations of the “moraluniversal” good, as I have called it. For one thing, as indicated, the golden rule is always open to multiple interpretations, leaving the door open to unilateral manipulation. In addition, in the field of international law, we still have to acknowledge the effects of the “Westphalian system,” that is, the role of state governments—relying on state “sovereignty”—in upholding or not upholding and even undermining international norms and conventions. Thus, the authority of international law is severely damaged if some government officials are prosecuted for war crimes or crimes against humanity while other governments and self-styled “world leaders” claim for themselves complete immunity from prosecution. Here the world community, and the conscience of peoples in that community, still have to undergo a serious maturing process. This can only happen through widespread ethical education and character formation. And this leads me to another—a third—“good” which is presupposed by international norms but not furnished by these norms; this is an “ethical” or “ethically transformative” good. When seeking to foster this kind of good, we have to descend into the “thick” fabric of comparative political theorizing, into the real pedagogy of

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cross-cultural learning. At this point, we no longer study only what all cultures have in common, but also how and why they differ. By exploring others and immersing ourselves in their distinct life-worlds, we become aware of the limits of our own particular traditions, of the special character of our own customs and preferences. This awareness is liable to induce a chastening of the self, of the self’s claim to supremacy or absolute autonomy, and thus to carry with it a lesson of modesty which is likely to have transformative effects. The fruit of this transformative lesson is enhanced tolerance and a genuine recognition of others, including their traditions and aspirations. Moving beyond moral universalism, on this level we come to appreciate the other no longer as a mere replica of ourselves (an alter ego), but as a different other needing to be valued in his or her own right or for his or her own sake. We are moving here along the line of ethical ascent discussed before, an ascent which always involves transformation (sometimes in painful ways). Using the typology of goods sketched above, we can say that the individual self is changed from a “pragmatic-utilitarian” ego and even from a “moral” or legal-contractual partner into (what is sometimes called) a “higher self” (atman) or perhaps “no-self” (anatta) which is able to forego the ambitions of domination, appropriation, and standardization (or “normalization”). At the same time, the “other” is transformed from a target of acquisition or abstract norm-regulation into a richly differentiated “persona”, an authentic agent and perhaps a friend. It is on this level that “dialogue” in the proper sense can happen—where the term refers to a genuine mutual learning process proceeding through question and answer. With some variations and adjustments, what I say here of individual transformation and ascent also goes for groups and communities whose “identities” are challenged and revised in the encounter with others. The possible emergence or refiguration of others as “friends” points back, of course, to Aristotle’s famous discussion of friendship in the eighth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. As one may recall, the progression there moves from pleasure and utility to genuine mutuality, from the treatment of others for one’s own benefit to an appreciation of the other and one’s relationship with the other for its own sake, or for the sake of goodness. This is part and parcel of Aristotle’s conception of ethics as a transformative process—here applied to the relation among friends. But as he notes, in a modified or “watered down” manner, the friend-friend relation carries over into the relations between citizens or agents in the public domain where (as he says) people relate to each others as friends “in a fellow-citizen’s way.” To this extent, the standard of friendship—that it is based on reciprocal goodness or “reciprocated good will”—carries over into the political domain (which is the concern of political theorists).12 To return again to the comparative or cross-cultural dimension, Aristotle’s standard of political action has been

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shared or echoed by classical thinkers outside the European confines. One example is the classical Islamic philosopher al-Farabi. In his Aphorisms of the Statesman (Fusul al-Madani), al-Farabi defined the purpose of political life—quite in agreement with Aristotle—as the cultivation and continuous practice of virtues conducive to the well-being and shared ethical happiness of all citizens.13 In turn, the Analects of Confucius contains these sayings: “Set your heart upon the ‘way’ (tao), support yourself by virtue (te), lean upon goodness (jen), seek enjoyment in the arts.” And at another point: “Is goodness really so far away? If we really searched for it, we should find that it was at our very side” (in everyday life).14 And here, for good measure, are the memorable lines of the twelfth-century neo-Confucian sage Chen Te-Hsiu: “Discipline the self by incorruptibility; / pacify the people by goodness (jen); / preserve the mind by impartial equity; / perform your duties with diligence.”15

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY AND POLITICAL PRAXIS Having discussed goodness and the “goods” of comparative inquiry, political realists are prone to object that I have neglected the most important thing: namely, that politics is centrally about power. For devotees of Realpolitik, politics is basically synonymous with the pursuit and wielding of power. In their view, politics and ethics do not mix; in fact, they are radically opposed to and incompatible with each other. Unfortunately, their argument has much real-life evidence on its side. One way to answer the realists, on a purely theoretical level, is to challenge the presumed opposition of politics and ethics. For clearly, if politics is equated with the pursuit of power, then power for its devotees must be something “good,” something worthwhile to be pursued. With this realization, however, we are back in the domain of ethics—if only on the level of ordinary everyday belief. This domain opens the door to further evaluation. Most often, power seems to be pursued for ulterior motives, like pleasure, wealth, or prestige—in which case it cannot function as a good in itself. On the other hand, treating it as the supreme good shipwrecks on the fact that power is intrinsically subject to the winds of good and ill fortune (as attested by the old adage “See how the mighty have fallen”). Hence, power cannot be the highest good and can certainly not take the place of virtuous conduct. This, I concede, is a theoretical-philosophical argument and does not alter the real-life experience that ethical goodness often (in fact: too often) falls victim to the exploits of the powerful. In this volume, social scientist Brett Bowden referred pointedly to the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur— not a supporter of Realpolitik—and some sobering comments contained in his book History and Truth. As Ricoeur noted there, the encounter between

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Western and non-Western civilizations “has not yet taken place at the level of an authentic dialogue”—adding that presently “we are in a kind of lull or interregnum in which we can no longer practice the dogmatism of a single truth and in which we are not yet capable of conquering the skepticism into which we have steeped.” Hence, “we are in a tunnel, at the twilight of dogmatism and the dawn of real dialogues.”16 In his own chapter, Bowden adds a further sobering touch to these observations. As he states (correctly), things have not tended to get better since the publication of Ricoeur’s book; in fact, they have gotten steadily worse in the face of September 11, the war against Iraq, and the ensuing terror wars. In his words: “At the level of diplomatic and international relations, I fear we are probably closer to midnight than to the dawn of an authentic dialogue between civilizations.”17 In my view, we need to take comments like these seriously and not turn away from the grim realities on the ground. Not long ago, I participated in a philosopher’s meeting organized by UNESCO in Rabat, Morocco. There I met a Jordanian colleague from Amman. He told me that he gets very angry and in fact infuriated by talk about global dialogue and global justice. For him, the reality—experienced every day—is not dialogue and justice but domination, rampant exploitation, and mayhem. I responded by saying that I shared his anger and his frustration. But I also added—pushing myself a bit—that dialogue and justice are not so much realities on the ground as rather aspirations or normative standards and that, in the words of Edward Said, we need to work on the “slow working together of cultures.” I could also have invoked Ricoeur who, in History and Truth, also wrote the following: “When we land in a totally foreign country, ... we feel that in spite of the greatest change of elements we have never left humankind. But this feeling remains blind; one has to raise it to the rank of a wager and a voluntary affirmation of human oneness.” And here is an additional passage in the same text: “I think that among all creations, there is a kind of harmony in the absence of all agreement. It is in this way that I understand Spinoza’s excellent saying: ‘the more we understand individual objects, the more we understand God.’”18 Surely, to return to Said’s phrase, the “working together of cultures” is slow and uphill. Therefore, those committed to cross-cultural encounter and comparative inquiry in an ethical sense must also shoulder the task of being critics of the status quo, the task of challenging and resisting the powers that be which are bent on domination, exploitation, and mayhem. Hence, people dedicated to the enterprise of “comparative political theory” cannot just remain “theorists” in the sense of uninvolved or neutral spectators. They also have to be practitioners or “practical” political thinkers concerned with the relation between theory and praxis, with the translation of insight garnered through inquiry into practical life conduct. In pursuing this path, practical thinkers follow the old Latin maxim abeunt studia in mores

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and also honor the teaching of Aristotle’s Ethics where we read that, as a corollary of virtue, “the happy person lives well and does well in action.”19 Being engaged in ethical action does not at all mean being blind to the realities on the ground, to the discrepancy between existing political practices and the standards of the good life. Practitioners of cross-cultural inquiry do not and should not view the world through “rose-colored” lenses; yet, while having their feet planted in reality, they also need to set their face toward future possibilities, toward the uncharted terrain of transformative experiences. A word of caution is in order here. In entering upon the path of praxis— involving often a contestation of the powers that be—cross-cultural agents must take care not to pervert resistance into radical conflict, leading to an intensification or exacerbation of the “clash of civilizations.” Rather, contestation and critique still have to follow the path of dialogue—maybe an “agonal” dialogue—relying on persuasion and moral or ethical argument. This is the strategy that Mahatma Gandhi called satyagraha, translated as “truth force” or “soul force.”20 I agree with my Jordanian colleague that cross-cultural or comparative study which lacks the courage of satyagraha is an empty exercise, an escape into complacently wishful thinking. Following in the footsteps of Aristotle, al-Farabi, Confucius, and Gandhi, we have to link theory and praxis, scholarly understanding and practical engagement. Only in this way can we really cultivate the “good(s)” or goodness of comparative political inquiry.

NOTES 1. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 1–2 (1094a1–20). 2. Nicomachean Ethics, 5, 7–8, 14, 17 (1095a15–25, 1095b15–30, 1097a30, 1097b5–15, 1098a15–16). I leave aside here Aristotle’s reference to “the life of study” (as possibly reflecting complete happiness) as well as the role of “external goods” in the pursuit of a virtuous life. 3. Nicomachean Ethics, 17, 19, 25, 266 (1098a18–20, 1098b20–22, 1100b18–19, 1172a10–15). 4. The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Juan Mascaró (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), 52, 56–57 (Chapter 2, verses 42–43, 47–48; Chapter 3, verses 7, 9–11). 5. The Bhagavad Gita, 53, 56, 58–59 (Chapter 2, verses 55–56, Chapter 3, verses 7, 25, 31). See also Anthony J. Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 187. 6. The Analects of Confucius, trans. Arthur Waley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 102–03, 122, 176 (Book 4:5; Book 6:28; Book 13:19). See also A Collection of Confucius’ Sayings, ed. Luo Chenglie et al. (Ji Nan: Qi Zu Press, 1988), 17, 19, 21, 68.

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7. The discussion has emphasized some similarities, but without neglecting differences. The latter are quite evident too: while Aristotle’s Ethics proceeds on a philosophical-metaphysical level, the Gita speaks more from a religious vantage point; Confucius, finally, does not show much interest in either religion or philosophical metaphysics. 8. In the worst of possible scenarios, such ignorance can lead to violent backlashes, to culture clashes or “clashes of civilizations,” and even to self-destruction. One Japanese intellectual, the present director-general of UNESCO, Dr. Koichiro Matsuura, has described the so-called “clash of civilizations” as basically a “clash of ignorance” or of blind prejudices—and rightly so. 9. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). Compare also my Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 10. See Bhagavad Gita, 97 (Chapter 12, verse 18); The Analects of Confucius, 162 (Book 12:2). 11. Compare in this regard my “The Law of Peoples: Civilizing Humanity,” in Peace Talks—Who Will Listen? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 42–63. 12. Nicomachean Ethics, 210, 263 (115b34, 1171a18). 13. See Al-Farabi, Fusul al-Madani (Aphorisms of the Statesman), ed. D.M. Dunlap (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 40, 53; also Alfarabi: The Political Writings, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 11–67. 14. The Analects of Confucius, 129 (Book 12:29); also A Collection of Confucius’ Sayings, 35. 15. See W. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 85. 16. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 283–84. 17. See Brett Bowden’s chapter in the present volume. 18. Ricoeur, History and Truth, 282–83. 19. Nicomachean Ethics, 19 (1098b23). 20. Compare in this regard my “Satyagraha: Gandhi’s Truth Revisited,” in Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 105–21.

2 Toward a Global History of Political Thought Antony Black

The global history of political thought sets out to explore the varieties of political thought which have appeared in different cultures, the way these developed over time, and how they have interacted with one another. One cannot cease to be amazed that no one has previously undertaken it. It is remarkable how little interest there is among political theorists in thinkers of the stature of Kautilya, al-Ghazalim or Ibn Khaldun. These people had much to say about economic morality and its relation to successful governance. In some ways their views parallel the modern discourse about public and private enterprise. The history of Western political thought is, by contrast, examined in every microscopic detail. There is, one must assume, some resistance, within the academic community. Max Weber (1864–1920)1 perceived more clearly than anyone before or since the role of the comparative study of ideologies in historical explanation. But Weber has had relatively few successors in this, and none that I know of in the field of political thought and culture. While Weber’s categories and analyses of cultural phenomena have been enormously influential,2 at times acquiring the status of dogma among social theorists, his basic approach has been progressively lost sight of during the twentieth century. This is perhaps because comparison is a forbidding task, requiring mastery of different specialisms and languages. The increase in knowledge since Weber’s time makes it much harder. Institutional and career pressures discourage comparison because it involves going outside one’s own specialism, and one is going to make mistakes. One has to cannibalize other people’s work, as Weber did.3 Comparison could most easily be achieved by collaboration, but effective collaboration seems more difficult to achieve in the social than in the natural sciences. 25

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AIMS What might a global history of political thought achieve? It is inadvisable for historians to say in advance what their purposes are, since they can be accused of finding only what they are looking for, of being programmatic rather than scientific. Perhaps it is best to confess that one is driven simply by curiosity and dissatisfaction, as is usually the case. Any reasons given for studying a particular topic are, moreover, in danger of being too abstract. One may be better to stick with the devil of detail: “en s’engage, puis on voit” (one sees when one gets involved). But, since the global history of political thought is not currently being undertaken, it may be helpful to present reasons for doing so. First, people study history, among other things, in order to acquire greater understanding of themselves, their society, and of the potentialities and limitations of human beings. All of this, the last especially, can be achieved only by looking at the many varieties of cultures into which humankind has historically been thrust, and divided, if only, from time to time, to become partially reunited again. Here we are concerned with the specific area of human life and struggle which we call political thought. By “political thought,” I mean any form of reflection about the nature of human society and organization, about leadership and the state; about how society and the state should be managed and run, and what possible alternative forms there are.4 I take it to include both philosophy and culture. Political thought is often closely linked to moral thought, of which it comprises a significant part. In examining a specific area, such as political thought, natural science, art, or religion, it would seem yet clearer that non-Western traditions ought to be taken into account. They are, after all, part of the human story. Second, it is possible that we ourselves today may learn something from other cultures. This is particularly clear in the field of art; here the products of all cultures are regarded as part of the common stock of human achievement. This is hardly the case nowadays in the natural sciences. It is much disputed whether or not it is the case in fields such as religion and philosophy, and so also in the case of political thought which almost always (some would say always) touches in some way on religion, and is often a part of moral philosophy. Not infrequently political thought is also tied up with natural science, either by analogies between the spheres of nature and human society, or because people believe that the same methods should be used to study political bodies as are used to study natural bodies.5 The argument that we can learn from other cultures will be developed below. Third, we need to study other cultures (as Weber did) for the sake of understanding our own. The study of non-Western cultures is necessary on scientific grounds for the study of Western culture itself. This is especially

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so with regard to understanding the history and development of Western political thought and culture. One cannot claim an adequate knowledge of why Western political thought developed the way it did, nor of what were its distinguishing characteristics, without looking at what kinds of political thought there were elsewhere, where these differed, and why the end results have been so different. One may equally use comparisons with Europe to explain the courses taken by political thought in other cultures. Global history enables one to see how different cultures stand, and stood in the past, in relation to one another. It enables one to spot similarities and differences. Comparative global history is necessary if one is to find out in exactly what respects political cultures and philosophers have influenced each other. One cannot know how A influenced B without first knowing what B was before it encountered A. In any branch of science, the way to explain phenomena and sequences of phenomena is to compare these with other sequences. This can be instructive whether these other phenomena appear altogether different, or appear to have at least some of the same characteristics. One can isolate the causes of the development of the Western tradition only by examining other traditions of political thought: both those which, like India and China, were different all along, and those which, like Islam and Judaism, shared some but not all of the same features at an earlier stage and then later developed differently. Other societies are the nearest thing any historian has to a repeatable experiment. It is one indispensable method of generating hypotheses about the causes of development or change.6 One needs, therefore, to examine traditions which did not lead to ideals or ideologies such as democracy, liberalism, nationalism, or to the modern state and capitalism, and to enquire why they did not. One may best understand the development of things by looking, inter alia, at cultures in which those things did not develop. By means of comparison one can identify both what is distinctive to each tradition and what different traditions had in common. For example, one often finds that a feature that has been assumed to be peculiar to the West was also present in other cultures. In the field of political thought, there were quasi-Hobbesian theories of the state in the medieval Islamic world,7 and aspects of the kind of political advice we call Machiavellian can be found in Kautilya in ancient India and in the “Advice-to-Kings” literature throughout the Islamic world from the eighth century onwards.8 The concepts of individual moral responsibility and of private property were once as prominent in Islamic thought as they were in European. How does one understand such similarities and the fact that they were accompanied, or superseded, by contrasting features? In making such comparisons it is necessary to follow Quentin Skinner’s method of identifying the contexts—intellectual, political and also socio-economic—in which ideas appeared.

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GLOBAL AND WESTERN HISTORIES COMPARED Let us compare the reasons considered so far why we should study the history of global political thought with the reasons why people have studied the history of Western political thought. When, from the late nineteenth century, the history of political thought began to be studied, usually as a separate sub-discipline of history, law, philosophy, or politics, people were set on charting the historical evolution of ideas such as liberty, the sovereign state, and parliamentary democracy, which they held to be important in the modern world. This was why they began with classical Athens and republican Rome, and tended to omit medieval Europe. In most cases, these were ideas of which they themselves approved; the history of political thought tended to be allied with a liberal view of progress and, in Britain’s case, the Whig interpretation of history. Lord Acton’s polished Inaugural Lecture (1895) is the most outrageous example.9 A German parallel was the earlier work by Otto von Gierke.10 Both Gierke and Acton wrote in a quasi-religious tone, about nationalism and freedom respectively. Gierke presented an almost biblical story of the decline of the true faith of German comradeship. But he, like Acton, believed his ideal would soon triumph. Both of these, and many others, were inspired by the Hegelian view that history would vindicate Providence. This was a classic instance of secularization. Heuristically, it was a disaster. There was, therefore, no need to consider non-“Western” ideas or thinkers, given that one had defined “the West” so as to include ancient Greece but not Egypt. One might hope to unearth from the past some aspect of the theory of liberty or republicanism which had got overlooked; but essentially it was an ideological story which helped validate the present. Good was triumphing over ill. Another view, exemplified by Leo Strauss and his followers,11 is that the history of political thought puts people in touch with a (or the) “great tradition,” from (say) Plato to more recent thinkers (before Hobbes). Who these are seems to depend entirely on the individual historical philosopher’s own point of view. One studies Plato or Augustine because they still have something valuable to say to us, or at least they present arguments which are still worth discussing. Strauss, importantly for our present discussion, included in the great tradition several Muslim and Jewish thinkers who are not usually included in the Western tradition as currently taught. The reason for studying Hobbes and anyone who came after him was to gain better understanding of the foundations on which the errors of modernity rest. Many have studied the history of great thinkers, as one studies the history of philosophy per se, in order to gain a better understanding of different points of view and the arguments that lie behind them. This is usually on the assumption that the ideas of, say, Aristotle or Machiavelli, either are

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partly true or remain important considerations in contemporary political discourse. In this view, it would be essential, as Strauss perceived to a certain extent but Oakeshott more so, to go outside the Western tradition. But hardly anyone in the political theory fraternity does so. Quentin Skinner called all of these approaches into question by pointing out the historical locale of all theories and beliefs: what was said in the past had a specific resonance for the then audience which it cannot have for us in our changed circumstances.12 This would reduce the history of political thought to a sub-division of history, and it would reduce the study of nonWestern political thought to an aspect of the study of China, the Muslim world, and so on. Neither Plato nor Confucius could have any importance for us today. The problem with this is that it overstates the relativity of historical situations. People today still fight, love, and compete for power; if we can empathize with Homer, we can surely empathize with what Confucius is trying to say (provided we understand how difficult it is to unearth the original texts, and so on).

THE NEEDS OF THE WORLD TODAY Finally, a knowledge of non-Western political traditions is necessary for political science, and for the practical purposes of policy-making, whenever, as is usually the case in international affairs, especially today, more than one cultural unit is involved. It is also required in order to improve civic harmony. This has always been so, but now it is a more obvious and pressing need than ever before. The exclusion of non-European thought from the history of political thought ignores the continuity, and indeed the revival, of non-Western ideas in various cultures today. Non-Western political cultures and ideas continue to play a critical part in regional politics throughout the Islamic world, in South-East Asia, India, China, and Japan, which comprise approximately three-quarters of the world’s population. Some non-Western cultures, notably Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islam, have experienced revivals, both among ordinary people and among theorists. The relevance of non-Western traditions, even when greatly altered by the impact of modernity and by revivals which often draw heavily on Western ideas and are responses to contemporary problems, is apparent both in specific countries and in the international arena. One cannot understand the politics of a country or region without taking such things into account. Any separation between empirical political science and the study of political culture and ideology is counter-productive; it dooms the endeavor concerned to failure. Many Western societies are to an increasing degree themselves inhabited by people from different backgrounds. Men and women of different cultural

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backgrounds—Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Judaic, Christian, humanist—are more than at any time in modern, and perhaps even ancient, history, faced with the problem of how to live together in the same civil society. Multiculturalism13 has become a major issue. In international politics, side by side with the globalization of commerce and production, and of certain forms of culture itself, major disputes are assuming an increasingly cultural—as distinct from ideological and power-political—character in the eyes of major players, and so to a corresponding degree in reality. The Western tradition has spread across the globe, but non-Western traditions have, partly in reaction, been restimulated. Policy-makers need to consider more urgently than perhaps ever before the makeup of different traditions, and the relationship between non-Western and Western traditions. Given all this, the present Eurocentrism in the way in which the history of political thought is studied and, still more, taught is dysfunctional, not to say obtuse. It is a barrier to mutual understanding. It privileges one tradition without serious discussion above all the rest. In international policy this attitude has particularly horrifying results. We need to study the history of these traditions in order to understand their present predicaments. In the case of Islam, for example, some indeed see fundamentalism as mainly a modern response to poverty and Western imperialism or hegemony, whether political, economic or cultural, dressed up in the language of Islam.14 They see it as comparable in this way to anarchism or extreme nationalism in Europe. Revivalists are influenced by contemporary thinkers as well as contemporary events; Gandhi by Tolstoy, Islamic fundamentalists by Lenin and Fascism. But, insofar as Islamic fundamentalists claim to be reviving an eternally valid ideal past, anyone entering into dialogue with them, or seeking to understand what they have to say, has to get to grips with whatever there is to know about that past. The same may be said for Christian fundamentalists, who have their own political agenda. Muslim political thinkers have for more than a century and a half thought hard about the meaning of original Islam for government and politics today. Some have argued that property rights, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, and moderated capitalism were already implicit in the Prophet’s message, but were subsequently overlaid by centuries of corrupt practices and tyrannical abuse of power; this led to a degeneration of the original message in the minds of believers and preachers themselves. For such thinkers, dialogue with Western political philosophers is both possible and desirable. Others, rather more recently, less impressed with the Western record, have argued that the political and economic aspects of the original Islamic message were unique and not comparable with any other tradition or ideology. In their view, Islam demands a rejection of Western ways in

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politics as in morals; it preaches a political and economic system that is quite different from that of the West, and infinitely superior to it. Equally important, perhaps even more important, is the question of how, and to what extent, the devout Muslim can engage with the values of secular modernity and a secular, religiously neutral state; or whether he or she may do so at all. Here, perhaps more than anywhere, knowledge of the praxes of the Muslim past is essential to informed discussion. Modern Christians are faced with a similar dilemma, since they, too, are committed to values which, in their view, stand above and outside the political order, and which are rooted in ancient texts or tradition. The same, mutatis mutandis, can be true of the modern humanist or agnostic. The praxes of the Christian and humanist past have also to be taken into consideration. Christians inherit certain ideas about moral obligation which make it especially difficult for them to compromise in certain areas, notably, the taking of life and sexual mores. In order to probe the issue of secular citizenship, therefore, one has once again to think comparatively, to recognize that the issue crosses creedal and cultural boundaries. Behind these issues lies the further question of the status of past utterances and traditional mores in belief systems. Here one cannot separate the comparative study of political thought from the comparative study of religions. Western political theorists have also themselves recently, partly because of the needs of policy-making, begun to engage with these questions of whether, and to what extent, non-Western streams of thought (such as Islam or Confucianism) are compatible with Western-style liberalism, democracy, and the secular state. Particular attention has recently been paid to Islam due to its perceived (and perhaps exaggerated) geo-political significance. But we should be paying no less attention, on policy grounds, to the traditions of China and India. In the long run (when the oil runs out), these may become even more important for a global understanding of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, for peace and human well-being. There appear to be significant differences in the capacities of traditions for dialogue with Western values. The state has been as central to Chinese thought as it has been virtually absent from Islamic. In China, a significant proportion of the population and intelligentsia recently fell head over heels in love with secularism, in the form of Marxism. Like a former lover, China is now trying to come to some kind of terms with its old self. Whether and how it will do so is impossible to predict. India provides another way, which one may indeed call a “third way,” since it has something in common with each of the others. It is, nonetheless, entirely sui generis. This has come about due to the Gandhian development of theory and praxis concerning the religious and the political.15

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These questions, and the findings which historians and philosophers arrive at about them, are now more than ever of central relevance to policymakers. They depend crucially on an informed knowledge of where the different schools of thought are coming from, and how they have developed, or stagnated, in the course of their histories. Specialists’ knowledge of non-Western traditions of political thought is, we all know, increasing all the time. In order to bear fruit in the tangled domain of policy, the findings of these specialists have to be set alongside our knowledge of the Western ways of thinking. In other words, comparative political thought, including a comparative history of political theories in their global settings, is necessary to intelligent decision-making in the world today. Worldwide enquiry, then, reflects the realities of present-day societies and international society. It will help to unearth the modes of thinking, or daydreaming, which underlie global conflicts, in which bands of men sometimes undertake to fight to the death (probably someone else’s) on behalf of creeds or claims or interests their adversary does not understand, does not care about, and may despise. One hopes that it will promote mutual understanding and increased harmony, though there is no guarantee of this. But in any case the Eurocentric way in which the history of political thought is at present taught and studied is dysfunctional for practical policy-making as well as scholarship.

AN OUTLINE SKETCH: THE ANCIENT WORLD A global history of political thought would start with the earliest records of the evolution of homo sapiens, proceed through the archaeological record of pre-history and on to the literate cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and elsewhere. Humans started from one family, and today we increasingly interact with one another in a single global society, whether we like it or not. But between these two points lie diverse histories. This is an act of recovery, an attempt at reconnecting with worlds we have lost touch with. Some of these worlds were never connected with each other. We will reap most benefit from comparative study if we study the history of ideas in the long term. We can best understand any culture by looking at it in as many stages of its development as possible. Inter-epochal study enables one to see continuities and discontinuities between earlier and later phases of what looks like the same tradition. Further, we can only make comparisons by looking at traditions in their entirety. Most, though not all, literate cultures were transformed by new religious and philosophical movements in the period c. 600–c. 200 BCE. Certain individuals in Greece, India, Israel, and China developed new ways of thinking about ethics, society and the political order.16 The two earliest

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traditions of political thought—in Egypt and in Mesopotamia (to be followed by Assyria, to be followed by Iran)—did not generate breakthroughs of their own. Their cultures were subsequently absorbed, or taken over by, the intellectual and spiritual achievements of Greece and Islam (the latter was a development out of the breakthrough by Israel). India and Israel explored the inner self through interiorized religions. China and Greece embarked on open-minded philosophical and scientific critical enquiry. What is truly remarkable is that this happened simultaneously in cultures so far apart which were clearly functioning independently of one another. Each development was distinctive. Only in Greece and China did this mental breakthrough produce political philosophy, and only in Greece did it lead to either empirical political science or debate about the merits of different constitutions. In each case the period of creativity came to an end fairly soon. Thereafter new traditions, stagnant or slow-moving, were formed; creative thought in philosophy and theology, concerning morality and the political order, became once again the exception. How does one explain this almost simultaneous appearance of creative and critical thought, including political theory, in China, India, Israel, and Greece? One may suggest the usual suspect of population growth which then triggers some kind of social crisis. This could indeed have happened more or less simultaneously in these separate agrarian economies. But it did not occur in other such economies. Perhaps we may learn something by looking beyond the usual disciplinary boundaries.

AN ARGUMENT FROM PRE-HISTORY Archaeologists have discovered evidence of anatomically modern humans many millennia (probably at least 100,000 years) before there is any evidence in artefacts of the kind of symbolic behavior which typifies modern homo sapiens.17 The explanation they suggest is that the brain of homo sapiens did not develop in tandem with language and culture,18 but as a result of a random mutation before it had any useful function (exaptation, preadaptation). “The emergence of anatomically modern humans considerably predated the arrival of behaviorally modern humans.”19 The mutation survived because it was not dysfunctional and, eventually, “an exapted brain, equipped since who knows when with a neglected potential for symbolic thought, was somehow put to use.”20 The use in question was symbolic behavior and communication:21 “A cultural innovation occurred in one human population that activated a potential for symbolic cognitive processes that had resided in the human brain all along.” This was followed by the “rapid spread of symbolic behaviors” through cultural diffusion.22 Thus, humans “probably had the hardware required for symbolic thought

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by the time the species arose, at least 195,000 years ago.” It may well be that “humans possessed the capacity for modern human behavior from the get-go but tapped that potential only when it provided an advantage.” At this point, archaeologists do indeed refer to population growth, leading to pressure on resources, which in turn required “cleverer ways of obtaining food and materials for tools ... Beads, body paint and even stylized tool manufacture may have functioned as indicators of an individual’s membership and status in a clan, which would have been especially important when laying claim to resources in short supply.”23 Could this also partly explain the yet more complex developments of symbolic thought which appeared in China, India, and elsewhere at more or less the same time? Was it the case that human beings had the potential for interiorized religion, philosophy, and science all along, but that these were only actually achieved when people made a particular kind of effort? This would at least explain the ease with which the results of these historic developments have been diffused. Let us note that this would indeed mean that people from different “traditions” are perfectly capable of learning from other traditions; it would explain why Indians and Chinese take to science, Westerners to meditation and yoga.

THE MEDIEVAL AND MODERN WORLD I am even less qualified to speak about the development of political thought in India and China after c. 200–300 CE. I have the impression there was little change until the introduction of Islam into northern India and the impact of Europe on China. For the rest of Asia and Europe, I would suggest the following road map. The Byzantine world of political thought was the direct product of the late Roman “Christian” empire. Its tradition was taken up by Bulgaria, Serbia, and finally Russia, where it remained in being until 1917. Islam, on the other hand, was a new phenomenon, comparable with the earlier breakthroughs. It took over the monarchical and raison d’état traditions of Iran. In this period, Europe (which after the seventeenth century may better be called the West) and, until c. 1350, Islam were the most innovative cultures in political thought. From around 1700, the history of non-Western political thought ceased to be independent of the West. The Western political tradition is customarily defined so as to include the ancient Greeks, Romans, and (often) Israelites, but to exclude Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Iran. Much of its subsequent history is about the influence of the West, first on Russia, then on the Muslim world, on India and China. This is a phenomenon still very much in process. I suggest that the main differences within world political thought now became differences generated within and by the West itself, notably (to avoid

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any originality): (a) liberal-individualist thought; (b) democratic ideas, not necessarily identical with or assimilable to (a); (c) socialism, and (c’) Marxism, which ranks as another breakthrough though probably short-lived; (d) nationalism, and (d’) fascism. It may be that all of these had some influence on Russia, the Muslim world, India, and China, except for (d’) which, so far as I know, had no influence in China or India or, until perhaps recently, Russia, but which did influence both secular and religious movements in areas of Muslim majority, for example, Turkey, the Ba’ath party, and some branches of radical Islam. I also question whether (d) had much influence on China, which already had a very adequately developed (and, as is now clear, plausible) sense of her own centrality in the scheme of things.

SEPARATE STORIES OR GENERAL THEMES? In planning a world history of political thought, how far should one treat the subject in separate stories, and at what point consider common themes and other means of comparison? There are advantages in both approaches: historians tend to prefer separate stories, political scientists and sociologists prefer comparison. Both surely have a role to play. The common themes that leap to one’s attention are justice and monarchy. In practically all cultures, both justice and monarchy are seen as part of the natural order. In early cultures, indeed in most cultures throughout history, there is no real division between the religious and the political.24 This remained the case, mutatis mutandis, in Islam. The great exceptions were Israel during and after the Babylonian captivity and Christianity, especially Western Christianity. The meaning of justice varies so much from culture to culture that to identify it as a common theme may not be to say very much. Monarchy as a phenomenon common to most or all cultures has recently been brilliantly treated by Francis Oakley.25 As he points out, the theory and widespread practice of monarchy have been neglected, and when not neglected often maligned. In fact, monarchy is found in all post-tribal societies except Greece. In Egypt, for example, we find moral-political treatises from c. 2000 BCE dealing with kingship, divinity, and nature. The king is shepherd, warrior, upholder of justice; his special duty is beneficence toward the poor and weak (compare Confucius). The ideology of kingship in Mesopotamia and Assyria was broadly similar. The king’s duties are to manage the god’s estate, ensure the subjects’ prosperity, uphold justice especially by protecting the weak, and redress grievances.26 In China, monarchy rested on cosmology; the emperor was validated by the “mandate of heaven.” If the crops failed or the people revolted, this could be a sign that heaven was reconsidering its mandate.

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Monarchy revived in post-classical Greece, as it did in Rome during and after the principate. It took over, or was taken over by, mainstream Christianity from the fourth century, and by Islam even sooner after its inception (750 at the latest). It was common to all medieval and early modern European societies until the Dutch Revolt (late sixteenth century), the English Revolution of 1689 (to some extent), and of course those young favorites, the American and French Revolutions. It was still the form of government in early twentieth-century Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, as it is today in Thailand, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, and elsewhere, as well as in largely ceremonial form in Japan, Britain, and several other northern European states. If it were not for the United States of America, one might see it as the most stable form of government for large societies. Monarchy too varied enormously from one culture to another. In every case, it was linked to nature—hence in some sense sacred and linked to the community—hence in some sense popular. I would prefer not to say “democratic,” though one may agree with Brett Bowden that some element of democracy is found in virtually every culture.27 But one has to distinguish here between tribes and larger states. Against Bowden one must insist that this was never democracy as we know it, the factor of consent being always informal, the consent in question invariably that of magnates (except in tribes). It is very rare for anyone but the king to have any power defined by law; there is never any question, before medieval Europe, of a constitution. The connections between both justice and monarchy and the divine, on the one hand, and the people, on the other, remained under Islam but were reformulated. Islamic monarchy was sacred insofar as the ruler claimed to be Muhammad’s deputy (caliph). Consent was limited to whatever pressure could be brought, typically during a succession crisis, by the brute force of magnates or tribes. Drawing once again on the insights of evolutionary biology and psychology, one may hypothesize that sacred monarchy was so widely adopted, and so relatively stable and long-lasting, because it transferred the symbolism of family, clan, and tribe to the new extended form of community, the state. The king was a father; all subjects were members of one great family: the nation. It was one solution to the problem of how to relate to non-kinsfolk; other solutions were religious community (the people of Israel, the Islamic `umma, the Christian church), class (the Indian and Iranian caste systems), and nationhood (Europe).

THE NEXT RENAISSANCE? To what extent can different traditions learn from one another? The claim that we can learn something from other cultures in political theory and

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culture is not one that is often made at present. The general assumption is that the political values and institutional arrangements that have been developed by the West are the best available and superior to those of other cultures, which is why other cultures have been learning from the West but not vice versa. The West is today uniquely equipped to teach others and does not need to learn from them. Those who believe that liberal democracy is all we need and is in every respect superior to everything which non-Western cultures have produced will, consequently, dismiss the argument that one reason for studying non-Western ideas is that we may learn something from them. This may be true for large swathes of the history of non-Western cultures. But it may not be true for some of the great creative thinkers of other cultures in the period c. 600 BCE–c. 200 CE. In these instances, there is a case for re-examining ancient understandings from every culture because they encapsulate millennia of pre-literate thought over many generations. In philosophy and religion, a high proportion of the most enlightened thinkers are indeed dead. Perhaps we can learn something from those who, during the last millennium BCE, in different environments, first came to terms with those complex social situations produced by expanding population and new technology, societies in which people have more choice about where and how they live. They were coping with vastly changed circumstances. And think how much circumstances are going to change in our lifetimes, because of the Internet, war, and climate change. The skills and understandings acquired in different cultures and remote times may help us in approaching our own problems in a world subject to drastic changes.28 If intellectual history teaches one thing, it is that views about society and the universe change considerably over time and place. It is unlikely they will not change considerably again. The study of the radically different ideas of other times and places forces the mind open. No consensus on matters of political right, any more than international hegemons and systems, has lasted for, at the very most, a few hundred years ever. Fukuyama, like Bell before him, could not have been more wrong.29 That people listened to him is an example of the triumph of ideology over any sense of history. We may learn different ways of viewing the relationship between the individual and the community, between the private and the public good, and the relationship between ourselves and future generations—the sorts of things which, in some people’s view, are quite grotesquely misunderstood or neglected in liberal democratic orthodoxy. Or again we might learn something not so specific as this, but rather a spirit in which to approach the problems which do or will confront us. Possible sources of enlightenment here are Confucius and Kautilya. Western political thought emphasizes individual rights but not individual duties or public service. It does not necessarily deny these, but they

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are not seen as fundamental values, but rather as afterthoughts. (One could say that the final test of any ideology is its public image.) Even economic justice, as preached by the left-leaning liberals or social democrats, focuses on universal rights, the extension of equal liberty and economic rights to the disadvantaged. It articulates the duty of the state and public or collective bodies rather than of individuals (of whatever social status). The effect is unbalanced social and legal systems, in which people are quick to claim rights of redress and access to services, yet feel little or no obligation to offer much, or anything, in return. Systems in which people behave according to these norms are not sustainable. Another central problem with the Western political tradition is its view of nature as a limitless resource, combined with a belief in the right of every person to whatever the latest technological development can supply. This was a key point in Marxism. Indeed, in their critique of the selfish shortsightedness of consumer culture, Muslim fundamentalists are right, but not in the way they think they are. Third, in Western discussions of justice, future generations hardly count at all. “Pro-life” movements are indeed concerned with the unborn, but only in the case of abortion (important as this is); they do not appear greatly concerned with the billions of other members of future generations as such. The American founding fathers expressed their concern for posterity. But nowadays the only people seriously to discuss our moral obligations towards future generations seem to be environmentalists. What kind of justice is this? Some in the West have tried to remedy some of these defects, notably communitarians, environmentalists and thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, together with advocates of “the third way,” such as Anthony Giddens and the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.30 It is in connection with environmental issues that obligations towards future generations are just beginning to enter political discourse. The problem, however, may lie deeper, at the very heart of Westernism. What it comes down to is an unbalanced view of human nature and of the natural world. What is needed is a public philosophy in which, first, duties and public service are seen as integral to what the human person is, to what human beings are about; second, a public philosophy in which future generations are seen as having from the word “go” the same claim to consideration as those living now; and third, a public philosophy in which the world of non-human nature is seen as having its own dynamic, as being in partnership with human beings. We need to realize that we have obligations toward other natural beings in the same way that we have towards our fellow-humans. If one cannot accept this in respect of natural objects themselves, one could at least accept it as a necessary corollary of our relationship to future generations of humans.

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So far as public service is concerned, Christianity once filled this space in political culture, but it does so no longer, at least in the West. One reason for this is that Christianity is widely rejected as false. The belief system on which the Christian ideology of public service and the common good used to be based is widely discredited. What we are left with is its secularized version, in which the inadequacies referred to above rampage unchecked. Western civilization, even in its bid for global hegemony—and indeed the United Nations itself—bears the marks of its origins in Christianity and Stoicism: the priority of liberty, the value and dignity ascribed to every individual, the doctrine of human rights.31 It is obvious that now, by contrast, we in the West are living in a post-Renaissance, and largely post-Christian, society. This leaves us with a void in our moral culture. The one system of thought in which public duty is made central to morality, and to human destiny, is Confucianism. Confucius and his immediate followers saw a continuity between the private and public spheres. Their priority with respect for ancestors could be extended to concern for descendants. (In time, as in space, no one is an island.) It is true that Confucius and his followers had more to say about duties than about rights; and this, as it became embedded as a program and ideology for society as a whole, became imbalanced in the opposite direction. The problems with Confucianism as it became institutionalized in traditional China are familiar. However, in South-East Asia there are now attempts to revive Confucianism in a modified version of its ancient form, to articulate its core spirit and values anew for modern society. This is analogous to the European Renaissance or (some might say) the Reformation. We in the West, and in the Westernizing global society, could also find here something that is needed to make good the deficiencies in the Western view of politics and public life. If we are to reduce man-made pollution and the destruction of our habitat through climate change, we need new policies but also a change in the hearts and minds of individuals (as well as of leaders and decision-makers). This is the area in which the Western way of life and thinking is the most defective. There is little sign of change coming from within the Western way. For in Christianity, as in all branches of Abrahamic monotheism, the emphasis is on a supreme being which has given humans the right to use the natural world for our own ends, and which will provide for humans in the long run despite ourselves and whatever we do (even if only in an afterlife). Secular liberal democracy contains no inherent logic limiting people’s freedom of consumption. What the West can learn from other cultures is not wholly absent from Western culture, but it is usually drowned out by other voices. A basis for a new way of looking at the material world, at other species, and at our own long-term prospects may be found in some of the existing traditions

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of India and China, namely, Buddhism, Hinduism as reformed by Gandhi, and Confucian and Taoist thought. Here are ways of looking at the world which make respect for nature, and a willingness to be content with moderate wealth, part of their basic agenda. Weber argued that non-Western systems of thought were inimical to economic and political development. But it now seems that the kinds of behavior entailed by some non-Western thought systems might enhance the prospects for human survival and well-being in the long term. If we are to learn anything from these sources, it would require an effort of rethinking and reshaping of conduct which is far beyond the scope of this essay, or the ability of its author. Even so, I hope to have said enough to stimulate reconsideration of whether the West does not need other cultures just as much as other cultures need the West. Borrowing from these other cultures would not be mere prettification of modern civilization, but operatively necessary for a sustainable human life on our increasingly bedraggled planet, indeed for our very survival. The West needs the East just as much as the East needs the West. Dialogue between cultures has been successfully conducted in the past. In the history of ideas, there are numerous instances of the transmission of ideas from one culture to another, as well as of rediscoveries of apparently lost pasts: in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds and in classical Muslim civilization. During the period of creative thought in Europe from c. 1100 onwards, people who were already impregnated by the Israelite values of their own sacred texts drew on the contemporary cultures of Islam and Byzantium, as well as on ancient Rome and Greece. (We may be thankful that Cicero, Plato, and Aristotle did not claim intellectual property rights, or this Renaissance might never have happened.) Elements of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Roman culture had indeed been current in Europe all along. But much else of the ancient Greek way of thinking was hardly less strange to medieval Europe than Confucius or Gandhi are to Europe today. Non-European cultures have set an example by learning from the West. In recent times, Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim intellectuals and political leaders adopted various European political ideas and practices. A transfusion of Confucian, Gandhian, and Buddhist ideas into the West is not impossible—to some degree it is already happening in the private sphere—and it would not be unprecedented. This is the next renaissance.

NOTES 1. Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).

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2. See, for example, Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 3. There are no footnotes in Economy and Society. 4. Aristotle put it better: Politics IV. 1 (1288b). 5. See G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) and Ambiguities of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 6. See Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973). 7. Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 262–63; Antony Black, The West and Islam: Religion and Political Thought in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). See also Vasileios Syros, “Did the Physician from Padua Concur with the Rabbi from Cordoba? Marsilius of Padua and Moses Maimonides on the Political Unity of Religion,” forthcoming. 8. Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought from the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh and New York: Edinburgh University Press and Routledge, 2001), 111, 161. 9. Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History, ed. J.N. Figgis and R.V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1906), 1–30. His History of Freedom had not been begun at the time of his death, but his copious notes are preserved in Cambridge University Library. 10. Otto von Gierke, Community in Historical Perspective: A Translation of Selections from Das Genossenschaftsrecht (The German Law of Fellowship) by Otto von Gierke, trans. Mary Fischer, ed. Antony Black (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 11. See Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1963). 12. See his classic article, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (1969), 3–53. This has not prevented Skinner from telling the heroic story of republicanism and liberalism in the old style: Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) and Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 13. Bhikhu Parekh, Re-thinking Multiculturalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2006). 14. Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991); Youssef M. Choueiri, Islamic Fundamentalism, revised ed. (London: Pinter, 1997). 15. Anthony Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Parel’s chapter in this volume. 16. To refer to this as “the axial age,” as many do, is misleading, first because the time involved is very elastic, and secondly because no less great changes occurred much later: for example, the rise of Christianity, of Islam, and of European philosophy. See Antony Black, “The Axial Age: What Was It and What Does It Signify?”, The Review of Politics 70 (2008): 23–39.

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17. See Scientific American 16/2 (2006) (Special Edition, Becoming Human: evolution and the rise of intelligence). 18. As used to be thought: see, for example, Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 55–86. 19. Geertz, Interpretation, 68. 20. Geertz, Interpretation, 69. 21. Kate Wong defines symbolism as “external storage of information, in jewelry, art, language or tools,” Scientific American, 16/2 (2006), 77. 22. Ian Tattersall, Scientific American 16/2 (2006), 68–70. 23. Wong, Scientific American 16/2 (2006), 81–82. 24. Francis Oakley, Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 2. 25. Oakley, Kingship. 26. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 1: the Old and Middle Kingdoms; vol. 2: The New Kingdom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973–1976); Ivan Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967); Samuel Kramer, “Kingship in Sumer and Akkad,” in Le Palais et la royaute, ed. Paul Garelli (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1974), 163–77. 27. See Brett Bowden’s chapter in this volume. Also Jean Baechler, Democraties (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1985). 28. As Geertz, Interpretation, 30 put it: “The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said.” 29. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992); Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology and the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1965). 30. Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1998). 31. Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150–1625 (Atlanta: Scolars Press, 1997).

II WESTERN CONVERSATIONS WITH ASIA

3 Varieties of Dialogue: Dialogical Models of Intercultural Communication in Medieval Inter-religious Writings 1

Cary J. Nederman The dominant approach adopted by the leading exponents of comparative political theory, such as Fred Dallmayr2 and Roxanne Euben,3 posits a “dialogical model” of philosophical hermeneutics, drawn from Martin Heidegger4 and Hans-Georg Gadamer,5 as the most appropriate method for comparative study. Dallmayr, Euben and those who follow directly in their wake embrace and endorse a single goal of intercultural dialogue: the so-called “fusion of horizons” (a phrase derived from Gadamer), which aims at a form of mutual understanding that produces a kind of selftransformation on the part of those engaged in the dialogue. This is the case even when the dialogue is an “imagined” one, as between a Western scholar of comparative political thought and an author or text(s) of nonWestern origin (such as Euben’s purely intellectual engagement with the dead Muslim fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb through a close encounter with his writings and those of his followers).6 I argue, by contrast, that there are numerous different kinds of dialogue, with multiple structures informed by a diversity of purposes. This is illustrated by the long history enjoyed by dialogue as a mode of conceptualizing cross-cultural understanding both in and outside the West, perhaps most notably in the inter-religious dialogues composed in great numbers by Latin Christians (but also Jews and Muslims) during the Middle Ages.7 In the following chapter, I isolate five models of cross-cultural dialogue evident in medieval thought, which I classify as follows: 1) dialogues of rational demonstration or conversion; 2) dialogues of mutual edification; 3) dialogues of mutual incomprehension; 4) dialogues of critical selfreflection; and 5) dialogues of mutual accommodation and respect. These ideal forms of dialogical encounter, the character of which I shall describe 45

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below, all impart lessons for scholars who strive for success in the comparison of political ideas. But they do not, except possibly in the final case, fulfill the criteria of fused horizons that current scholars of comparative political thought suggest is the salient goal of cross-cultural dialogue. Thus, the present chapter aims to “compare” comparative political thought in its current form with some of its forbearers, not as a project of ancestor hunting, but instead as a critical enterprise centered on the limitations that derive from excessive reliance on the background of philosophical hermeneutics. Without denying that dialogue is important—maybe even central—to comparative political theory, then, I assert that the very notion of what dialogue can teach us must be broadened and enhanced. Ironically, we may learn this lesson by turning back to the Middle Ages, a period that is generally deemed to be antithetical to the openness to “otherness” required of genuine cross-cultural comparison.

MODES OF MEDIEVAL INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE Given the reputation of the European Middle Ages as culturally and religiously “monolithic,” “authoritarian,” and “persecuting,”8 it may come as a surprise to discover that medieval thinkers produced a large and diverse body of writings that recounted conversations (usually, although not entirely, imagined) between medieval Christians and non-Western and/or non-Christian interlocutors. Inter-religious debates had debuted in the patristic era, pioneered by such writers as Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian. Thus, Christian authors of the High Middle Ages (not to mention Jews and Muslims who also employed the genre) simply revived an established format.9 For this group of medieval authors, the tenets of Christianity, not to mention the lessons of philosophy and history, suggested that differences in belief ought to be addressed from the standpoint of patience and charity, manifested throughout dialogue and discussion. Thus, the very period in which the rise of persecution has been detected also witnessed an upsurge in writings that took the form of inter-religious (and often inter-cultural) dialogue, that is, discussion between persons of different faiths and/or sects directed toward the discovery of truth or, at least, common ground. Medieval inter-religious and inter-cultural writings demonstrate that the spirit in which comparative political thought presently proceeds—the desire to bridge the gap between cultural familiarity and the “other” by means of dialogue—has a notable lineage. The early dialogues, generally speaking, shared a certain confidence in a basic universal human reason and hence in the possibility of achieving some form of mutual understanding. A similar minima of rationality forms the sine qua non of contemporary

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cross-cultural hermeneutics, or else no true discussion and no opportunity to fuse horizons could possibly be imagined. Yet inter-cultural dialogues during the Middle Ages were a diverse lot in terms of their purpose, logic, and structure. Unlike the agenda pursued by recent comparative political theorists, they revealed that there could be multiple valid reasons to engage in exchange with the “other.” Moreover, medieval dialogues persistently demonstrated recognition of the limitations of human reason and of the discourse that it facilitated, reminding their readers of the sometimes ineluctable quality of difference and of the many obstacles to the attainment of mutual understanding. I shall now examine the five different categories of medieval intercultural and inter-religious dialogue identified above in somewhat more detail, with reference to specific historical texts that exemplify them. Of course, I invoke the categories themselves for analytical purposes only, and the texts that illustrate them can only be summarized in brief compass. I contend, however, that even this compressed account is adequate to demonstrate that the ends of dialogue are multiple and cross-cutting when viewed historically, even in societies that lacked pluralistic tendencies. I think that this constitutes an important lesson for current scholars of comparative political thought, as I shall address in the conclusion.

DIALOGUES OF RATIONAL DEMONSTRATION OR CONVERSION Probably the most common form of medieval inter-religious dialogue, exemplified by some of the writings of members of the so-called School of Anselm of Canterbury that flourished c. 1100, led to the ultimate conversion of the non-Christian character(s) to the True Faith.10 In such dialogues, the superior rational case of the Christian speaker ultimately “silences” non-Christian interlocutors. Reasoned dialogue leads to the recognition of a single, inerrant, and orthodox Christian truth, leading the non-Christian “other” to embrace Christian faith by means of reasonableness alone. The ultimate purpose of engaging in dialogue is to “talk” the unbeliever into acceptance of religious truth. Such dialogue, however, presumes an equal distribution across humanity of the ability to comprehend rational proofs and also to question the adequacy of such proofs. To the extent that they held all human beings, regardless of their faith, to possess powers of reason, instilled in them by God and nature, medieval thinkers could accept a rational standard of intellectual debate that did not overtly favor the authority of Christianity over other religious persuasions. Reason and exchange of reasonable dialogue afforded a clear alternative to intolerant oppression and violence. Indeed, for any sort of inter-religious dialogue (even an imagined

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one) that engages in rational comparison of divergent beliefs, there lingers a presupposition of toleration that requires some (perhaps minimal) respect for differences of conviction. The medieval use of the dialogue genre as a means for developing theological and philosophical precepts owed a great deal to St. Anselm, who produced a large body of such works in the course of his long career. In turn, Gilbert Crispin, a close associate and student of Anselm, emphasized the rational quality of discussion with non-Christians in two dialogues. The philosophically trained Gentile in the Disputatio cum gentili insists that reason must be the sole criterion for debate, since “truth and reason can be refuted by no one.”11 The Christian, in his turn, agrees to the limitation to “leave out of account the authority of our scriptures.”12 For Gilbert, the consequence of a rationally based dialogue is forbearance of the differing beliefs of the disputants. The educated Jewish character of the Disputatio Judei et Christiani remarks to his interlocutor (supposedly Gilbert himself), “Since Christians claim that you are learned in letters and ready with the faculty of speaking, I should like you to deal with me in a tolerant spirit.”13 Rational dialogue, it seems, entails a measure of decorum and a level of mutual respect among the participants, or, as Gilbert says, “conversation in a friendly spirit.”14 To proceed otherwise is to invite invective and the breakdown of the entire rational enterprise through appeal to exclusive authority and revelation. Gilbert thereby admits a direct link between inter-religious dialogue and tolerance. Ultimately, though, conversion occurs: the Gentile and the Jew accede to the rational superiority of the Christian confession and further debate is foreclosed.

DIALOGUES OF MUTUAL EDIFICATION Some of the most famous medieval intercultural and inter-religious dialogues did not end with the Christian ultimately victorious and the “other” vanquished. Rather, these works closed with uncertainty; no one is converted and, indeed, each participant seems confirmed in his own system of beliefs. The purpose of these open-ended discussions, which highlight the need for continuing (and perhaps permanent) debate and comparison, seems to be the opportunity afforded for each interlocutor to deepen his understanding of his fellows and of himself, without any fundamental change of position. The “dialogue of mutual edification” is thus stimulated by a “practical educational motive” identified by Jay Newman: “By talking with men of other faiths, by being prepared to learn from them, we can enrich our own faith.”15 Peter Abelard’s Collationes (also known as the Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum), composed in the early twelfth century, affords one

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important example of this genre.16 But for present illustrative purposes, I concentrate on Ramon Llull’s thirteenth century Liber de gentili et tribus sapientibus.17 As the creation of a Spaniard who lived under the reality of convivencio between Christians, Jews and Muslims, the Liber more nearly reflects the complexities, socially and culturally as well as doctrinally, of multi-religious experience. Its main discussion arises from the convergence of two convergent narratives. First, Llull recounts the tale of “a Gentile, very learned in philosophy, who began to worry about old age, death, and the joys of this world,” and who became so agitated about his situation that he resolved to leave his homeland and travel abroad to find answers to his unsolved questions.18 By coincidence, three wise men—a Jew, a Christian, and a Saracen—were setting off from their city along the same route as the Gentile. These three were clearly acquainted, for, Llull tells us, “When they were outside the city and saw each other, they approached and greeted one another in friendly fashion, and they accompanied one another, each inquiring about the other’s health and what he intended to do.”19 Although members of competing faiths, the wise men conduct themselves in a dignified and convivial manner, establishing at once a tone of mutual respect and decorum. Initially, the three wise men encounter a lady, named Intelligence, who explains to them the principles of Llull’s so-called “Art,” that is, his “new method and new reasons” of scientific demonstration.20 After Intelligence departs, the wise men realize that the Art affords to them the opportunity to achieve some concordance on those points of religious dispute that have long separated them: “Since we cannot agree by means of authorities, let us try to come to some agreement by means of demonstrative and necessary reasons.”21 As they prepare to discuss their differences, however, they are immediately interrupted by the wandering and despondent Gentile. Having discovered that the philosopher is completely innocent of revealed religion, the wise men concur that they must teach him what they know of God and His saving powers in order to rescue him from his misery. They resolve to do so by employing “the method shown us by the Lady of Intelligence,” that is, by rational Art.22 In the first book, the three wise men defend the basic principles of monotheistic religion and the afterlife shared in common by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As they enlighten the Gentile, the wise men’s speeches are presented interchangeably, with no reference to the identity of the speaker. Indeed, they discourse with such unanimity that the Gentile has no idea that they subscribe to differing confessions: “What!” cried the Gentile, “Are the three of you not of a single religion and belief?” “No,” replied the wise men, “we differ as to belief and religion, for one of us is a Jew, the other a Christian, and the other a Saracen.” “And which of you,” asked the Gentile, “has the better religion, and which of these religions is true?”23

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The three wise men immediately begin bickering about the superiority of their respective convictions, leading the Gentile back into his pit of despair. Finally, the Gentile induces them to “debate before him and ... each give his arguments as best he could, so that he could see which of them was on the path to salvation.”24 The ensuing discussion, which takes up the remaining three books of the Liber, is consciously and carefully structured according to rules of the Art, which all freely accept in advance. More significantly, the Epilogue to the Liber, in which final judgment is to be proclaimed, is filled with intriguing ambiguity. Having listened closely to the respective discourses of the Jew, the Christian, and the Muslim, and having understood each of their teachings so precisely that they praise him, the Gentile has clearly come to his final decision. He offers to his new God a lengthy prayer, which still contains no clue as to his determination, since it is couched in the terms of Lull’s rational method of the Art. He is about to proclaim his choice, when he is interrupted by the sighting at a distance of two compatriots whom he recognizes, and in front of whom he wishes to declare his new faith. The three wise men, however, decline to remain and, in a surprise ending unprecedented in inter-religious dialogue, take their leave before judgment is rendered. The Gentile asks them in astonishment why they do not wait to hear which religion he would choose in preference to the others. The three wise men answer that, in order to each to be free to choose his own religion, they prefer not knowing which religion he would choose: “And all the more so since this is a question we could discuss amongst ourselves to see, by force of reason and by means of our intellects, which religion it must be that you will choose. And if, in front of us, you state which religion it is that you prefer, then we would not have such a good subject of discussion nor such satisfaction in discovering the truth.”25 The decision remains unstated and the reader never discovers the confession to which the Gentile converts.26 Nor does the Liber close with the departure of the three wise men from the company of the Gentile. Rather, Llull recounts their talk on the way back to the city. They again bemoan the harm that comes from inter-religious strife and agree upon the desirability of achieving concordance.27 The wise men ascribe the diversity of confessions to earthly causes, such as the deference human beings pay to “the faith in which they found themselves, and in which they were raised by their parents and ancestors,” as well as their love “of temporal possessions.”28 As the three enter the city gates, they apologize to one another for whatever insult or slight each might have given to the religion of his companions. And then, most intriguingly of all, they agree to perpetual continuation of their dialogue. When they were about to part, one wise man said: “Do you think we have nothing to gain from what happened to us in the forest? Would you like to

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meet once a day and ... discuss according to the manner the Lady of Intelligence showed us, and have our discussions until all three of us have only one faith, one religion, and until we can find some way to honor and serve one another, so that we can be in agreement?29

The dialogue closes with a consensus on this proposal, assigning “a time and place for their discussions, as well as how they should honor and serve one another, and how they should dispute ... Each of the three wise men went home and remained faithful to his promise.”30 The latter words are the final ones of Llull’s narrative, to which is appended only a short coda in which the author expresses hope that he has adequately illuminated a rational method “for entering into union with and getting to know strangers and friends.”31

DIALOGUES OF MUTUAL INCOMPREHENSION Dialogue across cultural and religious boundaries is by no means guaranteed to succeed, especially when it occurs in reality rather than in the imagination. The difficulties associated with agreeing on the principles of debate, such as the role to be played by scriptural authority, and the barriers posed by language render the achievement of cross-cultural communication more tenuous and problematic than one might think. A particular noteworthy example of such an admission of the breakdown of dialogue may be found in the travel narrative of the Franciscan William of Rubruck, who was dispatched eastward by French King Louis IX in 1253 to investigate the Mongol Empire. The report of this trip, known by the title The Journey of William of Rubruck, sketches not only the qualities of Mongol society and everyday life, but also recounts in detail the movements and activities of the author and his companions (another Friar and two servants) as they trek from the court of one Mongol ruler to another, traveling finally to the stronghold of the reigning Great Chan, Mangu.32 In his narrative, William reported that he often looked for opportunities to preach and discourse publicly on Roman Christianity, yet he was persistently thwarted—not by persecution or suppression, but by linguistic and cultural difference as well as by the need to compromise in a world that is indifferent to his message. The Mongols control their vast empire without any attempt to impose religious uniformity upon subject peoples. In some instances, these groups are separated geographically, permitted to practice their preexisting confessions and rites as long as they submit to the political terms imposed by the Mongols. In most of the cases noted by William, however, adherents to many faiths live side by side with what appears to be a minimum of inter-religious conflict.33 In the Mongol settlement of Caracorum, for example, “there are twelve idol temples belonging to the

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different peoples, two mosques in which the religion of Mahomet is proclaimed, and one Christian church at the far end of the town.”34 All faiths engage in their rites openly and without any evident regulation. If William had imagined at the beginning of his expedition that there might be some hope of converting the elites of the Mongol empire to Roman Christianity, then he was soon disappointed. His letter reveals how a range of cultural differences (of language and custom as well as religion) impeded the achievement of mutual understanding necessary for genuine dialogue, let alone conversion. Language is perhaps the primary barrier faced by William to the entry into dialogue. The sheer incompetence of William’s interpreter is cited by him to explain a breakdown of discussion: “Had I been possessed of a good interpreter, this would have given me an opportunity of sowing much good seed.”35 When William attempts to instruct his guides in Christianity, “my interpreter proved inadequate ... To speak in doctrinal terms through an interpreter like this was a great risk—in fact, an impossibility, for he was ignorant of them.”36 William’s own remarks indicate that his judgment of his interpreter may be unduly harsh and that much of the difficulty actually resided with problems inherent to translating Roman Christian concepts into the discourse of the Mongols. The interpreter is blamed, for instance, for halting a theological dialogue into which William enters with some Uigur (Turkish) priests: “When I wanted to argue further with them, my interpreter, who was tired and incapable of finding the right words, made me stop talking.”37 Where William sees his intentions foiled by a bad translator, however, the reality seems to be that his own doctrines simply have no discursive equivalents in the languages of the East. Although later in his expedition William undertakes to learn the local language for himself, and also discovers an interpreter who is more capable than the one assigned to him, the Franciscan is no more successful in spreading his message. All of this suggests that linguistic factors per se—the absence of equivalent vocabularies—should be held responsible for William’s failures at engendering dialogue. The obstacle posed by the issue of “translatability” is especially evident in a remarkable chapter of William’s letter, where he recounts the occurrence of an actual inter-religious dialogue held at the command of the Great Chan. Perhaps disturbed by the religious disputes he observes that William and his party have introduced into the Mongol capital, Mangu announces his desire to understand better the conflicting claims made by various confessions. He sent to me his secretaries, who said: “Our master is sending us to you with this message: ‘Here you are, Christians, Saracens and Tuins, and each one of you claims that his religion is superior and his writings or his books contain more truth.’ So he would like you all to assemble together and hold a conference and each one is to put his claims in writing, to enable the Chan to learn the truth.”38

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The Great Chan stipulates that the debate must take place within a framework of tolerance, “without bickering or recrimination,” a requirement upon which he insists “on pain of death.”39 Thus, the convocation is mandated to follow a principle of rational dialogue: each sect must defend its beliefs according to reasoned argument and logic rather than invective and vituperation. This is soon revealed to be a problematic requirement, however. As William realizes when he coordinates his efforts with the Nestorian Christians, many people of deep conviction lack a rational foundation for their faith. When William asks the priests how, in the midst of the debate, they would demonstrate the existence of God to the polytheistic Tuins, he discovers that “the Nestorians were incapable of proving anything, but could only relate what the Scripture tells. I said: ‘They do not believe in the Scriptures; if you tell them one story, they will quote you another.’”40 It is necessary, William points out, to establish a common ground on which to engage in inter-religious discussion, apart from those convictions that are not susceptible to rational support. Yet even unanimity on what constitutes valid reasoning may be difficult to attain, depending upon one’s theological starting point. When the day of the conference arrives, there is immediately a dispute over the order of the topics according to which the discussion should proceed. The Tuins insist upon addressing initially the creation of the world and the immortality of the soul, “because they consider them more important” points, whereas William asserts that “‘... we should begin by speaking about God, for you hold a different view of Him from us, and Mangu wishes to learn whose belief is superior.’”41 The judges—three of the Great Chan’s scribes, one from each of the main religious views represented—side with William, who proceeds to assert the unity and perfection of God. The Tuins, in contradiction, defend a version of polytheism, employing an analogy from the multiplicity of “mighty lords” on earth to a plurality of deities in heaven. William objects, of course, to what he regards as a false comparison, on the grounds that it presumes “arguing from men to God,” rather than from the divine nature, which is higher, to earthly conditions, which are inferior.42 But the Tuin speaker simply refuses to acknowledge that his statement is illogical; indeed, it is not, given his premises. Likewise, dialogue repeatedly grinds to a halt over the issues of the omnipotence and goodness of their respective deities, the Tuins falling into astonished silence in reaction to the “erroneous and impossible” creed of the Christians.43 Ultimately, of course, the practical limitations of rational dialogue prove insuperable. The Muslims simply refuse to engage in discussion at all, preferring instead to capitulate entirely (if somewhat disingenuously). “‘We concede that your religion is true,’” they say to their Nestorian interlocutors, “‘and that everything in the Gospel is true; and therefore we have no wish

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to debate any issue with you.’”44 Still, no one becomes convinced of the rectitude of another’s convictions: “Everybody listened without challenging a single word. But for all that, no one said, ‘I believe and I wish to become a Christian.’”45 Does William mean his reader to conclude that the debate was a failure? The text offers no remark that explicitly indicates this. Rather, the dialogue closes with raucous singing and drinking on the part of the participants, an indication of a measure of mutual respect and forbearance even in light of deep religious division. In a sense, the post-disputation celebration restores the status quo of Mongol society: peaceful interaction among members of various confessions. That people may argue about such matters and fail to find mutual grounds of understanding does not preclude them from sharing in expressions of conviviality. This suggests an intriguing model of dialogue quite different from that pursued by thinkers for whom rational consensus through discourse was assumed to be the eventual, if postponed, outcome.

DIALOGUES OF CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION In the case of conversional dialogues of the first variety surveyed above, the intent is clearly to demonstrate the rational superiority of one’s own viewpoint over that of the “other.” But the converse result is also a potential outcome of discussion—that one is led to see the error of one’s own ways by an encounter with a culturally alterior interlocutor without any evident transformation on the part of the “other.” In its most extreme form, this might produce an account of one’s own personal conversional experience. But more plausibly, an imagined account of an inter-cultural or interreligious exchange affords an opportunity to criticize the infirmities of one’s own cultural or religious practices and to introduce calls for reform based on an account of how others perceive us. The self-reflexive approach to dialogue is well illustrated by Honorat Bovet’s late fourteenth-century poem, the Apparicion Maistre Jehan de Meun, which features Jewish and Muslim characters (as well as a physician and a Dominican [called a “Jacobin” in the text]) as voices expressing dismay at the decadent and corrupt condition of Western (and especially French) Christendom.46 The narrative is constructed around the recounting of the dream of a “Prior,” clearly Honorat himself, in which the recently deceased French poet Jean de Meun appears to him and convenes a panel of visitors, all of whom offer highly critical commentary. Master Jean himself complains about the poor condition in which France finds itself—Church and kingdom are disordered, “natural” bonds of deference are disturbed, peace and justice are threatened.47 As evidence of this, the physician reports that his learned profession has been replaced by sorcery and superstition,

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as people of all ranks prefer black arts to “medicine, which takes its root from the heavens above, and which God himself has ordained.”48 The Jew, although treated disrespectfully by Master Jean, nonetheless sharply advises that he deserves a hearing, for he reports that the usury once perpetrated by his coreligionists (who had earlier been expelled from France) was nothing in comparison with “that which is practiced nowadays” by Christian merchants, with the assent of “the courtiers” who “are also in on the business.” France would be better served by the readmission of its former Jewish population: “ … we would be more cooperative, in that we would accept a smaller rate of interest, since the current rate is too high.”49 The Saracen is even more scathing in his condemnation of the West. He identifies himself as a highly educated and “noble” representative of Islam, and is repeatedly described as “noir”50—doubly an “other,” on account of his faith and the shade of his skin. The Saracen reports that he has already visited Rome, where he discovers that “wicked people congregate” and speak ill of the French. Meanwhile, in France he encounters only a dissolute population unable to fight or defend itself, instead interested only in the pursuits of the flesh.51 In sum, Christendom is divided and soft, at war with itself and incapacitated militarily. The Saracan observes even the internal wars fought among Europeans do little to prepare them in martial valor for a Muslim onslaught, since “you are people … who live like epicures … and if tomorrow there’s not more abundance than today, you are much troubled.”52 Consequently, Christians do not manage to live up to the basic precepts of their vaunted moral code: “I say that you have no charity among you Christians, and no pity either. All you care about is your social rank, your tender meats and your full plates. All Christians do is live like epicures, and especially the French.”53 Little wonder that the Saracen predicts that Latin Europe will go the way of the Greeks, who have been largely subjected to Muslim rule (note that this was written more than a half-century before the fall of Constantinople).54 In total, spread over one long speech and three shorter elaborations, the Saracen speaks for over 500 lines of the poem, reviling European Christian society and expressing glee over the possibility that Muslim fighters, who are described as well trained and steeled by their faith, will be easily able to dominate a corrupt Christendom. Master Jean turns to the Jacobin to make some reply to this unbridled condemnation. The Dominican essentially acknowledges the validity of all that the Saracen has stated, admitting that greed, power-grabbing, and general venality stand at the heart of the progressive disunification of Christendom—the schism between the Latin and Greek churches, and later the discords that characterized the Church of Rome itself. Most intriguingly, Bovet reworks his historical sources in order to demonstrate that the origins of Islam itself lie in the corruption of the universal Church that led to the split between Eastern and Western rites. “The Saracens came as a result” of

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the tyrannical acts of the early popes and emperors and their henchmen.55 Christianity, in other words, authored its own destruction through its failure to maintain fidelity to its core principles, as outlined by the Saracen. Somewhat ironically, the Saracen proves to be a fully knowledgeable critic of the history of Christian practices, whom the Dominican can by no means refute. And what of the speech of the Jew? Although he does not reappear in the poem, the Prior in his closing remarks recalls the matter “which the Jew touched upon as well,” namely, how Christian merchants manipulate markets in ways that amount to usury.56 In sum, the dialogue reflects a form of introspective criticism wrapped up into cross-cultural debate. France, the West and Christianity are placed on trial by the gaze of Others and found demonstrably wanting. There is an important sense in which Bovet’s ascription of the harsh words of disapproval to a Muslim character allowed him to express views about current circumstances that might otherwise be beyond the pale. Yet the fact that the Jacobin character, who is viewed from the outset as the wise and honest spokesperson for Western Christendom, by no means refutes his interlocutor demonstrates that the weight of the argument stands on the side of the “other.” If “our” failures are so palpably obvious to those outside of “our” society, the dialogue teaches, then ought “we” not to wake up to them and to redress them? Indeed, lest “we” imagine that the need for reform is not pressing, the Saracen’s gloating over the opportunity for conquest afforded by the corrupt condition of Christian Europe serves as a further, external goad to reform in head and members, spiritually as well as temporally.

DIALOGUES OF MUTUAL ACCOMMODATION AND RESPECT While many medieval examples of dialogue may have highlighted the one-sidedness or futility of discursive exchanges, some recognized that inter-cultural and inter-religious intercourse could lead to moral improvement and even profound change of belief on the part of all parties to the discussion—“them” and “us” alike. The participants, according to this model, come together with deep sincerity to inquire whether there are in fact any principles that are mutually acceptable to all sides as an adequate foundation of reciprocal respect and forbearance. Once these precepts have been identified, two further outcomes may occur as a result of discussion about specific differences: on the one hand, each of the interlocutors acknowledges that some of their own rites should be altered so as not to offend or insult others who subscribe to alternative confessions; and, on the other hand, the parties “agree to disagree” about certain components of their doctrine and worship and respectfully dissent from one another. Indeed, the discussants might even find that positive purposes may be

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accomplished by the perpetuation of diversity in matters of cultural and religious practice. The aim of dialogue to achieve mutual accommodation, which perhaps comes closest among the medieval forms to the Gadamerian “fusion of horizons” advocated by current comparative political thought, is certainly evident in a little treatise entitled De pace fidei, composed in 1453 by one of the leading medieval theologians and philosophers, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa.57 De pace fidei laments and condemns persecutions stemming from religious diversity and calls for a peaceful harmonization of discordant faiths, motivated by a sincere desire to see all of the world’s peoples reconciled in amiable coexistence. But Nicholas’s passion for harmony does not blind him to (indeed, it encourages him to speculate upon) the causes of conflict and discord. Ultimately, Nicholas adopts the view that, given the ineliminable character of social differences, religious concord can only be achieved in a partial and muted fashion—“one religion in a variety of rites,” to use his now famous phrase.58 De pace fidei purports to recount a vision experienced by Nicholas himself—an answer to his prayer for the peaceful resolution to the bloodshed accompanying the Turkish sack of Constantinople—in which God determines to hold a conclave of wise men for the purpose of achieving universal agreement about matters of faith. God calls together into dialogue delegates from “the individual provinces and sects of the world.”59 In the course of the discussion we are introduced to a Greek, an Italian, an Arab, an Indian, a Chaldaean, a Jew, a Scythian, a Frenchman, a Persian, a Syrian, a Spaniard, a Turk, a German, a Tartar, an Armenian, a Bohemian, and an Englishman, along with spokesmen for Heaven (St. Peter, St. Paul, and the Word). Nicholas acknowledges that human cultures necessarily diverge according to time and place. As he remarks, “In the sensible world nothing remains stable and, because of time, opinions and conjectures as well as languages and interpretations vary as things transitory.”60 Although Nicholas consistently maintains that there is only a single ultimate truth in central religious doctrines, he is aware that understandings of that truth are bound to change and diverge due to the fragility of human intelligence and the particular patterns of cultural practice. Thus, for instance, “difference in the manner of speech” produces distinctive confessions and rites, even if the true meaning which each religion intends to convey is identical.61 Religious rites, Nicholas says, “have been instituted and received as sensible signs of the truth of faith. But signs are subject to change; not however that which is signified.”62 This is perhaps best illustrated by an intriguing passage of De pace fidei in which St. Peter explains to the German that certain sections of the Qur’an that seem offensive to European Christians must not be taken literally:

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It says in the Qur’an that beautiful black maidens with very large white eyes are found [in Paradise]; no German in this world, even if given to the vices of the flesh, would desire them. Hence, it is necessary that these things be understood allegorically (similitudinaliter).63

Differing cultural and linguistic contexts demand the expression of the same idea—in this case, the desirability of the afterlife—according to usages and expectations appropriate to their specific conditions. Nicholas regards such particularity as unavoidable. Having explained the intractability of contextual factors in his opening plea to God, Nicholas admits, “Yet the way it is with the earthly human condition, a longstanding custom that is taken as having become nature is defended as truth. Thus, not insignificant dissensions occur when each community (communitas) prefers its faith to another.”64 Religion in this sense is regarded to be a purely conventional phenomenon, flowing from the traditions and rituals that have accrued within a society as the result of contingent historical usage. Later in De pace fidei, the Tartar (who presents himself as an outsider to these disputes) remarks, “I do not grasp how there could be a unity in these matters which vary also according to place and time; and unless it occurs, persecution will not end. For diversity gives birth to division and to hostility, hatred and warfare.”65 This, then, frames the salient dilemma of De pace fidei: how to achieve agreement regarding true doctrine without submerging cultural differences that arise ineluctably from the human condition. Nicholas consequently leaves wide latitude in matters of “rite,” that is, the socially conditioned practices that distinguish worship among different faiths.66 In his view, once faith as the chief source of salvation “is acknowledged, the variety of rites will not be a cause of turbulence.”67 Rather, he avers that “it is very often necessary to condescend to human weakness if it does not offend against eternal salvation. For to seek conformity in all things is rather to disturb the peace.”68 This is not to suggest that Nicholas does not express a preference for Christian rites in cases where conformity can be achieved.69 Yet he admits that, given the persistence of diversity, consensus is probably an unrealistic or even impossible goal. Instead, respect for a “variety of rites” is more likely to produce the elimination of cross-cultural conflict.70 As a matter of principle, he declares, “Where no conformity in manner (modo) can be found, nations should be permitted their own devotional practices and ceremonies.”71 Nicholas even finds virtue in the necessity of religious diversity. A variation of rites according to the differences among nations is capable of promoting worship, he holds, by permitting a sort of creative competition among the peoples of the world. Nicholas suggests this possibility tentatively near the beginning of De pace fidei:

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Perhaps the difference of rites cannot be removed or it is not expedient to do so in order that diversity may contribute to devotion, as when any region expends more attentive effort in performing its ceremonies as if they would become more pleasing to you, the King.72

If human beings worship in a manner appropriate to their traditions and customs, that is, they will take pride in their confession and will be more inclined to praise and serve God. Nicholas returns to this point at the close of De pace fidei, when St. Paul proclaims: “A certain diversity will perhaps even increase devotion when each nation will strive to make its own rite more splendid through zeal and diligence in order thus to surpass another and so to obtain greater merit with God and praise in the world.”73 Note that the purpose of a variation of rites is not simply religious in character; it redounds to the earthly glory and reputation of diverse peoples. Nicholas conveys a vision of a tolerant internationalism in which differences in worship are treated not as sources of hostility but as the basis for the mutual recognition of dignity and respect among nations.

CONCLUSION To judge from the array of purposes one finds at work in medieval intercultural and inter-religious dialogues, a multiplicity of rewarding lessons may be gleaned from the dialogue form for the study of comparative political thought. Most notably, if we enter into dialogue, whether imaginary or real, with the strong expectation that the result will be a fusion of horizons, we are likely to be frustrated. The examples of the medieval dialogues I have examined reveal that seldom does such a fusion occur. Yet these treatises also illustrate that dialogues may be successful in achieving other fruitful and worthwhile goals, such as constructive self-criticism and the realization of the cultural, linguistic, and conceptual limits to achieving communication. I propose, therefore, that comparative political theory needs to develop methodological principles that permit openness to the many different kinds of lessons that dialogue can convey, rather than insist that the only successful exchange across cultures is one in which the fusion of horizons eventuates. This requires, in turn, an absence of prejudgment about the dialogical process: the comparative political theorist must suspend her expectations about both the course that a dialogue will follow and the goal it will achieve. So long as preconceptions remain in place, dialogue itself will always tend to reaffirm the standpoint of the interlocutor who initiates the interchange, such as the theorist herself in the case of imagined dialogues, or will lead to failure and frustration. Readiness to enter into dialogue without the fixed expectation that one and only one outcome (namely, the fusion of horizons) must transpire seems more likely to produce genuine communication.

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The establishment of an imaginative hermeneutic model for cross-cultural political dialogue should interest political theorists—whether or not they are engaged in the project of comparative political theory—for at least two reasons. First, as my treatment of the history of imagined intercultural and inter-religious dialogues reveals, this method has often been used when the costs of true dialogue has been prohibitive for one or another reason. Imagined dialogue provides a conceptual bridge between the recalcitrance of the real and the possibility of the ideal. Second, the creation of imagined dialogue proves fruitful in situations where outcomes are necessarily provisional and contingent upon the outcome of “real” politics. That is, the dialogical model offers a naturally optimistic model in a world where substantive differences serve, and are served by, adherents of self-serving interests and Realpolitik to divide cultures for the benefit of domination of resources and power.

NOTES 1. I wish to thank Sara R. Jordan and Natalya Limonova for their helpful comments on drafts of this chapter. 2. For instance, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2 (2004): 249–257; “‘Asian Values’ and Global Human Rights,” Philosophy East and West 52 (2002): 173–189; Border Crossings: Toward A Comparative Political Theory (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 1999); Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); “The Politics of Nonidentity: Adorno, Postmodernism—and Edward Said,” Political Theory 25 (1997): 33–56; Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross Cultural Encounter (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996); “Western Thought and Indian Thought: Comments of Ramanujan,” Philosophy East and West 44 (1994): 527–542; and “Nothingness and Sunyata: A Comparison of Heidegger and Nishitani,” Philosophy East and West 42 (1992): 34–48. 3. Most prominently, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism—A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 4. Particularly Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 5. Especially Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1997). 6. On the role of imagination in the construction of otherness, see John L. Allen, “Lands of Myth, Waters of Wonder: The Place of the Imagination in the History of Geographical Exploration,” in Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geography in Honor of John Kirtland Wright, ed. David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden, with Mary Alice Lamberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 41–62.

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7. For a sweeping synthetic survey of the inter-religious dialogical form, and its conditions and limitations, in Western as well as non-Western thought, see Raymundo Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). 8. For two recent examples of this tendency, see R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1350 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987) and John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), xxii–xxvi. 9. On the background to and elements of the genre generally, see Gary Remer, “Ha-Me’iri’s Theory of Religious Toleration,” in Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment, ed. John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 71–91; Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann, eds., Toleranz in Mittelater (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1998); Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Religious Toleration, c.1100–c.1550 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 18–27; Hanna Kassis, “Symbolische und gesellschaftliche Erwiderungen des Islam in der Begegnung mit dem Christentum,” in Juden, Christen und Muslime: Religionsdialoge im Mittelalter, ed. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann and Alexander Fidora (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004); Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 10. In general, see the excellent volume by G.R. Evans, Anselm of Canterbury and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), especially 34–68. 11. The Works of Gilbert Crispin, ed. Anna Sapir Abulafia and G.R. Evans (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1986), 63. 12. The Works of Gilbert Crispin, 64. 13. The Works of Gilbert Crispin, 10. 14. The Works of Gilbert Crispin, 9. 15. Jay Newman, Foundations of Religious Toleration (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 107. 16. Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). On the structure of the dialogue, see Constant J. Mews, “Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue,” in Beyond the Persecuting Society, ed. Laursen and Nederman, 25–52; Nederman, Worlds of Difference, 28–30, 33–34; Stefan Seit, “Dilectio consumatio legis: Abaelards Gespräch eines Philosophen, eines Juden und eines Christen und die Grenzen einer rationalen Gotteslehre,” in Juden, Christen und Muslime, ed. Lutz-Bachmann and Fidora, 40–95. 17. Translated as The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men by Anthony Bonner in The Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1232–1316), 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). The most recent examination of the text is by Alexander Fidora, “Ramon Llull—Universaler Heilswille und universale Vernuft,” in Juden, Christen und Muslime, ed. Lutz-Bachmann and Fidora, 119–172. See also the studies contained in Ramon Lull und Nikolaus von Kues: eine Begegnung im Zeichen der Toleranz, ed. Ermenegildo Bidese, Alexander Fidora and Paul Renner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). 18. Llull, Selected Works, I:111–113. 19. Llull, Selected Works, I:113. 20. Llull, Selected Works, I:110. On the “Art,” see Mark D. Johnston, The Spiritual Logic of Ramon Llull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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21. Llull, Selected Writings, I:116. 22. Llull, Selected Writings, I:118. 23. Llull, Selected Writings, I:148. 24. Llull, Selected Writings, I:149. 25. Llull, Selected Writings, I:300–301. 26. Just as remarkable perhaps is the rationale given by the three wise men for wishing to remain in ignorance. First, they assert something that sounds very close to a principle of liberty of conscience: each person must be free to choose one’s religion for oneself. The principle is left ungrounded, but it may contain echoes of the traditional Christian view that genuine consent, not external compulsion or force, must dictate one’s convictions. Moreover, the wise men appeal to the ongoing nature of their own discussions as reason to depart without hearing the Gentile’s decision. They express a wish to pursue the debate among themselves, unencumbered by prior knowledge of his choice, which would only tip the scales in one or another direction. In sum, they recognize that the choice of the true religion is a complex process, even after all that has been said to the Gentile on behalf of their respective faiths. 27. Llull, Selected Writings, 301–302. 28. Llull, Selected Writings, 302. 29. Llull, Selected Writings, 303. 30. Llull, Selected Writings, 303. 31. Llull, Selected Writings, 304. 32. The most recent edition of the text is contained in The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, ed. Peter Jackson and David Morgan (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1990). References in this essay will be to the chapter and section numbers introduced by Jackson and Morgan. The treatise has been examined in further detail by Nederman, Worlds of Difference, 53–67. 33. William observes that members of virtually every religious group known to the Mediterranean and Eurasian worlds—he mentions Christians (Nestorians, Armenians, Russians, Alans, and Georgians as well as Romans) and non-Christians (Muslims [”Saracens”], Uigurs, and “pagans” of many varieties) alike—may be found in territories under Mongol domination. See The Journey of William of Rubruck, 11.1, 26.1, 30.10. 34. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 32.1. 35. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 22.2. 36. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 28.4. 37. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 25.8. 38. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.7. 39. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.12. 40. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.11. 41. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.14, 33.13. 42. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.16. 43. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.17–18. 44. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.21. 45. The Journey of William of Rubruck, 33.22. 46. The text has recently been edited with a facing English translation by Michael Hanly in Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue: The Apparicion Maistre

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Jehan de Meun of Honorat Bovet (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005). Manly’s introduction and notes provide a useful overview of the poem’s contents, its author, and its purpose. 47. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 64–67. 48. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 73–73. 49. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 80–81. 50. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 68–69, 82–83. 51. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 84–85, 88–91. 52. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 88–89. 53. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 100–101. 54. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 86–87. 55. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 126–27. He goes on to remark that in the East, “tyrannous rulership” disaffected the populace: “Saying that the pope’s word was not to be trusted, and so, to avenge themselves on him, they made Mohammad the Saracen their sovereign leader, and he taught them so well that they forsook the name of ‘Christian’ and adopted the name of ‘Saracen.’ All the harm I am telling you about is the result of tyranny alone” (Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 128–29). 56. Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue, 156–57. 57. The body of research on De pace fidei is voluminous. For a summary of the literature up to the late 1990s, see Cary J. Nederman, “Natio and the ‘Variey of Rites’: The Foundations of Religious Toleration in Nicholas of Cusa,” in Religious Toleration: ‘The Variety of Rites’ from Cyrus to Defoe, ed. John Christian Laursen (New York: Palgrave, 1999), 71–72. More recently, see Markus Riednauer, “Logik, Rationalität under religiöse Rede nach Nikolaus Cusanus” and Hermann Schrödter, “Religion zwischen Diskurs und Gewalt: Diskurstheorische Elemente bei Nikolaus von Kues— Anfragen an die Diskurstheorie,” in Juden, Christen und Muslime, ed. Lutz-Bachmann and Fidora, 192–220, 221–38; and the chapters in Ramon Llull and Nikolaus von Kues, ed. Bidese, Fidora and Renner. 58. Nicholas of Cusa, De pace fidei in Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony, ed. James E. Beichler and H. Lawrence Bond (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 7, 13, 62. 59. Cusa, De pace fidei, 4. 60. Cusa, De pace fidei, 9. 61. Cusa, De pace fidei, 13. 62. Cusa, De pace fidei, 52. 63. Cusa, De pace fidei, 48. 64. Cusa, De pace fidei, 6. 65. Cusa, De pace fidei, 51. 66. Nicholas counts circumcision, baptism, marriage, the Eucharist, and other Christian sacraments among such rites (Cusa, De pace fidei, 50–51). 67. Cusa, De pace fidei, 51–52. 68. Cusa, De pace fidei, 61. 69. An example of this is found in Paul’s discussion with the Tartar on the value of circumcision: “How peace could be preserved among the faithful if some are circumcised and others are not is a major question. Hence, because the larger part of the world is uncircumcised and circumcision is not necessary [for salvation], I

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consider it fitting that in order to preserve peace the smaller part should conform to the larger, with whom they are united in faith. But if on account of peace the larger part should conform to the smaller and accept circumcision, it ought to be done voluntarily so that peace thus might be established by mutual interchanges. For if in the cause of peace other nations accept faith from Christians and the Christians circumcision from them, peace would be better made and strengthened” (Cusa, De pace fidei, 56). 70. For example, Nicholas suggests, “Still I think that the practice of this [conformity regarding circumcision] would be difficult. Therefore, it should suffice that peace be established in faith and in the law of love and that such rites be thereafter tolerated (tolerando)” (Cusa, De pace fidei, 56). 71. Cusa, De pace fidei, 62. 72. Cusa, De pace fidei, 7. 73. Cusa, De pace fidei, 62.

4 Asia and the Moral Geography of European Enlightenment Political Thought c. 1600–1800 Bruce Buchan

The history of European engagement with Asia has largely ignored the impact of that engagement on the development of Western political thought. Much of the literature on the history of European/Asian engagement emphasizes the ambivalence of European attitudes to Asia, disdain of Asian government and religion coupled with avidity for Asian trade.1 I will argue here that European responses to Asia throughout the Enlightenment period were shaped by the problem of how Europeans wished to see themselves.2 This concern ensured that both positive and negative European views of Asia sustained increasingly assertive self-images of the superiority of European civilization throughout the Enlightenment period. In using the term “moral geography,” I want to explore the process by which Europeans construed geographical entities—Asia, Europe, America, or the South Pacific—as a grounding for moral claims about the relative levels of civilization that peoples and nations in those regions were thought to exemplify.3 These claims were taken as sufficient justification of European pretensions to superiority and empire over peoples deemed less civilized. The chapter begins with a discussion of the themes of “recognition” and “difference” in contemporary political thought and their application to the vexed issue of the relationship between empire and political theory. The following sections then explore some prevalent European Enlightenment images of Asia which imbibed early modern (c. 1500–1650) representations of Asia as a realm of great wealth, but also of “oriental despotism.” These images and representations, I will argue, were deployed to buttress the self-image of Europe as the realm of civility, sophistication, and good government. The remaining two sections then explore two late Enlightenment efforts by the Abbé Raynal and Edmund Burke to revise 65

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European views of Asia. Both Raynal and Burke criticized earlier moral geographies of European sophistication and Asian “backwardness,” but both also in different ways illustrated the limitations in Western political thought militating against genuine European recognition of Asia’s cultures and customs. Burke, in particular, despite his best efforts, ultimately helped to build a momentum toward Britain’s nineteenth-century “empire of uniformity.” The term “moral geography” is adapted from Edmund Burke’s campaign to regulate the affairs of the British East India Company (EIC), which, he claimed, had put aside the universal rights and liberties due to all peoples— European and Asian—and resorted to what he called a “geographical morality” in which “… actions in Asia do not bear the same moral qualities as the same actions would bear in Europe.”4 The claim to which Burke took such violent exception was not that different peoples should be governed differently, but that in governing Asian populations, Europeans could put aside what he saw as the universal principles embodied in the “law of nature and nations” because these only applied in the relatively more civilized realm of Europe.5 At issue here is a key problem in the conceptualization of how European empires in Asia (and elsewhere) actually operated. More importantly, it raises the vexed question of the implication of Western political thought in imperial projects.

UNIFORMITY, DIFFERENCE, AND THE EMPIRE OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Political theorists have long considered the relationship between Europe’s traditions of political thought and European imperial expansion.6 Many political theorists have applied and adapted recent debates over the representation of difference in contemporary liberal thought to the analysis of the discursive strategies of imperial government. The prominence of themes of “recognition” and “difference” in recent theoretical debates is due largely to the compelling work of feminist theorists such as Iris Marion Young who have argued that modern Western notions of universalizable morality, impartial reason, and autonomy deny the “particularity” of gender, ethnic, cultural and other differences.7 Some thinkers sought to account for the liberal indifference to difference by referring to the experience of empire. The “benign neglect” of cultural diversity in Western liberalism, Will Kymlicka argues, originated from … liberals who went to administer or study British colonies [and] found that the liberalism they learned in England simply did not address some of the issues of cultural diversity they faced.8

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Confronted by the governmental problems of cultural diversity, he claims, liberals simply stopped thinking about it and retreated to the comfortable territory of universalism. This account pays scant regard to the conceptual limitations of Western political thought that, as Anthony Pagden argues, militated against any genuine “recognition of difference” in the New World in the early modern period.9 James Tully has argued further that Western political thought provided the resources for an “empire of uniformity.”10 Tully’s critique revolves around the implication of Western political thought in the project of colonization. Tully contends that Enlightenment and postEnlightenment European political thought focussed on establishing “the equality of independent, self-governing nation states and the equality of individual citizens” in Europe (and later in white settler societies), while systematically denying recognition to the different cultural identities of indigenous peoples.11 He contends that overcoming this legacy of denial of difference requires a genuine (and mutual) constitutional recognition of indigenous cultural identities. The problem, however, lies in what kind of recognition. Conventionally, Western political thought offers what could be called “recognition as familiarity” that Tully dismisses as part of an “imperial attitude” in which the apparently different other is rendered familiar by translating it into the experience and language of the observer. What Tully aims for is “recognition as acceptance,” in which the different other is accepted on their own terms, and is not evaluated and acknowledged in terms of their familiarity with the observer’s perspective. Tully’s argument thus draws attention to the imperial structure of Western political thought which has endured long after the collapse of the political empires of European powers.12 This is what Tully means by speaking of the “empire of uniformity,” a rationalizing attitude that subjects and evaluates nonEuropean cultural identity to a single European standard of recognition. Christine Helliwell and Barry Hindess acknowledge Tully’s success in highlighting the sources from which a more inclusive form of recognition may develop.13 They have argued in contrast, however, that presenting the problem in terms of the empire of uniformity masks the ways in which imperial administration often did “acknowledge cultural and other kinds of difference.” The problem, as Helliwell and Hindess see it, is not one of an imperial disinterest in difference, but how cultural and other differences were treated in Western political thought.14 According to Bhikhu Parekh the “universalist” pretensions of European thought did not prevent acknowledgment of cultural diversity, but “defined its nature and permissible range in narrow terms,” effectively ruling out “several forms of diversity” including “traditional and customary ways of life.”15 Uday Singh Mehta goes much further in arguing that the

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Western “imperial gaze” is “never really surprised by the stranger” whose difference is “recognized as … familiar” by being reduced to the category of the child or deviant.16 More recently, Sankar Muthu and Jennifer Pitts have each argued for a more benign interpretation of the relationship between empire and Western political thought. For Muthu, the European Enlightenment (c. 1650–1800) was characterized by a keen interest in and acceptance of human cultural and political diversity. Indeed, Muthu claims that “In eighteenth-century debates about human diversity, no single category, classificatory scheme, or set of explanations of cultural difference was hegemonic in the manner that racial typologies of non-European peoples” came to dominate nineteenth-century “anthropological and political thought.”17 Pitts similarly argues that great eighteenth-century thinkers, such as Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham, were all largely hostile to empire while “tolerant” of and “broad-minded” in their attitude toward non-European peoples.18 In different ways, these thinkers have each drawn attention to the ways that Western political thought “recognized” difference. The key point, however, is not that differences were denied, but represented as “primitive” or “backward” in contrast to European standards of progress, development, or civilization. As Mehta puts it, Western thinkers … view[ed] the stranger merely as the embodiment of an abstract type that is then judged, reformed, and often assessed as moribund … by reference to another set of abstract ideals of rationality, individuality … [and] the requirements of progress …19

My aim in the remainder of this chapter is to explore how both a recognition of difference and an aspiration to uniformity were expressed by European political theorists interested in, as well as travelers to, Asia. In order to begin this exploration, it would be well to examine how Enlightenment Europeans imagined Asia.

EUROPE’S ENLIGHTENED IMAGINATION Asia, the “East,” or the “Orient” had long been portrayed in European thought as a realm of fantastic empires with fabulous riches supporting enormous populations and thriving cities.20 It was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that more reliable and regular sources of information about Asia flowed into Europe from missionaries, traders, and travelers, and from diplomatic engagements and military conflicts throughout the region.21 From this period, Asia gradually lost its largely mythical qualities for Europeans and came to be seen as both a more

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complex, but potentially just as threatening, region.22 Asia came to be seen as more internally differentiated, characterized by the sophistication of the Chinese Empire in the far east or the Islamic faith of the Ottoman Empire in the near east, and by the supposedly barbarous customs of the Tartars in the far north, or the ancient but decayed civilizations of India in the far south. Throughout the early modern period, European political and intellectual history was marked by the emergence of new, increasingly secular and popular forms of government, matched by new ideas about what constituted good government. These new ideas coincided with the effort some European nations made to extend their influence and control beyond Europe, prompting further contact and exchange between Europe and Asia. The growing awareness of the many ramifications of this contact became one of the defining characteristics of the European Enlightenment. The opening paragraph of the Abbé Raynal’s Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies expressed this sentiment. No event has proved so important to mankind in general, and to the nations of Europe in particular, as the discovery of the new world, and the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. That period gave rise to a revolution in commerce, in the power of nations; in the manners, industry, and government of every people. From this time, new relations, and new wants, produced a mutual intercourse among the inhabitants of the most distant countries. The productions of the Equatorial climates are now more consumed in the regions on the Pole; the industry of the North is transferred to the South; the inhabitants of the West have converted the stuffs of the East into articles of luxury; and men everywhere have bartered their opinions, their laws, their customs, their diseases and remedies, their virtues and vices.23

Here was frank acknowledgement that European imperial expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had given rise to processes of exchange—of goods, ideas, institutions, and maladies—which no European power could control. Raynal’s vision, however, imbibed an implicitly Eurocentric moral geography. The rest of the world was important because Europe had discovered it and integrated it into the developing European commercial economy, which, in his view, provided untold benefits to all people, inside and outside Europe.24 For all its anti-imperial moralizing, Raynal’s vision of Europe and the other regions of the world owed much to conventional tropes in European thought. Perhaps nowhere did these tropes receive more magnificent form than in the frescoed ceilings of the Wurzburg Residenz of the Prince-Bishop, Carl Philipp von Greiffenklau. The ceiling of the central staircase was painted between 1750 and 1753 by Gianbattista

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Tiepolo and it depicts “Apollo and the Continents.” Around the edge of the imposing central panel, Tiepolo painted four panels representing the four continents—Europe, Asia, Africa, and America—as allegorical figures, each of them female, and each surrounded by the goods their continent has to offer. The figures in the Europe panel speak eloquently of the Enlightenment’s self-image. The figures are all richly dressed. They cluster around a seated “Europe” and they are surrounded by symbols of refinement and civility, Christian crosses, a globe, a telescope, musicians, artists, tamed animals, carefully crafted walls and columns, and a cannon. The naked “America” rides upon the back of a huge crocodile, surrounded by the untamed wildness of savage nature. The semi-naked black “Africa” rides upon the back of a camel, but offers fabrics, spices, and ivory. “Asia,” however, is different again. She sits sumptuously and fully clothed on the back of an elephant, fitted out as if for war, surrounded by warlike figures bearing weapons and flags. In the foreground is the naked torso of a male figure whose hands are bound by chains, seemingly about to be trampled. The message here is clear: Asia is rich and powerful, but tyrannous and cruel. Tiepolo’s images were far from fanciful examples of Baroque extravagance. They were an impressive embodiment of the European Enlightenment’s moral geography in which Europe (especially its Western portion) represented the summit of civilization, and the other continents represented various levels of savagery or barbarism.25 The images drew explicitly on long established conventions of European vision in which not only were all the continents female, but in which Europe and Asia represent rival models of civilization. One of the most striking forerunners of this image can be found in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593), a book of symbolic forms and conventions to be observed in artistic representation, in which we can detect the origins of Tiepolo’s symbolism.26 Ripa depicted “Asia” as sitting before a camel dressed in a “rich garment embroider’d” holding “branches of Fruit,” spices, and a censer of burning incense, signifying “… that Asia produces delightful things necessary for human Life … that she distributes … to other parts of the World.” Europe, however, is represented wearing a “very rich Habit” and wears a crown. She is surrounded with symbols of plenty, weapons of war, a tamed horse, a book, musical and artistic instruments. With one hand she holds a temple, and points to “Scepters and Crowns” with the other. “All which shews it …,” Ripa tells his reader, “… to be the principal Part of the World, for Religion, Arts and Arms.”27 Between Tiepolo’s and Ripa’s imagery lies the atmosphere of cruelty and tyranny that Europeans came to associate with Asia. Nowhere is this European attitude to Asian cruelty more evident than in the articulation of the notion of “oriental despotism” to which I now turn.

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EUROPEAN COMMERCE, CIVILITY, AND THE IDEA OF ORIENTAL DESPOTISM Asia had long exercised a special fascination over the European imagination. Throughout the medieval period, Asia and “the East” was the supposed location of the “Garden of Eden.” Jerusalem was regarded as the center of the Earth and in churchyards across Europe bodies were buried on an east-west axis so that they would rise again to the easterly call of Gabriel’s trumpet. The East was also thought to be the home of “Prester John,” the mythical Christian king whose wealth and power was unparalleled even in Europe. Travelers like Marco Polo fed the European hunger for wealth with tales of the splendour of the Chinese Empire. Nonetheless, the East was also the source of potent fears for Europeans. The Mongol invasions erupted from the East, while the bubonic plague which also spread from the East was thought to have originated in a foul miasma emanating from foul swamps somewhere in China. It was not until the sixteenth century that Europeans began to receive more reliable information about Asia. It is significant, however, that this information was often used to construct an image of Eastern backwardness that bolstered a conviction in European superiority. Among the most significant examples of this kind of information were the stream of reports from Venetian ambassadors at the sultan’s court in Turkey. As Valensi has argued, these reports were produced by men schooled in the precepts of Renaissance humanism, based as they were on the revival of classical literature and philosophy in the Italian universities.28 While reports from the early sixteenth century tended to paint a favorable picture of Turkish society and government, Valensi suggests that from the 1570s the ambassadors’ reports become more dismissive and hostile. The explanation lies, she argues, in the development of a self-image of Venetian (and European) good government incorporating regular laws, standards of civility, and personal freedom, which was built in part by projecting an image of Turkish weakness, corruption, decadence, and despotism.29 In 1585, for instance, Gianfrancesco Morosini wrote that “Turkey is a republic of slaves” in which the Turks are dismissed as “a sordid and depraved lot, and very lazy.”30 His description of the Sultan’s government was similarly disparaging, characterizing it as a highly personalized form of rule, entirely based on the Sultan’s whims and passions, and thoroughly imbued with tyranny, cruelty, and greed. In 1592, Lorenzo Bernardo interpreted the deficiencies of the Turks in classical republican terms, emphasizing the “corruption” of their original martial vigor by their successful conquest of “vast, rich lands.”31 Another potent source of information from Asia was supplied in the reports of Jesuit missions to China and Japan, many of which painted an

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optimistic picture of Asian wealth and sophistication to sustain interest in their missions.32 As Joan-Pau Rubiés suggests, however, the Jesuits relied on implicit assumptions in European thought in ascertaining what they thought was positive in Eastern societies, The belief that sustained the Jesuits’ enterprise was that the [relatively] more civil and rational peoples of the East would be better prepared for conversion [than those in Africa or America] … by “civil” and “rational” they [meant] … those peoples who enjoyed regular trade and wealthy cities … accepted … centralized government [and] … could also command sophisticated techniques such as a system of writing.33

João Rodrigues, for example, wrote of the wealth and size of Chinese cities and reflected that “[o]f all the regions of the world, Asia has always been renowned for its wealth because it produces everything that men consider precious and valuable …”34 As a teacher at Jesuit seminaries, the great political theorist of the Counter-Reformation, Giovanni Botero, was no doubt familiar with such sources of information. Indeed, in his early work, The Greatness of Cities, Botero took a very positive view of China.35 China, he wrote, enjoyed “all those perfections that are attributed to the East,” meaning great wealth, fertile soils, abundant spices, and all the advantages of nature. Moreover, “such is the plenty” of nature and the “industry and labor” of the Chinese people that “they have no need of foreign help to bring them anything.” In his later The Reason of State, however, Botero classified various “eastern” governments (including the Ottoman Turks, China, and the Persian kings of “Ormuz”) as cruel and tyrannical, and thus subject to frequent rebellions. “On the other hand,” he wrote, The kingdoms of Spain, Portugal, and France, the principalities of Germany and the other states of Christendom … [have] fewer wars and rebellions than among these [eastern] barbarous peoples; this is because cruel laws and customs make men cruel, while humane ones make them humane.36

This kind of assessment of the failings of Asian government in comparison to European government became a commonplace in European political thought.37 So common did this view of Asian tyranny and slavery become that by 1650, John Milton could quip that “the people of Asia … are noted by wise Authors much inclinable to slavery.”38 Dutch exploitation and virtual monopolization of the spice trade in the “East Indies” throughout the seventeenth century showed how much wealth could be obtained in Asia, but European efforts to extend their control of trade were often successfully resisted by rulers in India, China, and Japan. European economic and political weakness in Asia in the early

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modern period, however, was counter-balanced by an increasingly assertive self-image of European “civilization” buttressed by images of a wealthy and populous, but tyrannous and only semi-civilized, Asia. As the testimony of the Dutch East India Company ambassador, Johan Nieuhof, makes clear, far from conquering and dominating Asian trade, as some Western historians have argued, Europeans encountered very sophisticated trade networks that they were eager to enter on any terms.39 Nieuhof makes special mention not only of the variety of goods traded—Chinese silks and porcelain, Javanese spices, Indian calico, Sumatran pepper and gold—but of a whole Asian trading network with a high level of cultural and economic integration. Displaying a characteristic European attitude of the period, Nieuhof categorizes the people of Asia according to their involvement in trade or “traffick,” emphasising the variety of Asian trade exchanges and their use of coin.40 “Traffick” was a vital ethnographic signifier in early modern European thought.41 Put simply, relations of private property signified established rules or laws that differentiated one person’s property from another’s. The existence of such laws themselves entailed the existence of a system of government able to proclaim and enforce such laws. Consequently, participation in “traffick” was used by Europeans to judge non-European political, legal, and social structures. Nieuhof’s detailed description of the centrality and significance of Asian trade and “traffick” thus conveyed a view of Asia as sophisticated. His account was also sprinkled with references to the “laziness” and “obstinacy” of the Amboynese, the deceitfulness of the Singaporeans, the cruelty of Sumatran punishments, or the tyrannous Persian government of “Ormus,” each suggesting that Asia lacked the polished virtues of superior European civilization.42 In this way, European “observations” of non-European peoples in Asia and elsewhere were used to construct an image of Europe’s superior “civilization.” It was precisely in this sense that the English political theorist John Locke tied legitimate political authority to the “common consent” of the more “civiliz’d” peoples of the Earth to the use of money.43 Use of money, he argued, allowed the accumulation of property without wastage, symbolizing the proper use of resources. The “common” agreement to use money set the bounds of each person’s individual property, while also establishing the territories of the “several States and Kingdoms” of the Earth. The implication that Locke did not hesitate to draw was that where peoples had not consented to the use of money (and here Locke referred to America), no property beyond the immediate possessions necessary for selfpreservation could be accumulated.44 In this way, Locke used the idea of “untamed” America with its “savage” indigenous inhabitants as exemplars of the “Pattern of the first Ages in Asia and Europe.”45 As Locke conceded, however, Asia was not in an analogous position to “savage” America.

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Some travelers to the region argued that Asian nations observed standards of civility at least as refined as those in Europe.46 Two French accounts of embassies to Siam (Thailand) in the late seventeenth century paid tribute to Siamese “civilities” in domestic conduct, though also suggested their rigid formality.47 For seventeenth-century European writers, the term “civility” was often used to refer to conduct adapted to and supporting a well-regulated polity, with laws protecting private property, and standards of propriety opposed to the rudeness of the uncultivated and unlearned.48 Civility was thus a term that denoted the superiority of a European way of life and informed claims to political authority over those deemed less civilized.49 It was held to be a precondition for what Europeans were then coming to see as the achievement of the process of civilization culminating in the countries of Western Europe where civility was tied to notions of good government. A striking illustration of how the recognition that Asian civility could be an indication of Asian backwardness (compared to Europe) can be found in William Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World of 1697. Throughout the narrative, Asian civility is recognized but slighted. Thus, the inhabitants of Pulo Condore are described as “very civil” but “extraordinarily poor,” while the inhabitants of Formosa are described as the “quietest and most civil People that I ever met with,” but as lacking any “civil government” and coin.50 The centerpiece of the narrative is his account of the island of Mindanao. Here Dampier noted that the inhabitants had different governments, spoke different languages, were almost all Muslims, but that their most notable characteristic was that because they traded “by Sea with other Nations,” they were “therefore more civil.”51 Their greater civility notwithstanding, Dampier believed that the Mindanayans were “very lazy and thievish” which he attributed to the “arbitrary” nature of “their Prince” who by exacting heavy tribute “damps their Industry.”52 Dampier’s analysis of the shortcomings of Asian civility here bears striking resemblance to the later formulation of the idea of “oriental despotism” by the French philosophe Montesquieu. Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws elevates “oriental despotism” to the status of an analytical tool. The “peoples of the East,” Montesquieu asserted, have a natural “laziness of the spirit” and of the body which explains the “immutability” of their customs and mores.53 “The East” is the realm of domestic and political servitude, in contrast to Europe, which is identified as the home of republicanism, equality, commerce, and political liberty. In “the East,” however, women are held as slaves by husbands and fathers, social peace means “extreme subordination” to a despotic ruler, and industry is sacrificed to the poverty of pastoralism, or to the greed and corruption of despotic rulers.54 Montesquieu claims that the main reason for the difference is climatic— Asia apparently having no “temperate zone” calling forth human ingenuity,

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labor, courage, and strength. The consequence is that in Europe each nation is roughly matched in courage and strength, spurring each other to greater accomplishments. In Asia, however, the “brave and active” nations of the colder north live side by side with the “lazy and timid peoples” of the torrid equatorial zone, thereby favoring the conquest of the weak by the strong or the corruption of the strong by the weak.55 Even the conquests of Europeans and Asians differ, Montesquieu thought, because Europeans conquered “as free men” for themselves, while Asians conquer as “slaves … for a master.”56 “By contrast,” Montesquieu asserted, “in Asia there reigns a spirit of servitude that has never left it” and “one will never see” anything in the histories of Asia “but the heroism of servitude.”57

RAYNAL: EUROPE, ASIA AND CIVILIZATION The concept of “oriental despotism” was developed by some Enlightenment thinkers into sweepingly dismissive accounts of Asian antiquity, conservatism, and backwardness, which served as a counter-foil to European modernity.58 In Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, this contrast is attributed to the salutary influence of Christianity.59 For Chardin, one of Montesquieu’s sources on the East, the barrenness and poverty of Persia and the Ottoman Empire is attributed to its “Arbitrary” and “Despotick” governments, which encourage cruel, deceitful, and slothful conduct.60 This attitude to Asia, however, was not universally shared. A distinguishing feature of Enlightenment thought was the notion that the different beliefs and institutions of human communities could be understood by reference to the particular conditions prevailing in each community. The French philosophe, Denis Diderot, used precisely this argument in rejecting the kind of climatic and geographical determinism represented by Montesquieu, Manners [moers] are everywhere the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asiatic or European. They are good or bad. You are a slave under the Pole where it is very cold, and a slave in Constantinople where it is very hot; but everywhere a people should be educated, free and virtuous.61

Diderot was also critical of European imperialism and its justification resting on the supposed “backwardness” of non-European peoples. Diderot’s collaboration with the Abbé Raynal on the monumental Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies presented a striking example of the view that Europe’s proper relationship with Asian nations must be through the medium of free commercial exchange, and not through European conquest and colonization.

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Written in the wake of France’s capitulation in the Seven Years War (1755–63) to the British, who emerged as Europe’s supreme imperial power, the Philosophical and Political History provided ample scope to reflect on where the French went wrong and what alternative policies could be pursued. Raynal holds up the Dutch as exemplars of a wise colonial policy in which, he says, they avoided unnecessary wars with the native inhabitants, introduced salutary commerce and allowed them to “govern themselves” while not compelling them to “change their laws, their manners, or their religion.”62 The French by contrast lost all their colonies because their “morals had degenerated chiefly in the voluptuous climate of the Indies.”63 Here, Raynal employs a classical republican notion of the cycle of greatness and decline to explain French imperial defeat. Employing republican discourse, however, hedged Raynal into a tight corner. Consistent with this discourse, he was compelled to contrast imperial corruption with a prior virtue displayed in the initial conquest. Through their initial virtue and vigor the French had won great conquests in India. Yet Indian wealth had fed private gain stimulating self-interest and corruption. This loss of virtue rendered the French unable to hold their position in the face of a more vigorous conquest by the British. Thus, by employing republican notions of virtue and corruption, Raynal fell back into a view of Asia (and India in particular) as a region in which Europeans could display their virtue (through conquest), but which also threatened ruin (through corruption).64 India, Raynal argued, had been an ancient cradle of civilization—its laws, religion and philosophy had been developed long ago and he spoke of these with great admiration. In more recent times, however, India had fallen under the “yoke of tyranny,” the very antiquity of its religion and philosophy had led to its ossification into an elaborate system of “extravagant and obscene superstitions.”65 A major reason for this decay lay in the conquest of India by the Muslim Moguls. Raynal described the “Great Mogul” ruler of much of northern India as more a “conqueror than … a sovereign” who ruled by “plunder” and “military force.” Such epithets carried enormous weight within the European republican discourse Raynal employed. Within this tradition, government was conceived as a mechanism balancing the democratic aspiration toward popular representation and the aristocratic emphasis on the leadership of the land-owning elite. The specter haunting republican discourse was that of “arbitrary government” where political power was exercised at the personal whim of absolute rulers.66 Raynal’s characterization of Mogul India conforms of this image of arbitrary power in its castigation of the “Asiatic indulgence” of the Mogul’s court, its lasciviousness, luxury, corruption, and tyranny.67 Thus, while Raynal was able to avoid Montesquieu’s crude moral geography, his own moral geography still placed India (and other parts

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of Asia) in the position of “backward” and “barbarous.”68 The problem was not limited to India but characterized other parts of Asia. In speaking of the Mongol “Tartars,” Raynal considered them—like Montesquieu—as prime exemplars of pastoral barbarism. In the European Enlightenment, “barbarism” signified an intermediate stage in the process of social development from “savagery” to more “civilized” society. In this scheme, the hunting and gathering of nomadic “savages” gave way to the pastoralism of “barbarians,” whose more settled political and social forms had their own virtues and dangers. Barbarism went hand in hand with the vicious despotism of their kings, but also with the vigorous virtues of a warrior people. It was in this light that Raynal could dismiss the “Tartars” as untouched by the sophistication of China, who, when they “repassed” the Great Wall of China back to their homelands, “relapsed into barbarism” and the “uncivilized” life in “their desarts” [sic] to the north.69

BURKE: EMPIRE AND CORRUPTION IN INDIA Raynal’s History was among the most popular books in Europe in its day, but although they met, there is little evidence of any direct influence Raynal may have had over Edmund Burke.70 Although generally known as a conservative thinker and politician, Burke was also a strident critic (though not an outright opponent) of the British Empire in Ireland and America, and especially in India. Burke’s interest in India originated in the assistance he gave in the late 1770s to his brother who was the London agent for the Nawab of the Carnatic. The primary motivator of his interest, however, was the conduct of the British East India Company (EIC), which had assumed sovereign powers in Bengal through the grant of the dewani (or the right to levy taxes) in 1766. From the late 1760s, the EIC had become the focus of parliamentary efforts at reform, culminating in Burke’s extraordinary campaign to impeach Warren Hastings, the former East India Company Governor of Bengal, which terminated in his acquittal in 1794.71 By the time he became involved in the campaign to regulate the affairs of the British East India Company, Burke had taken opportunities to familiarize himself with orientalist scholarship.72 Burke argued for tighter parliamentary regulation of the EIC, which he came to see as an organization whose chief interest in maximizing profits led it into extensive governmental power in India carried on in direct conflict with the British Constitution. The quest to bring the EIC under more effective parliamentary control was described by Burke in Ciceronian terms as being for the greater “glory” of the “whole British nation.”73 This glory consisted in what he called the “great superintending trust” that the British Parliament ought to conduct throughout its “Empire” by holding its functionaries and representatives

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(especially the EIC) to strict account.74 The problem, Burke argued, lay in the fact that the EIC had assumed control over peoples neither “abject and barbarous” nor “savages,” but “a people for ages civilized and cultivated” with their own governments, cities, economies and industries, agriculture, and religion.75 Most importantly, Burke argued, the populations of India under EIC control were so vastly different to Europeans, but also internally “diversified by manners, by religion, by hereditary employment, through all their possible combinations.”76 Burke could be boldly critical of European assumptions about their own superiority. Burke insisted, for example, that the “Laws and Institutions” of India had greater antiquity to those of Britain, having reached their maturity “prior to our insect origins.”77 At other moments, Burke subverted the conventional distinction derived from Montesquieu between “barbarism” and “civilization.” Comparing the history of Arabic, Mongol, and Persian conquests, Burke argued that while the ferocity of “Asiatic conquerors … soon abated,” the EIC introduced a more systematic plunder than India had ever seen.78 By elevating profits over all other considerations, the EIC not only exploited India, but engaged in all kinds of subversions—substituting rulers with those regarded more pliable, bank-rolling greedy local rulers, and then using debt as a means of control, or conquering whole nations that dared to oppose the EIC’s interests. In many cases, these actions were taken by young men sent out from England motivated by nothing more than a desire to make a quick fortune, who were ignorant of Indian culture and history, exposed to corruption by the “blandishments of Asia,” or were socially inferior to the nobles and rulers they used as pawns.79 Behind these concerns was a fear that what the EIC represented in India was a distortion or perversion of the process of civilization. As J. G. A. Pocock has pointed out, Burke was an early proponent of Scottish Enlightenment theories of civilization, which sought to place the emergence of commercial economies with pacified, law governed civil societies in Britain and Western Europe within long historical trajectories of development.80 A key to this development was the transformation of the rude virtues of savage life (based on simplicity, hardiness, and a warrior ethos) into the more flexible and rational manners of civilized societies. Manners consisted in the widely accepted standards of conduct and self-regulation that made civil life possible by circumscribing violence and entrenching social virtues such as courtesy, probity, and industry. Their development hinged on the development of commercial economies that brought people into greater contact and mutual dependence while also fostering a strong self-interest in changing one’s conduct. Crucially, however, the benefits of civilization were to be secured by the prior development of sovereign states able to foster and protect commerce and thereby provide the space within which civilization could emerge.81 The key to this development, as both Scottish

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Enlightenment thinkers and Burke insisted, was the gradual emergence of a separation of private financial interests (consigned to the economic sphere) and public political duties and responsibilities. This view of social development lies behind Burke’s insistent attack on the EIC’s pursuit of private interests under the guise of political power—a confusion of interests that Burke did not hesitate to label “corruption.”82 His concern was that through its involvement in India, the EIC threatened to distort the civilizing process in India and potentially in Britain also. The danger, Burke argued was that … in all other Countries, a political body that acts as a Commonwealth is first settled, and trade follows as a necessary consequence of the protection obtained by political power. But there [in India] the affair was reversed. The constitution of the Company began in commerce and ended in Empire … [becoming] that thing which was supposed by the Roman Law so unsuitable, the same power was a Trader, the same power was a Lord.83

In other words, the EIC confused both the private interest of commerce with the public duty of political authority; it was, Burke asserted, “... a State in disguise of a Merchant, a great public office in disguise of a Countinghouse.” Burke’s campaign thus rested on the primary assumption that for all of India’s antiquity and ancient civilization, Europe, and Britain in particular, was more advanced along the scale of civilization, and therefore had a greater responsibility to ensure that the benefits of civilization be extended to those deemed less civilized. This was the rationale for his argument that “Great Britain made a virtual act of union” with India and ought to extend the benefits of the British Constitution to India.84 In doing so, however, Burke arrogantly assumed that the British Constitution embodied principles of universal law, namely, the rights to security of person, to personal liberty and private property, and that this “law of nature and nations” must guide British administration in India.85 The problem that a more civilized British government confronted in governing India was not only to civilize the uncivilized, but to prevent the decay of their own civilization. This fear lay behind Burke’s repeated warnings of the danger that EIC corruption in India, and its unwarranted assumption of despotic powers, would destabilize Britain’s Empire and corrode the principles of the British Constitution, such as Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law.86 For these kinds of reasons, Burke called for a more benevolent British rule in India, one more attuned both to the virtues of the British Constitution and to the needs of India. The different situation of India required a form of government adapted to Indian “principles and maxims,” preserving Indian laws and institutions.87 This view clearly implied a relationship in which India was seen as a largely passive object for enlightened British

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benevolence, reinforced by Burke’s repeated use of female imagery in describing India.88 Others have pointed to the link between Burke’s use of the image of a lascivious Hastings ravishing the helpless, female India, and to his famously indignant passages in the Reflections on the Revolution in France on the unchivalrous treatment of Marie Antoinette by the Jacobins. There is more at work here, however, than indignation at the “sexually aggressive … defiling of feminine rank.”89 Burke’s discussion of chivalry was a product, as Pocock suggests, of his interest in Scottish Enlightenment theories of civilization in which the gradual replacement of barbarous mores by more chivalrous codes of conduct was a crucial phase in the development of society.90 This view informed Burke’s indictment of the insults offered by EIC functionaries to Indian women which showed that they flouted the values of all “civilized nations” as well as assaulting the “Manners of the East.”91 As Whelan has suggested, Burke’s attack on the EIC in this respect was the same as his critique of the Jacobins. Both were responsible for what he saw as the removal of chivalrous conduct, and thereby of a perversion of the very process of civilization.92 It was for this reason also that Burke thought Hastings’ imputed corruption was more than a misdemeanor in office, but that the scale and spread of corruption within and through the EIC represented a grave threat to the substance of British civilization in Asia and Europe.

CONCLUSION Burke did not want to dismantle the British Empire in India; rather, he believed it should and could exert a civilizing influence by adapting the nature of its Empire to Indian laws, customs, and institutions. One of many ironies in Burke’s campaign against the EIC is that the specially selected target for much of his invective, Warren Hastings, was himself an “orientalist” who claimed to want, and in the opinion of some actually sought, just such an accommodation.93 For Burke, however, Hastings was the “Representative of all the Delinquency of India,” the “captain-general in iniquity … in whom all the frauds, all the peculations, all the violence, all the tyranny in India are embodied.”94 Hastings defended himself against Burke’s charges by claiming that his style of government in India had been adapted to Indian customs and included wide discretionary powers. Burke took this to be tantamount to an admission of guilt.95 Burke latched onto the suspicion that Hastings had claimed a need for arbitrary rule in India and used it as a powerful rhetorical weapon. According to Burke, there was no such thing as “oriental despotism” in India. The view that the peoples of India were all “in a degraded, servile state … that they are … vile, miserable slaves, all prostrate

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…” was a figment of European imagination.96 “In short,” Burke argued, Hastings’ defense rested on the fiction of “oriental despotism” perpetrated by “Montesquieu [and the] … idle and inconsiderate Travellers …” he relied upon, all of which was, Burke maintained, “absolutely false.”97 Burke castigated what he called Hastings’ “geographical morality,” … we think it necessary … to declare that the laws of morality are the same everywhere, and that there is no action which would pass for an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and of oppression in England, that is not an act of extortion, of peculation, of bribery, and of oppression in Europe, Asia, Africa, and all the world over.98

The idea that Asia knew no form of government other than “oriental despotism” and that therefore the EIC were warranted in using this style of government in India implied a “geographical morality” that consigned the people of India to a perpetual slavery to British government, and limited liberty, rights, and representative government to Europe alone. Here again, Burke’s attack rested on an idea of law, justice, and government informed by universal principles of natural law that applied just as strongly in Britain and Europe as in India and Asia.99 Although the impeachment trial ended with Hastings’ acquittal and the apparent triumph of his defense that British government in Asia required a “moral geography” based on convictions of Indian difference, the next century would witness the sustained effort to create a British “empire of uniformity” in India. For Burke, the rejection of moral geography required a greater recognition of Indian differences, differences that made the universal political values to which he was committed more rather than less important. The final irony of Burke’s campaign was that in calling for a greater recognition of Indian difference, he helped to pave the way for the greater subjection of Indian customs, institutions, and ways of life to European customs, institutions, and ways of life.100 One of the most aggressive spokespersons for this empire of uniformity in Asia, Lord Macauley, was to reflect that Burke’s campaign against Hastings was as intemperate as Hastings’ orientalist leanings were misguided. The key problem of British rule in India had not been that it was insensitive to local custom and institutions, but that it had been too sensitive. Hastings’ failure, Macauley argued, was his unwillingness to introduce “into India” … the learning of the West. To make the young natives of Bengal familiar with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute the geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe for the dotages of the Brahminical superstition, or for the imperfect science of Ancient Greece transfused through Arabian expositions, this was a scheme reserved to crown the beneficent administration of a far more virtuous ruler.101

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Here as elsewhere, Macauley heralded a dramatic shift in British political thought away from the recognition of difference that both Burke and Hastings had sought in different ways.102 Along with this shift came the consolidation of a new kind of moral geography in which Europe’s claim to superiority came to rest on its supposed monopoly over the universal values that called for uniform application by means of what came to be seen by its proponents as benevolent, civilizing empire.

NOTES 1. J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1997), 50–3; G.C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 167–68. 2. R. Batchelor, “Concealing the Bounds: Imagining the British Nation Through China,” in The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. F.A. Nussbaum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 79–92. 3. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 284–331. 4. Edmund Burke, “Speech on Opening of Impeachment, 15, 16, 18, 19 February 1788,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. VI, India: The Launching of the Hastings Impeachment 1786–1788, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 346. 5. Burke, “Speech on Rohilla War Charge, 1 June 1786” in Writings and Speeches, Vol. VI, 109. 6. James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); J.G.A. Pocock, “Nature and History, Self and Other: European Perceptions of World History in the Age of Encounter,” in Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840, ed. A. Calder, J. Lamb and B. Orr (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999). 7. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) and Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). The typical example of contemporary universalism is John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 8. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 54–5. 9. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 10–14. 10. James Tully, Strange Multiplicity; Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 37. 11. Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 15–16. 12. Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 62–70. 13. Christine Helliwell and Barry Hindess, “The ‘Empire of Uniformity’ and the Government of Subject Peoples,” Cultural Values 6 (2002): 139–52. 14. Helliwell and Hindess, “The ‘Empire of Uniformity,” 140.

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15. Bhikhu Parekh, “Democracy and Cultural Pluralism, or How to Decolonize Liberalism,” paper prepared for the ECPR Workshop on “Indices of Democratization,” (Leiden, 1993), 20–33 and “Liberalism and Colonialism: A Critique of Locke and Mill,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, ed. J.N. Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh (London: Zed Books, 1995), 89. 16. Uday S. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 33. 17. Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 279. 18. Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 26. 19. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 25. 20. D. F. Lach and E. J. Van Kley, “Asia in the Eyes of Europe: The Seventeenth Century,” in Facing Each Other: The World’s Perception of Europe and Europe’s Perception of the World, ed. A. Pagden, vol. 1 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 243–59. 21. D. F. Lach and E. J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe. Volume III: A Century of Advance. Book I: Trade, Missions, Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 22. P. J. Marshall, “A Free Though Conquering People”: Eighteenth-Century Britain and its Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 4–7. 23. G. T. F. Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, Book I (Edinburgh, 1782), 1. 24. Even the fictional Baron Munchausen aimed to “facilitate commerce and civilization” by cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Suez to “pour all the wealth of India by a new channel into Europe.” Raspe, The Original Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen [1785] (London: Trübner and Co, 1889), 242. 25. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 93–94. 26. Cesar Ripa, Iconologia: or, Moral Emblems by Cesar Ripa (London: P. Tempest, 1709), 53 fig. 209; also P. Binding, Imagined Corners: Exploring the World’s First Atlas, (London: Review, 2003), 212, 245–47. 27. Ripa, Iconologia, 47 fig. 185. 28. L. Valensi, The Birth of the Despot: Venice and the Sublime Porte, trans. A. Denner (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 10–14. 29. Valensi, Birth of the Despot, 1987, 71–77, 91–96. 30. See for example, “Report by Morosini, 1585,” in J.C. Davies, The Pursuit of Power: Venetian Ambassadors’ Reports on Spain, Turkey, and France in the Age of Phillip II, 1560–1600 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 139. 31. See for example, “Report by Bernardo, 1592,” in Davies, Pursuit of Power, 1970, 159. 32. B. Guy, “Ad majorem Societatis gloriam: Jesuit Perspectives on Chinese Mores in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Exoticism in the Enlightenment, ed. G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 69. 33. Joan-Pau Rubiés, “New Worlds and Renaissance Ethnology,” in Facing Each Other, 108. 34. João Rodrigues, João Rodrigues’s Account of Sixteenth-Century Japan (London: Hakluyt Society, 2001), 10. See also “Japonian Embassage to the Pope …” and

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“Adams his Voyage by the South-sea to Japon” in S. Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes in Japan, Extracted From Hakluytus Posthumus, ed. C. Wild (London: Kegan Paul, n.d.), 41 and 95. 35. Giovanni Botero, The Greatness of Cities [1588], in Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State, trans. P. J. and D. P. Waley (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 267. 36. Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State [1589, 1606], 85. 37. Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum: A Discourse on the Commonwealth of England [1583] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), 132–33; Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of the Commonweale [1606] (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 201. 38. John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates [1650], in John Milton: Political Writings, ed. M. Dzelzainis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11. 39. Johan Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies 1653–1670 [1732] (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988), 178–79. 40. Nieuhof, Voyages, 179, 275–78. 41. Bruce Buchan, “Traffick of Empire: Trade, Treaty and Terra Nullius in Australia and North America, 1750–1800,” History Compass 5, no. 2 (2007): 386–405. 42. Nieuhoff, Voyages, 1988, 166, 181, 191, 205–6; E. Kaempfer, The History of Japan [1690–92], vol. 1 (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1906), 15. 43. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [1690], ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 299. 44. Locke, Two Treatises, 299. 45. Locke, Two Treatises, 293, 339. 46. Kaempfer, History, 138; John Chardin, Sir John Chardin’s Travels in Persia. Never Before Translated into English, 2 vols. (London, 1720), 122–24. 47. Simon de la Loubère, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam [1693] (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), 54; N. Gervaise, The Natural and Political History of the Kingdom of Siam [1688], trans. and ed. J. Villiers. (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1989), 83–85. 48. John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (London: Harper Collins, 1993), 362–65. 49. M. J. Braddick, “Civility and Authority,” in The British Atlantic World, 1500– 1800, ed. David Armitage and M. J. Braddick (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 95–97. 50. William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World [1697] (London: Hummingbird Press, 1997), 183, 203–04. 51. Dampier, Voyage, 147. 52. Dampier, Voyage, 148. 53. Charles S. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws [1748], ed. A.M Cohler et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 235. 54. Montesquieu, Spirit, 61, 270–71, 294–96; Montesquieu, Persian Letters. By M. de Montesquieu. Translated from the French by Mr Flloyd (London: B. Lintot, 1775), 6–7, 32–33, 287. 55. Montesquieu, Spirit, 280. 56. Montesquieu, Spirit, 282. 57. Montesquieu, Spirit, 284.

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58. J. Logan, Dissertation on the Governments, Manners, and Spirit, of Asia [1787] (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995), 7–27. 59. Montesquieu, Spirit, 32–3. 60. Chardin, Chardin’s Travels, 11–13, 30–32. 61. Denis Diderot, Observations sur le Nakaz, in Denis Diderot: Political Writings, trans. and ed. J.H. Mason and R. Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 85. 62. Raynal, Political History, II, 200, 225–27. 63. Raynal, Political History, IV, 87–88. 64. F. Mannsåker, “Elegancy and Wildness: Reflections of the East in the Eighteenth-Century Imagination,” in Exoticism, ed. Rousseau and Porter, 189. 65. Raynal, Political History, I, 30–31. 66. Raynal, Political History, IV, 68. 67. Raynal, Political History, IV, 70. 68. Raynal, Political History, V, 225. 69. Raynal, Political History, V, 170. 70. D. D. Irvine, “The Abbé Raynal and British Humanitarianism,” The Journal of Modern History 3, no. 4 (1931): 576–77. On Raynal and Burke, see J. H. M. Salmon, “Liberty by Degrees: Raynal and Diderot on the British Constitution,” History of Political Thought 20, no. 1 (1999): 87–106. On Raynal’s reception in Europe, see G. Paquette, “Enlightened Narratives and Imperial Rivalry in Bourbon Spain: The Case of Almodóvar’s Historia Politica de los Establecimientos Ultramarinos de las Naciones Europeas (1784–1790),” The Eighteenth Century 48, no. 1 (2007): 61–80. 71. H. V. Bowen, Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 197; P.J. Marshall, “Burke and India,” in Edmund Burke: His Life and Legacy, ed. I. Crowe (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 39–47. 72. G. H. Cannon, “Sir William Jones and Edmund Burke,” Modern Philology 54, no. 3 (1957), 165–86. Among his sources of information was Sir William Jones who sent Burke his own scheme for “the best practicable system of judicature for India.” Cannon, “Sir William Jones and Edmund Burke,” 185–86. 73. Burke, “Fox’s India Bill, 1 December 1783,” in Writings and Speeches, Vol. V, 381. On Burke’s use of Ciceronian rhetoric, see “Burke to William Baker, 22 June 1784” in The Correspondence of Edmund Burke: Vol. V July 1782 – June 1789, ed. H. Furber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 155. 74. Burke, “Speech on the Opening of Impeachment, 15, 16, 18, 19 February 1788,” in Writings and Speeches, Vol. VI, 380. 75. Burke, “Fox’s India Bill,” 389–90. Also Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767], ed. Duncan Forbes (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1966), 111, 143. 76. Burke, “Fox’s India Bill,” 390; also, Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 277. 77. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 304. 78. Burke, “Fox’s India Bill,” 401. 79. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 412. 80. J. G. A. Pocock, “Introduction” to Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987), xxxii–xxxiii.

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81. Bruce Buchan, “Civilization, State Sovereignty and War: the Scottish Enlightenment and International Relations,” International Relations 20, no. 2 (2006): 175–92. 82. Frederick G. Whelan, Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), 64–122. 83. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 282–83. 84. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 281. 85. Burke, “Rohilla War Charge,” 109, J. F. Davidson, “Natural Law and International Law in Edmund Burke,” Review of Politics 21 (1959): 487. 86. Burke, “Speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s Debts, 28 February 1785,” in Writings and Speeches, Vol. V, 491; Burke, “Ninth Report from the Select Committee, 25 June 1783,” in Writings and Speeches, 318–19, 322–23; Burke, “Articles of Impeachment, 14, 21, 28 May 1787,” in Writings and Speeches, Vol. VI, 145. 87. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 302. 88. Burke, “Fox’s India Bill,” 410–12; Burke, “Articles of Impeachment,” 215–24. 89. Isaac Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent Conservative (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 137. 90. Pocock, “Introduction” to Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, xxxii. Indeed, Adam Ferguson argued in 1767 that codes of chivalry were crucial not only in reforming “our manners,” but in the development of the “law of nations.” See Ferguson, Essay, 201–3. 91. Burke, “Articles of Impeachment,” 144. 92. Whelan, Edmund Burke, 168–69. 93. P. Moon, Warren Hastings and British India (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947), 231, 282. 94. Burke, “Rohilla War Charge,” 95; Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 275. 95. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 374–75. On Hastings’ defense, see The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 267–68. 96. Burke, “Speech in Reply, 28, 30 May, 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 16 June 1794,” in Writings and Speeches, Vol. VI, 283. 97. Burke, “Speech in Reply,” 265, 276. 98. Burke, “Opening of Impeachment,” 346. 99. Burke, “Speech in Reply,” 260. 100. A. M. Davies, Warren Hastings: Maker of British India (London: Ivor Nicholson and Davies, 1935), 99; Marshall, ‘A Free Though Conquering People’, 90–91. 101. Lord Macaulay, Warren Hastings (London: Longman Green and Co, n.d.), 71. 102. P. J. Marshall, The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 181–83, 187; Bowen, Business of Empire, 203.

5 The Ebb and Flow of Peoples, Ideas, and Innovations in the River of Inter-civilizational Relations: Toward a Global History of Political Thought Brett Bowden Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The Ballad of East and West” (1889), opens with the line: “Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” This memorable and sometimes misunderstood phrase has often been employed against Kipling to damaging effect. Irrespective of his meaning and intention, the phrase is one that has stuck, with some people taking it literally and running with it. But throughout history, East and West have met; how could they not? To many observers the various comings together of East and West are defined by a recurring or ongoing series of confrontations and clashes: from the Crusades (1095–1291) through to the modern-day Huntingtonian “clash of civilizations”1 being played out in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and beyond. But this preoccupation with clashes and confrontations belies what East and West share in common and sidelines centuries of migration and mingling, peaceful cooperation, cultural borrowing and exchanges of ideas. John Donne’s (1572–1631) phrase, “No man is an island, entire of itself,”2 applies equally as much to any civilization, Western civilization and civilizations of the East included. While East and West have had their share of skirmishes and still have their differences, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, they have also influenced each other and borrowed heavily among themselves (and others) in the marketplace of ideas—literally for millennia, from Ancient Egypt onwards. This dimension of East-West relations is something that is overlooked, even denied, when many speak of the history and ongoing relations between peoples of the East and those in the West. With that in mind, this chapter seeks to make two general points. First, significant elements of the Western canon of political thought have denied both the contribution and the capacity of the East—and others—to add anything of value to the 87

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history of ideas catalogue. Second, contrary to that position, the chapter highlights some common intellectual ground and outlines the inevitable and unavoidable borrowing and exchange of ideas between the East, the West, and other traditions of thought. Using highly topical and supposedly exclusively Western ideas such as democracy and toleration as examples, I demonstrate the general interconnectedness between what are purportedly competing and non-compatible traditions of political thought.

WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT AND “CONTINENTAL CHAUVINISM” As Eric Wolf pertinently asks in Europe and the People Without History, given that “there are connections everywhere,” such as those between East and West, “why do we persist in turning dynamic, interconnected phenomena into static, disconnected things?” His musings on this question point to a long-standing and widespread misconception in the reading of history. Wolf continues: Some of this is owing, perhaps, to the way we have learned our own history. We have been taught, inside the classroom and outside of it, that there exists an entity called the West, and that one can think of this West as a society and civilization independent of and in opposition to other societies and civilizations. Many of us even grew up believing that this West has a genealogy, according to which ancient Greece begat Rome, Rome begat Christian Europe, Christian Europe begat the Renaissance, the Renaissance the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment political democracy and the industrial revolution. Industry, crossed with democracy, in turn yielded the United States, embodying the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.3

As Wolf aptly notes, such a narrow understanding of the genealogy of the Western tradition—and by default other histories and traditions of thought—is misleading, even dangerous in the wrong hands or minds. This commonly adopted and often warmly embraced evolutionary schema renders history as some sort of hierarchical “moral success story,” a tale of civilization and progress, a race through time in which successive runners pass on the torch of progress and liberty. “History is thus converted into a tale about the furtherance of virtue, about how the virtuous win out over the bad guys.”4 In essence, the story runs along lines to the effect that the West has led this particular race from the get go; no other peoples, race, culture, or civilization has come close to the West in the hierarchy of world civilizations.5 Norbert Elias has described this general air of superiority in The Civilizing Process in terms of the very ideal of civilization as expressing the “self-

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consciousness of the West.” Moreover, this consciousness “sums up everything in which Western society of the last two or three centuries believes itself superior to earlier societies or ‘more primitive’ contemporary ones.”6 And, just as importantly, the West is seen as (eternally) maintaining its lofty position at the vanguard of progress and civilization. This view of the West as insular, self-sufficient, and boldly forging the way ahead on the path of progress and virtue is one that has been described by Robert Nisbet in his work on the idea of progress. “The history of all that is greatest in the West,” he tells us, that is, “religion, science, reason, freedom, equality, justice, philosophy, the arts, and so on—is grounded deeply in the belief that what one does in one’s own time is at once tribute to the greatness and indispensability of the past, and confidence in an ever more golden future.”7 But just as the idea and space we call “the West” did not evolve in a vacuum, devoid of external influences, neither was it as homogenous and cohesive as this account might suggest. It was not until around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that European cleavages began to ameliorate, slowly being replaced by a modicum of cohesion and solidarity, at least among Western European nations anyway. Slowly and steadily, the expanding entity we now call the West was incrementally forged by and through the exploring nations of Western Europe. And it was in relation to and by way of contrast with this creation that the non-European-cum-nonWestern world and its inhabitants came to be known and described. At the same time the “civilized” West also came to define itself in contradistinction to the “barbarians” and “savages” beyond the horizon. This process was neatly captured by Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) when he wrote: “A wise hand seems to have preserved these savage tribes until such time as we have progressed sufficiently in our own civilization to make useful application of this discovery, and from this mirror to recover the lost beginning of our own race.” But these peoples painted an “embarrassing and dismal … picture of our [Europe/the West’s] own childhood,” for they are the “barbarous remains of the centuries of antiquity and the middle ages!”8 As Oswald Spengler explains in Decline of the West, the “Western European area” came to be “regarded as a fixed pole, a unique patch chosen on the surface of the sphere for no better reason, it seems, than because we live on it.” Moreover, “great histories of millennial duration and mighty faraway Cultures are made to revolve around this pole in all modesty.” It is from and in relation to this select and privileged corner of the globe, and its successor the West, that all other peoples and events are “judged in perspective”9—politically, socially, morally, technologically. It is with this line of thought in mind that Martin Bernal asks us in Black Athena “not only to rethink the fundamental bases of ‘Western Civilization’ but also to recognize the penetration of racism and ‘continental chauvinism’ into all our historiography, or philosophy of writing history.”10 Few of the West’s most

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important and influential thinkers—the Western canon—are innocent of such charges, with many explicitly implicated. What follows are a few select examples that highlight this less admirable tendency of Western social and political thought, one which runs through too much of this vast body of work.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE WESTERN CANON One of the Enlightenment’s most distinguished thinkers, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), is indicative of this kind of “continental chauvinism” in his thoughts on history and progress, as succinctly expressed in “Idea of world history.” Kant writes: If one follows the influence of Greek history on the construction of and misconstruction of the Roman state which swallowed up the Greek, then the Roman influence on the barbarians who in turn destroyed it, and so on down to our own times; if one adds episodes from the national histories of other peoples insofar as they are known from the history of the enlightened nations, one will discover a regular progress in the constitution of states on our continent [Europe] (which will probably give law, eventually, to all others).11

While this passage might be more or less pregnant with “continental chauvinism,” privileging the role of Europe and its “intellectual predecessors” at the expense of all others, the innate racism referred to by Bernal is most evident in Kant’s much less discussed Geography. David Harvey makes the legitimate point that “the fact that Kant’s Geography is such an embarrassment is no justification for ignoring it.”12 Today, it is difficult to get one’s hands on the work, which is somewhat surprising given the cottage industry that Kant’s other more recognized works have given rise to. The following passage is drawn from a recent French translation: In hot countries men mature more quickly in every respect but they do not attain the perfection of the temperate zones. Humanity achieves its greatest perfection with the white race. The yellow Indians have somewhat less talent. The negroes are much inferior and some of the peoples of the Americas are well below them.13

Despite their many differences, for Kant’s compatriot Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the Ancient Greeks—as progenitors of the modern West—are also seen as central to the rise and dominance of the West over the East. Hegel writes: “It arises above all in the Iliad where the Greeks take the field against the Asiatics and thereby fight the first epic battles in the tremendous opposition that led to the wars which constitute in Greek history a turningpoint in world-history.” He continues:

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In a similar way the Cid fights against the Moors; in Tasso and Ariosto the Christians fight against the Saracens, in Camoens the Portuguese against the Indians. And so in almost all the great epics we see peoples different in Morals, religion, speech, in short in mind and surroundings, arrayed against one another; and we are made completely at peace by the world-historically justified victory of the higher principle over the lower which succumbs to a bravery that leaves nothing over the defeated.

The conclusion Hegel draws from this is: “In this sense, the epics of the past describe the triumph of the West over the East, [the triumph] of European moderation, and the individual beauty of a reason that sets limits to itself.”14 On the non-Western world more generally, Ranajit Guha notes that, for Hegel, “A people or a nation lacked history … not because it knew no writing but because lacking as it did in statehood it had nothing to write about.”15 Hegel was dismissive of “the New World, and the dreams to which it may give rise … [and] pass over to the Old World—the scene of the World’s History.”16 He insisted that the only people “capable of history” are those that “comprehend their own existence as independent, i.e., possess selfconsciousness.”17 And, for Hegel, the means by which this achieved is the state, or perhaps more accurately, statehood. Taking India as a non-European world example, Hegel asserted that, by-and-large, “the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb deedless expansion; that is, it presents no political action.” To this he added, the “people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves.”18 So, despite India’s acknowledged accomplishments in the arts and other arenas of achievement, Hegel concluded that “it is because the Hindoos have no History in the form of annals (historia) that they have no History in the form of transactions (res gestæ); that is, no growth expanding into a veritable political condition.”19 The question for Hegel, and he is not alone here, “is how far a nomadic people … or any people on a low level of civilization, can be regarded as a state.”20 Given this, Guha suggests that in the two hundred and fifty years or so between Hernán Cortés’s conquests in the New World and Robert Clive’s arrival in India, the “bar was raised” such that inclusion in “World-history” shifted from “no writing, no history” to “no state, no history.”21 This general line of argument has persisted for centuries. It is only too evident, for example, in Ferdinand Schiller’s mistaken claim as late as the early-mid-twentieth century that “the peoples of India appear to care very little for history and have never troubled to compile it.”22 The result of such beliefs was that Europeans, particularly the British, have taken it upon themselves to compile such uneven accounts as that which was prepared by James Mill (1773–1836) and published as The History of British India in 1817.23 Despite never having actually visited India, Mill’s History relayed to European audiences a fundamentally mistaken image of Indian civilization as eternally backward and undeveloped.

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Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who claimed to turn Hegel the right way up in other arenas of thought, were no kinder to India in their many writings on the “oriental despotism” found on the sub-continent. Neither Marx nor Engels was particularly kind to China either, as seen, for instance, in the following commentary written by Marx after the first of the Opium Wars between Britain and China. Marx writes: “It is almost needless to observe that, in the same measure in which opium has obtained the sovereignty over the Chinese, the Emperor and his staff of pedantic mandarins have become dispossessed of their own sovereignty.” He further speculated that it seemed “as though history had first to make this whole people drunk before it could rouse them out of their hereditary stupidity.”24 A few years later after the outbreak of the Second Opium War, Engels derisively referred to “China, the rotting semi-civilization of the oldest State in the world,” a nation essentially beleaguered by “overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism.”25 At around the same time Marx and Engels were speculating on the character of their neighbors in the East, Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882)—sometimes referred to as the father of ethnographic racism—was formulating a more substantial and “scientific” set of ideas in his Essai sur l’inégalitié des races humaines (The Inequality of Human Races, 1853–55). Gobineau maintained “that the racial question overshadows all other problems in history, that it holds the key to them all, and that the inequality of the races from whose fusion a people is formed is enough to explain the whole course of its destiny.” He concluded: “I convinced myself at last that everything great, noble, and fruitful in the works of man on this earth, in science, art, and civilization, derives from a single starting point; it belongs to one family alone, the different branches of which have reigned in all the civilized countries of the universe.”26 The latter encompasses the white race, the privileged peoples of Western Europe. While thinkers of all persuasions have, to varying degrees, been dismissive of the contributions and capacity of non-Western peoples (or nonEuropean races) to add anything of real value to story of civilization, some, like Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), have taken that general sentiment to extremes. In seeking to reconcile the thinking of Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schelling, and Leibniz, while speculating on “the improvement of the races[s],” he claimed that human evolution takes place through “the competition of races and nations in the struggle for existence, which is waged among mankind under natural laws just as pitilessly as among animals and plants.” He concluded: No power on earth is able to arrest the eradication of the inferior races of mankind, which … have gone on vegetating down to the present day. As little a favor is done the dog whose tail is to be cut off, when one cuts it off gradually, inch by inch, so little is there humanity in artificially prolonging the death-struggle

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of savages who are on the verge of extinction. The true philanthropist, if he has comprehended the natural law of anthropological evolution, cannot avoid desiring an acceleration of the last convulsions, and laboring for that end.27

Clearly, not all of the racism referred to by Bernal is implicit; much of it is overt, all of it offensive. While the vast majority of us are repulsed by such extreme social Darwinian ideas, not so long ago they were reasonably widely entertained by what were supposedly some of the best minds of the time. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), for instance, similarly claimed that nature’s “forces at work exterminate” those portions of humankind that stand in the way of progress “with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.” Just as it is natural that “the savage has taken the place of lower creatures, so must he, if he remained too long a savage, give place to his superior.” For Spencer it was not only a natural “phase of civilization,” but the “forcible supplantings of the weak by the strong” was also prudent and morally right, for it aids “civilization by clearing the Earth of its least advanced inhabitants, and by forcibly compelling the rest to acquire industrial habits.” Spencer was not alone in thinking that “the conquest of one people over another has been, in the main … or, strictly speaking, of the more adapted over the less adapted.”28 Or, to use Hegel’s terminology, this means that the conquest of self-governing states—as found in Europe—over the wandering tribes thought to be found virtually everywhere else. In Orientalism, Edward Said relates a good example of the related ideas that non-Westerners have no “history” and are ill-equipped for or incapable of self-government. In a speech to the British House of Commons of June 13, 1910, Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) proclaimed: “We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know the civilization of any other country. We know it farther back; we know it more intimately; we know more about it.” According to Balfour, the well-being of Egypt and its people was best entrusted to the hands of the British. He continued: “Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government.” But beyond Europe, one may look through the whole history of the Orientals … and you never find traces of self-government … Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motion establish what we, from a Western point of view, call self-government. That is the fact.29

This is just a small example of the continental chauvinism and implicit and explicit racism highlighted by Bernal as inherent to the Western canon, a body of work that is more or less constitutive of “Western Civilization.” This body of work and civilization many thinkers have perceived and described as owing nothing to non-European or non-Western peoples or

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civilizations, peoples whom John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) described in On Liberty as being “backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered at its nonage.”30 But as Bernal has also noted, some eighteenthcentury European thinkers were admirers of the likes of Egypt and China as “positive examples of higher and finer civilization,” with both “seen as having superior writing systems … and profound and ancient philosophies.” Their most admirable feature, however, was that “they were ruled rationally, without superstition, by a corps of men recruited for their morality and required to undergo rigorous initiation and training.”31 That is, contrary to Hegel and others, they were in fact self-governing.

SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE OF “CONTINENTAL CHAUVINISM” One of the thinkers who contested prevailing orthodoxy was Edmund Burke (1729–1797). Burke insisted about India that “this multitude of men does not consist of an abject and barbarous populace; much less of gangs of savages … but a people for ages civilized and cultivated.” Looking to their history he acknowledged the existence of “princes once of great dignity, authority, and opulence.” Significantly, in contradistinction to Hegel and so many others, Burke noted the existence of “an ancient and venerable priesthood, the depository of their laws, learning, and history, the guides of the people whilst living, and their consolation in death.”32 Another eighteenthcentury thinker, Voltaire (1694–1778), is even thought of as something of a Sinophile. This description is based, at least in part, on a passage in his Philosophical Dictionary in which he writes: “It is, in fact, in morality, in political economy, in agriculture, in the necessary arts of life, that the Chinese have made such advances toward perfection.” While on all other matters, Voltaire suggested “they have been taught by us [the West]: in these matters we might well submit to become their disciples.”33 In a more general sense, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) questioned “the universal, philosophical, philanthropic tenor of our century, which grants to each distant nation, to each most distant epoch of the world ‘our own ideal’ of virtue and happiness, is thus the sole judge of their customs, to pass judgment upon them by our standards alone, to condemn them, or to transform them poetically.” Or, as he simply expressed it, “Is not the good dispersed all over earth?” Surely “it could not be encompassed by one face of humankind, by one region of the compass.” Rather, “it was dispersed in a thousand faces, ever changing—an eternal Proteus—through all continents and centuries.”34 In short, Herder questioned “Why should the western extremity of our Northern Hemisphere [Western Europe] alone be the home of civilization? And is that really so?”35

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Naturally there are a number of perspectives on any given issue; rarely is it a case of black and white. That said, it is patently evident that the more open-minded views articulated by the likes of Burke, Voltaire, and Herder—all for differing reasons—are in the minority. Thus, it is equally clear that the racism and continental chauvinism sketched out by Bernal predominates across the history of Western political thought, irrespective of ideological positions held. In taking such a stance, generally speaking Western political thought has by-and-large denied or side-lined the relevance and influence of other traditions of thought on Western thinking. One of the simple yet important points to be made here is neatly articulated by Amartya Sen: “Classifying the world of ideas in terms of shared racial characteristics of proximate populations is hardly a wonderful basis for categorizing the history of thought.”36

THE PERVASIVE NATURE OF IDEAS AND INNOVATIONS: OSMOSIS OVER MONOPOLIZATION Contemporary thinking about interactions between East and West cannot help but be influenced by the general tenor of the Western history of thought on the issue of shades of civilization or the degree of political, social, and moral progress among different peoples. But not all contemporary thinking is influenced in the same way; some have accepted that the brief sketch outlined above more or less reflects the reality of the situation, while others have questioned and challenged the Eurocentric view. However, for every Martin Bernal questioning the roots of Western civilization and proposing an Afroasiatic alternative, there are a handful of scholars arguing for the maintenance of the traditional and more widely accepted account of Western civilization’s Greek heritage.37 Similarly, for every John M. Hobson arguing that the “deceptively seductive Eurocentric view is false” and that the “East (which was more advanced than the West between 500 and 1800) provided a crucial role in enabling the rise of modern Western civilization,”38 there are a handful like David Landes who insist “the historical record shows, for the last thousand years, Europe (the West) has been the prime mover of development and modernity.” And when it comes to the “moral issue” of Eurocentrism, thought of as being “bad for us, indeed bad for the world,” Landes disagrees, “prefer[ing] truth to good think.”39 Included in this camp is Charles Murray, who has followed up on Nisbet’s claims about progress and the primacy of the West to supposedly “prove” empirically that the premise is “objectively true” by cataloguing the West’s superior inventory of achievements in science and technology, music, literature, the visual arts, and philosophy.40 To counter this general argument one could highlight some of the East’s influences in the realm of ideas and innovations that were introduced to

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the West. To take just a few examples, Arabic/Islamic breakthroughs in the field of mathematics, particularly in algebra and trigonometry, are critical early developments in the field and crucial to its development. The term algebra actually derives from the title of an important work written in 830 CE by al-Khwa- rizmı- (c. 780–850 CE), H.isa-b al-jabr w’al-muqa-bala; the aljabr in the title was translated around three centuries later as algebra. By the ninth century, many Muslim mathematicians and astronomers agreed that the Earth was spherical, not flat, calculating its circumference to a less than 200 kilometer margin of error. The Arabic or Islamic world also made significant advancements in health, hygiene and medicine; Zakariyya al-Razi’s (c. 865–925 CE) medical writings, for instance, were translated, reprinted and widely available across Europe, representing required reading for would-be Islamic and European physicians alike for centuries. Similarly, Ibn Sı- na- (also known as Avicenna, 980–1037 CE), a Persian philosopher and physician—and important interpreter of Aristotle in the Islamic world—wrote a one million word Canon of Medicine which was a key medical or physiological text for centuries in both the Middle East and Europe through twelfth-century Latin translations. And it was a tenthcentury Muslim surgeon named al-Zahrawi (930–1013 CE) who introduced to the world many of the surgical instruments that have become commonplace, including the scalpel and forceps. In 1206, a Muslim engineer named al-Jazari authored the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, in which he introduced a number of inventions, from combination locks to water clocks, including none more important than the crankshaft. The modern bank check also comes to us from the East; it is thought that in the ninth century a businessman from what we now call the Middle East could cash a check in China drawing on his bank in Baghdad. These are just some of the ideas and inventions that have their origins in the East; added to these are things such as quilting and carpets, gunpowder and the compass, and from chess to the three course meal. In regard to Eastern invention and innovation, John M. Hobson suggests that an early form of “oriental globalization” was well underway while Europe was still stuck in the “Dark Ages,” something later taken advantage of by Europe. Thus the Orient or the East played a critical role in that it has been described as “the midwife, if not the mother, of modern Europe.” Hobson adds that while the Muslim world “learnt much from the Ancient Greeks,” they were more than just “librarians” holding the “original Greek texts in custody before passing them back once the Europeans were ready to receive them.” Rather, the East “not only built on the original ‘Greek ideas’ and took them much further, but at times they were highly critical of them and provided novel departures.”41 As with most contentious issues, particularly big ticket items such as those encapsulated in this debate, there are at least two—and often more—sides

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to the story, and just as many claims to the “truth.” What I think would or should now be accepted by most, irrespective of “who won the day,” if any one civilization can make such a claim, is that East and West have met throughout history, have borrowed and learned from one another, and have made significant contributions to where we all find ourselves today. This much, at least, has been reasonably well catalogued.42 As stated above, no civilization or culture is a completely isolated or self-sufficient island. Rather, for millennia there have been back and forth movement of peoples and exchanges of ideas, inventions, and innovations between East and West and beyond. Who invented what is not or should not really be the key issue of debate; as with any idea or invention people borrow and redesign and rethink and improve on the original. That is how progress is made that spreads far and wide to the benefit of all: through the exchange and sharing of ideas and inventions, not through keeping knowledge and know-how in-house to the exclusion of others.

DECISION-MAKING BY DISCUSSION: THE NON-WESTERN IDEA OF DEMOCRACY Having said all that, there are no doubt plenty of people on both sides of this debate that are simply unwilling to cede any ground whatsoever and are intent on keeping a scorecard of “winners” and “losers.” Hence, I think that there is little value to be gained here by further restating or adding much more to the already weighty volume of literature on the matter. Rather, by way of example, what I want to do is take a concept that is thought of as central to the Western tradition of political thought and socio-political progress and demonstrate that not all is as clear-cut as we have been led to believe. At the same time, this example further undermines the persistent contention in the history of Western political thought that non-Western peoples are socio-politically retarded and incapable of self-government. At present, as conflict rages in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as tensions simmer elsewhere, no concept is more topical and contentious than democracy and democratization, particularly the exporting and imposition of democracy to places and cultures that are thought to be totally alien to the basic principles of democracy. Perhaps more than any other idea or concept, democracy is regarded by many to be a uniquely and exclusively Western idea. But is this really the case? The Western conception of democracy tends to emphasize the importance of democratic institutions and processes largely associated with Western liberal democracies, such as those in Europe, North America, and Australasia. But democratic-like processes are also to be found in the histories of many non-Western peoples and places. Let us begin with a little

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background to illustrate that democracy and the principles underlying the concept are not exclusively a Western invention. The idea and practice of democracy is widely thought to have its roots in ancient Greece around two and a half millennia ago (c. sixth century BCE). Oldest and best known of the Greek democracies is ancient Athens, a city-state something like modern Singapore but considerably smaller. Recent discoveries, however, suggest that some rudimentary form of democracy or predemocracy might have first emerged centuries earlier in the Late Bronze Age (c.1600–1100 BCE) around Mycenae in the northeast Peloponnese. Furthermore, relatively recent archaeological explorations suggest that the ancient Greeks might not have been the first to make use of self-governing assemblies. That honor, rather, possibly belongs to the peoples of the East who once occupied the land that is modern-day Iran and Iraq. From there these early or pre-democratic ideas of decision-making by discussion spread toward the East and the Indian sub-continent and westward to Phoenician port cities such as Byblos and Sidon before arriving in ancient Athens.43 The point to be made here, and as will be outlined further, is that the ideas and ideals behind democracy are not the sole preserve of the Western world. On the contrary, they have a long and prominent history in the East, the West, and beyond, with undoubtedly more than a little borrowing taking place between one and all. One of the inhibiting factors in giving the non-Western tradition of predemocracy the attention it warrants is that scholarship tends to focus on the state as the foremost evolutionary political institution, as Hegel, among others (contemporary scholars included), painfully makes clear. There is a saying, however, that all politics is local; and this is certainly the case for much of human history. Steven Muhlberger and Phil Paine make the point that the vast majority of “human government has been a matter of councils and assemblies,” often incorporating a reasonably significant proportion of the community which adopts a “surprising degree of democratic procedure.” To put it another way, “Humanity possesses a long history of government by discussion, in which groups of people sharing common interests make decisions that affect their lives through debate and consultation, and often enough by voting.”44 Of all the human beings who have ever walked the earth, a large majority of them have lived in small agricultural villages. Consider, for instance, “the ancient tings of Scandinavia, the kampong assemblies of Malaysia, the famous council fires of the Amerindian confederacies, the communes of the vill of medieval England, the gumlao of the Kachin in Burma [Myanmar], the Landesgemeinde of central Europe, the Maori hapus [of New Zealand/Aotearoa], the kokwet of the east African Sebei, the panchayats of India, and countless others.” Of these untold millions of agricultural communities, both past and present, most “have employed some democratic techniques of government” in their decision-making and

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in choosing leaders. No matter what period or place in history one looks at, virtually all villages across time and space have made use of some form of village council system.45 Beyond Western political thought, other prominent theoreticians and practitioners have taken up the cause that democracy is not an exclusively Western idea, contesting the notion that its roots are fixed solely in the Western tradition. It is argued, rather, that some measure of democracy, or decision-making by discussion, has taken place in all corners of the globe among peoples drawing on all traditions of thought, including in the East. Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, for instance, takes issue with the suggestion that “Asian values” based on Confucian ethics—which emphasizes “filial piety, and, by extension, submission to state authority”—run counter to the very essence of democracy. On the contrary, he insists that this account “completely ignores another central precept of Confucian ethics, which … also emphasizes the primacy of the self and the importance of self-cultivation in realizing human potential and guarding against exploitation by the powers that be.” Anwar further highlights that “Islam has always expressed the primacy of ‘adl, or justice,” a concept he identifies as “a close approximation” to the idea of freedom as defined in the West. Moreover, in this particular conception, “justice entails ruling according to the dictates of Islamic law, which emphasize consultation and condemn despotism and tyranny.” Anwar makes the further point that “the great jurist al-Shatibi (d. 790 CE)” eloquently articulated that “the maqasid al-shari’a (higher objectives of the shari’a) sanctify the preservation of religion, life, intellect, family, and wealth.” All of these are “objectives that bear striking resemblance to Lockean ideals that would be expounded centuries later.” 46 Before he became President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Kim Dae Jung noted that “almost two millennia before Locke, Chinese philosopher Meng-tzu preached similar ideas.” Kim continues, in Mengtzu’s “‘Politics of Royal Ways,’ the king is the ‘Son of Heaven,’ and heaven bestowed on its son a mandate to provide good government, that is, to provide good for the people.” If the king failed to “govern righteously, the people had the right to rise up and overthrow his government in the name of heaven.” Kim relates that in Meng-tzu’s philosophy, the “people came first … the country second, and the king third.” Kim further highlights that the “ancient Chinese philosophy of Minben Zhengchi, or ‘people-based politics,’ teaches that ‘the will of the people is the will of heaven’ and that one should ‘respect the people as heaven’ itself.” Similarly, Kim points to Tonghak, a religion native to Korea, which “went even further” with these Lockean ideals. Kim emphasizes that there “are no ideas more fundamental to democracy than the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Tonghak.” Furthermore, he insists that “Asia has democratic philosophies

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as profound as those of the West.” Moreover, while Europe was still mired in feudalism, “China and Korea had already sustained county prefecture systems for about 2,000 years.”47 As indicated above, China’s near neighbor, India, also occupies a prominent place in the prehistory of democracy, as it does in the present as the largest of all democracies. Commentaries and histories of the people and politics of the Indian subcontinent, such as those by James Mill, Hegel, and Marx outlined above, generally characterize it as mired in and handicapped by oriental despotism. In contrast to these generally unflattering accounts, in the fifth and sixth centuries BCE, particularly in northern India, small city-state-like republics and regional federations were, in fact, relatively commonplace. The democratic flavor of ancient India is evident in its literature and records of the period, particularly religious writings known as Vedas and Brahmanas. The general right to self-government of any given group or collective was thought to be reasonably uncontested by the higher powers that be, and the decision-making in these “communities was either oligarchic or democratic in ways recognizable to Greek visitors.” The principles of Buddhist egalitarianism were also “an important strand of social and political thought in the India of the day.” In essence, as Muhlberger and Paine explain, in “India, as in Greece, democracy—in the ancient sense—was commonplace.”48 Africa, too, is generally tarred with a brush similar to that of India as a continent renowned for its authoritarian tradition based on kingship. Much of this “tradition,” however, is a relatively recent “invention” introduced to the continent by European colonial powers.49 As elsewhere, much of pre-colonial Africa was home to “a latticework of decentralized farming villages and autonomous towns,” many of which were more often than not beyond the gaze of monarchical power. And just as elsewhere, many of these villages were run by councils of village elders or assemblies which tended to the day-to-day business of governing.50 The African continent is also home to a good example which runs counter to the suggestion that democracy is not compatible with non-Western peoples because of their emphasis on the group to the exclusion of individual rights and welfare. In Igbo culture, for instance, the concept of chi represents the “sum total of an individual’s life history,” which imbues each and every person with a distinctive “behavioral personality” and makes them “personally responsible and calculative in [their] life and actions.” Thus, for the Igbo, the “individual becomes the last irreducible unit of responsibility who must originate and ‘automate’ [their] own behavior and guard it judiciously against all undue imitation and blind compliance.”51 These are the general principles and values of individualism that are synonymous with any standard account of liberal democracy, perhaps even libertarianism.

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The schema outlined above by Eric Wolf that there is a widespread belief that a direct line can be traced from ancient Greece, as the earliest of democracies, down to the United States as the most advanced experiment in democracy is also a problematic contention. Setting aside the many qualms observers have about the state of democracy in modern America, there is also the contention that the Constitution of the United States, particularly the opening line, “We, the people,” draws on and borrows from the constitution of the native Iroquois peoples.52 More generally, the lawyercum-anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) observed that the Hodenosaunee or Iroquois Confederation’s system of government “was an aristocracy liberalized, until it stood upon the verge of democracy.”53 Even earlier, in speaking of the “Indian method of government,” James Adair (c. 1709–1783) noted in The History of the American Indians that the “Indian method of government” generally consists of a “fœderal union of the whole society for mutual safety.” He further noted that the “power of their chiefs, is an empty sound.” For chiefs “can only persuade or dissuade the people” by “force of good-nature and clear reasoning.” Adair continues: When any national affair is in debate, you may hear every father of a family speaking in his house on the subject, with rapid, bold language, and the utmost freedom that a people can use. Their voices, to a man, have due weight in every public affair, as it concerns their welfare alike … They are very deliberate in their councils … They reason in a very orderly manner, with much coolness and good-natured language, though they may differ widely in their opinions … In this manner they proceed, till each of the head men hath given his opinion on the point in debate. Then they sit down together, and determine upon the affair.

Adair concluded that the Amerindians’ “whole behavior, on public occasions, is highly worthy of imitation by some of our British senators and lawyers.”54 The general point to be made here is that if we think of democracy more in terms of its essence being “decision-making by discussion,” or the application of public reason, and less about institutions and formal processes, then democracy can and should be seen as something more than just a Western idea. On a similar note, self-government and the capacities it entails were also not just the preserve of “civilized” Europe or the West, but were common to virtually all peoples across the globe and throughout much of human history. Indeed, democracy, or decision-making by discussion, might even come to be regarded in a more universal sense; or as having roots across our broader world; in the West, the East, Africa, and among indigenous peoples. At the very least, as Muhlberger and Paine argue, the “evidence is clear that both the idea and the practice of democracy are foreign to no part of the world.”55

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CONCLUSION Why does the non-Western history of democracy or decision-making by discussion matter? We have seen that the experiment of imposing foreign models of democracy in the non-Western world has been less than successful. If consensual popular government is to spread and take root it is more likely to do so in the non-Western world if there is an appreciation that it is part and parcel of other indigenous histories and heritages, if despotism and dictatorship can be shown to be a post-colonial aberration. In a very real sense, history does matter to the present; it is not something that is disconnected from the here and now. A good case in point here is contemporary India. With a population of around one billion people, India would simply not function efficiently as a centrally administered democracy—it is just not practical. Not so functionally dissimilar from the India of yesteryear, the contemporary “Indian national state” is described as an “Indian Union,” a union that relies on a “federal model whose constituent states retain extensive powers.”56 If the twenty-first century invaders and occupiers of Iraq, for instance, came close to a similar understanding and appreciation of its history, then there is a chance that some of the many mistakes made there might have been avoided. And any outcome that improves on the current state of chaos can only be a good thing. The supposedly exclusively Western idea of democracy is just one key example of how ideas that are thought to originate in or “belong” to one particular civilization or peoples are in fact common to greater humanity. Another is the ethic of reciprocity, or the so-called “Golden Rule,” which is a fundamental moral principle common to virtually all of our world’s major religious or cultural or civilizational groups. While it is expressed in a range of ways, the essence of the ethic of reciprocity is captured in the phrase, “treat others as you would like to be treated.” A similar point can be made about the importance of human dignity and its prominent place in a plurality of cultural groupings. And, like democracy, the same can be said of the supposedly exclusively Western or Judaeo-Christian principle of toleration.57 For one reason or another, conflict always seems to attract more attention than cooperation and what we have in common. Nevertheless, there is much to be gained by directing greater attention toward what Eastern, Western and other traditions of thought have in common and have shared and shaped together, particularly in the realm of ideas. In making this point, I would like to borrow Will Durant’s idea that civilization is a stream with banks, and that at times the stream is filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things that tend to attract our attention, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues.58 Like the

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story of civilization, the story of East-West relations and the future of the relationship is the story of what happens on the banks. Anwar Ibrahim, for one, sees the positive work being done on the banks and recognizes the opportunity presented to the current generation of thinkers and leaders when he writes: “For me, there has never been any doubt that our world [the East] and the West are compatible, and that this spirit of inclusiveness and pluralism will continue to be a source of inspiration in bridging the gaps between cultures and civilizations.”59 In a similar line of thinking, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote in History and Truth that human truth lies in the “process in which civilizations confront each other more and more with what is most living and creative in them.” He went on to suggest that human “history will progressively become a vast explanation in which each civilization will work out its perception of the world by confronting all others.” But he thought that “this process has hardly begun” and that it is likely to be a task thrust upon “generations to come” to make better sense of. Looking back on the West’s history of relations with non-Western peoples and cultures, he was unsure of what will become of Western civilization “when it has really met different civilizations by means other than the shock of conquest and domination.” In this regard, he was compelled to “admit that this encounter has not yet taken place at the level of an authentic dialogue.” Ricoeur thought at the time that “we are in a tunnel, at the twilight of dogmatism and the dawn of real dialogues.”60 Since he wrote these words, momentous events such as September 11 and the subsequent war on terrorism, and even the riots that spread across his homeland of France not long after his death, have cast a shadow on this optimism. At the level of diplomatic and international relations, today I fear we are probably closer to midnight than to the dawn of an authentic dialogue between civilizations wherein an exchange of ideas takes place in the true two-way (or multidirectional) sense of the word. The need for inter-civilizational dialogue and understanding has rarely been more urgent. That said, as with many momentous turning points in history, along with great challenges come great opportunities which must be seized upon by people operating at all levels. And in this regard there is good cause for hope; gatherings such as the World Social Forum and similar events are doing their bit to facilitate and advance inter-civilizational dialogue. Similarly, ranging from the level of individuals to larger collectives and communities of faith, each and every day multiple dialogues and exchanges of ideas are taking place; some of them are face to face, many of them over the Internet, but all of them adding to and aiding the cause of shared understandings. As we engage in these dialogues-cum-debates or debates-cum-dialogues, we would all do well to keep in mind a point reiterated by Edward Said in the Preface to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Orientalism: “Rather

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than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow.”61

NOTES 1. See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49; and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Touchstone Books, 1998). 2. John Donne, Meditation XVII, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions [1624]. 3. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 4–5. 4. Wolf, Europe, 5. 5. See, for instance, J.M. Roberts, Triumph of the West (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985). 6. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, revised ed., trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 5. 7. Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (London: Heinemann, 1980), 8. 8. Friedrich von Schiller, “The Nature and Value of Universal History: An Inaugural Lecture” [1789], History and Theory 11 (1972): 325–27. 9. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, abridged ed. Helmut Werner, English abridged ed. Arthur Helps, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 13. Italics in original. 10. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, 2 vols. (London: Free Association Books, 1987), I, 2. Italics in original. 11. Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” [1784], in Kant On History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 24–25. 12. David Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographic Evils,” Public Culture 12, no. 2 (2000): 534. Kant sought an exemption from university regulations to teach geography and taught the course at least forty-nine times; by way of comparison he taught logic and metaphysics fifty-four times, ethics on fortysix occasions, and anthropology twenty-eight times. 13. Immanuel Kant, Geographie (Physiche Geographie), trans. M. Cohen-Halimi, M. Marcuzzi, and V. Seroussi (Bibliotheque Philosophique, Paris, 1999). Quoted in Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism,” 533. 14. G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 2 vols., trans. T.M. Knox, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), II, 1061–1062. 15. Ranajit Guha, History at the Limit of World-History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 9. 16. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 87. 17. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 162. 18. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 142.

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19. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 163. 20. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), para. 331, 213. 21. Guha, History, 10. 22. F. C. S. Schiller, introduction to E.H. Goddard and P.A. Gibbons, Civilisation or Civilisations: An Essay in the Spenglerian Philosophy of History (London: Constable & Company, 1926), vii. 23. James Mill, The History of British India, 9 vols. (London: J. Madden, 1840– 1848). 24. Karl Marx, “Revolution in China and in Europe,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Colonialism (New York: International Publishers, 1972), 20. 25. Friedrich Engels, “Persia and China,” in Marx and Engels, On Colonialism, 120, 124. 26. Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Essai sur l’inégalitié des races humaines, quoted in Frank H. Hankins, The Racial Basis of Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 34. 27. Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of Unconscious, 3 vols., trans. William Chatterton Coupland (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., 1893), II, 11–12. 28. Herbert Spencer, Social Statistics [1850], revised ed. (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1892), 234–236. See also J.C. Prichard, “On the Extinction of Human Races,” Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 28 (1839): 166–170. 29. Arthur James Balfour, quoted in Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 31–33. On the relation between the ideal of civilization and the capacity for self-government, see Brett Bowden, “The Ideal of Civilisation: Its Origins and Socio-Political Character,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (2004): 25–50. 30. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1962), 73–74. 31. Bernal, Black Athena, I, 172, 25. 32. See, for instance, Edmund Burke, “India,” in Selections: With Essays by Hazlitt, Arnold & Others, ed. A. M. D. Hughes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), 111. 33. Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 2 vols. (London: A. Lewis, 1849), I, 265. 34. Johann Gottfried Herder, On World History: An Anthology, ed. Hans Adler and Ernest A. Menze, trans. Ernest A. Menze and Michael Palma (Armonk, New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 41. Italics in original. 35. Herder, On World History, 47. 36. Amartya Sen, “Democracy and its Global Roots,” The New Republic 6 (October 2003). 37. Bernal, Black Athena; Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, eds., Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Martin Bernal, Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to his Critics, ed. David Chioni Moore (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). 38. John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2. See also J. M. Blaut, The Colonizer’s Model of the World (New York: Guilford Press, 1993). 39. David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London: Abacus, 1999), xxi.

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40. Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (New York: Harper Collins, 2003). 41. John M. Hobson, “The Cosmopolitan Side of Europe’s Development: Eastern Origins of European Civilisation,” in Europe and Asia: Towards a New Cosmopolitanism, ed. Gerard Delanty (London: Routledge, 2006), 107–119. 42. See for instance, Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization; J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1997); Cyriac K. Pullapilly and Edwin J. Van Kley, eds., Asia and the West: Encounters and Exchanges from the Age of Explorations (Notre Dame: Cross Cultural Publications, 1986), Lewis A. Maverick, China: a Model for Europe (San Antonio: Paul Anderson Co., 1946); Stanwood Cobb, Islamic Contributions to Civilization (Washington, D. C.: Avalon Press, 1963); Adolf Reichwein, China and Europe: Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1925). 43. John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (London: The Free Press and New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). 44. Steven Muhlberger and Phil Paine, “Democracy’s Place in World History,” Journal of World History 4 (1993): 27. 45. Muhlberger and Paine, “Democracy’s Place,” 32. 46. Anwar Ibrahim, “Universal Values and Muslim Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 17 (2006): 6–7; see also Chenyang Li, “Confucian Value and Democratic Value,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 31 (1997): 183–93; Lee Teng-hui, “Chinese Culture and Political Renewal,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1995): 3–8. 47. Kim Dae Jung, “Is Culture Destiny?”, Foreign Affairs 73, no. 6, (November/ December 1994): 191–92. 48. Muhlberger and Paine, “Democracy’s Place,” 34–39. See also Jagdish P. Sharma, Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968); and Anant Sadashiv Altekar, State and Government in Ancient India, 2nd ed. (Banaras: Motilal Banarsidass, 1955). 49. See Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 211–62. 50. Muhlberger and Paine, “Democracy’s Place,” 32–33. 51. Lambert U. Ejiofor, Dynamics of Igbo Democracy: A Behavioural Analysis of Igbo Politics in Aguinyi Clan (Ibadan: University Press Ltd. published for the University of Nigeria Press, 1981), 106. The Igbo are one of the largest single ethnic groups in Africa, scattered across western and central Africa, particularly southeast Nigeria. 52. See Charles L. Mee, The Genius of the People (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). More generally, see Bruce E. Johansen, Native American Political Systems and the Evolution of Democracy: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995). 53. Lewis H. Morgan, The League of the Iroquois [1851] (North Dighton, Mass.: JG Press, 1995), 126. 54. James Adair, Adair’s History of the American Indians [1775], ed. Samuel Cole Williams (New York: Promontory Press, 1930), 459–60. 55. Muhlberger and Paine, “Democracy’s Place,” 28. 56. Arjun Appadurai, “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics,” Public Culture 14 (2002): 32.

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57. Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Cf. J. C. Laursen, ed., Religious Toleration: The “Variety of Rites” from Cyrus to Defoe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Mehdi Amin Razavi and David Ambuel, eds., Philosophy, Religion, and the Question of Intolerance (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997). 58. See Will Durant in Life, 18 October 1963. 59. Anwar Ibrahim, “Universal Values,” 5. 60. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 283–84. 61. Edward Said, “Preface,” Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), xxii.

6 Viewing Islam through Enlightenment Eyes Vicki A. Spencer

Just as those eager to avoid the charge of essentialism are quick to point out that “Islam” is not one single, determinate entity, scholars have been equally concerned in recent times to emphasize that there was never a single “Enlightenment” project.1 Given the heterogeneity of this highly fertile period of European intellectual activity, it is unsurprising, then, to find that various Enlightenment eyes viewed Islam in differing ways.2 By the latter part of the seventeenth century the military threat of Islamic countries to European states had abated and far more accurate information concerning Islamic practices had become available.3 Derogatory images of Muhammad nonetheless remained a part of the intellectual milieu of the era, as is evident by the influence of Humphrey Prideaux’s highly popular The True Nature of Imposture Fully Displayed in the Life of Mahomet (1697). That Prideaux, however, felt the need to attack the Prophet With a discourse annex’d for the vindication of Christianity from this charge. Offered to the considerations of the Deists of the present age is itself indicative of changing attitudes amongst others and a greater openness to accept, albeit partially, Islam as a religion of comparable stature and importance to Christianity when it had been previously dismissed outright as a morally corrupt and false one. At the same time, increasing criticisms of Christian superstitions meant that Islamic ones often fared no better, and the history of Muslim conquests and colonialism in Europe4 meant the image of Muhammad as a conqueror wielding a sword possessed a particularly enduring power in the European imagination. Yet such comparisons, at times, also yielded a picture of Islam as equally or more rational in its beliefs and Muslim practices as far more tolerant than Christian ones. For the European reformers of the time, the real enemy was not an external alien force but the corruption, hypocrisy, and intolerance amongst Christians. 109

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Despite the different strategies toward Islam evident in the works to be examined in this chapter, I argue that a close reading of selected texts by Pierre Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu reveals that they did not view Christian precepts or practices, and hence European ones, as superior in any straightforward manner if at all. The reevaluation of Islam that they undertook was admittedly often partial. Bayle does not overturn Christian attitudes outright by accepting the Muslim claim that Muhammad was a prophet and the Quran the word of God. Yet to do so would have been heresy, and to appreciate past texts and thinkers it is crucial from a hermeneutic perspective to take into account the context of their age. Both social pressure and government censorship meant the French intellectuals, in particular, had to take considerable care in challenging Christian orthodoxy, and yet, as deists who believed in God but took a skeptical approach to all revealed religions irrespective of their particular allegiances, it was no less their common objective. Their treatment of Islam was invariably connected to their perspective on Christianity and as such their analyses were intrinsically comparative. Their various reform agendas further meant that Islam was not examined purely on its own terms. But their comparisons did lead to self-criticism and critical reflection on their own practices, with it becoming commonplace to employ Islam to highlight Christian hypocrisy and intolerance. This did not necessarily lead to positive depictions of Islam or Muhammad. Montesquieu and Voltaire exploited highly disparaging images as a safe means to instruct Christians on the dangers of despotism and fanaticism respectively, but I argue that their view of Islam is more nuanced than is often supposed when neither their historical context nor their reform agenda with respect to Catholicism is taken into account. In the case of Voltaire, I demonstrate that his clandestine work reveals he saw Islam as a superior religion to Christianity. Both their successes and failures in presenting Islam in a relatively fair and unbiased manner are, moreover, instructive in reflecting upon those conditions that enable genuine intercultural communication, the hermeneutic aim of comparative political theory.5 “It is opinion,” according to Hans-Georg Gadamer, “that suppresses questions” and hence an openness to learn from others dialogically, whether the “Thou” is a text or a different culture.6 The alternative is not a naïve objectivity whereby the investigator can take on the stance of a neutral spectator. We cannot, as Fred Dallmayr also indicates, take on a “view from nowhere.”7 As embedded creatures within a particular cultural and historical context, we all possess “prejudices,” to use Gadamer’s term, or, in Heidegger’s terminology, “fore-sight” and “fore-conceptions.” The hermeneutic aim is not the impossible one of ridding ourselves of these prejudices but accepting them as our startingpoint. By being conscious of our assumptions, we are then in a position to

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check them through constant questioning and by being open to the “Thou” to tell us something against which we can then reevaluate our initial prejudices. Rather than an object of our investigation, the “Thou” in comparative theory is a partner in intensive dialogue and engagement in the search for shared meanings across cultures. Neither our prejudices nor difference are extinguished but the reevaluation of them entails a “fusion of these horizons” whereby we look beyond our own perspective and develop a wider vision.8 Such conversations are not always harmonious and can involve contestation. Mistranslations and misunderstandings remain possible. Yet the important point, according to Dallmayr, is whether we engage in a presumed self-righteous and hegemonic arrogance whereby we see all other societies as categories of our own or whether we are willing to engage in a mutually transforming learning process.9 It is my contention that, to some extent, Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) exemplifies these hermeneutic qualities. Already well-known amongst London’s literary circle, Montagu traveled through Europe to the Levant on 2 August 1716 when her husband, Edward Wortley, was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Turkey. Her first-hand experience of life in the Ottoman Empire immediately distinguishes her work from the French intellectuals who instead relied on such travelers’ reports. But, as many of the travelers of the time exemplify, first-hand observations of other cultures do not necessarily result in a “fusion of horizons.” Instead, when Montagu succeeds in reevaluating her prejudices and thereby broadening her vision, it is due to her willingness to engage in genuine dialogue through question and answer, and sometimes contestation, with those she sees as equal partners. The result is not always accurate information regarding Islamic beliefs and practices, but there is a richness in her text and empathy for those she engages with that means Islam is presented as rational and Muslims as moral as any Christian. Without eradicating their differences, she radically subverts the dominant perception of her time that Muslim women were oppressed and she is sufficiently open to embrace the Turkish practice of inoculation against smallpox. By contrast, the French intellectuals were hampered not merely, as Gadamer suggests, by a naïve empiricism that meant they did not grasp that our prejudices are inescapable.10 Both Bayle and Voltaire show that their engagement with texts on Islam led to a reevaluation of their assumptions and self-criticism of European practices whereby the latter were by no means rendered superior. Their focus remained dominated, however, by what was nearest to them, that is, their reform agenda for their own society. It is through this lens that they largely evaluated Islam. However, for us to understand their various strategies toward Islam, it is just as imperative that we place their texts within the particular historical context in which they wrote.

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SUBTERFUGE AND THE FRENCH INTELLECTUALS If the French intellectuals were primarily concerned with their own social and political conditions and tended to view difference in terms of their own problems, they, at least, had good reason for doing so. The Enlightenment, sometimes characterized as the “age of tolerance,”11 was, in France, far from it. After the assassination of the Huguenot King Henry IV, the Edict of Nantes of 1598 was revoked in 1685 and the period of toleration the Huguenots had enjoyed was suppressed under Louis XIV. Yet even before this new era of persecution with Protestants who refused to convert being beaten, imprisoned, and driven into exile, Bayle, who had converted from his family’s religion for a short time to Catholicism in 1669–1670, on reverting to Calvinism was sent by his family to live in exile to avoid the penalties associated with renouncing his conversion. His brother, Jacob, was later put into prison as a consequence of his writings and died therein.12 A short period of partial liberalization existed following Louis XIV’s death that enabled Montesquieu’s anonymously published Persian Letters (1721) to avoid censure. Given the boldness of its critique of the clergy and both Louis XIV’s regime and the Regency, not to mention its eroticism, it was always a surprise to Voltaire that Montesquieu had managed to escape attack.13 But by the time the Regent died in December 1723, the small liberties enjoyed had already been revoked14 with a new decree declaring that no work “contrary to religion, public or sound morality”15 could obtain royal approval. Although, to use Brumfit’s words, the “icy grip of despotism” was never again as “thick” as it had been under Louis XIV,16 in 1741 the government employed seventy-six censors which grew to 178 by 1789. Royal approval did not, however, mean that the magistrates, parlements, or the clergy would agree and they often succeeded in having the royal seal revoked in what was a complex web of surveillance and control.17 No real appreciation of the texts of the French philosophers of this era is possible without an understanding of the fear generated by such control and the courage required to challenge it. To criticize the church and religious dogma when the Catholic Church still very much dominated the state constituted a revolutionary political act,18 and to present alternative religions as legitimate was in itself an implicit critique. In an era with such strict censorship, where freedom of speech was far from a reality and any intellectual work that did not conform to religious doctrine was subject to severe suspicion and its author to possible imprisonment, Rebecca Joubin argues that the French philosophes “were forced to use innuendo, allegory, irony, and other literary techniques” to convey their criticisms of both the church and state.19 Satire, where fiction and fact become intermingled through the use of irony, was well-suited to such subterfuge and due to its comic elements further ensured an audience for one’s political views, as is

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evident by the popularity of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. With a public captivated by the adventures of voyagers to the East due to the publication of numerous travel diaries during the seventeenth century and Antoine Galland’s A Thousand and One Nights early in the eighteenth century, Montesquieu also exploited their insatiable appetite for the mysterious and exotic. But in basing his work on the perspectives of two cultivated Persians as they saw Paris for the first time, he not only comically plays with the structure of cultural voyeurism; as the text unfolds Persia melds into Paris and Islam into Catholicism.20 Certainly, it is no less a critique of what Montesquieu saw as Persian despotism and Islamic superstitions, but his strategy was not thereby to render either Christianity or French society and politics superior. Whilst it would have been far too dangerous even for his two Persian visitors, Usbek and Rica, to condemn Catholicism outright, their critique of Islamic beliefs and practices that just happen to have an uncanny resemblance to Catholic ones meant Montesquieu could do so and yet deny accusations that it was a veiled attack on Catholicism.21 What is often less appreciated is that the need for subterfuge equally affected the ability of the French intellectuals to express their views freely in their nonfictional works. It is commonplace to indicate that despite their claim to be applying objective scientific methods to their historical studies, their “histories” were often riddled with hasty generalizations and a polemical intent that meant even the data available to them was, at times, distorted for their own purposes.22 It was not until Johann Gottfried Herder’s sustained critique in the 1770s of such methodological practices that it began to be seen as the historian’s first and foremost task to attempt to understand other cultures and the past in their own terms. But their inability to relate even what they saw as the truth was an additional constraint that also needs to be recognized. That this was particularly so with respect to theological matters is clearly expressed in d’Alembert’s admission of the “poor” quality of the articles on “theology and metaphysics” in the Encylopédie which he attributed to having “theologians as censors.” Voltaire similarly lamented when he wrote to Diderot in 1758 that “it is a real pity that in everything that concerns metaphysics and even history, one cannot tell the truth ... One is obliged to lie, and then one is persecuted for not having lied enough.”23 Nor did Bayle’s residence in the relatively tolerant Netherlands mean he was immune to the religious pressures of his era.24 If these deists thus appear, at times, to conform to conventional Christian polemics against Islam, it is necessary to read closely to see the more subversive and dissident elements in their texts. This subversive technique is evident in one of the most important early texts to begin the revision of Islam in the late seventeenth century, Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697).25 If one reads only the main text and not the extensive footnotes in his twenty-three pages on “Mahomet,”

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one could easily conclude, despite his concern to argue against many of the more outlandish Christian polemics that claimed Muhammad was an antiChrist, a devil, that his tomb hung in the air and his body had been eaten by dogs, that Bayle was “no admirer of Islam” given his generally unsympathetic portrait.26 The first two pages present the Prophet as an unfaithful man to his wives whom he also beat and not long after retiring to Medina “discovered his design of planting his religion by arms.”27 Bayle criticizes the unfair zeal of Muhammad’s disputants in ridiculing him based on the extravagances of the miracles attributed to him by his followers as he never claimed them himself, but he concurs with the view that Muhammad was an “impostor”28 who used religion to “aggrandize himself.” He quotes a positive portrait of the Prophet as a man with a “pleasant disposition” who consistently helped others, but only to demonstrate that rather than a “true fanatic” he knew his business well.29 Thus, Bayle at first appears to repeat the essence of Prideaux’s vitriolic attack by depicting Muhammad as a man motivated solely by lust and ambition and whose success was attributed to the sword; he later reaffirms this perspective by recommending Prideaux’s work to those who wish to confirm Muhammad’s imposture. In place of the anti-Christ of previous theological polemics, Muhammad was recast as a clever yet devious Machiavellian figure. Bayle proceeds, however, systematically to deconstruct this image. He repeats without comment in the main text the belief that Muhammad’s success was due to his toleration of corrupt manners and the promise of a sensual paradise, but in his footnotes argues the contrary case. Rather than derogating “from the morality of the Gospels,” as far as Bayle can find with respect to Muslim ceremonies, the Prophet “considerably increased the yoke of the Christians” and promoted the opposite of the corruption of humanity with his precepts of “patience in adversity, of not speaking evil of our neighbors, of being charitable, of renouncing vanity, of doing no injury to any man, and lastly, that, which is the epitome of the law and the prophets, Do to your neighbor, what you would that he should do unto you.”30 Thus, he dispels the “illusion” that Islam is a corrupt religion and concludes “without flattering this religion, that the most excellent precepts, that can be given to man, for the practice of virtue, and avoiding of vice, are contained in these aphorisms.”31 In his fair-minded manner, he later summarizes travelers’ reports that show the Turkish possess considerable “probity, charity and devotion” and those that accuse them of “extreme lewdness,” but in their defense argues that what has been “written of the court of Rome and what may be written of many Christian nations, is no better.”32 Whilst he sees Islam as a religion prejudicial to women,33 he correctly reports against more fanciful claims that men could not marry more than four wives and only then if they could keep peace amongst them. Further contrary to the dominant perceptions at the time, which he faithfully

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reports, he acknowledges at the end of this discussion that learned Muslims state women are not excluded from paradise.34 When he returns to discuss in more depth his view of Islam’s success arising largely from its use of arms, he demonstrates that it is invariably more tolerant than Christianity. Far from the military might of Islamic empires proving the true divinity of Christianity as some argued, in a lengthy footnote Bayle details the use of the sword by Christians from the time of the Christian emperors’ destruction of Paganism through to its more recent use against those sects who condemned the Pope as well as in the Indies. It follows that Christians cannot then condemn Muslims for their use of such tactics.35 He equally disputes the Catholic claim that “extent is a mark of the true church” employed in their cause against the Protestants by arguing that if this were the case then “the Mahometan may more justly pass for the true church, than the Christian” as Muslim military might, which had extended well into Europe, showed that “[t]he exploits of the Mahometans are without doubt the most glorious things that History affords.”36 Similarly, he dismisses the notion of the true church having the most temporal blessings as a sign of Christianity’s superiority, as it would surely fail in comparison to Islam which has produced the greatest scientists, philosophers, poets, astronomers, and wits.37 But most telling, the history of the Muslims demonstrates that in practice they were invariably far more tolerant than the Christians who did nothing but persecute, so that: It may be affirmed for a certain Truth, That if the western princes had been lords of Asia, instead of the Saracens and Turks, there would be now no remnant of the Greek church, and they would not have tolerated Mahometism, as these Infidels have tolerated Christianity.38

He concludes skeptically that people rarely keep to their principles since the Quran enjoins Muslims to persecute the infidels and the Bible prohibits Christians from doing so.39 Whilst neither claim is entirely correct in theological terms, as Christians could justify their actions based on the Bible’s dictum that “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force”40 and the Quran clearly states that “There is no compulsion in religion,”41 with his careful use of empirical evidence and logical argumentation Bayle nonetheless dispelled any superior sense Christians might hold over Muslims. A half-century later, the theological issues were of little consequence to Montesquieu, whose stated aim in Book Twenty Four of The Spirit of the Laws (1748) was to examine the utility of various religions with respect to their effect on the welfare of society. Whilst the epithet of impostor was still used in even one of the most generally recognized sympathetic portraits of Muhammad in the eighteenth century—Henri Boulainvilliers’s clandestine work The Life of Mohammad (1730–1)—Montesquieu avoids its use.

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Nevertheless, his comparative analysis of Christianity and Islam draws a sharp battle line between the two religions; the former is responsible for creating a moderate, responsive, and gentle government, and the latter a cruel and despotic one: The Christian religion is remote from pure despotism; the gentleness so recommended in the gospel stands opposed to the despotic fury with which a prince would mete out his own justice and exercise his cruelties. As this religion forbids having more than one wife, princes here are less confined, less separated from their subjects, and consequently more human; they are more disposed to give laws to themselves and more capable of feeling that they cannot do everything. Whereas Mohammedan princes constantly kill or are killed, among Christians religion makes princes less timid and consequently less cruel. The prince counts on his subjects, and the subjects on the prince.42

He continues in the following chapter: From the character of the Christian religion and that of the Mohammedan religion, one should, without further examination, embrace the one and reject the other, for it is much more evident to us that a religion should soften the mores of men than it is that a religion is true. It is a misfortune for human nature when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahommedan religion, which speaks only with a sword, continues to act on men with the destructive spirit that founded it.43

He further criticizes the Muslim practice of praying five times per day and its “dogma of an inflexible destiny” which he thinks creates an unhealthy indifference toward the material world. Here, too, he holds Islam responsible for destroying the Persian Empire by failing to correct “the bad effects of despotism” in contrast to its former religion of the Ghebers or the positive effects of Christianity on Ethiopia despite its size and climate that meant it was more suited to despotism.44 Thus, Montesquieu reasserts the superiority of Christianity over Islam, not as a theologian, but in terms of the consequences of their doctrines for government. Islam becomes the sole explanatory tool for despotism, an argument that persists today. What is most interesting and perplexing, however, is that even from Montesquieu’s perspective these claims about Christianity and government were false. In the Persian Letters, Rica describes King Louis XIV as the most powerful ruler in Europe who most admired the Turkish and Persian governments and, like a “great magician,” had authority even over the minds of his subjects, making “them think what he wants,” and who was only controlled by an even stronger magician, the Pope.45 Alain Grosrichard argues that Montesquieu’s ironic comparison in the Persian Letters that highlighted the failings of both religions was later replaced by the above preemptory

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comments because the issue of despotism was now on his agenda.46 But, as Judith Shklar notes, “[d]espotism was Montesquieu’s perpetual nightmare,” and it is by no means less evident in the Persian Letters where he examines “both its sinister psychological structure and its crushing social effects.”47 Moreover, in The Spirit of the Laws he considers such Christian countries as Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Russia to have despotic systems to varying degrees.48 One would have also thought that such a clear declaration supporting Christianity would have made Montesquieu’s work immune from the condemnation of the Theology Department of the Sorbonne and the Catholic Church that it nonetheless received so that it was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books.49 The question that thus begs is whether Montesquieu, in equating Christianity with moderate government as opposed to Islam and despotism, was employing Islam not to show what was the case but to argue implicitly what “ought to be” in Christian societies.50 At the outset of his discussion of religion he strategically states, for example, that “[t]he Christian religion, which orders men to love one another, no doubt wants the best political laws and the best civil laws for each people.” Whilst the above comments suggest any further examination of Islamic practices is redundant, in chapter sixteen he admits that “religion, even a false one, is the best warrant men can have of the integrity of men” indicating that “religion can sustain the political state when the laws are powerless.” All hostilities amongst Arabian tribes cease for four months each year, and Montesquieu further indicates by citing the Quran that Muhammad introduced the principle of reconciliation to deal with injustices and injury in opposition to the law of retaliation that Bayle had mistakenly attributed to Islam.51 At the same time, he acknowledges that it is most often the use or abuse of religions, rather than the truth or falsity of their doctrines, that makes them “useful or pernicious to men in the civil state.”52 Then, reversing his earlier position, in Book Twenty Five he develops a more complex sociological view of religion where it is no longer a mere tool employed by governments in the same way as laws.53 Instead, arguing that religion can act as a restraint on government, he writes that to prevent a prince “in despotic government, whose nature is to unite all the different powers in the same person,” from regarding religion as dependent on his will “there must be records of the religion, for example, sacred books that fix and establish it. The king of Persia is the leader of the religion, but the Koran regulates the religion.”54 Rather than being the explanatory tool for despotism, Islam is instead credited with limiting the actions of a despotic ruler. In Book Twenty Five, Montesquieu also takes up the theme of tolerance and criticizes the practice in Europe when a people was forced to change its religion upon decree whenever its ruler converted. Religions, he argues, generally suit the climate where they develop and, besides, such

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authoritarianism based on whim in regard to belief only creates cynicism toward the laws.55 Following his argument that penal law ought to be avoided in religion, he quotes a lengthy letter that he says was written by a Jew in response to the burning of a ten-year-old Jewess by the Inquisition. Although claiming that he believes “it is the most useless thing that has ever been written,”56 no such declaration for the censors can override the power and force of the plea contained within for Christians to act as Christ decreed by denouncing such cruelty or, at the very least, to act in accordance with natural justice. In a technique that, following Bayle, became commonplace in the eighteenth century, Montesquieu employs Islam to point out Christian hypocrisy in criticizing the rise of Islam through violence whilst employing exactly the same techniques of submission.57 Continuing with the same theme in Book Twenty Six, he advocates tolerance also toward polygamy: When a religion that prohibits polygamy comes into a country in which it is permitted, one does not believe, speaking politically only, that the law of the country should permit a man with several wives to embrace this religion, unless the magistrate or the husband compensates the wives while returning them in some way to their civil state. Failing this, their condition would be deplorable …58

With the following two chapters returning to the issue of the Inquisition, his analysis proceeds to one that ultimately is most condemnatory of the “tribunal of the inquisition” which he emphatically states is against all good policy and “unbearable in all governments.”59 Thus, whilst Montesquieu initially presents a crude dichotomy between Christianity and Islam that sees the former as pure and the latter as the cause of despotic governments, his analysis proceeds to one that instructs Christians on tolerance toward other religions in both other countries and their own in accord with his opening declaration that, of course, they would want the best civil laws in keeping with Christ’s teachings of love. These strategies are equally evident in Voltaire’s play Mahomet (1741), a tragedy that fictionalizes a moment in Muhammad’s life following his return to Mecca. As is evident by its full title in French, Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet, Voltaire conforms to the dominant trope of the Prophet as a Machiavellian character flourishing a sword and prepared to manipulate religious doctrine and the zeal of his adherents for his greedy and lustful ambitions. His intention was not to challenge this stereotype through satire but to counter all religious fanaticism as represented by the character of Séide, who despite his good and noble nature is indoctrinated by Mahomet into agreeing to assassinate Zopire, the governor of Mecca who refuses to submit to Mahomet. When Séide initially hesitates, the blind adherence demanded of him is overt in Mahomet’s response:

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Who for themselves would impiously judge, Or see with their own Eyes; who dares to think Was never born a Proselyte for me.60

It is earlier revealed that Mahomet had recently become aware that Séide and Palmire, whose love he had encouraged, are brother and sister and Zopire’s children but it is unknown to them until Zopire lies dying from Séide’s hand. The play concludes with Séide’s failed attempt to assassinate the villainous Mahomet when he is struck down by the poison Mahomet had arranged for him so that he could take Palmire for himself, the fall of Mecca, and Palmire’s tragic suicide. Well-acquainted with Bayle’s work and having utilized Boulainvilliers’s text as the main source for his biographical data,61 Voltaire was cognizant that his portrait of Muhammad was a highly prejudicial and false stereotype. As its Parisian premiere was delayed to avoid offending the Turkish ambassador whilst he was in residence,62 he was equally aware of the insulting and disrespectful nature of such blasphemy to Muslims. He later apologized in his “Autobiography” “for having painted Mahomet in more odious colors than he deserved” adding the rationalization that if he had made the Prophet a “hero … the piece would have been hissed.”63 But it is not, as Ian Richard Netton claims, entirely paradoxical that in his histories his portrait is more balanced.64 Following the order for his arrest and the burning of his Philosophical Letters when it was published in France (1734), Voltaire never again placed his name on his social criticisms, which his histories invariably were.65 By contrast, Mahomet was a public performance where he could not deny authorship. Greater subterfuge was instead necessary in the text itself, and whilst his allusions to Christianity and Jansenist zeal were lost on his first audiences in Lille, they were not on the Parisians. The protests were so intense that Voltaire agreed, when reminded of the order for his arrest, to close it down after three performances. He responded by ironically dedicating the play to Pope Benedict XIV, who in return gave Voltaire two gold medals bearing his portrait and in correspondence thanked him for his “very beautiful tragedy.”66 Whether we should interpret this as the Pope being duped, him responding to Voltaire instead as a man of letters, or merely a sign of the ambiguity that often marred Voltaire’s plays, is a matter of dispute.67 Still, even the direct Christian allusion when Mahomet refers to Abraham’s willingness to perform God’s command to kill Isaac—“the first assassination ordered by God in our books”68—would likely be missed by most readers today. That he intended to highlight the dangers of all religious zeal is nonetheless confirmed by Voltaire’s correspondence in which he stressed the parallels with Christian fanatics, citing three attempts by committed Christians to murder French kings and claiming arrogantly that if Ravaillac had seen it, he would not have assassinated Henry IV.69

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In his war on religious fanaticism,70 Voltaire possessed no qualms in exploiting what he knew to be highly erroneous Christian prejudices against Islam, and Mahomet, which went on to be one of his most successful plays,71 undeniably reinforces negative perceptions of Muhammad. Nevertheless, to see Voltaire as possessing an “anti-Islamic bias” and “hostility toward Muslims,”72 or to say that he displays “the three aspects of the Enlightenment Paradigm—distaste for the alien, fear of the threat and fascination with the exotic,”73 as a consequence, is problematic. Voltaire was hostile to and intolerant of all religious superstitions, and he can just as readily be characterized as having an anti-Christian bias, distaste for the familiar, and a fear of the threat of Christianity.74 His crusade against it, launched in full flight with the publication of his clandestine religious pamphlets during the 1760–1770s, ironically displays all the zeal of a fanatic intent on extinguishing the flames igniting his terror. He was inordinately insensitive in his use of sarcasm and wit, “cruel and unfair” with a “propaganda’s half-truth,”75 and exceeded “what many would consider to be the bounds of normal restraint.”76 All these qualities characterize his An Important Study by Lord Bolingbroke (1767), a key work in his campaign. Based on his biblical studies undertaken with Mme. de Châtelet during the same period he wrote Mahomet,77 it contains a relentless satirical attack on the absurdities and contradictions contained in the Old and New Testaments, and on the behavior of the founding Fathers of the Church and the Roman Catholic papacy for their hypocrisy, corruption, and intolerance of others. He denies the first Christians were ever persecuted by the Romans, who gave freedom to all sects, and presents a portrait of Christian victimization to rival that of Nietzsche’s in the nineteenth century.78 No doubt Muhammad was an impostor in Voltaire’s eyes but only in the sense that he believed all who claimed to be prophets in every revealed religion throughout time were impostors.79 Here Christianity is his indisputable target, whilst his treatment of the Old Testament means Judaism is equally ridiculed. He questions Moses’s very existence, claiming he must have been a magician: “Was there ever a Moses? Everything about him from his birth to his death was so stupendous that he appears as fantastic a personage as our wizard Merlin.”80 Nor is Christ immune to his satirical pen asserting “[t]hat a Jew named Jesus may have been similar to God, or consubstantial to God is equally absurd and impious.”81 Significantly, he does not apply the epithet of impostor to Muhammad but to the Apostle Paul who in his view was the lowest and the most “impudent impostor” who ludicrously claimed that he had traveled to “the third heaven.” Islam is employed in this context to highlight the hypocrisy of Christians for accepting unquestionably such claims contained in the Bible whilst laughing “at Muhammad when his commentators claim that he visited all the seven heavens in one night.”82 But, unlike the “tyrannical master” Paul, who

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displays “the madness for power” by attempting to deceive the Corinthians by lying himself, echoing Bayle he writes, “at least Muhammad does not talk in his Koran of such a fantasy as was ascribed to him.”83 When comparing Islam and Christianity, the former is represented as the more rational: Muhammedanism was without a doubt more sensible than Christianity. It did not adore a Jew while abhorring Jews; it did not fall into the extravagant blasphemy of asserting that three gods make one god; it did not call a Jewish woman mother of god; and it did not eat the god whom it adored, nor render its creator on the stool. To believe in one all-powerful god was its sole dogma; and if it had not been added that Muhammed was its prophet, it would have been a religion as pure, as beautiful as that of the Chinese men of letters. It was a simple theism, a natural religion, and in consequence a true one. Muslims can be excused for calling Muhammed the spokesman of God, since in fact he taught the Arabs that there is only one God.84

By contrast, “I conclude that all sensible men, all honest men must hold the Christian religion in dread.”85 It is no wonder that Voltaire, who wrote his first play while in the Bastille and who even had his letters watched and intercepted by the authorities,86 attributed the work to his friend Lord Bollingbroke who had already passed away. Thereby protected from the wrath of the censors so that he could express his views freely, such tracts demonstrate conclusively that Voltaire by no means singled out Islam for ridicule. On the contrary, unlike Montesquieu, who was willing to tolerate Islam in the private sphere for the greater good of peaceful coexistence and in the interests of natural justice but had little interest in its spiritual dimension, it is evident that Voltaire had genuine respect for the precepts of this “alien” religion in which he found strong affinities with his Natural Theology,87 whilst he possessed only contempt for the real enemy at home. To be sure, he was willing to disrespect it, too, in the greater interest of his polemics, but if we are seeking to discover how Voltaire viewed Islam, his clandestine works that he published only when he felt safe enough to express his views88 provide us with a far more reliable picture than a fictional play he openly acknowledged and was originally censored for what was recognized as its anti-Christian subtext.

MONTAGU AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE Whilst Montagu did not face the same government censorship in the relative liberty afforded to her in Britain, both her aristocratic class and gender were effective social controls that meant, despite Mary Astell, the early feminist, pleading with her to publish her Turkish Embassy Letters, she did not do

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so during her lifetime.89 Nonetheless, it appears she always intended them to be published as she took a copy with her when she retired to Europe and eventually gave them to Reverend Benjamin Sowden to dispose of as he saw fit. Despite the attempts of her daughter and son-in-law to prevent publication, they found their way into print in 1763 in The London Chronicle. They were well received among her contemporaries, receiving high praises from Voltaire, Dr Johnson, and Edward Gibbon for both the brilliance of her writing and her intimate knowledge of Turkish manners which, as Gibbon wrote, were “very different from any thing we have yet seen.”90 Based on letters she wrote to her friends from the daily journal she kept during her journey through Europe and the Ottoman Empire, she edited them upon her return to England, transforming them into a linear narrative of her excursion before circulating them to her friends. The polemical intent of these “pseudo-letters”91 does not lie in the abstract commitment to a universal tolerance evident in the work of the French intellectuals but in the very concrete and particular aim of correcting erroneous perceptions of Turkish life and Islam.92 She gains textual authority with her constant reminders that both her aristocratic class and gender meant she had access to the homes of the elite, women’s baths, harems, and mosques, which previous travel writers to the region did not despite their pretense of such knowledge.93 She does not, however, use her privileged access to such empirical evidence to take on the stance of an “objective” observer. The prejudices of her class are overt. Previous writers, she tells us, misrepresented Turkish manners because they failed to distinguish the culture of the common people of which they wrote from that of the elite.94 Although Victorian women travelers later criticized Montagu for her exclusive focus on distinguished persons,95 unlike previous writers, her explicitness96 means we know it is a partial and limited picture that makes no pretense to represent the empire as a totality. We are all subject to prejudices, in Gadamer’s sense of the term, whereby we cannot avoid taking a stand from somewhere. Montagu’s aristocratic class serves to ground her,97 facilitating her openness to cultural difference through the reassurance she gains from the shared aristocratic values she finds amongst those she meets as a consequence of her station. Contrary to her expectations her Muslim host in Belgrade, the effendi Achmed Bey, drinks wine, a predilection he explains to her in aristocratic terms that God would not have allowed vines to grow if it were a sin to drink its juice, but that the law was “very wise” to forbid it “to the vulgar” who “have not sense enough to take it with moderation.”98 She considers him her equal and recognizes his scholarship as a man of letters, explaining to Alexander Pope that “[h]e has wit, and is more polite than many Christian men of quality. I am very much entertained by him.”99 Her utter failure in comparison to see difference as anything other than alien and ugly when she likens the women who flock

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to see her at Carthage to “baboons”100 serves to confirm how an openness to learn from those whom one encounters and to engage in genuine dialogue is only possible when we consider our interlocutors to be on equal terms. Montagu learns most of what she relates to her correspondents regarding Islam from her three weeks of nightly conversations with Achmed Bey. That shared meanings arise in a dialogical manner through “lateral interaction, negotiation, and contestation among different, historical grown cultural frameworks”101 is evident in her description of her “frequent disputes with him concerning the differences between our customs, particularly the confinements of women. He assures me, there is nothing at all in it; only, says he, we have the advantage that when our wives cheat us nobody knows it.”102 These disputes resulted from the “fore-conceptions” she had formed through her prior reading of the Quran in French and various travel writers in preparation for her journey.103 But rather than approaching these discussions in an attempt “to out-argue” the effendi, she considers the weight of his viewpoint as a partner in conversation and respects his superior learning by reevaluating her own prejudices and thus widening her horizon.104 When her party travels from Belgrade to Adrianople with a guard of janissaries, even she is moved by their lack of mercy to the poor. Yet she is by this stage sufficiently acquainted with Islamic precepts to indicate that it is due to “the natural corruption of a military government, their religion not allowing of this barbarity any more than our [sic] does.”105 Thus, rather than providing an essentialist account that invokes Islam as the sole explanation of such behavior, she dissociates the principles of the religion from the actions of government. Nor does she generalize from such instances of cruelty to the Turkish people as a whole. Montagu repeatedly undercuts the notion that the Turkish people are themselves cruel or “unpolished” and sees both their legal system and practice of adoption as vastly superior to British practices.106 In order to grasp that which is new, it is often necessary for her to relate the information back to the familiar. The danger is a crude assimilation whereby difference is accepted only because it is the same as the familiar, as is evident when Montagu fetishizes the “shiningly white” skins of the women at the Sofia baths.107 In most instances, however, Montagu avoids a naïve assimilation by consciously bringing out the tensions between the familiar and the strange, enabling her reader to understand the difference without being able to indulge in cultural superiority.108 Commenting to the Abbé Conti on the diversity of sects within the Islamic religion, she undermines any Christian superiority that might arise concerning their disputes by noting that “[t]he Zeid, Kudi, Jabari, etc. put me in mind of the Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, etc. and are equally zealous against one another.”109 Similarly, when she refers to the treatment of female Turkish slaves as concubines, she preempts her readers’ objections by reminding

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them that women “are bought and sold as publicly and more infamously in all our Christian great cities.”110 To be sure, when she reports that the sect of muserin are deists and not atheists, as Paul Rycaut had incorrectly asserted in his travel account, and further claims that deism is the “prevailing opinion” among effendis, she can be seen as translating difference into familiar and acceptable Enlightenment categories, thereby failing to accept it on its own terms.111 Yet whilst Montagu’s acceptance of Islam is predicated on finding common ground, the search for shared meanings is evidently a two-way interaction as she notes that Achmed Bey was pleased to find that some Christians “did not worship images or adore the Virgin Mary.”112 Her derision and ridicule are instead reserved for the Greek priests and Catholicism which, like Voltaire, she sees as the real enemy. Recounting that Achmed Bey assured her that if she read Arabic, she would find in the Quran “the purest morality delivered in the very best language” and that she had heard the same viewpoint from “impartial Christians.” Montagu surmises “that all our translations are from copies got from the Greek priests who would not fail to falsify it with the extremity of malice. No body of men ever were more ignorant or more corrupt.”113 They are virtually the same, however, as the “Romish Church,” as she confesses to the Abbé Conti that “nothing gives me a greater abhorrence of the cruelty of your clergy than the barbarous persecution whenever they have been their masters for no other reason than not acknowledging the Pope.”114 She juxtaposes such intolerance in the following paragraph with the diversity of religions she encountered in the Ottoman Empire, including the Christian sect of Paulines at Philippopolis and the Arnounts who adhered to both Muslim and Christian practices. Reporting their perspective “that at the day of judgement they are sure of protection from the true prophet; but which that is, they are not able to determine in this world,” she is astonished at such modesty.115 In stark contrast with her reevaluation of her fore-conceptions of Islam, her travels only reinforced her Anglican prejudices toward Catholicism’s cult of virginity and treatment of women. After visiting a beautiful young nun, who she characterizes as being “buried alive” in the Order of St. Lawrence in Vienna, she is overcome by “melancholy,” asserting that “I never in my life had so little charity for the Roman Catholic religion as since I see the misery it occasions so many poor unhappy women!”116 Montagu makes a number of factual errors regarding Islam. She confuses the details of Islamic divorce proceedings, and whilst she corrects the false perception that women are excluded from paradise, stating that Muhammad “was too much a gentleman and loved the fair sex too well to use them so barbarously,” she erroneously claims that virgins and widows were.117 This misperception partly arises from the social pressure she experiences from Turkish women to be continually pregnant as a sign of youth, a cultural expectation she credits for her pregnancy with her second child.118

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But in her letter on the same topic to the Abbé Conti, she employs her misperception to exploit comically the relativism of cultural values by indicating the irony that if this doctrine were true, all the Catholic virgin saints would be condemned as “infamous creatures that passed their whole lives in a most abdominal libertinism.”119 She also incorrectly claims that there is a separate paradise for women, but rather than that being a problem for Montagu, she can barely control her sarcasm as she fancies “the most part of them won’t like it the worse for that, and that the regret of this separation will not render their paradise the less agreeable.”120 For Montagu, attuned from her conversations with Achmed Bey to question the veracity of the subordination of Turkish women, found in the baths and harems she visited an autonomy enjoyed by the women that, whilst different, she nonetheless appreciates. She compares the baths to a “coffeehouse,” a male English institution,121 and with regards to polygamy she notes that in terms of Turkish custom there exists “no man of quality that makes use of this liberty, or a woman of rank that would suffer it.”122 If a man takes a mistress, he keeps her in a separate house, visiting her privately, as is the case in Britain. But delighting in the sexual equality that Achmed Bey had intimated to her she argues that Turkish women possessed greater ability than their British counterparts to conduct affairs due to the incognito afforded them by the veil and Turkish dress.123 Her preparedness also to respect and listen to the inter-subjective accounts of the elite Ottoman women with whom she converses—a feature that becomes more evident in her letters once she has learnt the language—plays a crucial role in her ability to convey the subtlety of power relations between Turkish men and women in which the latter were by no means lacking in power.124 She takes, for example, her opportunity with the Sultana Halfise to learn as much as she can about the seraglio and to test through question and answer the information she has gleaned from previous travel writers, which once again is shown to be incorrect.125 Commenting elsewhere on Mr. Hill’s A Full and Just Account of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1709), Montagu writes: “‘Tis also very pleasant to observe how tenderly he and all his brethren voyage-writers lament on the miserable confinement of the Turkish ladies, who are, perhaps, freer than any ladies in the universe …”126 Much of this liberty admittedly lay in their ability to live a carefree and luxurious lifestyle, but it was these women’s relative economic independence due to them “having all their money in their own hands, which they take upon a divorce with an addition he is obliged to give them,”127 whilst British women forfeited their property rights upon marriage, that Montagu identifies as the main source for their greater freedom. Having thus called into question any notion that Europeans might possess a cultural or moral monopoly, Montagu employs the same techniques of listening to the stories of others and her empirical observations to

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perceive the advantages of Turkish folk medicine with its invention of inoculation for smallpox, a disease that she suffered from just prior to her visit to Turkey. Montagu describes in detail the procedure of the “old woman” injecting the smallpox into her client’s veins, the fever that follows and the wellness after eight days. Adding authority to her account, she reports that “thousands undergo this operation” every year as had the French Ambassador.128 With no evidence that anyone had ever died as a consequence, she writes: I am well satisfied of the safety of the experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it if I knew anyone of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue for the good of mankind. But that distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I live to return, I may, however, have courage to war with them.129

Indeed, she did have such courage when she had her daughter inoculated in front of witnesses in Britain. Princess Caroline followed her example in 1722 with her two children, causing considerable scandal. Whether this letter was amended following these events is unknown, but Montagu’s critics behaved on cue displaying at their worst the ethnocentrism identified by J. J. Clarke whereby the West is loath to acknowledge it can learn anything of value from the East,130 to which we might add even more so from women.131 With her ironic juxtaposition of the ignorance of the British medical establishment to the enlightenment of the female practitioners of Turkish folk medicine, Montagu situates these women within a scientific context and indicates how the West could, however, benefit if it were instead willing to engage in genuine intercultural dialogue.

CONCLUSION It would be inaccurate, therefore, to characterize the Enlightenment as having a homogenous perception of Islam that rendered Christian and/or European beliefs and practices as invariably superior. Despite the persistence of the dominant image of Muhammad as a Machiavellian character wielding a sword, it became increasingly commonplace for the reformers of the time to employ the religious tolerance of Muslims to criticize the zeal and intolerance amongst Christians and to highlight their hypocrisy in having disparaged Islam for the Quran enjoining Muslims to employ violence when their own history evinced far greater cruelty and coercion between themselves and against believers of other religions. Islam was not only used

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in this respect in Protestant polemics against Catholics and vice versa. Bayle was no less aware of Protestant intolerance and the need to tread carefully with the use of subterfuge in refuting both sects’ claims against Islam even whilst he was living in the relatively liberal Netherlands. In this context, the use of the epithet of imposter for Muhammad was not necessarily indicative of an author’s substantive views. For, crucially on the eve of the eighteenth century, Bayle fomented the idea that the Quran contained admirable moral precepts equivalent to those contained in the Bible whilst Muslim tolerance was worthy of emulation by all Christians. I have argued that to appreciate fully the strategies of the French intellectuals toward Islam it is necessary to recognize that deception continued to be an essential tool in their avoidance of persecution throughout much of the eighteenth century. In an absolutist state that was dominated by the Catholic Church, we cannot take at face value the kind of perfunctory statements for the censors lauding the benefits of Christianity over Islam for society’s welfare evident in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws when a closer examination of his writings reveals he by no means possessed either such a naïve perception of Christian practices and governments or such a crude understanding of Islam. Similarly, I have shown that Voltaire’s clandestine work provides us with a more authentic account of his views than a fictional play where he could not disavow authorship. This is not to deny that, irrespective of its anti-Christian subtext, Mahomet simultaneously reinforced European prejudices against Muhammad, and Montesquieu’s claims about despotism and Islam have had a powerfully enduring and negative influence on others. Bayle recognized more deeply that overcoming erroneous perceptions of Islam was an important part of any campaign for greater tolerance. Yet it is nonetheless the case that Voltaire discovered a spiritual affinity in Islam with his own Natural Theology, and whilst Montesquieu possessed the least admiration for Islam of the thinkers examined in this chapter, he advocated tolerance toward Islamic practices as he concurrently condemned the cruelty of the Inquisition. When these thinkers showed a greater appreciation for Islam it was, however, largely due to its conformity with their own moral values. In this respect, even where they refute erroneous perceptions of Islam, they can be seen to display the kind of hegemonic arrogance comparative political theory seeks to overcome. Their failure to adopt the insights of a hermeneutic methodology over a naïve empiricism at such an early stage of the development of the social sciences is, however, hardly surprising, although their inability to examine Islam on its own terms was also due to their overriding concern with what was near to them. And yet, I have argued that as a traveler to the Ottoman Empire early in the eighteenth century, Montagu to some extent managed to do so. For rather than either using the “Thou” as a means for a greater polemical end or treating the “Thou” as an object

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of her investigation, she sought companionship in her new home. She thus intuitively engaged with her interlocutors in a process of mutual learning through question and answer and, at times, contestation as one does in forming new friendships. Her insatiable curiosity combined with the advantages of her station and gender, which gave her access to people and places previous travel writers did not have, undeniably played an important role in this process. Yet most significantly in terms of our reflections on the conditions necessary for genuine intercultural dialogue, her ability to reevaluate her fore-conceptions and broaden her vision with respect to Islam and its treatment of women was contingent on her acceptance of those with whom she engaged as equal partners. Montagu may not have always succeeded in this enterprise and there is no guarantee that mistranslations and misperceptions will still not arise, but her text does show us that respectful cross-cultural communication is possible and the benefits that accrue when we are sufficiently open to the “Thou” to tell us something.

NOTES 1. I am using the term “Enlightenment” broadly in accord with Sankar Muthu’s usage to denote the long eighteenth century, see Enlightenment Against Reason (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), 264. See also Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Jonathan Israel, “Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment?”, Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 3 (July 2006): 523–45; Daniel Gordon, ed., Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History (New York: Routledge, 2001); Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hanns Reill, eds., What’s Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2001). For an interesting discussion on the use of the term “Islam,” see Roxanne L. Euben, Journey to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 4–6. 2. See also Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 615–39. Israel examines the more radical wing of the clandestine writers influenced by Spinoza and the way they embraced medieval Muslim traditions of thought, despite them being contemptuous of certain aspects of contemporary Muslim practices. 3. Not that past Christian views had necessarily meant Europeans were always hostile to or fearful of Muslim states as they also generated respect and awe. Europeans in the sixteenth century gave the Sultan Suleiman the title of “magnificent” and many admired what they saw in the Ottoman Empire as a more tolerant and meritorious system that meant ambitious young European men were willing to convert to Islam to work in its service. Europe had also benefited significantly from an exchange of ideas in the fields of philosophy, science, and medicine. See Albert Hourani, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 7–8.

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4. See Meic Pearse, The Age of Reason: From the Wars of Religion to the French Revolution, 1590–1789 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2006), 22–27; Hourani, Islam in European Thought, 7; Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 34–41. 5. See Fred Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (June 2004), 249–57; Fred Dallmayr, “Introduction: Toward a Comparative Political Theory,” The Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (Summer 1997), 421–27; J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 6, 13. 6. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1979), 329, 321, 324–25, 330. 7. Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue,” 250. 8. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 236–39, 246–47, 271–73. 9. Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue,” 254. 10. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 239–40. 11. Anna Secor, “Orientalism, Gender and Class in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters: To Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, & c.,” Cultural Geographies 6, no. 4 (1999): 385. 12. Sally L. Jenkinson, “Introduction: A Defence of Justice and Freedom,” in Pierre Bayle: Political Writings, ed. Sally L. Jenkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xxi. 13. Frederick B. Artz, The Enlightenment in France (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1968), 53. 14. J. H. Brumfit, The French Enlightenment (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1972), 60–62. 15. Cited in Peter Gay, Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 73. 16. Brumfit, French Enlightenment, 60. 17. Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 72–74. 18. Haydn Mason, Voltaire (London: Hutchinson, 1975), 24–25. 19. Rebecca Joubin, “Islam and Arabs through the Eyes of the Encyclopédie: The ‘Other’ as a Case of French Cultural Self-Criticism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 2 (May 2000): 197. 20. See Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, Epistolary Bodies: Gender and Genre in the Eighteenth Century Republic of Letters (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 43, 45, 47–50; Brumfit, The French Enlightenment, 73–74; Stephen Werner, “Comedy and Modernity: The Lettres persanes,” in Montesquieu and the Spirit of Modernity, ed. David W. Carrithers and Patrick Coleman (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002), 42–43; Sanford Kesler, “Religion and Liberalism in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters,” Polity 15, no. 3 (Spring 1983): 380–96; Pauline Kra, Religion in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Geneva: Institut et Musée, 1970), 72: 11–19, 205–13; Judith Shklar, Montesquieu (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 44. 21. Kesler, “Religion and Liberalism,” 382–82; Brumfit, French Enlightenment, 73–74. This reading also helps make more sense of the factual errors regarding Islam that Montesquieu makes, despite his access to sources with more correct data.

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See Ahmad Gunny, “Montesquieu’s view of Islam in the Lettres persanes,” in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Haydn Mason (Oxford: Cheney and Sons, 1978), 151–66. 22. Both Montesquieu and Voltaire, for example, presented highly idealized images of the English political system. See Artz, Enlightenment, 63, 68–69, 74–75; Wade, Intellectual Development, 23, 44–45; Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 11. 23. Cited in Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 79 n. 31, 86. 24. Continual disputes with his Protestant patron meant that Bayle lost his academic position in Rotterdam and he was also called to account by his own church prior to being able to publish the second edition of his Dictionary. See Jenkins, “Introduction,” xxiii–xxiv. 25. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 616–19. 26. Gunny, “Montesquieu’s view of Islam,” 154. See also Philip Almond, “Western Images of Islam, 1700–1900,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 49, no. 3 (2003): 413; Rebecca Joubin, “Islam and Arabs,” 197. 27. Pierre Bayle, The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr. Peter Bayle, vol. 4, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for J.J. and P. Knapton, D. Midwinter [and others], 1737), 28. 28. He modifies this position slightly in a footnote responding to Prideaux by adding that, despite the force of this position, it ought “not be too far extended” given “all the expounders of the Apocalypse, who change their hypothesis as the general affairs take a different turn” as “[t]heir conduct is very often an imposture, but not always.” Bayle, Dictionary, 47, n. NN. 29. Bayle, Dictionary, 29–30. 30. Bayle, Dictionary, 30, n. L. 31. Bayle, Dictionary, 30, n. L. 32. Bayle, Dictionary, 34. 33. Later in the text he is clearly quite perplexed by this circumstance noting that Muhammad’s laws were deposited with Haphsa, his older wife, and they could be interpreted by Ayesha who “was looked upon as a prophetess, and as an oracle, and she was a true she-Pope among the Mahometans” stating that he “cannot determine the point” why she would not have made Islam more beneficial to women. Bayle, Dictionary, 48, n. PP. 34. Bayle, Dictionary, 34–35, n. Q. 35. Bayle, Dictionary, 31, n. O. 36. Bayle, Dictionary, 32–33, n. P. 37. Bayle, Dictionary, 33, n. P. 38. Bayle, Dictionary, 39, n. AA. 39. Bayle, Dictionary, 39, n. AA. 40. Matt. 11:12 cited in Pearse, The Age of Reason, 32. 41. 2:256 cited in Michael G. Knapp, “The Concept of Jihad in Islam,” Parameters 33, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 83. 42. Charles-Louis de Secondant Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Bk. 24, ch. 3, 461. 43. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 24, ch. 4, 462. 44. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 24, ch. 11, 466–67; Bk. 24, ch. 3, p.461.

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45. Charles-Louis de Secondant Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. C. J. Betts (London: Penguin, 2004), letter 37, 91; letter 24, pp 72–73. 46.. Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East, trans. Liz Heron (London and New York: Verso, 1998), 113–14. 47. Shklar, Montesquieu, 31. 48. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 2, ch. 4, 18–19; Bk. 2, ch. 5, 20; Bk. 5, ch. 14, 59–60. 49. His naturalistic explanation of polygamy based on sex-ratios between men and women without moral condemnation whose logic he extended to polyandry in the reverse situation was also a major source of Catholic commentators’ criticisms. See Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 16, ch. 4–5, 266–67; Carol Blum, “Montesquieu, the sex ratio and ‘natural polygamy,’” in Montesquieu and the Spirit of Modernity, ed. David W. Carrithers and Patrick Coleman (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002), 195–99. 50. Scholars indicate that Montesquieu’s reformist tendencies were never far from the surface in The Spirit of the Laws so that his descriptive and normative claims often merge into one another. See David W. Carrithers, “Introduction: Montesquieu and the Spirit of Modernity,” in Montesquieu, ed. Carrithers and Coleman, 32; Shklar, Montesquieu, 68. 51. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 24, ch. 1, 459; Bk. 24, ch 8, 465; Bk. 24, ch. 16, 470; Bk. 24, ch. 16, 471; Bk. 24, ch. 17, 471. Although Bayle is critical of the concept of revenge, he also indicates Muslims are no different in adhering to it than the Jews and Pagans. See Bayle, Dictionary, 30, n. L. 52. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 24, ch. 19, 472. 53. Richter, Political Theory of Montesquieu, 100. 54. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 25, ch. 8, 487. 55. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 25, ch. 11: 488–89. 56. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 25, ch. 13, 490. 57. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 25, ch. 13, 490–92. 58. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 26, ch.10, 504. 59. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 26, ch. 11, 504. 60. Voltaire, Mahomet the Impostor: A tragedy as it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, by His Majesty’s Service, trans. James Miller, Edinburgh 1755, Eighteenth Century Collections Online (London: Gale Group), Act III: 38, (12 Dec. 2007). 61. Ronald W. Tobin, “The Sources of Voltaire’s ‘Mahomet,’” The French Review 34, no. 4 (February 1961): 372–78. 62. Theodore Besterman, Voltaire, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 260; A. Owen Aldridge, Voltaire and the Century of Light (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 128. 63. Voltaire, “Autobiography,” in Besterman, Voltaire, 634. 64. Ian Richard Netton, “The Mysteries of Islam” in Exoticism in the Enlightenment, ed. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 36. 65. Mason, Voltaire, 146; Norman L. Torrey, “Duplicity and Protective Lying” in Voltaire: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. William F. Bottiglia (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Princeton-Hall, 1968), 18–19; Aldridge, Voltaire, 93–94; Besterman, Voltaire, 177.

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66. Cited in Aldridge, Voltaire, 129. See also Marvin Carlson, Voltaire and the Theatre of the Eighteenth Century (Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood, 1998), 55–56; Roger Pearson, Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2005), 172. 67. For a detailed discussion of his dedication see Aldridge, Voltaire, 129–30, and for commentaries on the weaknesses in Voltaire’s plays, which explain why they are no longer performed, see Eva Jacobs, introduction to Voltaire, Zaire (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) 40–41, 48–49; Wade, Intellectual Development, 382–84. 68. Cited in Aldridge, Voltaire, 125. See also Mason, Voltaire, 26. Indeed, this line was excluded from the English translation. See Voltaire, Mahomet, Act III, 38. 69. Aldridge, Voltaire, 126; Mason, Voltaire, 25–26; Besterman, Voltaire, 260–62. 70. Although Voltaire’s campaign against l’infâme began in earnest in 1762, Mason concurs with Ridgway that Mahomet was his first major attack. See Mason, Voltaire, 174, n. 33; Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 244. 71. Carlson, Voltaire and the Theatre, 85, 162. 72. Hammerbeck, “Voltaire’s Mahomet, the Persistence of Cultural Memory and Pre-Modern Orientalism,” Agora: An Online Graduate Journal 2, no. 2 (Spring 2003), (2 Dec. 2006): 9, 2–3. 73. Netton, “Mysteries of Islam,” 339. 74. Harvey Chisick also argues that it would only be reasonable to charge Voltaire with anti-Semitism if he failed to criticize all fanaticism and use of force with respect to religious beliefs. He was, however, consistent in such criticism. See “Ethics and History in Voltaire’s Attitude Towards the Jews,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 4 (2002): 583, 593–94. 75. Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 248. 76. Kenneth W. Appelgate, introduction to Voltaire on Religion: Selected Writings (New York: Frederick Unger, 1974), 9. 77. It is possible Voltaire wrote a draft of half of this pamphlet during his Cirey period (1735–1749). See Wade, Intellectual Development, 547–60. 78. Voltaire, “An Important Study by Lord Bolingbroke,” in Voltaire on Religion, trans. Kenneth W. Appelgate (New York: Frederick Unger, 1974), ch. xxvi, 172–88. 79. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” ch. ix, 111. 80. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” ch. ii, 100. 81. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” ch. xxxi, 190. 82. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” ch. xii, 134. 83. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” ch. xii, 133–34. 84. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” ch. xxxv, 205. 85. Voltaire, “An Important Study,” 212. 86. Torrey, “Duplicity and Lying,” 22. 87. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 617. 88. Wade, Intellectual Development, 547–48, 560; Gay, Voltaire’s Politics, 243–44. 89. Anita Desai, introduction to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters (London: William Pickering, 1993), xx. 90. Cited in Cynthia Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the EighteenthCentury Familiar Letter (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 82–83.

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91. Robert Halsband, introduction to Mary Wortley Montagu, The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), xiv. 92. That Rousseau and Porter claim Montagu “only saw what she had been expecting to see” is quite inexplicable, particularly as they use Gibbon as an authority to contrast such “ethnocentric observers” with the praise he lavished on the French travelers. See G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, introduction to Exoticism in the Enlightenment, ed. Rousseau and Porter, 16. For those who instead see Montagu as one of the more perceptive travelers who overcame a simple ethnocentrism see Hourani, Islam in European Thought, 137; Lockman, Contending Visions, 64; Srinivas Aravamudan, “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the Hammann: Masquerade, Womanliness and Levantization,” English Literary History 62, no. 1 (1995): 70–71; Joseph W. Lew, “Lady Mary’s Portable Seraglio,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 24, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 432, 437, 439; Billie Mellman, Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 78; Halsband, introduction to Complete Letters, xiv. 93. Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters, ed. Malcolm Jack Letter (London: William Pickering, 1993), letter xxvii, 60; letter xxxiii, 85; letter xxxiv, 90–91; letter xxxviii, 104. 94. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxxiv, 90–91. 95. Mellman, Women’s Orients, 100. 96. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxxiii, 85; letter xxxviii, 104; letter xli, 118. 97. Clare Bent, introduction to Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters (London: Everyman’s Library, 1992), xix. 98. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xl, 111. See Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 90. 99. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxiv, 54. 100. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter l, 151. See Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 92; Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 171. 101. Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue,” 249. 102. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxiv, 54. 103. These writers included Paul Rycaut, Richard Knolles, Francois Thevenot, George Sandys, Aaron Hill, Dumont, and G. F. Gemelli-Carreri. See Mellman, Women’s Orients, 82. 104. See Gadamer, Truth and Method, 330–31, 347–48; Mellman, Women’s Orients, 62. 105. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxviii, 61. 106. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xlix, 142; letter xlvi, 130; letter xlviii, 137. Anna Secor sees these differences as class based, although Montagu further notes that the pashas, or generals, are known to be far worse when they travel. See “Orientalism, Gender and Class,” 386. 107. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxvii, 59. See also Teresa Hefferman, “Feminism Against the East/West Divide: Lady Mary’s Turkish Embassy Letters,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 33, no. 2 (2000): 202. 108. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 273, 325. See also Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 58.

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109. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxviii, 62. 110. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xlvi, 130. See also Arthur J. Weitzman, “Voyeurism and Aesthetics in the Turkish Bath: Lady Mary’s School of Female Beauty,” Comparative Literature Studies 30, no. 4 (2002), 333. 111. For an argument that regards the tendency to translate the apparently different into the language of the observer as an “imperial attitude”, see James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 62–70. See also Albert Hourani who sees some truth in this kind of argument but argues that we have no option but to bring our own categories of understanding to studies of different cultures, Islam in European Thought, 58. Lisa Lowe in Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991) 31–51 analyzes Montagu’s text as overcoming Orientalism when she recognizes similarities between Turkish and European practices or the former as superior but as contributing to Orientalism when she acknowledges difference. By contrast, Meyda Yeg˘enog˘lu criticizes her on this point indicating the imperial nature of a “logic of sameness.” Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 84–85. 112. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxviii, 62. 113. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxviii, 63. 114. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxviii, 63. 115. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxviii, 64. 116. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xii, 28. 117. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xl, 110. See Joan Delplato, “An English ‘Feminist’ in the Turkish Harem: A Portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,” in EighteenthCentury Women and the Arts, ed. Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 177, n. 23. 118. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xlvii, 132. 119. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xl, 110. 120. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xl, 110. On the Quran stipulating that husbands and wives enter paradise together, see Gunny, “Montesquieu’s view of Islam,” 152–53. 121. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxvii, 59. See also Lew, “Lady Mary’s Portable Seraglio,” 441. 122. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxx, 72. 123. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxx, 71–72. 124. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xli, 113–120. 125. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xli, 116. 126. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xlviii, 134. Also see letter xxx, 71. 127. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxx, 72. 128. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxxii, 81. 129. Montagu, Embassy Letters, letter xxxii, 81–82. 130. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment, 5. 131. For a fascinating discussion of these events, see Grundy, Comet of the Enlightenment, 209–222.

7 Dealing with Inequality: A Conversation with Islamic Economics Philip Nel

… [A] genuine conversation is never the one that we wanted to conduct. Rather, it is generally more correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it. The way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the led. No one knows in advance what will “come out” of a conversation.1 It is not righteous that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteous is the one who believes in God, and the Last Day, and the angels, and the Book and the prophets; and gives away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and to those who ask and to set slaves free; and keeps up prayer; and pays the poor-rate; and the performers of their promise when they make a promise.2

One of the most pressing global challenges is the need to halt and reverse the tendency of late modernity to produce ever-growing disparities in wealth and income between rich and poor. Of primary concern is not so much the disparities between countries—large as those disparities are—but rather the growing disparities within countries. There is no dispute in the literature that the majority of countries have become significantly more unequal over the last three decades.3 In many developing countries, where inequality has been endemic ever since their violent incorporation into the world capitalist economy, the worsening of inequality has retarded their ability to achieve even the modest goals of poverty relief as formulated in the Millennium Development Goals. The result is that up to two billion people continue to languish in conditions of extreme deprivation despite 135

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the spectacular growth of the world economy during the most recent period of globalization.4 The connection between poverty and inequality has long been ignored. But this ignorance can no longer be justified, given the emergence of evidence that causally links relative deprivation with absolute shortfalls in human development. Easterly shows that inequality, independently of other factors, is a large and statistically significant barrier to securing the institutional framework and human capital on which the success of human development depends.5 A recent study of inequality in Latin American countries concludes that inequality hinders the implementation of sensible macroeconomic strategies, retards demand, impedes the development of pro-poor trade policies, limits the growth of human capital stocks, raises social discontent, and limits the degree of political participation.6 Successful development policy demands that we look at the whole spectrum of the income (and wealth) distribution in developing countries, in contrast to the singular emphasis on the lower end of the spectrum—poverty reduction— that has dominated developing thinking for the past decades. National equity is crucial for economic and human development. Significantly, research conducted by the World Bank shows that countries with high levels of initial inequality find it exceedingly difficult to reduce the incidence and depth of material deprivation through economic growth if measures are not taken to rectify the maldistribution of economic resources and opportunities. On the basis of a careful review of the available evidence, the World Bank’s 2006 World Development Report concludes: The balance of evidence does not, therefore, allow much room for doubt that growth elasticities of poverty reduction are stronger in more equal societies. Inequality reduces the effectiveness of economic growth in reducing poverty. This means that, if all else remain the same, a reduction in income inequality today has a double dividend: it is likely to contribute to a contemporaneous reduction in poverty, and it is likely to make future growth reduce poverty faster.7

Societies in which Islam is the dominant religion have been noted for the relatively low incidence of poverty compared to countries with similar levels of per capita income. Less noticed is the fact that Muslim countries tend also to have lower inequality levels than their non-Muslim peers. Reliable inequality data for developing countries are notoriously difficult to find. However, the best available data for the second half of the twentieth century indicate that when we hold income level constant, a country in which Islam is the dominant religion was 50 percent less likely to be plagued by high inequality than other countries.8 While it is important to remember that there are many factors that contribute to income and wealth distribution within countries, it would be foolish to ignore the potential redistributive effect of religious injunctions aimed at the rich to share their wealth with

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the poor. Islam, as do all the Abrahamic faiths, makes much of the claim that the poor has on the rich and of the obligations of beneficence and the virtue of benevolence. All of these faiths agree that believers face a special and absolute obligation to share so as to relieve the plight of the poor. With the emergence of secular liberalism as the dominant public ideology in societies with Christian and Judaic pedigrees, a distinction is made between religiously-informed beneficence as a private obligation on the one hand, and the provision of social welfare through the redistribution of wealth and income as a civic, public responsibility on the other hand. Distributive justice, for many Westerners, is a perfect obligation, something that the state is responsible for, and its practice and justification should not be confused with the practices and justification of private benevolence. Benevolence is a private virtue and implies imperfect obligations, while social welfare is a public responsibility. In contrast, Islam tends to reject this religious-secular, private-public dichotomy. The intellectual movement known as “Islamic economics” in particular emphasizes that public morality and private virtue cannot be separated, and that it is desirable to institutionalize virtue throughout the public sphere. Islamic economics is a set of economic beliefs and institutions that are based explicitly on the Qur’an—the revealed Word of God—and the Sunnah and Hadith—the practices and sayings of and received through the prophet Mohammed. There are disputes among proponents and observers over what exactly Islamic economics portends and what its pedigree is. Few doubt, however, that in its self-understanding Islamic economics represents a distinct and superior way of approaching the core economic puzzle, namely how to account for the production and allocation of scarce means that have alternative uses in view of the competing ends that people pursue. Mainstream economics prefers to be agnostic about the ends that people pursue, assuming that its task is only to explore the implications of assuming that human rationality entails the pursuit of self-interest as defined by economic agents themselves. For Islamic economists, in contrast, the intellectual pursuit of the above puzzle and the formulation of appropriate macroeconomic policies cannot be considered independently of an over-arching moral vision: In fact, even the most everyday, simple, and natural economic activity always contains a moral quality. Whether we look at production or consumption, it is the moral quality from which it derives its value, not in the first instance from performance in terms of productivity, profitability, or benefit in the broad sense.9

This focus on “moral quality” in Islamic economics is translated into concern about the question of social justice as the core question of the science of economics:

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The Islamic perception of the socio-economic process is dynamic and its insistence on social justice is uncompromising. This is because injustice disrupts social harmony and, for that reason, is unethical. To produce the best social structure, according to this view, man’s economic endeavors should be motivated by a meaningful moral philosophy.10

What should “we” make of these claims? By that I do not mean that “we” should be concerned with verifying the claim that the precepts of Islamic economics indeed have solid Qur’anic and Hadithic roots. There are much better qualified scholars who can pronounce on the Islamic pedigree of Islamic economics.11 Instead, what I have in mind with the question above is rather how “we” should assess the distinctiveness and significance of Islamic economics in the pursuit of social justice. How distinct is the Islamic economics’ approach to social justice, and is it this factor that explains why Islamic societies tend to be better at avoiding extreme inequality? And, what can we learn from the way in which Islamic economics approaches and deals with the problems of inequality and poverty? The plural “we” refers to political economists such as I who are concerned about the failure of mainstream Western economics to deal adequately with the problems of distributive justice, but who do not necessarily share the religious beliefs informing Islam (or any other religious tradition). To be appropriate and fruitful, an assessment of the distinctiveness and significance of Islam must take the form of a conversation, rather than that of an interrogation or a debate. A conversation, as conceived of in the hermeneutic tradition represented by Hans-Georg Gadamer, cited as one of the mottos of this chapter, is an exercise of humility and is premised on the countenance of the possibility that we may be wrong and that we can learn more from the other than they can learn from us. By engaging in a conversation we come to understand the limits of our own assumptions in terms of a broader fusion of intellectual frames of reference that appeared to be mutually exclusive at the outset. Hence, a conversation is potentially humiliating. At the same time, a conversation of the type that I have in mind here does not imply an uncritical acceptance of the claims made by the interlocutor. The critical effects of the honest conversation cut both ways. Conversation, one can say, is a form of ideology critique in which the coherence and truthfulness of the beliefs and claims of all participants are put to the test.

SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE SELF-UNDERSTANDING OF ISLAMIC ECONOMICS The term “Islamic economics” has two distinct meanings. On the one hand, it refers to a body of thought about economic matters that emerged among the early Muslim jurists, and that alternatively has been neglected, revived,

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and amended during thirteen centuries of the evolution of Islamic philosophy, jurisprudence, and science.12 As a body of thought on the sources and implications of a distinct Islamic conception of the right and the wrong in terms of economic affairs, Islamic economics at various points played important roles in profiling Islam against other and competing intellectual traditions. As we shall see, it did so again in the twentieth century which saw a determined attempt to revitalize Islamic economics as part of a program that aimed at securing cultural survival by emphasizing intellectual/ cultural distinctiveness. Alternatively “Islamic economics” can also be used to refer to “the economic behavior of ‘representative’ Muslims in a typical real life Muslim society with reference to the ideals that impart it a distinct ‘personality.’”13 Although this usage is less frequent than the first, it is based on a conceptual distinction that is important in terms of the notion of a conversation that this chapter is premised upon. By treating Islamic economics as a pattern of behavior, it becomes possible to generate empirical hypotheses about this pattern that can be tested by means of empirical investigation. It is this second meaning of the term that we had in mind, for instance, when we referred above to the empirical observation that societies in which Islam is the dominant religion are less prone to high income inequality. What is important from the perspective of this second meaning is not whether specific economic practices can be justified in terms of the sources of Islamic belief, but rather what these practices and their consequences are. From very specific origins as part of a cultural strategy aimed at survival against all odds, Islamic economics has taken on a life of its own as a distinct body of economic practice. Starting in Mecca in 1976, a number of International Conferences on Islamic Economics have been held, giving rise to an ever growing literature. In terms of practice, there is a real existing Islamic economy that now incorporates Islamic banks and branches in numerous countries of the world, and the formal institutionalization of Islamic economics in a number of Muslim countries. One source claims that there are 300 institutions in 65 jurisdictions, controlling up to US$1 trillion, which base themselves in one form or another on the precepts of Islamic economics.14 The study of “Islamic economics” is hence not only an exercise of intellectual reflection about the sources and interpretation of religious-ethical injunctions about economic matters. It is also an empirical science of economic behavior capable of applying the concepts, methodologies, and techniques of the social science, thus fully capable of entering into conversations on equal footing with non-Muslim interlocutors who are schooled in the ways of these disciplines. Both as a tradition of intellectual reflection about the correct interpretation of religious-ethical injunctions and as a pattern of distinct behavior, Islamic economics bases itself on a set of explicit moral precepts that have

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to be fulfilled for the transactions of the market to be regarded as legitimate and righteous. Islamic economics does not reject the institution of the market as a conduit of information and an adjudicator of value, but it does reject the notion that the market is the sole adjudicator of what is of value. Similarly, property rights are respected, but are not absolute as all that can be subject to property claims ultimately belongs to God, and humans can only exercise trusteeship. Islamic economics testifies to the oneness (tawhid) of God and His universe, which has to be respected by humans in exercising their God-given free agency. Respect for the oneness of God and His creation and the notion of trusteeship implies the pursuit of efficiency tempered with responsibility, moderation, and equilibrium. Equilibrium (al ‘Adl wal Ihsan, which roughly translates as the balance between justice and benevolence) is a crucial concept in the moral vision of Islamic economics. It should not be confused with the term equilibrium as used in mainstream economic theory, where it denotes a state of affairs in which economic “forces” balance one another and the agents involved have no incentives to change their behavior. In contrast, Islamic economics see equilibrium as a social ideal in which due is given to the Qur’anic injunction that socio-economic arrangements must be such that resources do not flow from the poor to the rich, but rather that “the needs of all the least-privileged members in Muslim society constitute the first charge on the real resources of the society.”15 Although endowments of abilities and resources are distributed unequally in society—which is seen as a natural, God-given state of affairs—the principles of oneness and equilibrium place a special responsibility on the well-endowed to share their wealth and income with the less well-endowed to ensure balance in societal relationships. Fulfilling the responsibility of ensuring social equilibrium and harmony through the sharing of wealth is an expression of the character of a person, reflecting his or her obedience to the Divine. Fundamentally, Islamic economics regards the primary economic question as the one pertaining to what the attributes of the virtuous economic agent are. Virtuous people make for virtuous economics. The most important virtues are well captured in the Qur’anic verse that is one of the two mottos to this chapter. On the broadest level, the true believer is supposed to subsume all of his or her economic decision-making to the practice of the virtues of avoiding evil and promoting what is good and right. Timur Kuran summarizes these virtuous norms thus: They promote the avoidance of waste, extravagance, and ostentation. They discourage activities that create harmful externalities. They stimulate generosity. They encourage individuals to work hard, charge fair prices, and pay others their due. The intended effect of the norms is to transform selfish and acquisitive homo economicus into a paragon of virtue, homo Islamicus. Homo Islamicus acquires property freely, but never through speculation, gambling, hoarding,

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or destructive competition. And although he routinely bargains for a better price, he always respects his trading partner’s right to a fair deal.16

While the tradition of Islamic political-economic thought is ancient and rich, commentators agree that Islamic economics also has a distinct modern pedigree.17 Its recent prominence should best be understood as an intellectual reaction against the conditions of colonial subjection and cultural and economic humiliation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries experienced by Muslims in South and Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East and North Africa. Contrary to some interpretations which see in the emphasis of Islamic economics on orthodoxy a revival of a nostalgia for a pre-modern way of life, my reading is indebted to Ernest Gellner and Francis Robinson18 who both see the revival of Islamic fundamentalism in the twentieth century as essentially a modernizing force of high culture. For Gellner [h]igh Islam is carried by urban scholars, recruited largely from the trading bourgeoisie (which often combines scholarship with trade) and it reflects the natural tastes and values of the urban middle classes … Those values include order, rule-observance, sobriety, learning. They contain an aversion to hysteria and emotional excess, and to the excessive use of audio-visual aids of religion … High Islam stresses the severely monotheistic and nomocratic nature of Islam … [and] is generally oriented towards Puritanism and scripturalism.19

Modernization can be fuelled by a higher culture of religious orthodoxy, as the history of Puritanism reminds us. What makes contemporary Islamic political and economic thinking unique, though, is that it has been much more successful at resisting secularization than its Christian counterparts, while fulfilling many of the same modernizing “this-worldly” functions that the sociology of religion has identified as major modern contributions of Protestantism in particular. As a modernizing force, Islamic economics makes use of the vocabulary of higher learning to make sense of and to resist the loss of greatness and dignity that flowed from the West’s overpowering of the Islamic world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the process, it explicitly rejects the mysticism and anti-scholarly syncretism of “Folk Islam” that were centered in the tribal and semi-tribal areas of the Muslim world, in which saints were revered as the magical representation of God’s intervention in the affairs of His followers. Islamic economics is an urban-based scholarly tradition of High Islam, as is much of twentieth-century Islamic Revivalism. It is characterized by a desire to return to first principles with an emphasis on the teachings of the Qur’an and the Prophet. For observers such as Gellner and Robinson, the revival of High Islam is akin to the Protestant reformation of Christianity in its embrace of both religious orthodoxy and

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this-worldly engagement. There is no need for saintly intermediaries between God and His people, High Islam teaches. By using the vocabulary of reason, as embodied in the traditions of higher learning both in the Muslim and non-Muslim world, the follower can discern the pristine and true will of God, and it is the duty of every believer to take responsibility to turn this will into practice. And this must happen in every sphere of life, and in particular in the economic sphere, as it is from that sphere that the West has drawn the strength with which it had humiliated the once prosperous and proud Islamic world. This celebration of bookish Orthodoxy “represents a shift in the forms of Muslim piety from an other-worldly to a this-worldly Islam”20 and is thus rightfully regarded not as an expression of pre-modern metaphysical nostalgia, but as a force of immanent dynamism and transformation. Here, one finds no rejection of the vocabulary and agenda of modern industrialization, of private property and markets, of investment, profit, and of consumerism, but rather a desire to transform these to conform to the principles of Islam. But the celebration of and a desire to return to Orthodoxy also fulfils a further modernizing role, namely that of generating the sense of collective distinctiveness and solidarity that is indispensable in mobilizing against the imperial dominance of colonial masters. As was the case with so many other instances of resistance against imperial dominance, the discovery or invention of a distinctive high culture also became an important tool in the struggle for political, cultural, and economic liberation. However, while it was the nation that became the rallying invention/discovery for the national liberation movements elsewhere in the colonial world, Islamic revivalists were and remain skeptical about the misuse that can be made of secular nationalism and pan-nationalism. Instead, they opted to emphasize the distinctiveness and moral superiority of Islamic Orthodoxy in all spheres of life, including the economy, as the mark of distinctiveness and as the focal point of liberation. Islamic economics, it is claimed, not only represents a project distinct from socialism and capitalism. It is also distinct and morally superior to the Western discipline of economics, which was corrupted by pretensions of value neutrality and secularism, a quagmire from which it is only now trying to free itself. In contrast, Islamic economics in its very conception is a “moral economy” and … never got entangled in a secular and materialist worldview. It is based on a religious worldview which strikes at the roots of secularism and value neutrality. To ensure the true well-being of all individuals, irrespective of their sex, age, race, religion or wealth, Islamic economics does not seek to abolish private property, as was done by communism, nor does it prevent individuals from serving their self-interest. It recognizes the role of the market in the efficient allocation of resources, but does not find competition to be sufficient to safeguard social interest. It tries to promote human brotherhood, socio-economic

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justice and the well-being of all through an integrated role of moral values, market mechanism, families, society, and “good governance.” This is because of the great emphasis in Islam on human brotherhood and socio-economic justice.21

Claiming to be based on ancient sources, and there finding its legitimacy, Islamic economics as a distinct intellectual movement is of recent vintage. Historians trace its genesis to the intellectual and political cauldron of India’s decolonization in the 1940s, and in particular to the writings and speeches of Sayyid Abu’l-A’la Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-i-Islami.22 Maududi promoted the idea of a cultural resurgence amongst India’s Muslims as the appropriate survival strategy in a Hindu-dominated independent India. Not in favor of political independence for Muslims, he suggested that Muslims maintain their cultural independence by turning Islam from a private personal religion into one that informs every aspect of both private and communal life. This gave birth to the idea that there is also a distinct cultural domain for Muslims to be carved out within the economic sphere of life, challenging not only the distinction between the religious and the secular, but also between public and private morality. For him, Islam is distinct not in the weak sense that “there is social justice in Islam also,” but rather in the strong sense that “justice is the only objective of Islam,” and that “there is justice in Islam only.”23 What constitutes the uniqueness of Islam’s conception of social justice? Maududi claims that Islam is better than rival economic ideologies at avoiding the extremes of iniquitous inequality and “unnatural” equality, and thus represents a golden mean. As is pointed out by sympathetic commentators, Maududi was primarily a political-economy reformer, though, and one seldom finds in his writings and speeches the precise and selfreflective formulations of the professional philosopher and/or economist.24 We have to turn elsewhere to get a more precise and less speculative formulation of the distinctiveness of the Islamic conception of social justice. During the last three decades, a number of professionally trained Islamic economists have emerged whose formulations and idiom are much more digestible for the Western political economist. One such figure is the Princeton trained Pakistani economist, Syed Nawb Haider Naqvi, who has done extensive work in translating Islamic economics into a less speculative and more empirically inclined idiom.25 Naqvi is as much an Islamic economist as is Maududi, in that he fully prescribes to the assumption that social distributive justice can only be attained on the basis of a rational deduction of behavioral principles based on the Islamic notion of the search for equilibrium within the oneness of God’s creation. In the economic sphere, he writes, such equilibrium is to be found not in the pursuit of utilitarianbased social-choice principles, such as Pareto optimality, at least in terms of

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how Pareto optimality is usually interpreted as the outcome of a competitive process. The reason is that a welfare choice based on Pareto optimality is not sensitive enough to the existence of extreme poverty. The utilitarian frame of reference, with its emphasis on marginal welfare, its inability to distinguish between the interests of the rich versus the interests of the poor, and in terms of its status-quo conservatism is of little use to Islamic economics, Naqvi concludes. The same goes for the liberal conception of social justice as formulated by John Rawls. This conception has the edge over utilitarianism in that it explicitly seeks to maximize the welfare of the worst-off, and it makes room for the transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor. However, it still falls short of the Islamic criterion in that it does not have anything to say about measures that should be taken to reduce the number of people who find themselves in the worst-off category, and about an upper limit to wealth that any single individual/household/family could morally lay claim to.26 The Islamic conception of social justice thus draws an explicit connection between the relative distribution of wealth and income on the one hand, and the absolute distribution of wealth and income on the other. Put differently: it admonishes us to consider the notion of justice to be applicable not only to the lower end of the income/wealth distribution, but to be relevant to a consideration of the whole of the distribution. The Islamic conception of social justice demands that adequate amounts be transferred to the poor to enable them to have their needs met and to make it possible for them to work their way out of poverty, but also that wealth itself be morally limited and purified. That does not mean that Islamic economics is biased against the rich, or that it is in favor of complete equality. The principles of fairness apply also to the way in which the rich should be treated. However, because the rich have been specially blessed with the riches of God’s creation, there rests on them a special and absolute duty of sharing their wealth with the poor. In terms of policies, this implies that redistributive measures must be instituted to ensure equity (qist), which means that (a) more equality of wealth and income is preferable than less, as long as it does not threaten welfare growth for society as a whole; (b) effort should be respected and adequately rewarded, as long as social security measures are taken to meet the basic needs of those who cannot work due to infirmity of one kind or another; (c) equality of opportunity is guaranteed for everyone through universal education and other equalizing policies; (d) the functional distribution of income in the production structure is addressed so that the wage income of labor is boosted relative to capital and land; and (e) measures are taken to ensure broad access to productive resources such as land and capital.27 Overall, the pursuit of equity and equilibrium is not an afterthought—something that has to be done to correct market failures—but should determine the very character of economic agents and their actions from the outset.

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It is on the basis of considerations such as these that Islamic economics place much emphasis on the Islamic practices of the zakat and waqf, both of which have the expressed purpose of recognizing and institutionalizing the claim that the poor has on the wealth of the rich. Islamic economics, as does political Islam in general, underlines the importance of the provision of social welfare, which is deemed to be primary function of the state. Where citizens have lost faith in their callous, corrupt state leaders, welfare societies organized around mosques have been promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, the Holy War Brigade in Indonesia (Laskar Jihad), the Party of Islam (Jamaat-i-Islami) in Pakistan, Hamas in Palestine, and Hezbollah in Lebanon). Such welfare societies provide a variety of welfare services, including religious schools, day-care centers, libraries, sports clubs, transport, medical clinics and hospitals, infrastructure such as portable water and power generation facilities, direct income support to those who have been wounded, and construction services, including providing access to building finance. The waqf and zakat play central roles in generating the revenue that is used for these social services.28 The practice of waqf refers to the transformation of property or other assets into public goods that are held in perpetuity for the benefit of society at large. It was widely supported by the state in the Ottoman empire, through the granting of land to those who indicated their desire to found a waqf. The state could use this to secure that land be utilized effectively, thus increasing the income of the state, but also to effectively control the peasantry, and at the same time encouraging the use of property for the benefit of society at large.29 Today, this form of public-private partnership still acts as the main source of financing for the activities of mosques and religious schools. Its purposes are many, including the aim of de-personalizing and safeguarding income from inheritance (through the appointment of relatives as trust members), but objectively speaking it constitutes an ingenious mechanism for securing communal benefits without tampering with private property rights: communism without the confiscation, one can call it. Central to Islamic thought on social justice and redistributive practice is the institution of zakat (poor dues), though. Islamic economics makes provision for different types of revenue generation, including taxes of various types. However, much emphasis is placed on what is widely regarded as a unique Islamic institution. Zakat (from zakah, literally meaning “to purify”) consists of “the obligatory payment by Muslims of a determinate portion of specified categories of their lawful property for the benefit of the poor and other enumerated classes.”30 The Qur’anic origin of the institution of zakat is well-established, and there is some evidence that it was institutionalized already in the Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime. Scholars trace some thirty-two references to it in the Qur’an and point out that it is there often associated with prayer, hence the emphasis on seeing the giving of zakat as

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an act of worship and of purification. The practice is ultimately legitimated by reference to numerous injunctions in the Qur’an (such as 59:7, for instance, which advises that care should be taken so that “wealth does not circulate only among your rich”). It also traces its origin in the saying of the Prophet that “He is not a Muslim who takes his fill and his neighbor goes to bed hungry.”31 What distinguishes it from the common human reaction of beneficence—compassion for the needy—is that zakat is supposed to be performed as a public act of gratitude and purification by all Muslims who have savings above a certain limit—for the blessings bestowed upon them by God. As its etymological root indicates, it is related to an act of purification. Zakat is one of the five cornerstones of Islam (the other four being Shahadah: the confession of faith; Salat: prayer; Sawm Ramadan: the fast of the month of Ramadan; and Hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca). However, Maududi stipulates that next to salat, zakat constitutes one of the “two principal pillars upon which the edifice of Islam has been raised. Islam cannot stand upright if these pillars collapse.”32 The giving of zakat is thus one of the obligatory public institutions of Islam, and its denial amounts to an act of disbelief. In that respect it differs from other forms of obligatory giving, such as the zakat al-fitr which is a per capita payment linked to the termination of the fast of Ramadan. Zakat proper is valued not only as a ritual, but also as a source of revenue for the authorities established by Islamic law to be used in effecting the just redistribution of wealth, and thus reestablishing social equilibrium. The revival of Islamic economics initiated by Maududi in the twentieth century has sparked renewed interest in zakat as a unique Islamic institution, and an extensive Islamic economics literature dealing with it has emerged in recent decades. There is some debate within Islamic economics about the way in which this social transfer should be collected, who the targets of disbursement must be, what forms of savings/wealth may possibly be excluded, and there is also difference of opinion about the question whether it should be compelled and administered by the institutions of the state. A further bone of contention is whether zakat is the form of revenue collection for social security in Muslim societies, or whether it is only one source of revenue amongst others. Although obligatory on Muslims wherever they live, zakat has been formally introduced as enforceable by law in six Muslim countries, Malaysia, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the Yemen Arab Republic, where it becomes an item that is deductible from national income tax dues.33 In a number of other countries, intermediary institutions have been created to receive voluntary payments of zakat (Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait). These intermediaries use the funds thus earned to finance interest-free loans as a form of social assistance. Zakat also plays a major role in the revenue-generating activities of the religiously based welfare societies to which we referred above.

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DISTINCTIVENESS AND SIGNIFICANCE There can be little doubt that ideas structure economic behavior, although these effects are seldom modeled today in the dominant explanatory paradigms of economics. But which ideas are important? Despite the influence that the sociology of religion à la Max Weber and Emile Durkheim has had on historical explanations of the emergence of capitalist-driven modernity, very few contemporary students of economic systems consider religious or culturally determined beliefs as worthwhile explanatory variables. This is particularly true of the field of the political economy of development. This neglect relates to the dominance of the analytical paradigm of methodological individualism and rational choice that have come to dominate so many of the social sciences in recent years. However, there are also specialists whose intimate knowledge about the politics and economic practice in specific countries or regions make them skeptical about the usefulness of religion as an explanatory variable. One recent example is the statistical study by Frederick Pryor of the questions whether there is a distinct Muslim economic system to be found among countries that espouse Islam as their dominant religion, and whether the presence of Islam has any influence on the economic and social performance indicators of these countries. His answer with respect to both questions is a resounding no: Muslim countries are as diverse as other countries in terms of their distribution among economic systems with more or less state guidance of the economy, and among better or worse performing economic units. In addition, Pryor finds that the economic and social performance of Muslim countries is explained by the same mix of factors that account for economic development, or lack thereof, in most developing countries. He is adamant that there is no distinct Islamic economic factor.34 Additional evidence to support Pryor’s conclusion comes in the form of survey findings recently generated by Davis and Robinson for seven predominantly Muslim nations, namely Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.35 Davis and Robinson identify a pronounced adherence to what they call a communitarian economic policy outlook among orthodox Muslims, compared to the more individualistic economic outlook of less orthodox believers or “modernists,” as these two authors call them. Muslims who subscribe to a moral cosmology, such as the one propounded by Islamic economics, and who favor the institutions of Islamic law, are more strongly disposed than modernists toward the redistribution of wealth and income, the provision of assistance to the poor to have their basic needs met, and toward an activist role for the state in these regards. Davis and Robinson emphasize that the communitarian outlook of orthodox believers is not a phenomenon that is unique to Islam, however. Their research in other contexts reveals similar trends among

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orthodox believers in the two other Abrahamic faith traditions. Although we do not have the space to explore this further here, it is important to remember that there is a strong commitment to beneficence and social justice in both other Abrahamic faiths as well, and that providing for the poor is also there seen as an act of moral righteousness and as a duty. I am not persuaded that considerations such as these and the points made by Pryor and Davis and Robinson provide sufficient reasons for us to deny that there is a distinct Islamic commitment to social justice, as formulated by Islamic economics. For one, Pryor uses quite broad designations of economic performance variables, and none of these enable him to test whether there is anything distinct about the way relative deprivation (inequality) and absolute deprivation (poverty) are addressed in Muslim countries. As suggested above, there is some empirical evidence pointing to the fact that Islamic societies—at least until recently—were less inclined to be highly unequal than their counterparts in the low- and middle-income group of countries, and any empirical determination of the distinctiveness of Islamic economies, or lack thereof, must explicitly test for this. As far as Davis and Robinson are concerned, it is important to note that although they reject the notion of Islamic distinctiveness altogether, they do acknowledge that the institution of zakat may strengthen the economic egalitarianism that they detect among orthodox believers. Hence, once we consider the role of zakat and related institutions of charity, and using the concepts developed by Davis and Robinson, one can justifiably speak of a distinct Islamic version of the economic communitarianism that characterizes religious orthodoxy in the Abrahamic faith traditions. This distinctiveness, I would suggest, lies in the way in which Islam has elevated the private virtue of benevolence to an institutional feature of public life in a number of Muslim countries. The collection and distribution of zakat is undertaken by the state in only a few Muslim states, but that does not diminish the public role that zakat has come to play in many Muslim countries as the means through which the obligations of social justice are fulfilled in the public sphere. Zakat is undoubtedly a unique and important source of charitable funds, and in some contexts make it possible for Islamic political movements to compensate for the weakness of the state as far as the provision of social welfare is concerned. But how successful is the institution of zakat in alleviating poverty and mitigating inequality in general? There is no easy answer to this question, given the paucity of reliable data on the extent of zakat collection and distribution, and on poverty and inequality trends in Muslim countries. How successful have the proponents of Islamic economics been in reducing social inequity? As we noted above, the practice of zakat has been institutionalized in six states, and the evidence emerging from these states is a mixed bag. Finding one single reliable answer to this question poses a number of

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difficult methodological challenges. First, there is the problem of endogeneity: Is the institutionalization of zakat a response to increasing inequality, or is it itself a factor that affects levels of inequality? Second, we need to distinguish the effects of “voluntary” zakat (which is obligatory in terms of the religious beliefs and is often administered by the religious community organized around the mosque) and the form of obligatory giving administered by the state in those six countries where it has been institutionalized. Third, there is significant variety in how states administer this practice.36 Fourth, we will have to control for a whole host of other factors that could potentially affect economic inequality levels in those countries that have instituted it. The fact that the institutionalization of zakat is followed over time not by a decline in income inequality but by an increase may be due to factors that work independently of how effective the zakat revenue is collected and distributed by the state, and may have to do with the fact that, where Islamic principles are not fully lived up to, corruption may occur. It also might simply be that the level and nature of economic development has benefited the holders of scarce factors of production—such as skilled labor—which increased their earnings relative to the rest of society, with the result that the distribution of income worsens. In other contexts, such as Malaysia for instance, successful economic redistribution is ethnically, not religiously, based and motivated.37 A couple of tentative conclusions can be drawn from the small pool of empirical data at our disposal, though. The most important conclusion is that there can be little doubt that zakat on its own is not sufficient to generate the revenue needed to alleviate poverty significantly in most Muslim countries. Even at optimal rates of giving and collecting, the revenue from zakat falls below the typical marginal tax rate in most industrialized countries,38 and as it is supposed to be distributed only among fellow believers, it is inadequate to provide poverty relief and fund redistribution in plural societies. One simulation study calculates that if instituted in the USA, zakat would generate about US$470 billion, sufficient for a basic income grant of US$14,500 per individual per year, an amount sufficient to eliminate poverty in the USA.39 However, it is unlikely that such a basic income grant could be financed in Muslim countries from zakat sources alone, even if there is large-scale giving from oil-rich countries to fellow believers in poorer Muslim countries. A study of twenty-four low- and middle-income Muslim countries finds that if the collection of zakat could generate 1.8 percent of GDP,40 the amounts generated would be sufficient to increase the income of all the poor41 by US$ 1 per day only in eight of the countries. However, the expectation that 1.8 percent of GDP can be reached may be too optimistic. A study of the management of zakat in four Muslim societies during the 1980s reveals that the best approximation was in Pakistan, where zakat contributions constituted 0.3 percent of GDP.

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In Kuwait, Egypt, and Jordan, the income generated was significantly less than in Pakistan.42 A second important conclusion is that zakat does have the potential to mitigate inequality, but only marginally so. A study of income inequality in Pakistan in the late 1980s finds that both inter-region and inter-household inequality in Pakistan were reduced by means of the collection and distribution of compulsory zakat donations.43 However, this effect is small, partly because most of the giving and receiving of zakat was conducted among the poor and the near-poor among themselves. There is even some evidence that the recipients of zakat disbursements in some cases were wealthier than the donors, probably as a result of the poor application of Islamic principles of disbursement and of the skewed balance of power that often accompanies skewed income and wealth distribution. Kuran concludes that zakat predominantly favors those who already have economic connections, passing over the truly destitute and unemployed.44 This also implies that the institutions of zakat and associated charity practices provide only a partial explanation of why Muslim countries tend to be less unequal than their counterparts. A fuller explanation will have to take into consideration the structure of the economy of the typical Muslim country and the policies pursued by the authorities, and how both these factors affect the returns received by holders of different factors of production. In addition, the role of international immigration and the impact of remittances should not be ignored, especially in the case of Middle East and North African Muslim states.45 But our appreciation of the significance of Islamic economics must go beyond the practice of zakat. It might be that the significance of the Islamic conception of social justice lies not in the effectiveness of zakat as it is presently implemented, but rather in the way that this conception forces us to reconsider some of the assumptions about distributive justice that we have come to take for granted. It is not possible to explore the potential significance of the Islamic conception in this respect in detail here, but one important aspect does deserve our attention. The combination of anti-secularist orthodoxy and modernizing functions that are intertwined in Islamic economics pose considerable hermeneutical problems for the Western political economist. We have been conditioned into “taking certain historical experiences of the West as the template for a universal knowledge,”46 and we are thus prone to identify modernity, secularization, and the private-public distinction as natural corollaries.47 Islamic economics challenges this identification and encourages its interlocutors to consider the possibilities of multiple paths to modernity, some of which may include a decidedly non-secular approach to social justice. In his A Short History of Distributive Justice, Samuel Fleischaker stipulates five “premises” on which, he claims, the modern (Western) concept of

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distributive justice is based.48 These five are that (a) individuals are entitled to have certain fundamental rights protected; (b) some share of material goods is part of every individual’s due; (c) this due can be justified in terms of public reason, in purely secular terms; (d) the distribution of each individual’s share is practicable; and (e) the state should play a leading role in guaranteeing this role. Useful as this list is to mark the transition to a contemporary Western conception of distributive justice from earlier conceptions of justice based either on dessert or on charity, it is clear that it cannot pretend to exhaust the conceptions of distributive justice that can lay claim to being “modern.” The Islamic concept of social justice, as discussed in the second section of this chapter, is a thoroughly modern and rational concept, making explicit provision for public institutions to play a central role in effecting redistribution with the means at its disposal, including the revenue created by acts of private beneficence zakat. Islamic economics challenges the notion that private morality and public justice should be distinguished, nor does it accept the modern liberal notion that distributive justice can only be justified in political terms, that is, principles that would be acceptable to anyone, independently of which moral philosophy she ascribes to.49 As other critics of the liberal political concept of distributive justice have argued, the disinterested public deliberative process through which the presumably objective standards of fairness are supposed to be established would not necessarily preclude the polluting effect of substantive conceptions of the Good. Instead, disinterested public deliberation of the type that liberals propose as the means to secure impartial public standards of public justice is likely to bias the choice of principles in favor of those participants who already entertain a secular and individualistic conception of the Good.50 A conversation with Islamic economics about social justice thus reminds us of the fact that particularism is not only an attribute of religious conceptions of justice, but also of the modern liberal justification of distributive justice. It is not a question of particularism versus universalism, but rather a question of which particularism we prefer, and on which grounds. The Islamic economics conception of social justice has at least one edge over the liberal secular conception, I would argue. By challenging the distinction between individual virtue and social justice, between beneficence and justice, Islamic economics may be better placed than anemic liberalism to address one of the central socio-psychological challenges of distributive justice: How do we motivate people to share their income and wealth with individuals whose faces they may never see? By equating private virtue and public justice, Islamic economics answers. This is a strength that Islamic economics share with other conceptions of justice that is based on virtue ethics. What distinguishes Islamic economics from other virtue ethics, though, is the fact that it makes explicit provision for public institutions to channel private virtue into just social outcomes.

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This means, of course, that Islamic economics not only shares in the advantages of virtue approaches to social justice, but also in their drawbacks. Predominant in this regard are the limitations that a virtue-based approach to social justice has in addressing the social-structural causes of injustice. The ultimate source of injustice, Islamic economics tells us, lies in the character of humans, and that is where attempts at reestablishing a just order must begin. This is how Maududi puts it: Evil in the economic system begins when the natural selfishness of man exceeds the limits of moderation. It develops with the aid of certain other immoral habits and receives further support from an inherently defective political system, especially if the latter has no moral basis.51

A social critic of contemporary global capitalism would agree that our era is indeed characterized by the evils that Maududi and other Islamic economists are so concerned about, especially the simultaneity of the display of perverse avarice and greed on the one hand and the occurrence of extreme, widespread, and preventable deprivation on the other. She would also agree that it belongs to the very soul of the field of study called political economy to be concerned about the quality of human beings involved in the economic processes of production, distribution, and conception. No one has put this better than Max Weber in his 1895 inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Freiburg: The doctrines of political economy have alternatively placed in the forefront or naively identified as standards of value either the technical economic problem of the production of commodities or the problem of their distribution, in other words “social justice”. Yet again and again a different perception … has raised itself above both these standards of value: the perception that a human science, and that is what political economy is, investigates above all else the quality of the human beings who are brought up in those economic and social conditions of existence.52

Taking her cue from Weber, our social critic will appreciate any economics which makes it its central task of placing the human question, as Weber puts it, back into the center of our field of focus. Islamic economics, with its explicit and well-developed vocabulary of human attributes and motivations, provides one useful contemporary reminder of what political economy has lost under the influence of neo-liberal economic thinking in recent years. But our social critic would also be aware of an extensive body of non-Islamic thought, partly influenced by Max Weber as well, that concludes that questions of social justice and human qualities cannot be adequately assessed without considering the effects of social institutions and structures, both national and global, on how humans behave. One

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advantage that contemporary liberal thinking has over Islamic economics, she would say, is that the former makes a careful distinction between questions of justice as they apply to the behavior of individuals and questions of justice pertaining to the social institutions, and proceeds to investigate these institutions as social features in their own right.53 It is not that Islamic economics has no conception of the role of social institutions—see for instance Maududi’s comments about “an inherently defective political system” cited above.54 However, Islamic economics tends to see institutions as appendages of human actions, and not as structural determinants in their own right. As a consequence, Islamic economics does not proceed beyond the question of who gets what to the equally important question of why are people treated in a specific way? To appreciate the difference between these two questions, we have to consider how Iris Marion Young distinguishes between two perspectives on distribution one focusing on the nature and implications of specific distributions, and the other interrogating the social-structural conditions that give rise to the distributions in the first place.55 In the first perspective, what Young calls “the distributional paradigm,” we are concerned about the nature and implications of specific distributional patterns considering, for instance, questions about its fairness and the effects that it has on the people involved. In pursuing this question, we explore the relational politics and justice of inequality. But there is also a more fundamental way of investigating distributive justice. In this perspective we ask about the socialstructural conditions of inequality, what Rawls calls the “basic structure” and “background social framework” that underpins the distribution of primary social goods in a society.56 Here, the focus falls on the power of social structures to determine the place, function, and worth of actors, be they nations, classes, or individuals. The structures of the prevailing national and transnational mode of production define specific and differentiated roles, rights, and privileges for different nations and different groups of individuals within nations, and thus constitute specific configurations of how people are treated.57 How people are treated by the structural determinants of the global capitalist economy, one can say, ultimately determines who gets what and how much. There is no indication as yet that Islamic economics takes this perspective seriously, nor does its vocabulary of human motivations and attributes lend itself easily to the structural investigating required by this broader conception of the determinants of distributive justice.58

CONCLUSION Achieving distributive justice is one of the under-appreciated but crucial global challenges faced today. The evidence is overwhelming that it is

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economic inequality, and not the mere incidence of poverty, that lies behind the low human-development performance of numerous low- and middleincome countries. To date, very few political economists concerned with issues of global justice have taken note of the potential contribution that Islamic economics can make to the collective effort that will be required to rectify the iniquitous patterns of income and wealth distribution within and between countries. Islam is the source of guiding belief for about 1.3 billion people in the world today (destined to reach 2 billion by 2025, given current population growth rates), constituting the dominant religion in more than 50 countries.59 A cross-cultural learning process concerning distributive justice has been underway for some time now between the Confucian normative world and Western liberalism.60 However, the dialogue between a distinct Islamic tradition of thinking about economic equity and Western liberalism has hardly begun (and has been set back significantly by 9/11 and its aftermath). The obstacles in the way of a conversation between Islam and Western political thought on social justice are many and challenging. Apart from the geo-political and diplomatic divisions in our present world that undermine such an exchange, a number of epistemic obstacles also persist. The primary epistemic obstacle is that these bodies of thought are seemingly not only worlds apart in terms of structure and focus, but that each also defines itself by explicitly or implicitly excluding the other. Despite its many variations, Western political thought is characterized by a thorough-going post-foundationalism that remains skeptical of any claim to justification that cannot be defended on impersonal and secular grounds in the public sphere. In turn, and also in spite of its many variations, contemporary Islamic thought remains anchored to a bedrock of religious justification that recognizes no authority but its own sources. The result is mutual exclusion. Despite pretensions to the contrary, Western post-foundationalist thinking of the dominant liberal kind is not as accommodating as it pretends to be. Its own justification is based on the notion that the reality of value pluralism leaves us with no other choice than to exclude from legitimate political justifications anything that cannot be defended by public reason alone. This leaves no room for the foundationalist moves made by the Islamist. Post-foundationalism, as Roxanne Euben argues, thus turns into intolerant anti-foundationalism.61 In turn, some versions of Islam perceive this anti-foundationalist rejection as just the most recent manifestation of the Western cultural and political hegemony that, from the nineteenth century onwards, systematically robbed Islamic civilization of its former glory. This chapter is based on the premise that a conversation between “foundationalist Islam” and Western political economy is desirable and possible, despite these significant obstacles. To kick-start this conversation, it

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is important that Western observers try and understand Islamic economics in and on its own terms as an attempt to reestablish a “moral economy”62 and not simply dismiss it as a somewhat perverse attempt at creating a “sub-economy.”63 Once this is done, it is possible to appreciate that Islamic economics may contain an important corrective to mainstream economics which has succeeded, especially in its recent neo-liberal manifestation, in the near complete disembedding of the economy from the moral discourse of society. In our attempt to reembed the economy and to revive the notion of the moral economy, we (the Western industrialized world) can do worse than engaging in a dialogue with the redistributive ideas of Islamic economics. The obligations that institutions such as the waqf and zakat place on the individuals, plus the institutionalization of this in state practice in some countries, can serve as a model for ways in which private and public redistributive initiatives can be combined to achieve equity, without which poverty relief and human development will be retarded. Indications are that the majority of Muslim believers are strongly committed to the ideals of societal equity. However, much research still needs to be done about to determine the net effect of Islamic redistribution on income and wealth distribution in the Muslim countries where it is practiced. Contrary to first impressions, Islamic economics is not an example of regressive and nostalgic romanticism, but as part of the revival of High Islam is a progressive scholarly movement which forces believers to engage with this world in order to make it more just. What often causes secular observers some discomfort is the moral fervor and enthusiasm with which High Islam is advocated and practiced. In this regard, though, it may be important to recall a distinction that David Hume makes between religion that partakes of enthusiasm and religion that is based on superstition: Religions which partake of enthusiasm are, on their first rite, more furious and violent than those which partake of superstition; but in a little time become more gentle and moderate … superstition is an enemy to civil liberty, and enthusiasm a friend to it.64

To the extent that Islamic economics compels us to open the book of human virtue and the economy—a book that neo-liberalism so successfully closed—it is indeed a friend of civil liberty in Hume’s terms. However, the price at which this is bought may be too high, if the focus on virtue closes our eyes to the questions of justice that are entailed by the way in which the institutions and structures of the global economy are organized. To the extent that Islamic economics ignores this structural dimension—as do many other versions of mainstream Western economics as well—its potential to become a friend of civil liberty is seriously undermined.

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NOTES 1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum Books, 2002), 383. 2. The Holy Qur’an, 2:177. 3. Robert Wade, “Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?”, World Development 32, no. 4 (2004): 567–89. 4. See Philip Nel, The Politics of Economic Inequality in Developing Countries (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Chapters 1 and 2. 5. W. William Easterly, “Inequality Does Cause Underdevelopment: New Evidence,” Center for Global Development Working Paper No. 1 (June 2002). 6. Patricia Justino et al., “The Impact of Inequality in Latin America,” Poverty Research Unit at Sussex Working Paper No. 21 (2003): 64–65. 7. World Bank, Equity and Development—World Development Report 2006 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 87. 8. That is, Muslim countries are fifty percent more likely to have a score of less than 40 on the Gini index of income inequality. A score of 40 is regarded as a threshold of high inequality. The Gini index is a summary measure of income dispersal, in which a score of 0 signifies full equality, and a score of 100 means that one person earns all the income. The result cited here is based on a logit analysis of 2680 observation for the period 1963 to 1999, controlling for the income level. Income inequality data is from the UTIP EHII dataset. See James Galbraith and Hyunsub Kum, “Estimating the inequality of household income: a statistical approach to the creation of a dense and consistent data set,” Review of Income and Wealth 51, no. 1 (2005): 115–143. 9. Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 178. 10. Syed Nawb Haider Naqvi, Islam, Economics, and Society (London: Kegan Paul, 1994), xvii. Emphasis in the original. 11. See Ahmed El-Ashker and Rodney Wilson, Islamic Economics: A Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 12. For a discussion of the evolution of Islamic economics, see El-Ashker and Wilson, Short History. 13. Naqvi, Islam, Economics, and Society, xix–xx. Emphasis in the original. 14. Daniel Pipes, “Islamic Economics: What Does It Mean?”, Jerusalem Post (September 26, 2007), 15. Naqvi, Islam, Economics, and Society, 27–28. 16. Timur Kuran, “Islamic Economics and the Islamic Subeconomy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 4 (1995): 159. 17. See Rodney Wilson, “The Development of Islamic Economics: Theory and Practice,” in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi (London: I.B. Taurus, 2004), 195–222; Kuran, “Islamic Economics”: 155. 18. See Francis Robinson, Islam, South Asia, and the West (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007); Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992).

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19. Gellner, Postmodernism, 11. 20. Francis Robinson, “Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations?” Future Islam (2002), 21. M. Umer Chapra, “Islamic Economics: What It Is and How It Developed,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. Robert Whaples, (14 Oct. 2005) 22. Kuran, “Islamic Economics.” See also M. Umer Chapra, “Mawlana Mawdudi’s Contribution to Islamic Economics,” The Muslim World 92, no. 2 (April 2004): 163–80. 23. Syed Abul A’Ala Maududi, Economic System of Islam (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1984), 103. Emphasis added. 24. Umer Chapra, “Mawdudi’s Contribution,” 163. 25. Maududi and Naqvi are both Sunni, but Islamic economics also has its supporters among Shi’ites. A notable Shi’ite scholar is Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr. See his Islam and the Schools of Economics (Accra: Islamic Seminary, 1980) and a discussion of his work in Rodney Wilson “The Contribution of Muhamad Baqir Al-Sadr to Contemporary Islamic Thought,” Journal of Islamic Studies 9 (1998): 46–59. See also Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 174–213. 26. Naqvi, Islam, Economics, and Society, 63–64. 27. Naqvi, Islam, Economics, and Society, 89–91. 28. See for fuller detail the discussion in Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2008), 369–70. These authors note that donations from Muslims in other countries have played an important role in generating revenue to be used by religious welfare societies in Palestine and in Lebanon. 29. Birol Baskan, “Waqf system as a redistribution mechanism in Ottoman empire,” unpublished manuscript (2002), 19–21. 30. “Zakat,” in Peter Bearman et al. ed., Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill Online, 2006). 31. Cited in Mohammed Sharif, “Application of Islamic Economic System in a Contemporary Economy: An Illustration with Poverty and Inequity in the USA,” Humanomics 19 (2003): 48. 32. Maududi, Economic System, 216. 33. This, and the preceding information, is based on “Zakat” in Encyclopaedia of Islam and Kuran, “Islamic Economics,”159, 163–65. 34. Frederic L. Pryor, “The Economic Impact of Islam on Developing Countries,” World Development 35, no. 11 (2007): 1815–1835. 35. Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson, “The Egalitarian Face of Islamic Orthodoxy: Support for Islamic Law and Economic Justice in Seven Muslim-Majority Nations,” American Sociological Review 71 (2006): 167–90. 36. Kuran, “Islamic Economics.” 37. Rodney Wilson, “Islam and Malaysia’s Economic Development,” Journal of Islamic Studies 9 (1998): 259–76. 38. Richards and Waterbury, Political Economy, 375. 39. Sharif, “Application of Islamic Economics,” 48–52.

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40. Ahmed Habib, Role of Zakah and Awqaf in Poverty Alleviation, Occasional Paper No. 8 (Jeddah: Islamic Development Bank, 2004), 67–72. The figure of 1.8 percent of GDP is based on a scenario that allows for optimum zakat collection. 41. The poor is here defined as those individuals whose incomes fall below the one US dollar threshold. 42. Kahf Monzer, Zakah Management in Some Muslim Societies, Background Paper No. 11 (Jeddah: Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, 2000), 41. 43. Geoffrey A. Jehle, “Zakat and Inequality: Some Evidence from Pakistan,” Review of Income and Wealth 40 (1994): 205–16. 44. Kuran, “Islamic Economics,” 164. 45. See Richards and Waterbury, Political Economy, 278–80. 46. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 7. 47. For recent critiques of this association and how it bedevils Western conceptions of Islam, see Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, “Political Islam and Foreign Policy in Europe and the United States,” Foreign Policy Analysis 3, no. 4 (October 2007): 345– 367; and Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 8–16. 48. Samuel Fleischacker, A Short History of Distributive Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 7. 49. Under the seminal influence of John Rawls’s work, this has become known as a “political conception of justice.” See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). 50. Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” The Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 227–28. 51. Maududi, Economic System, 17. 52. Max Weber, “The National State and Economic Policy,” in Max Weber: Essays in Economic Sociology, ed. Richard Swedberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 128–29. 53. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 54. 54. See also Ramadan, Western Muslims, Chapter 9 for a well-developed treatise on how Muslims in Western countries should challenge the dominant system of capitalism-cum-consumerism in these societies. 55. See Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Iris Marion Young, “Taking the Basic Structure Seriously,” Perspectives on Politics 4 (2006): 91–97. 56. Young, “Taking the Basic Structure Seriously,” 91. The citations are from Rawls, Theory of Justice, 7–11. 57. Rainer Forst, ‘”Radical Justice: On Iris Marion Young’s Critique of the ‘Distributive Paradigm,’” Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 260. 58. For a discussion of the structural determinants of inequality, see Nel, Politics of Economic Inequality, Chapter 2. 59. Davis and Robinson, “Egalitarian Face,” 167. 60. Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 61. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror, 3–4.

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62. Charles Tripp, Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6. 63. For an example of such attitude to Islamic economics, see Daniel Pipes, “Islamic Economics.” 64. David Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), cited in Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 46.

III ASIAN DIALOGUES WITH THE WEST

8 Islamic Responses to Europe at the Dawn of Colonialism* Nelly Lahoud

Historically, Islam, the religion—and the global civilization that sprang from it—was marked by its ability to adapt itself to and assimilate elements from the different civilizations it encountered. In the words of the great Orientalist scholar, Ignaz Goldziher, “Islam demonstrates its ability to absorb and assimilate foreign elements so thoroughly that their foreign character can be detected only by the exact analysis of critical research.”1 The onset of colonialism, however, brought about a different era to the way the Muslim world reacted to foreign influences; this change is especially apparent in the transformation of Islamic responses to Europe at the dawn of colonialism in the late eighteenth century in the Middle East.2 This chapter seeks to highlight this transformation by exploring writings from that period that reflect the change the Islamic tradition underwent with the advent of colonialism. The central figures, who reflect this change are Abdul Rahman al-Jabarti (1753–1825) and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1837/9–1897). The former represents an intellectual landscape that precedes colonialism, the latter reflects the creation of a different Islamic mindset, one that is generated and conditioned by colonial discourses; representing the colonial discourse, in this chapter, is Ernest Renan (1823–92). The final section of this chapter explores the possibility of whether the Islamic tradition, in view of the colonial legacy, can be explored, in neutral terms, from a comparative political theory stance.

NAPOLEON AND HIS ISLAMIC AND EGALITARIAN CREDENTIALS In his memoirs, de Bourrienne, the friend, advisor, and later biographer of Napoleon Bonaparte, recounted that in August 1797, Napoleon had 163

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declared that “it wouldn’t be long before we realize that in order to destroy effectively the power of England, it would be necessary to attack Egypt.”3 When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, then, his military mission was essentially about a power struggle between France and England. Egypt then was under the rule of the Ottomans, but it was effectively run by the Mamluks,4 whose power was increasing because of the decentralization of authority under the Ottomans. France needed access to the Egyptian market, but it was with its rival England that the Mamluks were engaged in commerce. In addition to securing a commercial link with Egypt, Napoleon saw an additional dimension to his mission, a civilizational one: “I shall colonize the country. I shall bring them artists, artisans of all sorts, women, actors, etc.,” he told de Bourrienne.5 He viewed the Orient as the cradle of all religions, and the only place where great empires and revolutions once existed. It was a subject he never tired of discussing with his close associates.6 Prior to landing in Egypt, he told his troops of the dual mission he had in mind: “You are about to undertake a conquest the effects of which on civilization and commerce are incalculable.”7 Among the books he requested de Bourrienne to purchase was the Qur’an.8 In his Chronicle of the French Occupation,9 which gives a detailed account of the first seven months of the French occupation, the Egyptian historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti related that not long after the French ships had reached Egypt’s shores, the French distributed a proclamation in Arabic, on behalf of Napoleon: In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no god but God. He has no son, nor has He an associate in His Dominion … O ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion; but this is a pure falsehood … I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors and that I, more than the Mamluks, serve God—may He be praised and exalted—and revere His Prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an. And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and the only circumstances which distinguish one from the other are reason, virtue, and knowledge. … O ye Qadis, Shaykhs and Imams … tell your nation that the French are also faithful Muslims, and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Papal See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war with Islam.10

Napoleon and his advisors were at pain to show that their mission was not religiously sanctioned, and avoided resorting to references to Christianity in their language. Other conquerors had made the mistake of

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conquering other nations in the name of religion, they believed, but now “the age of religious revolutions has passed.”11 Yet if equality was what Napoleon promised the Egyptians, it was in the form of submission to the French that Egyptians could actualize it. He ordered that villages should send messengers to spread his message, requiring people to follow his injunctions and to raise the French flag, with precise instructions, indicating that it was white, blue and red,12 as a sign of their submission. Napoleon also took the liberty to compose a prayer for the locals that they may perform in mosques: … all of them shall render thanks for God’s graciousness, praise be to Him and may He be exalted, in extirpating the power of the Mamluks, saying with a loud voice, May God perpetuate the glory of the Ottoman Sultan! May God preserve the glory of the French army! ...13

Judging by the Islamic rhetoric he deployed, one gets the sense that Napoleon’s civilizational plan might have had a cross-civilizational, i.e., Islamo-French, texture to it, but that was far from his mind. It was ancient Egypt and its distant link to Europe that Napoleon fantasized about. As Edward Said put it, for Napoleon, “[t]he Orient, in short, existed as a set of values attached, not to its modern realities, but to a series of valorized contacts it had had with a distant European past.”14 As to his references to Islam, Napoleon deemed it politically effective to elevate the religion of the conquered people. Beneath the rhetoric, however, de Bourrienne revealed: Everything he said about Muhammad, Islamism, and the Koran to the leading men of Egypt, he laughed at himself. But he enjoyed having his sayings repeated, and that those sayings related to his [claimed] religious convictions be translated into beautiful Arabic prose, through which he aimed to gain the sympathy of the inhabitants.15

Napoleon may well have enjoyed the Arabic sound of his proclamations. It seems that it amused the soldiers. It was also a source of amusement for him to give the impression to the religious scholars of Egypt that he was considering converting to Islam.16 Al-Jabarti’s reaction, however, suggests that Napoleon must have overestimated both the effect of his religious claims on the locals and the Arabic fluency of the French scholars he brought with him. To the ears of al-Jabarti, Napoleon’s Arabic proclamations resonated very differently, indeed painfully. Al-Jabarti had a field day highlighting the basic Arabic mistakes that littered what he described as the “miserable letter,” with its “incoherent words and vulgar constructions.”17 The Arabic was badly drafted; the occurrence of certain words in the wrong context appeared to al-Jabarti “like animal droppings on the road or a boulder on a mountain pass.” He did not hide his disdain for their violation

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of the Arabic language, calling on God to “afflict the man who composed it with break-bone fever and … expose him to all sorts of destruction.”18 It must be remembered that for Muslims (and Arabs too), the Arabic language in and of itself occupies a spiritual-like status, it is the language in which the Qur’an was revealed; for the poetic among them, it originates from the soul before it gets expressed by the vocal cords. One poet expresses this as: Our duty to learn languages Is like that of memorizing prayers For no religion is understood Except by the study of languages19

On Napoleon’s pretension of religiosity, al-Jabarti wasted no time “deconstructing” it. He highlighted to his co-religionists that while Napoleon gave the appearance that he agreed with the three monotheist religions, in effect, his proclamation indicated only a partial lip service to these religions. He may agree with the Muslims “in denying that God has no son or an associate,” but he does not respect the Prophet; for if he did, “he would believe in him, accept his truth, and respect his nation.”20 As to his laudatory statement about “the glorious Qur’an,” “this too is a lie, because to respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies it by believing in what it contains.” Further, the fact that Napoleon could boast of destroying the Papal See is but an affirmation for al-Jabarti that the French are neither respectful of Christianity nor of Islam, they simply “do not hold fast to any religion.”21 Al-Jabarti was also loathed by the way in which the French sought to govern the Egyptians. They instituted a Diwan, an administrative government to which they appointed local leaders, who reported to them.22 Members of the Diwan were to vote on administrative issues, thus empowering them against the Mamluks, and, in theory, they would take charge of communal affairs. If the French’s aim was to “win the hearts and minds” of the locals, they did a poor job achieving it. Al-Jabarti’s description is invaluable. One day, the head of the Diwan, Shaykh al-Sharqawi, paid a visit to Napoleon along with the other members. After a while, Napoleon got up and: … brought a three-piece taylasan (a shawl-like garment) of red, white, and blue and put it on Shaykh al-Sharqawi’s shoulder. The latter removed it with his hand and put it on the floor, asking to be excused from wearing it. The interpreter said ‘Oh Shaykhs! You have become dear friends of the Sari ‘Askar [i.e., Commander-in-Chief, Napoleon], and his intention is to glorify you and to honour you with his attire and token, because if you are thus marked, the soldiers and the people will extol you and you will fill a great place in their hearts. They answered “But our esteem may fail in the eyes of our Muslim brothers.” The Sari ‘Askar became angry with Shaykh al-Sharqawi and said “This man is unsuited for leadership”…23

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The Muslim leaders ended up accepting a tricolor emblem, which they wore when they met Napoleon on formal occasions and took off later. De Bourrienne was correct in noting that the age of religious revolutions had passed for the French, but French nationalism was emerging as a new political dogma. The behavior of French soldiers did not reflect well on Napoleon’s mission either, and therefore did not win them much sympathy among the locals. Napoleon had issued strict orders to his soldiers to respect local religious culture, stressing that while Egyptian men treat their women differently from the French, “whoever commits a rape is a monster in the eyes of all nations.”24 The orders were not always observed. Al-Jabarti recounted how the French “started to open the houses of the Amirs, to enter and loot them to their hearts’ content.”25 Al-Jabarti was amazed that the French should call on people to go out at night, and expect them to stroll along the Nile as they usually did, and open their shops, as if life was normal. How could they, when the French had just imposed on them “poll-taxes, unrelenting demands, looting of homes, harassing women, and girls, arresting and imprisoning them, and making financial settlements which exceeded all bound!”26 The presence of the French, however, benefited some Egyptians more than others. Greek Orthodox Christians, for example, opened several alcoholic shops to cater for the taste of the occupiers.27 Al-Jabarti also told of Muslim local leaders and merchants who conspired with the French. But neither the Christian nor the Muslim collaborators were spared the wrath of the French. Christian houses were also looted. And when a certain Sayyid Muhammad Kurayyim engaged in corrupt practices and did not give the French their cut, “they tied him with his arms stretched out and fired upon him with rifles as was their practice with those whom they executed.”28 Al-Jabarti was philosophical on Kurayyim’s fate: “The wise man is he who is content with what God has granted him of worldly things and who is satisfied with a small portion.”29 The initial Diwan was not effective, so the French set up a new one, which they called the “Court of Cases.” It was meant to handle commercial, civil, inheritance and lawsuits. In al-Jabarti’s eyes, it served as “a basis for malice, a foundation for godlessness, a bulwark of injustice, and a source of all manner of evil innovations.”30 His harsh judgment stemmed from the heavy-handed taxes that were introduced, with many complicated and elaborate stipulations that were suddenly imposed on people. Property owners, for example, had to bring forth title-deeds as proof of their possessions. The only proofs deemed acceptable were ones that were recorded in the register, a record that they had to pay a fee in order to get. What was more devastating for the people, though, was that the evidence for what constituted ownership did not take into consideration the existing practices at the time. Those who had a certificate of purchase but were not registered

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or those who inherited land and held certificates handed down to them by their forefathers had their properties confiscated by the Diwan. In alJabarti’s eyes, this practice “was one of the most malicious artifices by which the French stripped owners of their holdings and lands.”31 A series of new taxes were introduced, e.g., land taxes, farming taxes, death taxes, etc.32 The French then proceeded to increase taxes on property above those that were set by the Diwan. This served as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Before long, a rebellion arose, which was perhaps the debut of the phenomenon we have come to call political Islam. That is because very quickly Islam was decentralized,33 and many people jumped on its bandwagon. Initially, it was some populist ‘ulama (religious scholars) who instigated an uprising, calling on the people to rise against the French and kill them: “O Muslims, the jihad is incumbent upon you. How can you free men agree to pay the poll tax (jizya) to the unbelievers? Have you no pride?”34 The jizya being the poll tax that non-Muslims had been required to pay under Islamic rule, the symbolism of the call was thus meant to resonate both politically and religiously. Islam quickly became the language of resistance. Al-Jabarti tells of a certain perfumer, who, dressed up in the manner of the faqihs (religious scholars), went around calling on people to fight in the name of Islam: “God is most great, O Muslims. The ‘ulamas have commanded you to kill the infidels. Make ready, O stalwarts, and strike them everywhere.”35 Al-Jabarti did not limit his criticism to the French; he was equally critical of his fellow Egyptians. He was unimpressed by the populist call for jihad by some ‘ulama, remarking that “this deluded one forgot that he was a prisoner in the hands of the French, who occupied the fortress and its walls, the high hills and the low.”36 He held no hope of success in the rebellion; the rebels were not acting in unity and “had forgotten that the cause of all these misfortunes and calamities was but the lack of unity, and the extreme disagreement and dispute among them.”37 Besides, he had already witnessed the superiority of the French army over the Mamluks, one of the most powerful armies Islam had had, at the hands of whom the Mongols were defeated in the thirteenth century. He might have loathed French policies, but he gave them credit for their military prowess. He described them as being tightly knit and well organized, “they acted as if they were following the tradition of the Community (of Muhammad) in early Islam and saw themselves as fighters in a holy war.”38 Of course, the French spared no means to quell the rebellion, including plundering al-Azhar mosque, one of the oldest and most prestigious of Islamic institutions. They treated Qur’anic volumes as trash, treading on them with their feet; they soiled the mosque, “blowing their spit in it, pissing, and defecating it.” Al-Jabarti was not surprised that they were, as he knew all along, “the enemies of the Religion, the malicious victors who

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gloat in the misfortune of the vanquished.”39 Surprised, he was not; but his religious sensitivity was severely bruised: “On that night the Lord’s host allowed the host of Satan to move freely, because of a pledge which He had taken upon Himself, fulfilling it beyond all requirements.”40 It is as if God had bet on al-Azhar in a gambling game with Satan, and lost. Al-Jabarti’s account is not all negative about the French; he also had much to admire about them. As noted earlier, he expressed high esteem of their military prowess, though the memoirs of de Bourrienne revealed that there was a great deal of disunity and discontent among the French, details which had obviously escaped al-Jabarti.41 But he reserved his greatest admiration for their scientific and literary learning. He noted in his chronicle that he was a frequent visitor of the house where the French scholars had set up their library. He was impressed by many of their scientific books, including books they had translated from Arabic, among them the Qur’an. Some of them had apparently memorized verses from the Qur’an. No doubt these came in handy when Napoleon thought it fitting to ascribe to himself characteristics that the Qur’an reserves to the Prophet and others to God. Thus at one point he addressed the Egyptians, presenting his role in history as akin to that of Muhammad, perhaps as his modern and more successful heir: I say to you that I love the Prophet Muhammad, because he is a hero like me, his appearance is like mine. Nay, I am greater than him because I invaded more [countries] than he did … If you had known me well, you would have worshipped me …42

Muslims don’t worship Muhammad; worship is only reserved for God. Napoleon went on to compare his power to that of God (e.g., Q. 8: 43): Know ye also that it is in my power to expose what is in the heart of every one of you, for I know the nature of man and what is concealed in his heart at the very moment that I look upon him.43

It is generally assumed, but not uncontested, that Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt signaled the dawn of modernity in the Middle East, and an important and positive shift toward progress in the history of modern Egypt, a shift that was to be consolidated by Muhammad Ali, the Governor of Egypt (1805–49).44 While many of the early Egyptian nationalists espoused this view, historians will no doubt continue to debate the impact of the French occupation on Egypt’s modernization. For the purpose of this chapter, however, it is al-Jabarti’s response to the occupation and its bearers that is of interest to us. He was born into a prestigious family of scholars, whose ties to alAzhar went as far back as the sixteenth century. His father was a scholar and a businessman, knew several languages, taught, among other subjects,

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mathematics, geometry, algebra, and astronomy, and was well connected to the ruling classes of Egypt, both Mamluks and Ottomans.45 David Ayalon considers al-Jabarti as “one of the greatest historians of the Muslim world of all times,”46 remarking that the “objectivity with which [al-Jabarti] narrates the history of the French occupation can serve as a model to any modern European historian.”47 His longer chronicle might have begun initially as a collaborative project with other historians, the Damascene historian alMuradi and al-Jabarti’s own teacher, Muhammad al-Murtada al-Zabidi, but their deaths meant that he proceeded with the project on his own.48 Ayalon believes that al-Jabarti’s chronicle must have been well known and available to use even before its publication, since Egyptian and European scholars at the time drew on it extensively. But al-Jabarti’s criticism of the policies of Muhammad Ali led to the disappearance of the chronicle from circulation; it was believed that the government confiscated and destroyed most of the copies.49 Al-Jabarti’s approach is grounded in an Islamic worldview, one that is representative of an educated class of scholars, displaying a critical, sharp, and independent mind at work. On one hand, he gave the French due credit for their military superiority and their love of learning. Yet at the same time, neither their power nor their propaganda had an influence on how he read the situation. He saw them as vanquishers, enemies of Islam; their lip service to Islam was at best ignorant of the principles of the faith. More importantly, we see in al-Jabarti a scholar whose views of Islam are defined by traditional Islamic understanding, rather than conditioned by the Europeans’ understanding of the Islamic tradition. One gets a clear sense that this was an evolving mindset, open to embracing non-Islamic forms of learning, evidenced in his admiration of the French’s intellectual talents. Before long though, this was to change, when Muslim reformers of the nineteenth century began to see Islam through European lenses; in many instances, European views carried assumptions and prejudices that Muslim reformers were to assimilate into their own mindset. This is not to say that traditional Islamic learning came to a complete halt, but the prominent political discourse shifted to another generation of Muslim scholars, who, like the dominant European discourse at the time, believed that modernity was to be achieved by modernizing Islam, instead of the institutions of the Islamic world. The debate between Ernest Renan and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani illustrates the new dynamics and a different chapter in Islamic responses to Europe.

SAVING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM: RENAN AND AL-AFGHANI The French philologist Ernest Renan wrote his doctoral dissertation on the twelfth-century philosopher Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), Averroes as he was known

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in the Latin West. But Renan’s work on Islam spanned a broad spectrum; he wrote on the foundation of the Islamic faith, its prophet, doctrines, theology, etc. He also wrote on Judaism, Christianity, philosophy, language, science, literature, and more. Whether Renan’s views of Islam were defined by a predisposition to an ideological and systematic framework or not is difficult to say, but they did nevertheless grow into an ideological worldview. Despite the numerous flaws in his ideas and the subsequent scholarship that has since discredited him, Renan’s ideas have survived to the present day. Renan’s contemporaries describe him as someone who is passionate and “nervously obsessed” by his own ideas: “He has impressions, this says it all. Generalizations for him are nothing but the effect, the echo of things in him. He has no [analytical] system, but insights, and sensations.”50 His writings on Islam certainly fit such a description. In his mind, Islam is the last religious creation of humanity and its least original.51 Relative to other religious traditions, he considers Islam to have brought forth the heaviest fetter humanity ever had to endure.52 For him, there was no such thing as an Arabic science or Arabic philosophy. People thought there was one “until we recognized the Greek origin of Arabic science and philosophy. The latter were but a petty translation of Greek science and philosophy.”53 The great intellectual movement that the world witnessed under Islamic rule, he held, owed nothing to Islam. Muslims who happened to be part of it were “internally rebelling against their religion,” for, in reality, “Islam always persecuted science and philosophy.”54 Despite admiring the original ideas of al-Ghazali (d. 1111), who renounced philosophical rationalism in favor of a life of mysticism, Renan blamed him for humiliating science and philosophy in his book The Incoherence of the Philosophers.55 Thus, for Renan, the twelfth century saw the end of philosophy in Islam; that is when Ibn Rushd, whom he considered to have been the last Muslim philosopher, died in 1198. Renan’s ideas are fraught with internal contradictions. Assuming as he does that Islam is antithetical to science and philosophy, it was either that no science and philosophy could have existed under Islam and all the intellectual output was mere translation of Greek texts, or that Islam had its scientists and philosophers, but they were not true Muslims. Renan’s inconsistency is more bewildering when in the same article he professes that Islam kills science and philosophy and admits that it was within the heart of Islam that complete rationalism was developed.56 He tells of an account by a Spanish theologian who witnessed two sessions conducted by Muslim theologians (mutakallimun) in Baghdad during the Abbasid era, and decided never to attend another: The first session, which I attended, there were not only Muslims of all sorts, orthodox and heterodox, but also religious deviants, Zoroastrian (guèbres),

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materialists, atheists, Jews, Christians; in short, there were unbelievers/skeptics (incrédules) of all kinds. Each sect had its own leader, entrusted with the task of defending the opinions they professed … one of these unbelievers would address the gathering: “we are gathered here to reason, he would say. You all know the rules. You Muslims shall not invoke arguments from your Book [i.e., the Qur’an] or based on the authority of your prophet, because we believe in neither. Each one should limit his arguments to reason.” Everyone applauded.—You understand, continued the Spanish theologian, after listening to such things, I didn’t return to these assemblies. They proposed that I should visit another, but it was just as scandalous.57

One would have thought that the fact that orthodox and heterodox Muslims took part in such gatherings should have given Renan a pause, but coherent analysis of complex issues does not seem to have been his forte. H. Taine held that Renan is simply incapable of formulating a precise formula.58 Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), whose original mind Renan admired, would have judged Renan in much harsher terms. He was of the view that ignorance and “imbecility are nearer to salvation than a defective intelligence” or arrogance.59 One gets the sense that for Renan, Islam is itself a malady. Once it takes hold of the mind, it is certain to lead it into infinite fanaticism. By the time of his religious initiation, around the age of ten or twelve, the Muslim child, Renan held: … turns suddenly fanatic, full of an inane pride of possessing that which he thinks to be absolute truth … This mad pride is the radical vice of the Muslim. … convinced that God gives fortune and power to those who obey him, irrespective of education or personal merit, the Muslim has the most profound contempt for education, science, and everything that makes up the European mind. This strain inculcated by the Islamic faith is so strong that all the differences of race and nationality disappear by the act of converting to Islam. The Berber, Sudanese, Circassian, Malay, Egyptian, Nubian, once they become Muslims, cease being Berber, Sudanese, Egyptian etc. … they become Muslims. Only Persia is an exception; it was able to guard its distinct mind.60

Thus, emancipating the Muslim from his religion, Renan held, is the best service Europe could offer him.61 Renan’s views about Islam and science beyond the twelfth century have long been discredited by historians of science. To give one example, George Saliba’s work on astronomy has established that Copernicus’ “astronomical revolution” owed a great deal to advances in the field by Muslim astronomers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (among others, Damascene physician Ibn al-Nafis [d. 1288] and Damascene astronomer Ibn al-Shatir [d. 1375]).62 But in view of Renan’s claims and for the purposes of this chapter, it is worth rewinding the clock to less than a century earlier, that is,

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prior to the onset of colonialism in the Arab-Islamic world, and examine what a Yemini scholar, Muhammad bin Ali al-Shawkani (1759–1839), a contemporary of al-Jabarti, thought of a proper education that students desiring to achieve high stages of learning ought to pursue.63 Al-Shawkani’s purpose of writing his book, Talab al-’Ilm wa-Tabagat alMuta’allimin (The Pursuit of Knowledge and the Categories of the Educated), is to compile a curriculum for the interested student that would meet his intellectual ambition. The pursuit of knowledge, al-Shawkani writes, is one of the highest and most honorable forms of worship.64 The student has a duty to avoid dogmatism of all kinds and pursue a fair and objective approach to his study of the Shari’a; it is like a trust in his hand, not to be betrayed. Taking side, in a dogmatic manner, with any Muslim scholar amounts to betraying the Shari’a: … you would turn him [i.e., the Muslim scholar] into a lawgiver (shari’) instead of a jurist (mutasharri’); into the source of religious authority (mukallif) instead of someone authorized to carry out the religious precepts (mukallaf); [in short, you would turn him] into somebody to be worshipped instead of a worshipper.

Al-Shawkani identifies five categories of learned people (ahl al-‘ilm); students aiming to be in any of these categories are meant to cover different curricula. He who wishes to be in the highest category ought to cover an extensive spectrum of subjects, covering grammar, morphology, logic, Islamic law, theology, science of Tafsir (the corpus of commentary on the Qur’an), science of Hadith, history, as well as any of the books that are written by objective people, who are not dogmatically affiliated with any of the schools and sects. Once the student covers these subjects, then he is free to broach any subject he likes.65 It is no surprise that George Makdisi, an eminent scholar of classical Islamic education, should remark that the classical education of jurists took between 14 to 24 years of learning, before a student is said to be a qualified jurist.66 The true scholar, according to alShawkani, is he, who, after mastering these subjects, interprets the Shari’a by “supposing himself to be present during the time of prophecy, when revelation descended [upon the prophet] … as if no other scholar or mujtahid has preceded him.”67 In other words, he has a duty to be independent and innovative in his interpretation of the foundation texts of the faith. The other four categories of educated people are noble enough, but they are for those students who are less ambitious. They cater for those who wish to have enough knowledge as to be independent thinkers or for those who need to acquire specific knowledge for vocational purposes. In the latter category, he includes accountants and philosophers. Those who wish to pursue philosophy ought to study mathematics, natural sciences, metaphysics, and geometry. Far from seeing philosophy as an enemy of religion, he

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remarks that “the knowledge of philosophical sciences does not contradict the science of Law, rather, it adds happiness and love for the science of Law to the well educated and capable jurist.”68 Like al-Jabarti, al-Shawkani is representative of a generation of Muslim scholars who were writing about Islam just before or at the dawn of colonialism. The point here is not to speculate about the path towards modernity that the Islamic world might have pursued without European colonialism, but merely to highlight the existence of a mode of thinking in the Islamic world unlike that painted by European colonial discourse. By the time Renan was writing, colonialism had already taken hold of the Islamic world, and a new chapter of Islamic discourse was opened, one that owes more to European assumptions about Islam than to evolving Islamic perspectives. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani is representative of that latter discourse. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1837/9–1897) was one of the leading Muslim reformers of the nineteenth century. His reforms spanned the political as well as the scholarly spheres, with his disciples becoming renowned reformers (e.g., Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida) in their own right. AlAfghani lived at a time when the world of Islam and that of the West were not on equal terms, with European powers encroaching on Muslim territories on several fronts. He traveled widely in the Islamic world and beyond, spending considerable time in Egypt (1871–79), and presenting himself to be of Afghani Sunni origin. Keddie’s research has since uncovered his Shi’ite Iranian origin,69 while Elie Kedourie has highlighted serious doubts as to Afghani’s religious commitment altogether.70 In pithy terms, Maxime Rodinson has remarked that “religion was clearly a political weapon for Afghani.”71 Afghani was thus writing at a time of political turmoil, during which the map of the Islamic world had shrunk beyond recognition. In his own words: England has taken possession of Egypt, Sudan and the Indian Peninsula, thus seizing an important part of Muslim land. Holland has assumed full control over Java and islands of the Pacific Ocean. France controls Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Russia has taken over Western Turkestan, the Caucasus, Transoxia (Afghanistan?) and Daghestan. China has occupied eastern Turkestan. Only a few Muslim countries have remained independent, but under [constant] fear and danger. The terror the Europeans are breathing [down the necks of Muslims] prevents the latter from sleeping at night, and takes away their peace of mind. The influence of the Westerners has greatly affected these peoples, so much so that they tremble upon hearing the utterance of the words Russia or England, they faint upon hearing the word France or Germany. These are the same [Muslim] people who once received tributes from the great monarchs [of the world]. The all-powerful governors are now humiliated and serve as subjects; of their own hands, they offer capitulation.72

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Afghani was also writing at a time when European discourses about Islam had already developed into not just a political onslaught but a civilizational one. He was not, therefore, an internal reformer, but more of a reactionary reformer, an apologist for Islam to the Europeans, and a latent advocate of European modernization to his fellow Muslims. As Nikkie R. Keddie notes, Afghani sought to achieve a middle way between Islamic traditionalism and uncritical imitation of the Christian West. While al-Jabarti and al-Shawkani could openly embrace different forms of knowledge, Islamic and nonIslamic, Afghani’s era made it difficult to advocate openly European modes of modernization, when Europe’s guns were pointed at Muslim lands. Like Renan, Afghani’s writings do not present an internally coherent vision as to his views of Islam. But unlike Renan, Afghani was consciously inconsistent. As Homa Pakdaman remarks, Afghani had an excellent gift at disguising his own views, and made his ideas contingent on the circumstances of the country in which he lived and the people he was addressing.73 His broad agenda was the establishment of a pan-Islamic movement that would unite Muslims worldwide. He thus appealed to Muslims to return to the teachings of the Qur’an, the foundation text of the creed. Through the Qur’an, he preached, God “planted the roots of philosophical sciences,” and when the Arabs began to believe in the Book, they moved from a state of ignorance and savagery into a civilized one. In order “to exalt and elevate knowledge,” Muslims “lowered their heads and showed humility before the lowest of their subjects, who were the Christians, Jews, and Magians, until, with their help, they translated the philosophical sciences from Persian, Syriac, and Greek into Arabic.”74 It was because Islam had been misunderstood, he often repeated, that the Muslim world was in decline and trailing behind Europe as far as scientific progress was concerned. By advocating a return to the teachings of the Qur’an, as Keddie remarks, al-Afghani intended to bridge differences among Muslims, under the banner of believing in the Qur’an.75 In other words, Afghani’s appeal to the Qur’an and what he deemed to be the authentic adherence of early Muslims to Islamic teachings is not to be read as a theological contribution; rather, he wanted to deploy Islam as a means to awaken the religious fervor of his fellow Muslims for political ends.76 Islam for him was the path towards initiating a pan-Islamic movement that would counter the influence of European domination in Muslim lands. Unwittingly, his legacy was in being the source of inspiration for nationalist Islamic movements. Looking at his political agenda through the lenses of his other intellectual views, it is pertinent to highlight the extent to which his views of Islam owed to those of Renan, with all the inconsistencies and assumptions that marked Renan’s views. Like Renan, he showed little appreciation of the classical Islamic heritage. For example, despite admitting that

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Muslim philosophers improved on the works of the Greek philosophers before them, he proceeded to claim that they accepted “their words like a celestial revelation … just as the masses follow their leaders in objects and aims.”77 The works of classical Muslim philosophers were “defective” in his eyes, and Muslims would do well to ignore them and not be misled by their antiquarian teachings. Yet despite his obvious concern for the need of scientific learning to take hold in the Islamic world, pointing to advances in telegraph lines, electricity, etc.,78 he launched an onslaught on the materialists, singling out Darwin’s evolutionary theory for fierce criticism.79 The materialists, he believed, undermined the qualities that religions confer upon man, namely, shame, trustworthiness, and truthfulness. It was these qualities, he believed, that permitted human associations to form and then develop into civilizations.80 Afghani’s views about the Islamic tradition were conditioned by European views of Islam at the time. He was an avid reader of European scholarship, especially the works of Renan. When Renan published his article “L’Islamisme et la Science” in Journal des Débats, referred to earlier, in which he launched an onslaught on the nature of the Islamic faith, Afghani sent a response to the same journal. In it, Afghani highlighted, against Renan’s charges, the Arabs’ positive influence upon philosophy and science under Islam. But he went on to support Renan’s offensive against religious systems, though Afghani’s onslaught saw no qualitative difference between the dogmatism of Christianity and that of Islam. “All religions are intolerant, each one in its way,” he argued. Afghani went on, however, to concede that the societies that follow Christianity have freed themselves from its teachings, and they are able to “advance rapidly on the road of progress and science.” He expressed his hope that “Muhammadan society will succeed someday in breaking its bonds and marching resolutely in the path of civilization after the manner of Western society.”81 If, on the other hand, the millions of Muslims fail to break away from their religion, they would be “condemned to live in barbarism and ignorance.” In that article, Afghani’s representation of Islam and Muslims was not that different from that of Renan. “In truth,” he wrote, “the Muslim religion has tried to stifle science and stop its progress.” It has succeeded on that front, and it is responsible for the “profound darkness” that the Arab world is buried under. In effect, it is impossible to reconcile religion and philosophy, he argued, for “religion imposes on man its faith and its belief, whereas philosophy frees him of it totally or in part.”82 As to Afghani’s characterization of Muslims, they, too, did not fare any better. The true Muslim, he believed, is a slave to his dogma, and refuses to allow his mind to ponder outside its narrow parameters.83 In effect, the substance of Afghani’s response was a testimony, approving Renan’s views. Renan, of course, was

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most grateful. He responded with the highest praises to Afghani’s intellect; in his parlance, this meant that Afghani was “disengaged completely from all the prejudices of Islam.”84 He couldn’t have been more sympathetic toward Muslims, “they were the first victims of Islam.”85 As noted earlier, Afghani’s reforms were largely defined by the political turmoil of his time. It is difficult to do justice to his efforts, since his era did not afford him the luxury to initiate reform from a position of power. This, however, doesn’t change the consequences that followed, namely, since the nineteenth century, major reforms in the Islamic world evolved on European terms, and indeed mirrored European assumptions about Islam. That colonialism should result in Muslims being somewhat coerced to follow a path of reform largely defined by Europeans is not surprising. After all, that is the nature of conquest and the dynamics of power that flow from it. Perhaps no one understood such dynamics better than the great historian Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), when he noted in his al-Muqaddima (An Introduction to History) that “the vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive mark(s), his dress, his occupation, and all his other conditions and customs.”86 That European powers should exercise their political privileges over the vanquished Muslims then is not unique to Europeans; Muslims had done the same before, as had other vanquishers. Still, one may point to a number of qualitative differences between European and Islamic forms of conquest, without wishing to romanticize either one. To paraphrase Michael Cook, Islamic conquests began by endorsing the idea of aggressive warfare (jihad) to extend the dominion of Islam, only to be followed by a variety of ifs and buts, which generally saw that conquered people kept their own religions and traditions.87 Patricia Crone has highlighted that while classical Muslim jurists supported in principle holy war, they also found it imperative to account for the Qur’anic dictum that “there is no compulsion in religion” (Q. 2: 256).88 For the most part, she writes, Muslims did not persecute non-Muslims, but “those who stuck to their faith were apt to feel that history was passing them by, which easily turned into a conviction that the truth must lie elsewhere,” and so went the conversion route.89 Modern European conquests, on the other hand, adopted the opposite starting point. They began with grand and revolutionary ideals to spread the universal rights of man, only to be followed by stipulations and qualifications that ensured, for the most part, the subjection of their conquered people rather than their liberation. There is another qualitative difference that marks Islamic conquests from those of modern Europeans, and it has to do with the way they perceived and evaluated different sources of knowledge. Cary Nederman has shown in his chapter in this volume how medieval Latin Christians composed inter-religious dialogues that drew respectfully on the ideas of different religious faiths as a way of understanding their own. On the Islamic front,

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the military superiority of Islamic conquests did not translate into unquestioned superiority of Islamic forms of knowledge. The Muslim scholar Sa‘id al-Andalusi (d. 1070), who was passionate about science, did not, for example, confine knowledge to Islamic civilization when he wrote about scientific achievements. The contributions by Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, and Hebrews were critical to scientific advances; in his eyes, these people qualified as “God’s elite.”90 The dominant discourse of modern European conquests, however, embraced the view that civilization and science originated in the West by the ancient Greeks, and were dormant for centuries until they were recovered and developed by European thinkers since the Renaissance.91 This should not mean that Muslims are better than modern Christian Europeans. That Afghani should believe and imitate Renan is not unusual, but that this specific discourse should become a dominant one is a feature of modernity. The ease with which communication spreads in the modern world is a mixed blessing. Just as knowledge and all the positive aspects that flow from it can spread swiftly and reach an unprecedentedly large number of people across continents, so do prejudices, assumptions, and misinformation. Intelligent people are not immune to the latter. In 2007, we find the Nobel Prize recipient in physics, Steven Weinberg, educating the readers of the Times Literary Supplement about Islam, as if he was paraphrasing Renan and Afghani, in a blind leading the blind sort of fashion: Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God’s hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.92

ISLAM AND COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY Fred Dallmayr makes the point in this volume that there are several reasons why we should embrace learning about the “other” through the vehicle of comparative political theory. Not only such an endeavor is conducive to self-interest “for the purpose of gaining a strategic advantage or bolstering one’s own sense of superiority,” but also “with a view toward what is common or shared in humanity,” that serves what he terms as a “moraluniversal” good. At the heart of the transformation that Dallmayr is seeking to realize in our mindset is the relinquishment of any “ambitions of dominations” vis-à-vis other cultures, so that the “other” ceases to be an object of

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“acquisition” but “an authentic agent.” Only then can dialogue take place based on a mutual learning process. That comparative political theory allows us to use our knowledge of the “other” for self-interest is undeniable. It is difficult, however, to envisage how the “other” can be studied as an “authentic agent,” at least in the case that I am addressing in this chapter, namely, between the world of Islam and Christendom/West in the modern period. As shown in the first part of the chapter, the nature of the encounter between the two has never been about a “dialogue,” nor have the events since Napoleon’s invasion been conducive to any forms of “dialogue” based on equal terms, and outside the parameters of political domination. Thus, the “other” cannot be said to be an authentic agent in the manner Dallmayr assumes to be possible. The colonial encounter in this instance rendered the “other” into not just an image but a reality that conforms to a set of assumptions created by European powers, a point Dallmayr himself has made in his Beyond Orientalism.93 Thus, Western powers today do not need a Renan to perpetuate the view that Islam is backward. They could count on Afghani and Renan’s heirs in the Islamic world to do so.94 Many Muslims have assimilated into their minds that there is a problem with Islam, and are busy/trapped, explaining why a seventh-century book, i.e., the Qur’an, does not have a theory of democracy.95 The very assumption then that this “other” is an “authentic agent” is in itself a dangerous supposition to make. That is because it assumes that the “other” is as equal as “us,” and therefore makes the “other” as accountable as “us” for the intellectual output he produces. There is a reason why the Muslim world has not produced in its recent history a Weber or a Foucault, but rather it is producing imitations of them (good and bad ones). As for the innovative thinkers coming out of the Islamic world, they’re for the most part Islamist ideologues, and there is a reason for that, too. So if we assume that the “other” is an authentic agent, then Islamic intellectual output cannot be expected to fare well compared with Western intellectual output, in view of the persistent political domination of some Western powers over parts of the Islamic world. Thus, assuming that Islamic civilization currently enjoys an authentic agency is to confer upon it an equality of accountability in its intellectual output that it is better off without. To assume this equality would amount to imposing it in a neo-colonialist fashion.

CONCLUSION A few months before he left Office, Prime Minister Tony Blair published an article in Foreign Affairs in which he expressed, in a language that resonates with Napoleonic metaphors, “great humility” toward Islam, expressing

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his amazement as “to how progressive [the Qur’an] is.” He proceeded to explain that the war in Iraq was launched not under the banner of “regime change,” but under “values change.” The political struggle the world is witnessing today in parts of the Islamic world (and beyond), according to Blair, has nothing to do with oil or domination, and it “is not a clash between civilizations; it is a clash about civilization.”96 The vocabulary and “aesthetics” of political domination may have changed since Napoleon; but modernization on Western terms, even with decolonization, has been less about political liberation and more about homogenization.97 This process may well have been less dramatic if the homogenizers have followed a uniform path of homogenization. But as Fanon has aptly put it some fifty years ago, “The well-known principle that all men are equal will be illustrated in the colonies from the moment that the native claims that he is the equal of the settler.”98 Political domination is no longer about “settler” and “native,” but the spirit behind Fanon’s claim remains, if we replace the motto of equality with that of democracy. Muslims who embrace representative democracy that is not dictated by the Washington consensus, e.g., Algeria and Palestine, are likely to have their democracy annulled and suffer the alienation of the international community. “It is strange that they want to dictate democracy and Americanize our culture through their jet bombers,” exclaimed Usama bin Laden.99

NOTES * My thanks to the members of the Deliberative Democracy Group at the Australian National University for inviting me to “test” this paper on them. Their comments were most helpful. My thanks also to Michelle Burgis, Charles Butterworth, Fred Dallmayr, Bob Goodin, Gerald Gross, Barry Hindess, Anthony H. Johns, and Roland Rich for their helpful comments. 1. Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. Andras and Ruth Hamori (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 4–5. 2. It should be noted that in Southeast Asia and South Asia, the onset of colonialism was as far back as the early sixteenth century. 3. Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne, Ministre d’État, sur Napoléon, le Directeur, le Consultat, l’Empire et la Restauration, Tome II (Paris: Chez Ladvocat, Librairie, 1829), Chapter 2, 39. De Bourrienne was also part of Napoleon’s cabinet. 4. The term Mamluks (means “owned” in Arabic) designates a distinct group who were former slaves and were trained militarily in a Spartan-like fashion. They rose to power in the thirteenth century and established a dynasty over Syria and Egypt that lasted until the early sixteenth century, when they were taken over by the Ottoman conquest. David Ayalon has written extensively on various aspects of Mamluk history; see his “Aspects of the Mamluk Phenomenon,” Der Islam 53 (1976): 196–225.

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5. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 4, 49. 6. Mémoires, Tome II, 44–45. 7. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 6, 77. 8. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 4, 50. The other religious Scriptures he requested were the Bible, the New Testament, and the Veda (the latter presumably because, if all goes well, he planned to get to India). 9. The Arabic title of the book is Tarikh muddat al-Faransis bi-Misr. Al-Jabarti later wrote a more extensive account of the occupation entitled Mazhar al-Taqdis bi-Zawal Dawlat al-Faransis, and a third multi-volume work on the history of Egypt that covered the period between 1688 to 1821. See David Ayalon, “al- Djabarı-, ‘Abd alRah.ma- n b. H.asan,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill Online, 2007). This chapter focuses only on his first work, the details of which are listed below. 10. Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the French Occupation, 1798, trans. Shmuel Moreh (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 25–6. The edition also contains a chapter by Moreh, an introduction by Robert L. Tignor, excerpts from de Bourienne’s Memoirs, and excerpts from Edward Said’s Orientalism. I did not limit my use of de Bourienne to this edition, but instead I consulted the original Mémoires for further background. Citations from al-Jabarti are based on Moreh’s excellent translation in the edition I just noted. For a further appreciation of al-Jabarti’s views, especially those specifically related to the proclamations of Napoleon as translated by his scholars into Arabic, the Arabist would do well to consult the original Arabic that was published in conjunction with Moreh’s translation by Brill in 1975. Moreh’s chapter on al-Jabarti’s views of the occupation covers more Egyptian sources from that era than I do, since I am limiting my sources to this text by al-Jabarti. However, he omits much of the unflattering behavior by the French soldiers, e.g., looting, raping, etc. that al-Jabarti relates in his Chronicle. He does, however, note in one of his footnotes that his chapter will be expanded in a forthcoming publication. At the point of writing this chapter, his publication has not yet appeared. 11. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 6, 78–79. 12. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 27. 13. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 27. 14. Edward Said, Orientalism (excerpt from Orientalism in Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle), 174. 15. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 11, 165. 16. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 11, 165–66. 17. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 27. 18. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 30. 19. Cited in Majd al-Din Muhammad b. Ya‘qub al-Fayruzabadi, Al-Qamus alMuhit, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2 (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi,1952), 7. 20. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 31. 21. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 32. 22. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 42. 23. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 59. 24. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 6, 78. 25. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 44. 26. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 49.

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27. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 45. 28. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 58. Note that “Sayyid” is a title reserved to those who are descendants of the prophet Muhammad. 29. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 59. 30. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 67. 31. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 68. 32. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 68–70. 33. “Decentralized” does not imply that Islam had prior to that a central authority akin to that of the Pope. But what distinguishes the decentralization of Islam in modern times from previous traditional authority is that historically, it was only scholars who commanded a level of authority in questions of religion, and their authority was legitimated on the basis of established scholarly credentials, e.g., linguistic, legal, etc., a status that could only be achieved after years, if not decades, of learning. 34. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 83. 35. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 85. 36. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 83. 37. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 85. 38. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 36. 39. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 93. 40. Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle, 93. 41. Mémoires, Tome II, Chapter 9, 135. 42. Cited in the chapter by Shmuel Moreh, “Napoloeon and the French Impact on Egyptian Society in the Eyes of al-Jabarti,” Chronicle, 192. 43. Moreh, “Napoloeon and the French Impact on Egyptian Society in the Eyes of al-Jabarti,” 114. 44. For a critical survey of the various views, see Elliott Colla, “ ‘Non, non! Si, si!’: Commemorating the French Occupation of Egypt (1798–1801),” MLN: Modern Language Notes 118 (2003): 1043–1069. 45. For an informative background to al-Jabarti’s life and writings, including his connections and sources for his Chronicle, see David Ayalon, “The Historian alJabarti and His Background,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23, no. 2 (1960): 217–249. On this point, see 238–40. 46. Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabarti and His Background,” 218. 47. Cf. Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabarti and His Background,” 231. See also 233–34 on the extent to which French historians relied on al-Jabarti’s Chronicle when they wrote their Histoire scientifique et militaire de l’expédition française en Égypte, d’après les mémoires, matériaux, documents inédits. 48. Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabarti and His Background,” 224–26. I say “might have been” because, as Ayalon suggests, al-Jabarti provides two different versions as to his reasoning for writing his Chronicle. Ayalon notes both of them in his article. 49. Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabarti and His Background,” 228–29. 50. Cited in the Introduction by Ira O. Wade to Ernest Renan, Les Sciences de la Nature et les Sciences Historiques & L’Avenir de la Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), x. The description of Renan is by H. Taine. 51. Ernest Renan, “Mahomet et les origines de l’islamisme,” Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1955), Tome VII, 170 (168–220).

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52. Ernest Renan, “L’Islamisme et la science,” Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: CalmannLevy, 1952), Tome I, 956 (945–65). 53. Ernest Renan, “Les Peuples Sémitiques,” Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: CalmannLevy, 1952), Tome II, 326 (317–35). 54. Renan, “L’Islamisme et la science,” 955. 55. Ernest Renan, Averroes et L’Averroisme, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1952), Tome III, 90. 56. Renan, “L’Islamisme et la science,” 951. 57. Renan, “L’Islamisme et la science,” 950. 58. Cited in the “Introduction” by Ira O. Wade to Renan, Les Sciences de la Nature et les Sciences Historiques & L’Avenir de la Science, x. 59. Al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. Michael E. Marmura (Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1997), para. 6, 2–3 (my adaptation of Marmura’s translation). 60. Renan, “L’Islamisme et la science,” 946. 61. Renan, “L’Islamisme et la science,” 963. 62. George Saliba’s articles are available on his website ; his most recent book on the topic is Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007). 63. Muhammad ibn Ali al-Shawkani, Talab al-‘ilm wa-tabaqat al-muta‘allimin: adab al-talab wa-muntahi al-arab ([Egypt]: Dar al-Arqam, [1981?]). al-Shawkani was of the Zaydi sect, a branch of Shi’ism. The book under discussion, however, reveals no doctrinal affiliation; al-Shawkani presents himself as someone who upholds the teachings of the “pious predecessors” (al-salaf al-salih), a common invocation among Sunni scholars. For more details about the common religious heritage between the Zaydi sect and Sunnism, see Bernard Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 5–12. 64. Al-Shawkani, Talab al-‘ilm, 16. 65. Al-Shawkani, Talab al-‘ilm, 108–124. 66. George Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 24. 67. Al-Shawkani, Talab al-‘ilm, 122. 68. Al-Shawkani, Talab al-‘ilm, 142. 69. Nikkie R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). Keddie’s book is the most comprehensive account of Afghani’s career in the English language; it is to be read with Keddie’s earlier book on Afghani, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). The latter contains translations of some of Afghani’s writings. Another book worth consulting is by Homa Pakdaman, Djamal-Ed-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani (Paris: G.-P Maisonneuve et Larose, 1969). It contains a biography of Afghani and additional writings by him, translated into French. Where the citation of Afghani’s work is in English, it is based on Keddie’s translation; where it is in French, it is based on my rendering of Pakdaman’s French. 70. Elie Kedourie, Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Routledge, 1997).

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71. Maxime Rodinson, in his “Foreword” to Pakdaman, Djamal-Ed-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani, 16. 72. Al-Afghani, “Des Causes de la Faiblesse de l’Islam,” 273. 73. Pakdaman, Djamal-Ed-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani, 193. 74. Afghani, “The Benefits of Philosophy,” in Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 114. 75. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”, 392–93. 76. As remarked by Pakdaman, Djamal-Ed-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani, 195. 77. Afghani, “The Benefits of Philosophy,” 115. 78. Afghani, “The Benefits of Philosophy,” 120–21. This is from a section in which he calls on the `ulama of India to turn their minds away from the classical Muslim philosophers and ponder on the new possibilities that modern science is offering. 79. Al-Afghani, “The Truth about the Neicheri Sect,” 134–40. 80. Al-Afghani, “The Truth about the Neicheri Sect,” 144–47. 81. Al-Afghani, “Answer of Jamal ad-Din to Renan,” 183. 82. Al-Afghani, “Answer of Jamal ad-Din to Renan,” 187. 83. Al-Afghani, “Answer of Jamal ad-Din to Renan,” 183. 84. Ernest Renan, “Appendice à L’islamisme et la Science,” Tome I, 961. 85. Renan, “Appendice à L’islamisme et la Science,” 963. 86. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), vol. 1, 299. 87. Michael Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race (New York/London: Norton, 2003), 281, 284. 88. Patricia Crone, God’s Rule (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 373–5. 89. Crone, God’s Rule, 372. 90. Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race, 287–8. 91. I am here speaking of dominant political discourse arising in the West; the point is not to be generalized to all forms of knowledge. Indeed, specialized fields of studies in Western universities have generally explored the transmission of ideas across history and traditions. 92. Steven Weinberg, “A Deadly Certitude,” Times Literary Supplement, January 17, 2007, (18 Jan. 2007). 93. Fred Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounters (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 115–16. 94. On contemporary Arab thinkers of that category, see Nelly Lahoud, Political Thought in Islam: A Study in Intellectual Boundaries (London/New York: Routledge, 2005), chapters 2 and 6. At the time of writing this chapter, al-Nahar, a Lebanese daily newspaper, reported that a statue was unveiled in the Lebanese town of Jazir to commemorate Renan. Reported on Monday August 20, 2007 (accessed on that date). 95. See Anthony Johns and Nelly Lahoud, “The World of Islam and the Challenge of Islamism,” in Islam in World Politics, ed. Nelly Lahoud and Anthony Johns (London/New York: Routledge, 2005). 96. Tony Blair, “A Battle for Global Values,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007.

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97. Michael Cook makes the point about modernity and homogenization of the world. See Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race, 339. 98. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Baskingstoke: Penguin Books, 1967), 34. 99. Usama bin Laden, “Resist the New Rome,” January 4, 2004, in Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, ed. Bruce Lawrence and trans. James Howarth (London: Verso, 2005), 214.

9 From Political Thought in India to Indian Political Thought Anthony J. Parel

Modern political thought in India had its beginning in the nineteenth century. It began in response to Western political ideas and institutions, most of which the colonial state had introduced into the country. There were two aspects to the response. The first was the intellectual attraction that Indian thinkers felt for such Western ideologies as nationalism, liberalism and Marxism, even though these were not native to India. And the second was the political opposition that they felt towards colonialism, which was expressed in one way or another with the help of these very same ideologies. Attraction to political ideologies not original to India posed a problem for modern Indian political thinkers. For ancient and medieval India, too, had a well-established political philosophy grounded in the ArthasastraDharmsastra tradition, a tradition that had lasted for well over a millennium, up until the eighteenth century.1 The question arose as to what modern Indian political thinkers would do with that tradition. Would they ignore it altogether and start on a clean slate, or would they keep the old slate but write new things on it, as Gandhi wanted to do? Such was the nature of the question that the early generations of modern Indian political thinkers faced—from about the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. What was remarkable about Indian political thinking during this period was that it produced two distinct genres of political thought. The one I call “political thought in India” and the other, “Indian political thought.” What distinguishes the two is their respective intellectual framework. By “intellectual framework,” I mean the set of underlying ideas and assumptions regarding the nature of reality, the cosmos and the place that humans occupy in it. Such ideas and assumptions include those relating to the nature 187

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of history, the political community, the goals of life, and the role that the individual and the state play in realizing those goals. Every canon of political thought has its own specific intellectual framework. What happens when ideas are transferred from one framework to another? This is a question that all families of modern political thought face, whether Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Islamic, or Western. The political ideas that modern Indians accepted from the West were of course set in their own Western intellectual framework. The question arises as to whether in accepting them Indian thinkers accepted the Western intellectual framework also. If they accepted both the ideas in question and their Western framework, they would be producing in India nothing more than “political thought in India.” No doubt, Indian thinkers adopted Western political ideas in good faith. They needed these ideas in order to deal with such Indian issues like the end of colonialism and the establishment of self-government. But unless they were able to think from within an Indian framework, such ideas could produce only “political thought in India,” not “Indian political thought.” The key issue before us, then, is the type of intellectual framework that Indian thinkers were able and willing to use. Some Indians, wittingly or unwittingly, used a Western intellectual framework for their political thinking. Others quite deliberately used a new Indian intellectual framework. The one produced just “political thought in India” while the other produced genuine “Indian political thought.” In what follows I shall give a brief account of each of the two genres of political thought. The overall purpose of this exercise is to highlight the importance of the intellectual framework for political thinking, whether the thinking is Indian, Western, or any other. The critical question is whether modern Indian political thinkers were able to develop an Indian intellectual framework or whether they were dependent on Western substitutes.

POLITICAL THOUGHT IN INDIA The fact is that not many Indian political thinkers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were able to use an Indian intellectual framework for their political thinking. They seemed satisfied, in Sri Aurobindo’s words, “to imitate and reproduce with a servile fidelity the ideals and forms of the West.”2 Historians of political thought in India, too, have taken due note of this phenomenon. This is evident from the very titles of some of major works on political thinking in India. Take, for example, the titles of the works of A. Appadorai, a pioneer in the field. They refer very accurately to “political thought in India” rather than to “Indian political thought.”3 The same is true of the titles of the works of Thomas Pantham, the leading historian of political thought in India today.4 Both Appadorai

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and Pantham could not help but tell their readers the story as it really unfolded: the impact of Western political thought resulted in the production of two different modes of political thought mentioned above. Among those that cultivated the genre of “political thought in India,” two groups stand out: the radical Indian nationalists, on the one hand, and Indian Marxists and Neo-Marxists, on the other. The goal of the radical nationalists was to make India a modern, homogeneous nation-state, militarily and economically powerful like any in the West. The inspiration for this came first from Herbert Spencer, and later from the theory of ethnic nationalism in Europe, notably Germany. The fascination with Herbert Spencer was fortunately short lived. But as long as it lasted, it did have an impact on early Indian nationalists. The person responsible for promoting Spencer was Shyamji Krishnavarma (1857–1930), now all but forgotten, but a man of great influence on the expatriate Indians living in London in the early years of the twentieth century. Born in Gujarat, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1882. After serving some minor Maharajahs for a short period, he returned to London to work full time for various radical nationalist causes. Among the causes that he promoted was the establishment of scholarships to enable young Indians to study in British universities. Upon graduation, they were supposed to return to India and work for the cause of nationalist revolution. In 1905, he established a Herbert Spencer Lectureship at Oxford University. In the same year, he founded “India House” at Highgate, in London, which many Indian students used as a residence and as a gathering place. Also in the same year he started a monthly magazine called The Indian Sociologist. He used it to disseminate his deeply held belief that what India needed was Herbert Spencer’s political philosophy. The masthead of the magazine carried two quotations from Spencer: “Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.” “Resistance to aggression is not simply justifiable but imperative. Non resistance hurts both altruism and egoism.”5 The absurdity of building Indian nationalism on the foundations of Spencer’s philosophy did not escape the notice of British observers. G. K. Chesterton, writing in the September 18, 1909 issue of The Illustrated London News, had great fun at the expense of Krishnavarma and The Indian Sociologist. When young Indians talk of independence for India, I get a feeling that they do not know what they are talking about … But when I see the actual papers and know the views of Indian nationalists, I get bored and feel dubious about them. What they want is not very Indian and not very national. They talk about Herbert Spencer’s philosophy and other similar matters … One of their papers is called The Indian Sociologist. Do the Indian youths want to pollute their ancient villages and poison their kindly homes by introducing Spencer’s

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philosophy into them? ... Indians have a right to be and to live as Indians. But Herbert Spencer is not Indian; his philosophy is not Indian philosophy … But this is our first difficulty, that the Indian nationalist is not national.6

The most famous resident that “India House” ever had, and the most illustrious recipient of one of Krishnavarma’s scholarships, was V. D. Savarkar (1883–1966), the future leader of Hindu ethnic nationalism and the founder of the ideology of Hindutva. In 1906, with Krishnavarma’s help, he came to London to study law. But soon he got himself immersed in nationalist activities, using “India House” as his base of operations. Implicated in the 1909 assassination of Sir William Curzon-Wyllie, assistant to Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, he was incarcerated from 1911 to 1924. While in prison he managed to produce Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923),7 which remains to this day the manifesto of Hindutva ideology. Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? is in part a review of India’s past and in part a prognostication into its future. India was Hindu, and its future depends on its being Hindu. It is Hinduness or Hindutva, and that alone, that could make India a great modern nation. He defined Hindutva as a quality possessed by those who could validly claim the territory of India as their fatherland and their holy land. Positing India as a holy land posed some difficulties to Savarkar, who did not believe in any religion. In an effort to overcome those difficulties, he did not want to identify Hindutva with Hinduism; he would rather identify it with the cultures that the religions originating on the territory of India—such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—produced. The sources of this quality are not these religions but the culture (sanskriti) that they produced and their common ethnicity (jati). Though Hindutva is inclusive of Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, it is deliberately exclusive of Muslims, Christians, Parsis, and Jews. The latter have their holy lands outside India. They therefore lacked the quality of Hindutva and could not be counted upon in crucial moments of the nation’s life. Only the core ethnic community in a pluralistic nation could be depended upon. He writes: “The essence of the life of a nation is the life of that portion of its citizens whose interests and history and aspirations are most closely bound up with the land and who thus provide the real foundation to the structure of their national state.”8 Thus, the Muslims, not the Armenians, constitute the foundation of modern Turkey. In the United States, it would be the Anglo-Saxons, and they alone, who provide the foundation of American nationalism.9 Similarly, in modern India only those who possess Hindutva could provide its foundation. Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, Martha Nussbaum has written, is a “European product.”10 This is perhaps too sweeping a characterization. For Europe had produced not only ethnic nationalism but also civic or liberal nationalism.

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However, she is on to something in that the intellectual framework that Hindutva nationalism had adopted was derived from European ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism, whether in Europe or India, shares similar features. The nation in both instances is given priority over the individual. Ethic nationalism in both cases favors a specific ethnic group to the detriment of other groups. The minorities in both cases are treated with suspicion if not active hostility. Hindutva ideology sought to turn modern India into a homogeneous nation-state on the pattern of such nation-states in Europe. Insofar as these are its essential features, it is indeed a “European product” similar to the radical ethnic nationalism of, say, Germany. Savarkar’s intellectual framework could produce only “political thought in India,” rather than “Indian political thought.” The thinker who further developed the ideology of Hindutva was M. S. Golwalkar (1906–1973). He was president of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the organizational wing of the Hindutva ideology, once branded by Nehru as “an Indian version of fascism.”11 In 1939 Golwalkar wrote We, or Our Nationhood Defined, which was to act as a guide to the thinking of the members of the RSS. Hindu and Hindus alone, it argued, could meet the requirements of Indian nationalism. Minorities, and Muslims in particular, were its inimical “other,” to be subdued and kept in check. The German idea of nationalism as articulated by the Swiss jurist J. K. Bluntschli was one of the several Western sources that influenced Golwalkar’s political thinking. “The essence of a People,” Bluntschli had written, “lies in their civilization [Kultur].” A nation is a “social organism” held together by conceptions of race, language, and manners. It has a “national spirit” and a “national will” which are more than the sum of the spirit and will of the individuals that compose it.12 It is not surprising that Golwalkar should be impressed by the efforts that the Nazis were making to implement the above idea of nationalism. “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”13 Already in 1909, Gandhi had read the signs of the times accurately. He had no hesitation in branding Hindu ethnic nationalism as inconsistent with Hindu culture as it had historically evolved. The state that such nationalism wanted to introduce into India, he pointed out, was the modern, militarily aggressive state. Independence or swaraj for such nationalists meant the replication of the modern Western nation-state in India. Though they were fighting colonialism, the ideology behind the fight wanted to establish exactly the same type of state that the modern West had developed. In Gandhi’s words, they were fighting to have “English rule without the

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Englishman. You want the tiger’s nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English, and, when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. This is not the Swaraj that I want.”14 No one could have better exposed the non-Indian origin of ethnic nationalism in India than could Gandhi. Strange as it may sound, Hindutva nationalism was a product of “political thought in India” rather than genuine “Indian political thought.” Turning now to Indian Marxism, the other ideology that produced only “political thought in India,” there are three varieties of it in vogue in India today. Since its introduction to India in 1920, Marxism has proliferated into Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, and Gramscism. What is common to them is their dogmatic adherence to the intellectual framework supplied by historical materialism. It is their common belief that India does not possess the necessary intellectual resources to understand its own past, present, and future. In their view, India needs a foreign intellectual framework of understanding and analysis if it is ever to become a modern progressive society. British colonialism and liberal capitalism, in their view, were historically necessary instruments of India’s progress. It helped annihilate the old Indian society and lay down the intellectual foundations of what Marx called “Western society” in India. No class of Indian political thinkers has insisted more consistently than have the Indian Marxists on the inadequacies of the Indian intellectual framework, including those of Gandhi. In their view, only Marxism in its Western framework, and not in an Indian framework, can really drive India forward. Their writings therefore belong to the genre of “political thought in India” rather than to “Indian political thought.” We saw above how Herbert Spencer had fascinated an early generation of Indian nationalist thinkers. Fortunately, it proved to be a very temporary phenomenon. The same, however, could not be said of Marxism and its variants, which continue to fascinate a stratum of Indian political thinkers. What is remarkable here is that their fascination for Marxism, Maoism, or Gramscism, as the case may be, is matched by their contempt for Gandhi and his reconstruction of Indian political thought. Even a quick glance at some of the major works by Indian Marxists would verify this point. Take, for example, India in Transition (1922) by M. N. Roy (1887–1954). An assistant to Lenin in the early 1920s in formulating the Marxist policy toward Asian countries, he lived in Moscow for a while. By 1930, however, he became disillusioned with Marxism, returning to India, only to embrace Radical Humanism, another political philosophy set in a Western intellectual framework. For all that, India in Transition still remains one of the best works by an Indian Marxist. History follows unalterable laws, and Marxism supposedly knows what they are. Roy therefore tried “to investigate the past, analyze the present and visualize the future, from the point of view of Historical Materialism.” The verdict of history was that India’s past was

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doomed.15 There was nothing in the past that was salvageable. India must embrace Marxism or else remain a backward country. Roy saw in Gandhi the chief intellectual obstacle to India’s progress. What he represented was nothing but “petty-bourgeois humanitarianism hopelessly bewildered in the clashes of the staggering forces of human progress.”16 While he found Gandhi’s criticism of modern civilization, i.e., capitalism, justifiable, the remedy that he was suggesting was “not only wrong but impossible.” Gandhi’s remedy, according to Roy, asked for the restoration of “the patriarchal or feudal civilization” of the past.17 A generation later, in 1959, The Mahatma and the Ism of E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) sought to reassess the prospects of Marxism in India. Namboodiripad, the communist chief minister of the state of Kerala, was arguably the most successful communist politician of India. In 1957, he led his party to an electoral victory. He agreed to govern within the framework of the Indian Constitution—a liberal, not a Marxist document. However, agreement to work within a liberal constitution did not mean any change in the political theory of Marxism. It simply meant that Indian Marxism was opportunistic enough to make temporary tactical adjustment in the long struggle to replace democratic liberalism with full grown communism. Once again, Namboodiripad found Gandhi to be the major obstacle to India’s progress. While he applauded his positive contributions toward the decolonization of India, he faulted him for failing to give what he regarded as a correct public philosophy for independent India. Gandhism, he pointed out, was not communism minus violence. It was nothing more than a soft variant of Indian bourgeois thought. Gandhi understood neither the laws of history nor the role that violence played in history. He was a “total failure” as far as the task of the regeneration of India was concerned.18 The failure of Marxism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and the success of Maoism in China forced Indian Marxists to make new adjustments to their pattern of political thought. Even so, these events did not lessen their disregard for “Indian political thought.” These events only made the Indian Marxists more determined than before to adopt a policy of ABI—“anything but Indian.” They would rather turn to an Italian variant of Marxism as developed by Antonio Gramsci in the 1930s than invent an Indian variant. Gramscism with a mixture of Maoism contributed to the rise to prominence of the Subaltern School of Indian history. As Dipesh Chakravarty, a distinguished member of this School, has pointed out, Subaltern Studies “came out of a Marxist tradition of history-writing in South Asia and was markedly indebted to Mao and Gramsci in the initial formulations that guided the series.”19 Space does not permit us to go deeply into the contributions that Subaltern Studies have made, which are considerable. However, what is

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important to the present discussion is its penchant to interpret original Indian concepts in Gramscian terms. It showed once again a reluctance to use an Indian intellectual framework of thought. The very concept “subaltern,” for example, was of Italian, not Indian derivation. The same was true of the concept of “hegemony” (egemonia) widely used in Subaltern literature.20 Ranajit Guha, in a masterly way, has shown how Indian Subalterns could prize out concepts such as dharma and bhakti (devotion to God) from their original Indian intellectual setting and relocate them within a Gramscian setting. Thus, Guha claimed that the Indian notion of dharma could be used to justify the liberal idiom of material improvement. It was to dharma, he wrote, that members of the indigenous elite (such as Gandhi) turned “in order to justify and explain the initiatives by which they hoped to make their subordinates relate to them as nonantagonistically as possible.”21 Similarly, the notion of bhakti was turned into “an ideology of subordination par excellence.”22 What we notice in Indian Marxist political thinkers generally is the willingness to adopt anything but an Indian intellectual framework. They would gladly adopt a Chinese or even an Italian intellectual framework, but not an Indian one, in order to explain Indian political phenomena. Because of this, their political thought has never risen above the level of mere “political thought in India.” Again, because of a lack of an Indian framework to their thinking, they are unable to tell in which direction Indian Marxism is moving, whether in that of a “commercially driven dictatorship” like that of China or a dynastic dictatorship like that of North Korea or a dictatorship based on a personality cult like that of Cuba. Long after India won political independence, Marxism continues to colonize the Indian mind.

INDIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT What makes “Indian political thought” what it is, as we have been arguing, is its intellectual framework. Several modern Indian thinkers have contributed to its development. However, for reasons of space we limit our discussion to the contributions made by the most important of these thinkers, viz., Mahatma Gandhi. He made his contribution by innovating the old framework and making it suitable for modern political thinking. To appreciate the extent of his innovation, it is necessary to have an idea of the basics of the old framework. Its locus classicus is Kautilya’s Arthasastra.23 According to Kautilya, the proper study of political science (danda niti) had to take into account the relevance of three other sciences (vidyas or “knowledge systems”). These

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were philosophy (anviksiki), the Vedas (revealed religious truths), and economics (varta) (1.2.1). Philosophy is mentioned first. It is the science of investigating “by means of reasoning” (1.2.11) the internal structure of all systems of knowledge. It is “the lamp of all sciences” (1.2.12) that dispels the darkness of ignorance and inconsistency. The science of the Vedas is the science that deals with truths that are beyond the reach of discursive reason, truths that provide the ultimate grounding for moral and spiritual life. What is remarkable here is that Kautilya posits no necessary opposition between philosophy and the science of the Vedas. Indeed, they are supposed to work harmoniously. Neither did the old framework posit any necessary opposition between the science of the Vedas, a spiritual science, and the secular sciences of politics and economics. The rational, the spiritual, and the secular knowledge systems were supposed to work in harmony. Again, according to the old framework, the transcending end of political science was the creation of the material and moral conditions necessary for the pursuit of the four canonical ends of life, called the purusharthas. These ends were (i) the pursuit of wealth and power (artha), (ii) ethical integrity (dharma), (iii) pleasure, both sexual and aesthetic (kama), and (iv) spiritual freedom (moksha). The good life consisted in the coordinated pursuit of all these four ends in due proportion. Once more, the Arthasastra posited no necessary opposition between the pursuits of material, moral, and spiritual ends (1.7.3–5). Even though the immediate end of the science of politics is the acquisition of wealth and power, they have to be acquired in conformity with the requirements of the other equally necessary ends of human existence. The autonomy of political science is protected; but the autonomy is not absolute but relative, i.e., only in its own specific field. Its relative autonomy does not entitle it to undermine the relative autonomy of the other ends. That is to say, in exercising its autonomy, political science had to be mindful of the legitimacy of the other ends as well. Kautilya attached the greatest importance to this point. The Arthasastra ends with the following statement: “This science [political science] brings into being and preserves spiritual good (dharma), material well-being (artha) and pleasure (kama), and destroys spiritual evil, material loss and hatred.” (15.1.72). One can hardly think of the traditional Indian science of politics except in the context of the four great aims of life, the purusharthas. The above description gives us a picture of the ancient normative tradition. The empirical facts were, however, quite different. The history of the theory of the purusharthas underwent a major change when the ascetic or the shramanic movement gained cultural predominance in Indian society. One of its consequences was the overvaluing of the end of moksha and corresponding undervaluing of the end of artha. The culture of renunciation made more and more people look upon the ascetic life as the desired mode

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of life. Withdrawal from the world became preferable to active engagement with it. The coordinated pursuit of all the four ends of life no longer remained the empirical norm. Political science itself became stagnant and did not develop beyond the stage where Kautilya had left it. The institution of the monarchy gradually became more and more authoritarian. The four-fold division of society based on varna (color) degenerated into the so-called caste (jati) system based on birth. No one has described the damaging impact of all this on Indian society more persuasively than has Pandurang Vaman Kane, the author of the celebrated History of Dharmasastra. Indian philosophers (the acharyas), writes Kane, placed “too much emphasis on otherworldliness and Vedanta,” and not enough on the importance of the active life manifested through “performance of people’s duties to themselves, to their families and to society.” “Great disparity” began to emerge between metaphysical teaching praising the unity of human kind on the one hand and the treatment meted out to the Untouchables on the other. The education of the masses were greatly neglected and “the higher classes did not seriously mind who ruled the country so long as their life was not too much disturbed.”24 He wondered why Hindus could not form a “permanent organized state comprising the whole of India,” and why they did not develop manufacturing, commerce and industry.25 “It makes one sad,” he continues, that “not a single Hindu scholar” came forward to enquire into the causes of successful foreign invasions of India. At least from the eleventh century, Indian intellectuals were interested mostly in metaphysical gymnastics and not at all in finding the remedies for the root causes of their social and political backwardness.26

GANDHIAN INNOVATIONS Gandhi was keenly aware of the state of decline of Indian society. There is hardly any doubt that he wanted to make his contributions toward its innovation. As he put it, he wanted to write many new things, but only if it could be done on the Indian slate—his metaphor for the Indian intellectual framework. “My swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization. I want to write many things but they must all be written on the Indian slate. I would gladly borrow from the West when I can return the amount with decent interest.”27 At the same time, he did not want to preserve what had become obsolete. He did not want Indians, to use his picturesque language, to drown themselves in the waters of their ancestors’ well.28 Innovation required additions, deletions, and the creation of new things. Deleted from the old framework were the monarchy and the caste system. They, in his view, had become outdated. They had only historical validity,

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and as historical conditions change, so should they. Preserved in the old framework was the old idea of the need for a plurality of sciences for human well-being. The theory of the purusharthas was also preserved, with due modifications. Added to the intellectual framework were specific Western values, such as civic nationalism, democracy, constitutionalism, fundamental rights, and economic development for all. What is remarkable is that he sought to set these new ideas within an innovated Indian intellectual framework. Therein lies his distinction as an innovator. The creation of a modern Indian intellectual framework entitles him to be regarded as the first modern Indian political thinker of stature. In the process of resetting them within an Indian intellectual framework, the new ideas themselves underwent suitable modification or “Indianization.” His most important innovation had to do with the theory of the purusharthas. As we have already mentioned, this theory, under the influence of the renouncer movement, came to be interpreted in hierarchical terms. Moksha and otherworldliness were exalted and politics and economics undervalued. The purusharthas, instead of interacting with one another positively, began to work at cross-purposes. Gandhi’s innovative energies focused on the task of reversing this trend. He argued that the correct relationship between the purusharthas should be interactive, not hierarchical. Above all, he wanted to bring about a rapprochement between artha and moksha. No one before him had attempted so daunting a task. Two well-known statements support the above claim. The first occurs in the celebrated introduction to his Autobiography. The ultimate aim of his activities, he writes, was “self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain moksha.” All his ventures in the political field “were directed to this end.”29 The point is repeated in the conclusion. “To see the universal and allpervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. A man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me in the field of politics.”30 The second statement occurs in the highly authoritative introduction to his translation of the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita, he writes, teaches that the dharma, artha, and moksha should operate in an interactive way. The current interpretation that they should act counteractively has no support in that work. The common belief is that religion [dharma] is always opposed to material good [artha]. “One cannot act religiously [according to dharma] in mercantile and such other matters [artha]. There is no place for religion [dharma] in such pursuits; religion [dharma] is only for attainment of salvation [moksha],” we hear many worldly-wise people say. In my opinion the author of the Gita has dispelled this delusion. He has made no line of demarcation between salvation [moksha] and worldly pursuits [artha].31

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ARTHA REINTERPRETED In what follows we shall examine briefly his new interpretation of artha, dharma, and moksha. To take artha first, the new artha of Gandhi has three component parts—the notions of the political community, the state, and economics. The corresponding notions as found in the Arthasastra are no longer tenable. They have to be replaced with civic nationalism, the constitutional secular state, and modern political economy. The old notion of political community was built on the sentiment of loyalty to the king and the caste. Gandhi wants to make civic nationalism the basis of modern Indian community. Here he faced an initial difficulty, however. For while all Indians agreed on the need for nationalism, there was no agreement on what constituted the nation. Three types of nationalism were vying for acceptance: the nationalism based on religion that the Muslim League was propagating, the nationalism based on ethnicity that the proponents of Hindutva ideology were propagating, and the civic nationalism that the Indian National Congress was propagating. Gandhi supported civic nationalism and opposed the other two. A civic nation is a people who, in addition to sharing a common history and culture, shared a sense of justice, rights, and duties. The individual in a civic nation is valued not so much because of his or her religion or ethnicity but because he or she is capable of self-determination and selfdevelopment. The civic nation exists to protect these capacities. Only this type of nationalism, Gandhi felt, could create a viable, pluralist political community in modern India. He was strongly opposed to the idea that religion or ethnicity should be basis of Indian nationalism. Religion insofar as it was the pursuit of spiritual liberation was necessarily a personal matter. That was why he could write that there would be as many religions as there would be individuals.32 Religion as an institution, however, was a means of facilitating the attainment of spiritual liberation. As such, it ought not to be made the foundation of the political community. Despite the pressure from religious nationalism and ethnic nationalism, he persisted with the civic idea of nationalism. India, he asserted, was a nation, neither nations nor peoples.33 He justified his idea of civic nationalism by appealing to certain Indian intellectual traditions. The first was the very term he used for civic nation, viz., praja. Praja in the old sense meant “subject of a Raja”—the traditional ruler. Used in the new Gandhian sense, it meant a civic nation. Thus, modern India to Gandhi is a praja, a civic nation—a body of modern, autonomous citizens. The second tradition that he appealed to was the well-known tradition of “unity in diversity,” which went back to Rig Vedic times. The third tradition that he drew upon was the tradition of assimilating diverse

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elements. Tolerance of difference was yet another feature of the Indian tradition. Given all this, India, despite its religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, was capable of making itself a modern civic nation. The metaphor of the “oceanic circle” that he used for India as a civic nation aptly captures his nationalist thought.34 The term “oceanic” refers to India’s tradition of inclusiveness, openness, tolerance, and assimilation. The term “circle,” on the other hand, refers to the fact that the multiplicities of India nevertheless constitute a distinct national unity. The circumference of one circle separates it from another. In this sense, India as a nation is distinct from other nations. But within it broad circumference there is room for a wide variety of distinct subnational identities. What we see here is the way Gandhi integrates what is originally a Western idea into the Indian pattern of political thought. Indian nationalism, as he defines it, is still nationalism, though not the same as found in the West. The notion of the state—the second major component part of artha—also undergoes adjustment in Gandhi’s hands. He does not accept the modern notion that the state is absolute in its power, that national interest ought to be its supreme rule of conduct, that state power requires continuous expansion and conquest. If these modifications are brought about, what would be left of the idea of the modern state? The state that Gandhi defends is a limited state, limited by the principles of modern fundamental rights, and by the basic principles of dharma or the transcendent moral law. The state for Gandhi is a necessary institution, necessary for internal order and external security. He, unlike Tolstoy, is not an anarchist. His state is a defender of rights by which its own powers are restricted through the constitution. It comes closest to the modern liberal state. Gandhi felt it necessary to bring about the modifications mentioned above because of the Indian concept of swaraj. A sustained account of this can be found in his Hind Swaraj (1909). He uses the same term swaraj to cover outer freedom and inner freedom. There are three components to outer freedom—the independence of the nation from colonialism, the civil liberties of the citizen, and the economic freedom of the individual to enjoy the fruits of his or her labor. However, these outer freedoms are morally linked to inner freedom, the freedom of the inner self. It is this moral link between the four freedoms that makes Gandhi’s idea of political freedom different from the Western idea of political freedom. The notion of the freedom of the inner self goes back to ancient times. Negatively, it is the freedom of the inner self from the undue influences of passions and appetites. Positively, it is the freedom of the inner self to seek unity with the ultimate reality. The search for this inner freedom is a transformative inner experience and is itself swaraj in the making. “It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves,” states Gandhi. “Such swaraj has to be experienced by each one for himself.”35

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That the theory of the new Indian state should recognize the nature of freedom (swaraj) in its comprehensive sense is Gandhi’s point. Since there is a relationship between inner swaraj and outer swaraj, the conditions for exercising the latter become critical. The agent of the outer swaraj, the state, may not exercise its right to use violence in any manner it likes, but only in a legitimate and morally acceptable manner. Applied to the question of expelling the British from India, Indians may apply only legitimate and peaceful means to attain outer swaraj. The experience of inner swaraj requires this. The expulsion of the British from India by itself would not make Indians free in the Gandhian sense. To make Indians free in the Gandhian sense, they have to acknowledge the relationship between inner swaraj and outer swaraj and behave accordingly. Otherwise, they would have only “English rule without the English”—“English rule” being the metaphor for the rule of the modern absolute state. “This,” he says, “is not the swaraj that I want.”36 Turning now to economics, the third component of artha, here, too, Gandhi’s goal was to reset the economic values that he took from the West within an appropriate Indian framework. His chief Western sources on economic ideas were John Ruskin’s The Political Economy of Art (1857) and Unto This Last (1862). His chief Indian sources were Dadabhai Naoroji’s Poverty and the Un-British Rule in India (1901) and R. C. Dutt’s two-volume Economic History of India (1901–02). He found in Ruskin a constructive criticism of nineteenth-century British capitalism, a criticism whose object was to improve capitalism rather than to destroy it. Gandhi followed Ruskin in this grand scheme of things. To this end, he, like Ruskin, introduced “social affection” or “soul force” as one of the motivating forces of economic activity, side by side with enlightened self-interest. Likewise, he introduced “natural justice” (nyaya buddhi) to facilitate a peaceful relationship between capital and labor, and to moderate the anti-social tendencies of an unchecked application of the law of supply and demand. Gandhi paraphrased Unto This Last and published the paraphrase under the title, Sarvodaya (“the welfare of all”), in both English and Gujarati. He called his economic philosophy, too, Sarvodaya. What is relevant to the present discussion is the way Gandhi added certain Indian ideas to what he had taken from the West. Three of them are of interest here. The first is the idea of trusteeship of any excess wealth that you may accumulate—excess, that is, to one’s reasonable personal needs. Such wealth should be held in trust for the benefit of society as a whole. Thus a certain balance is introduced between the right to private property and the rights of society at large. He found support for this in Ishopanishad, one of the oldest of the Upanishads. It says, in effect, that the earth belongs to humankind as a whole. You may appropriate portions of it by your labor. At the same time, you must abstain from coveting the property of others.

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Your right to enjoy your private property is not absolute, but relative to the needs of the society in which you live. The second “economic” idea comes from the Bhagavad Gita. It concerns the duty to engage in socially beneficial labor. The basic idea is that one has an obligation to work and not to encroach on the labor of others. If humans had not violated this principle, writes Gandhi, humanity would not suffer as much as it does now, “the rich would not have become masters of immeasurable stores of wealth and millions would not be suffering in poverty.”37 The third “economic” idea comes from Patanjali’s Yogsutra. It concerns aparigrapha, the moral virtue of detachment from the desire for superfluous wealth or “conspicuous consumption.” Gandhi did believe that a limit to the desire for wealth is a moral condition for the proper enjoyment of one’s own wealth. Modern capitalism, in his view, does not respect this virtue. His philosophy of Sarvodaya, on the other hand, does lay particular stress on it. The vice of over-consumption, with its dreadful impact on natural environment, in Gandhi’s economic thought, had its moral solution in this virtue.

DHARMA REINTERPRETED The old notion of dharma had accumulated over time the meanings of duty, ethics, and law. It had two branches—universal dharma and particular dharma. The first applied to all human beings, while the second applied to them only according to their caste and stage in life. The duties of truthfulness, non-violence, freedom from malice and compassion were parts of universal dharma.38 It was particular dharma that posed problems for life in modern society. For one thing, it stood against the principle of equality, and for another it justified the very harsh treatment meted out to the so-called Untouchables or Dalits. While Gandhi fought against the social evils arising from the application of particular dharma, he held on to the principles of universal dharma. Two of its principles—truthfulness and non-violence (satya and ahimsa)—became part of the foundation of his own ethics. On the foundation provided by truthfulness and non-violence he built the structure of modern rights. In other words, universal duties and universal rights were made part of the same ethical structure. The good life envisaged by him needed both, duties and rights, the old and the new, working in tandem. Rights, in other words, did not replace duties, as they did modern liberal ethics. The theory of satyagraha or civil disobedience—Gandhi’s original contribution to modern political ethics—the old universal principles of truth and non-violence were integrated into the new universal principles of rights.

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Gandhi defines satyagraha as a non-violent way of securing rights.39 In the Gandhian type of civil disobedience, which, let us not forget, is the application of the principles of universal dharma and the universal principles of rights to the field of artha, these two notions, the old and the new, come together. At the same time, Gandhi brought about certain important modifications to the old notion of non-violence (ahimsa). According to the old notion, non-violence was a monastic, not civic, virtue, necessary for the spiritual life, but not the political life. Gandhi reinterpreted the old notion in such a way as to make it compatible with the needs of modern political life. Thus, in the political sphere non-violence meant abstention from the use of violence to obtain political rights and interests. However, Gandhian nonviolence does not abrogate the natural right to self-defense, if necessary, by violent means. Thus, the individual retains the right to defend himself or herself from unjust attacks. The state also retains the right to use violent means in self-defense for the sake of internal order and external security. What Gandhian non-violence forbids, and forbids very firmly, is the aggressive use of state power for any purpose whatever. Gandhi’s contributions to the theory and practice of satyagraha are widely acknowledged. However, what led to its discovery was his ability to graft what was originally a Western idea—the idea of rights—to what was originally an Indian idea—that of non-violence (ahimsa). This is yet another example of his using an Indian intellectual framework to reset Western ideas.

MOKSHA REINTERPRETED Gandhi was painfully aware that the prevailing notion of moksha was indifferent to the great issues of social and political justice. This, as we saw above, was because of the undue influence of the “renouncer” (shramanic) movement. The “renouncer” idea of spirituality had equated the spiritual life with otherworldliness and flight from the world of artha. This had a deleterious effect on Indian civilization in general and Indian politics and economics in particular. A reinterpretation of the rules of the spiritual life was long overdue. Gandhi believed that there was something flawed in a spirituality that remained indifferent to social and political issues. It was his firm conviction that such indifference was incompatible with Indian spirituality, as he understood it. Indeed, if modern politics in India were to become truly democratic and just it needed the support not only of a sound political philosophy but also of a sound philosophy of the spiritual life. In reaching these conclusions, he was greatly helped by his reading of the Bhagavad Gita. But this work, too, needed reinterpretation. In the past

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it had been interpreted in three different ways—those of contemplation, devotion, and action. The first two proved to be largely indifferent to the welfare of society and polity. It was Gandhi’s view that the way appropriate to modern times was the third way, the way of action in the field of artha. By action, he meant the process of bringing about justice in the political world and of resisting the abuses of power. In other words, he sought to relocate the modern concept of political action within the framework of a newly interpreted Indian philosophy of the spiritual life. In Gandhi’s interpretation, the Gita teaches that there should be a working harmony between the demands of the pursuit of moksha and those of the pursuit of artha. But this harmony can be actualized only on one condition: a positive resolution of the inner clash between the psychological ego and spiritual self. Applying this idea to modern politics and economics, he argued that a precondition for the creation and maintenance of a just democratic order in India was the recognition by Indians of the need to bring about a positive resolution of the inner clash between the ego and the self. The passions, according to the Gita, are the expression of the ego, while the virtues are those of the self. Bringing the ungoverned state of the passions under the guidance of virtues has consequences not only for spiritual, but also political, life. In other words, a just political order has its beginning in the taming of the ego and its passions. The benefits of taming the ego are famously described in Gita II: 54–72: they help toward the formation of the personality of the sthithapraja (the person of inner stability). It is not surprising that Gandhi recited these nineteen verses as part of his daily meditation, as if to emphasize the point that throughout his life he was trying to shape his own personality on the model of the sthithaprajna. The spiritual modification of egoism is the key to understanding Gandhi’s new politics. It is a far cry from the Western liberal position that makes no such demands on the ego. Indeed, if we are to believe Hobbes and Hume, freeing the ego from any spiritual restraint is the first step towards attaining modern individual freedom. Verse 71 as it were sums up the contrasting vision of the Gita: “The man who puts away all desires and roams around from longing freed, who does not think ‘This I am,’ or ‘This is mine,’ draws near to [inner] peace.” The sthithaprajna represents a dynamic vision of human self-improvement, a vision that all good citizens, according to Gandhi, should emulate. That Gandhi should use the Gita as his medium of teaching the right relationship between artha and moksha, the secular and the spiritual, is not surprising. After all, the imaginary background of the work is set in the field of politics—a dynastic war, than which nothing could be more political. Arjuna, its leading character, is a soldier whose particular dharma is to wage war when there is no honorable alternative. How such a demand to

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wage war can be reconciled with the universal dharma that stipulates nonviolence is the spiritual dilemma that underlies the whole work. The Gita’s position is that under the right moral and spiritual conditions the two demands—those of artha and moksha—can and should be reconciled. The conditions in question are, first, purity of intention and, second, trust in the Providence that governs human affairs. An intention is pure when the preponderant motive of action is the performance of what duty demands rather than what an untamed ego demands. If what duty demands is carried out without the taint of undue egoism, the action is deemed to be spiritually compatible with the requirements of moksha. When Gandhi states in his Autobiography that for him the path to moksha is through the path of political and economic activities (artha), he means politics that is set within a framework that is sensitive to spirituality. Modern Western politics from Machiavelli to the present has, with some exceptions, tended to be indifferent if not hostile to such a framework. Modern politics is supposed to be a struggle for power through violent means. Gandhi questions the universal validity of this supposition. He would readily grant that such a supposition might reflect the worldview of the modern West. But he would oppose the position that such a worldview is or should be applicable to the India of his vision. His vision of India sees a politics in which the requirements of artha can be reconciled with those of dharma and moksha. At least that is what the Bhagavad Gita, duly interpreted, teaches. There is an interesting similarity between Gandhi’s view on this matter and Max Weber’s view on the need for harmony between what he calls “the ethic of responsibility” and “the ethic of the ultimate end.”40 The person who has a “vocation” for politics, i.e., a person who lives for politics rather than off politics, is characterized by the ability to reconcile these two ethics. This is comparable to Gandhi’s position that the good citizen should try to reach a working harmony between dharma, artha, and moksha.

THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN INDIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT The title of this essay, “From Political Thought in India to Indian Political Thought,” does not imply that there is a natural progression from the one to the other. The two are distinct modes of political thought and they have co-existed in India for over a hundred years. The reason is that there have been Indian thinkers who were either unable or unwilling to use an Indian intellectual framework for their political thinking. The Indian Marxists and Neo-Marxists are perhaps the best example of the type of thinkers who do not want an Indian intellectual framework for their thinking. They are dogmatically determined to reject any intellectual framework that is not Marxist. They would rather rely on Mao or even Gramsci

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than on Gandhi. There is an air of triumphalism in Namboodiripad’s boast that only the Indian Communists are immune to Gandhi’s influence. Barring them, he states, every political trend in India tries to use Gandhi to justify their policies.41 The attraction to Gandhi’s political thought is due to its truly Indian character, which in turn is due to its intellectual framework. The main features of this framework may now be summarized. First, the new framework is the outcome of the innovation of the old framework. There has been no radical break with the past. In this respect, the experience of modern Indian political thought is somewhat different from that of modern Western political thought. The former retains the old idea of the need for a plurality of knowledge systems (vidyas) for human flourishing. These include political philosophy, economic philosophy, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, and a philosophy of aesthetics and spirituality. Modern Indian political thought, in contrast to modern Western political thought, does not posit any necessary opposition between secular knowledge and knowledge of the spiritual. Second, modern Indian political thought retains, with due modification, the old idea that a coordinated pursuit of a plurality of ends is necessary for human flourishing. The theory of the purusharthas as reinterpreted by Gandhi indicates what these ends are. Gandhi does not glorify artha at the expense of dharma and moksha. Seen from Gandhian perspective, the great danger that Western modernity presents is its glorification of artha over everything else. Third, Gandhi incorporates a specific number of Western political ideas into the body of modern Indian political thought. Among them are the ideas of civic nationalism, the limited constitutional secular state, human rights, the rule of law, and economic development. These ideas are reset within an Indian intellectual framework that he had created anew. He has shown how modern Indian political philosophy can be written on the old Indian slate. What then are we to make of the continued existence of the genre of “political thought in India”? As Thomas Pantham, a leading Indian political theorist today, points out, it is a sign that the “decolonization of the Indian mind” still continues. Any “future theorization of Indian politics,” Pantham adds, should follow Gandhi’s example.42 Indian Marxists and Radical Indian Right are not sufficiently Indian in their thinking because of their reliance on the Western intellectual framework. Gandhi’s political thought creatively engaged with the West.43 He wrote Hind Swaraj, the fundamental text of modern Indian political thought, in both Gujarati and English, which is significant. The significance is that modern Indian political thought needs to draw from both Indian and Western sources. The famous Appendix I of Hind Swaraj illustrates the same

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point: eighteen of the twenty books included in it are by Western writers. Indians, in other words, have to read and study Western writers, as and when they draw from their own sources. Gandhi, as it were, has made it canonical that Indian political thinkers should engage with the West. They can best do so only if they have their own intellectual framework. Having an Indian intellectual framework for political thinking will make Indian political thinkers original thinkers. It will also put an end to the intellectual colonization of the Indian mind.

NOTES 1. For more on this tradition, see U. N. Ghoshal, A History of Indian Political Ideas (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1959). 2. A. Appadorai, Indian Political Thinking: From Naoroji to Nehru (Madras: Oxford University Press, 1971), 151. 3. See, for example, his two-volume Documents of Political Thought in India (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1973 and 1976) and Political Ideas in Modern India: Impact of the West (Bombay: Academic Books, 1971). 4. See Thomas Pantham and K. L. Deutsch, eds., Political Thought in Modern India (New Delhi: Sage, 1986); Thomas Pantham, Political Theories and Social Reconstruction: A Critical Survey of the Literature in India (New Delhi: Sage, 1995); and V. R. Mehta and Thomas Pantham, eds., Political Ideas in Modern India: Thematic Explorations ( New Delhi: Sage, 2006). 5. For these citations from Spencer, see A. J. Parel, ed., Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (hereafter HS) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xxvi. 6. For the full text of Chesterton’s article see M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (hereafter CW) (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 100 vols., 1958–1994), 9: 425–27. 7. V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is A Hindu? 6th edition (Delhi: Bharti Sahitya Sadan, 1989). 8. Savarkar, Hindutva, 139. 9. Savarkar, Hindutva, 140. 10. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence and India’s Future (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 158. 11. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Viking, 1996), 51. 12. Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 53–54. 13. M. S. Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined (Nagpure: Bharat Prakashan, 1939), 43. 14. HS, 28. 15. M. N. Roy, India in Transition, reprint of the 1922 Geneva edition (Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1971), 16. 16. Roy, India in Transition, 207. 17. Roy, India in Transition, 209–10.

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18. E. M. S. Nambooridipad, The Mahatma and the Ism as: 2nd ed. (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1959), 110. 19. Dipesh Chakravarty, “Subaltern History as Political Thought,” in Political Ideas in Modern India, ed. Mehta and Pantham, 97. 20. Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 128. 21. Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony, 34. 22. Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony, 49. 23. The reference here is to R. P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra, Part II, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997). Further citations will be given in the text to book and section numbers. 24. P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Vol. V, Part 2, 2nd ed. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1977), 1621–22. 25. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 1620–21. 26. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 1623. 27. Gandhi, Young India, 26 June 1924, 210. 28. CW, 51: 259. 29. CW, 39: 3. 30. CW, 39: 401. 31. CW, 41: 98. 32. HS, 53. 33. CW, 76: 187. 34. For Gandhi’s description of the “oceanic circle,” see CW, 85: 32–34. 35. HS, 73. 36. HS, 28. 37. CW, 32: 156. 38. See the Arthasastra, I. 3. 13. 39. HS, 90. 40. See Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 77–129. 41. Namboodiripad, The Mahatma and the Ism, 112. 42. Thomas Pantham, Political Theories and Social Reconstruction, 187–89. 43. For those interested in a short list of Gandhi’s political writings, the following, all found in the Collected Works, are recommended: Hind Swaraj, Sarvodaya, the Autobiography, History of Satyagraha in South Africa, Constructive Programme, Introduction to Anasakti Yoga, Letters on the Gita, History of Satyagraha Ashram, Introduction to Gokhale’s Speeches, Introduction to Rajchandbhai’s Biography, Exchanges with Tagore, Amedkar, Jinnah and Nehru, Speeches at the 1931 Second Round Table Conference, and selected editorials from his weeklies—Indian Opinion, Young India, and Harijan.

10 Indian Alternations: Aurobindo, Ambedkar, and After Makarand Paranjape

This chapter is about the very difficult and challenging subject of the construction of Indian modernity, more specifically, of Indian nationalism, which I believe became the primary driver in this process. What I propose to offer is a model and three snapshots. My model identifies three positions in India’s response to modernity, while the snapshots are close examinations of three moments in the history of Indian nationalism through the reading of three sets of texts. The model is meant to explain India’s intellectual face-off with the West, while the three snapshots are oblique illustrations of both the model and the face-off. Together, I hope they become a part of a larger project of Indian self-understanding, which is so essential to the attainment of svaraj, or responsible self-govermentality, a goal that at both the individual and collective level continues to fascinate and inspire. Svaraj is, of course, the cornerstone not only of Gandhian thought but of much of India’s intellectual exertions in the last two centuries. We might even assert that what distinguishes political thought in India from Indian political thought—to use the distinction made by Professor Anthony Parel1—is that the latter is centered on svaraj, while the former is not. The implications are obvious: one kind of thinking is conducive to self-reliance and selfempowerment, while the other is either indifferent to it or actually promotes subordination and subservience. While the distinction between the two traditions of thought may be neither clear-cut nor absolute, it is important to bear them in mind, especially when we recall the history of India’s colonization and the as yet incomplete imperative of the decolonization of Indian mentalities. In my own study of this encounter, I have found it useful to use a threeposition model (trivada) to try to understand India’s responses to Western 209

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thought. As I shall explain shortly, in this model the third position or the third space emerges as the most enabling and creative. Models have their limitations in that they are well-defined, while reality is complex. Yet, models have explanatory power and are therefore attractive, even if not accurate. Models, of course, have heuristic and explanatory uses. They may not be accurate or exhaustive when we examine the actual situation on the ground. That situation is a welter of confusing, contradictory, multitudinous, even “unsurveyable” phenomena leading to a state of frustrating indeterminacy. However, even as they run the risk of simplification if not falsification, models help encapsulate or crystallize vast areas of information into comprehensible categories. These categories, if they are sharply defined and subject to continuous verification, create corridors of lucidity and understanding, which in turn enable us to intervene effectively in our world. It is with such a premise that I offer the following model. India’s encounter with the West goes through various phases both chronologically and ideologically. Some forms of India’s transfiguring encounter with the West may be traced back to early European, mainly Portuguese, colonization of India in the early sixteenth century, but the crucial engagement takes place after the establishment of British supremacy in the early nineteenth century. While India’s interaction with the West is an ongoing process, continuing to this day, the period I speak of throws up most of the major positions possible in this debate. It is not that these positions were either static or fixed, but at the critical juncture, which I wish to examine, the West was strong and India weak. In essence, then, the question India had to answer was how to cope with superior power. To put it simply, India responded by acknowledging the reality of power, but by resisting it when it was unjust. To this end, it developed three types of responses, working its way through which it arrived at the special contribution that it was destined to make. First, there was the overwhelming sense and acknowledgement of defeat. Defeat might range from grudging admiration to outright capitulation, but overall, it implies the acceptance of Western superiority. (I use the present tense here because this position is still extant.) The dominant is not merely recognized as the dominant, but there is a desire to emulate it, to join it, to derive legitimacy from it, even to be assimilated into it. The second type of response is one of defiance. Defiance may range from a reluctant but forced denial to an outright dismissal and repudiation, but overall, it does amount to the negation of what the West stands for, its values, its systems, its institutions, and the world system dominated by it. Defiance, paradoxically, might actually be a form of admission (of defeat) in that the power and the dominance of the West are not just desired, but considered of paramount importance. But these are not sought in collaboration or cooperation but in overthrow or, failing that, in suicide. The actual possibilities of either

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overthrow or suicide being dim, defiance of this sort is often revealed to be a false and corrupt ideology. At its root, such rejection is only a ruse to want to wrest control, to destroy, to supplant oneself in the place of the “other.” In post-colonial theory, these positions have been characterized as appropriation and abrogation. We find them in a variety of encounters between dominant and subordinate entities, whether individual or collective. The third position is more complex, even ambivalent. It may form the pragmatics of “selective assimilation,” in which certain elements of the dominant are accepted, while others are rejected. Or it may be a fundamental disinterest in, even indifference to, the dominant. In other words, the third position may be one of engagement or disengagement, absorption or resistance, but at its heart is the imperative of autonomy or svaraj. The third position seeks, at its best, neither to dominate nor be dominated, neither to colonize nor be colonized, neither to be master nor slave, but to be itself, to explore and express its own inner creative urges, to get on with its own civilizational enterprise, to have its own narrative, which is neither a master narrative nor a petit narrative. The relation of the third position with politics or power is rather problematic. It ranges from the wielding of just power to the renunciation of the pursuit of power. It may, in some of its expressions, resemble either the first or the second position, but its aims and objectives are ultimately quite different form both. To use the framework devised by Y. Dion-Buffalo and J. Mohawk, wishes to be neither a “good” subject nor a “bad” subject of the dominant regimes of power, but a “non-subject.”2 In another paper, speaking of India’s experiment in modernity, I have said that India is essentially non-modern.3 That is, it is not anti-modern or countersystemic, nor imitative and aspiring to be modern, but that it wants to chart its own course, using critical elements of modernity without compromising its fundamental cultural and spiritual values. By way of explanation, let me clarify that I have used the word West mainly to signify Western European and North American societies, characterized by a history of colonial dominance, industrial and military ascendancy, and linguistic and cultural hegemony. By modernity, I mean the regime of instrumental rationality, scientific and technological innovation, and the bureaucratization of social structures within the system of competing or collaborating nation-states. Modernity enters India in the garb of colonialism; the regime of reason that it institutionalizes is therefore distorted and corrupt. Instead of liberty, equality, and fraternity, it endorses oppression, inequality, and racist divisions between the rulers and the ruled. Using tools and weapons partly borrowed from the armoury of the West and partly excavated and reinvented from its own past, India fashions a nationalism that overthrows imperialism. India’s road to modernity, thus, lies in the forging of a special kind of nationalism. The national becomes an oppositional space where the fallen god of

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rationality may be resurrected into a civil space which is free, egalitarian, and tolerant of diversity. Of course, Indian nationalism was by no means a singular or homogenous discourse. It would be more appropriate to talk of Indian nationalisms. These nationalisms were in fierce competition with one another in their desire to capture both the popular imagination and eventually the state to be after the departure of colonial power from India. Some of these nationalisms were adventitious, parasitical, or opportunistic; others were actually anti-national in more than one sense. Yet, they all sought legitimation both at the hands of the colonial state and the people they claimed to represent. The dominant forms of these nationalisms went on to create two distinct state systems, India and Pakistan. But even within themselves, these forms carried their own contradictions, like a marsupial does its babies. The rest of this chapter will try to illustrate three snapshots in the trajectory of Indian nationalism, namely, Sri Aurobindo and spiritual nationalism, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and anti-Gandhian modernity, and the more recent failed experiment of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to offer an alternative to Nehruvian secularism in the form of a modified Hindutva. My observations are meant to complement and supplement my own (and other people’s) treatments of Gandhian, Islamic fundamentalist, right-wing, Hindu ethnic-culturalist, and other forms of nationalism.

SRI AUROBINDO Sri Aurobindo’s views on the nation and nationalism can be found in greatest concentration in his essays in Indu Prakash, Bande Mataram, and Karmayogin, which were written between 1893 and 1910. I would, however, like to concentrate on one key text of his, the “Uttarpara Speech,” in which he spells out the nature of Indian nationalism far more boldly and comprehensively than is generally acknowledged. When we go back to its context, we realize that it is not only a very important, but also a very moving, speech. Sri Aurobindo was released from jail after being acquitted in the infamous Alipur bomb case. The story of Sri Aurobindo’s arrest, incarceration, trial, and almost miraculous acquittal bears study in its own right, but that is not germane to this chapter. Sri Aurobindo was accused by the colonial government of being a part of a terrorist attack. He spent one year, from May 5, 1908 to May 6, 1909, as an under-trial prisoner in Alipur jail. He was defended free of charge by one of India’s leading lawyers, Chittaranjan Das. Though initially he was very depressed and despondent, Sri Aurobindo underwent a series of spiritual experiences in jail that transformed him. Later, during the trial, he surrendered

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totally to what he saw as a Divine plan to save him. Within a few months of his acquittal, he received an inner command to leave British India for the French enclave of Chandranagore in February 1910. He arrived in Pondicherry on April 4, 1910, where he stayed till his death on December 5, 1950. After his release, the first public address he delivered was on May 30, 1909, at Uttarpara, on the outskirts of Calcutta. This speech is noteworthy for its thought content, but perhaps more so because it is an extraordinary account, almost a spiritual autobiography, of Sri Aurobindo. The speech is most often cited for the viswaroopa darshana, a mystical experience of Divine omnipresence, that was vouchsafed to Sri Aurobindo in his solitary confinement: I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Love. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.4

This luminous passage is already well-known and often cited. It shows that Sri Aurobindo was established in a higher consciousness during his incarceration. Sri Aurobindo arrives at this vision through a process that is decisive, though initially painful. He admits that when he was arrested, he “was shaken in faith for a while” and at first “faltered for a moment and cried out in my heart to Him …”5 It is only a few days after this initial trial that he hears the voice of God within him. He is urged “to do the sadhana of the Gita.”6 That is when he realizes “what the Hindu religion meant.”7 As Sri Aurobindo puts it: We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old.8

It is after this that he makes his extraordinary declaration on the nature of Indian nationalism:

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It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.9

The raison d’être of the nation, for Aurobindo, is neither civic nor ethnic, neither romantic nor cultural, but spiritual. We might consider Aurobindo’s an extremely romantic trans-rational form of nationalism, but that is merely a matter of classification. For Aurobindo, the nation, specifically the Indian nation, is a space meant to foster and nurture the descent of higher consciousness. Spiritual progress is possible only when certain material conditions are guaranteed. This does not mean that spirituality is epiphenomenal or that it is produced by material forces. Rather, it itself creates the material conditions that are conducive to its growth. It acts upon matter so that matter might respond likewise in a bi-directional, continuous, collaborative manner. That India must rise not for herself is one thing that makes Indian nationalism different. Most nationalisms are selfish, meant to empower their own citizens, often at the expense of other nationalities. That was one of Rabindranath Tagore’s strictures against nationalism; to him imperialism was nothing but nationalism extended. The urge to dominate lay in the massification and mechanization of the idea of the nation. For Aurobindo, Indian nationalism is for the fulfilment of the spiritual potential of all of humankind. Somewhat like Gandhi’s ideal of svaraj, which was good not just for India but also for its former colonial master, Britain, Aurobindo’s spiritual nationalism implies service and sacrifice. India must rise not to trample on others or to assert its own might to promote universal righteousness or dharma. In order to show us his own personal journey toward such a realisation, Aurobindo freely admits how he was not at first a person of faith or Bhakti. This passage is important lest we consider Aurobindo an irrationalist or fanatic. That he was trained in modern Western thought, educated in England since the age of seven, first at St. Paul’s School and than at King’s College, Cambridge, is only further proof that he represents not the premodern or the primordial type, but rather a post-Enlightenment critique of reason and modernity: “I had had many doubts before. I was brought up in England amongst foreign ideas and an atmosphere entirely foreign.”10 He adds: When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion.11

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It is only later, after practising Yoga, that Sri Aurobindo undergoes a complete transformation. To him is revealed what he believes to be the true nature of the Sanatan Dharma and his inner voice clearly declares: “The agnostic and the sceptic in you have been answered, for I have given you proofs within and without you, physical and subjective, which have satisfied you.”12 He is further directed to remind his countrymen and women that the true significance of Indian nationalism is nothing but Sanatana Dharma: When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the Sanatan Dharma that they arise, it is for the world and not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the World.13

There is nothing equivocal or uncertain about this Divine commandment that Sri Aurobindo receives and records for us: When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists.14

By implication, Indian nationalism, according to Sri Aurobindo, can and should therefore never be imperialistic or violent because it is not directed at self-aggrandisement or domination. Its real purpose is to uphold dharma. This nation and its nationalism, thus, exist only for the sake of dharma. How is this statement different from that of religious fanatics, those who wish to establish a theocracy or a state of religious totalitarianism? We need to refer to Aurobindo’s own words in this document. But it must be understood that according to Aurobindo, Sanatana Dharma does not mean the religion of any group of people; it is not a sectarian faith, not a religion that is based on certain prescriptions, or certain rituals, or certain dogmas. As Sri Aurobindo precisely states: That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion that embraces all others. If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose.15

Aurobindo then goes on to list the distinctive features of this Sanatan Dharma: This is the one religion that can triumph over materialism by including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and

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embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the one religion which enables us not only to understand and believe this truth but to realize it with every part of our being. It is the one religion which shows the world what the world is, that it is the Lila of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which shows us how we can best play our part in that Lila, its subtlest laws and its noblest rules. It is the one religion that does not separate life in any smallest detail from religion, which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed from us the reality of death.16

Aurobindo concludes this extraordinary speech with a reaffirmation of the basic tenets that he has already outlined: I spoke once before with this force in me and I said then this movement is not a political movement and that nationalism is not politics but a religion, a creed, a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another way. I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish. The Sanatan Dharma, that is nationalism. This is the message that I have to speak to you.17

What Sri Aurobindo says in this “Uttarapara Speech” is in consonance with the words and thoughts of other great heroes and builders of India like Swami Vivekananda before him and Mahatma Gandhi after him. They all agreed that it was spirituality that was the keynote in Indian nationalism and that without the former, the latter would be meaningless. But nowhere is this message spelt out as boldly and unequivocally as in this speech of Sri Aurobindo. That is why I think that the “Uttarpara Speech” is central to the corpus of Sri Aurobindo and the literature on Indian nationalism. The atheists, communists, materialists, macaulayites, mercenaries, secularists, modernists, post-modernists, and anti-Sanatanis of various hues will, no doubt, be alarmed by this speech and its contents. They will denounce and condemn it for their own reasons. They will see Sri Aurobindo as a proponent of the Hindu Rashtra. They may even call him a Fascist who all his life opposed Nazism and Fascism. To a certain kind of Indian intellectual, this speech of Sri Aurobindo will be utterly unsettling and dangerous. Post-modernists will accuse it of advocating a totalizing agenda, of trying to impose homogenous order on what is a diverse and differing populace. People of other faiths may see it as an attempt to declare that Sanatana Dharma is the best or better than their religions. But when read carefully, it is clear that the contents of the “Uttarpara Speech” are not directed against anyone or anything, but present a

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powerfully positive and inspiring message on what the Indian nation should be like. This should be a strong nation, based on dharma, an eternal and ever self-renewing moral order. It should devote itself to the service of humanity and its spiritual upliftment. This is not a nation that will follow a narrow or exclusive creed, or attack others in order to dominate them. The Sanatana Dharma itself is not in conflict with any of the religions or creeds of the world, but includes the best that is in them. To that extent, it resembles the universalistic “perennial philosophy” that informs all the religions of the world as their core. It would be erroneous to call it a grand narrative because it allows for infinite plurality and differentiation. It is, when defined in a certain way, without the negative and oppressive features of other grand narratives. For Aurobindo, Indian nationalism, which is based on the lofty idea of Sanatana Dharma, cannot be equated either with the idea of the nation based on social contract, or with the romantic folk nationalism of the later German type. While some of his language in the “Uttarpara Speech” might make sound like a religious nationalist, he was not that either. Unlike Savarkar, he does not advocate India for ethnic Hindus but defines Sanatana Dharma is a non-exclusive way. Aurobindo’s later writings and work deal more with the descent of the supramental, a higher consciousness that would transform life on earth. Yet, even as his speech on the eve of independence day 1947 shows, he did not entirely leave behind or outgrow his earlier political ideas, especially the role of India in the transformation of the world. What is also clear is that Aurobindo did not consider the West as a model for India. He felt that we had to work out our institutions and forms of governance according to our own native genius. He also did not believe that the past was always a good model for our present. Instead, he held that the perfection of the human being lay ahead, in the future, in the dawn of a higher consciousness than what is available at present. From the point of view of the future, the present was deeply flawed and inadequate. The solution, therefore, lay in what he termed the supramental descent, the establishment of a divine consciousness on earth. Non-coercive cooperation between nations, leading to some form of an international order, was what he envisioned in the near future. But for the larger workings of the force of higher consciousness, the enfranchisement and empowerment of India was a prerequisite. Indian nationalism was a means to this larger end. That India attained its independence on his birthday was, according to him, quite significant. In his broadcast on All India Radio, Trichinopoly, on August 14, 1947, the eve of the independence of India, he said, “I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force.”18 In this important speech he outlines five movements “though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or

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on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.”19 These dreams are: a free and united India (he notes that India is free but not united); the decolonization and rise of Asia; a world union for the betterment of humankind; the spiritual gift of India to the world; and a higher step in the evolution of consciousness for the human race. The natural fruition of nationalism would be in world unification and global culture: But an outward basis is not enough; there must grow up an international spirit and outlook, international forms and institutions must appear, perhaps such developments as dual or multilateral citizenship, willed interchange or voluntary fusion of cultures. Nationalism will have fulfilled itself and lost its militancy and would no longer find these things incompatible with selfpreservation and the integrality of its outlook. A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human race.20

Aurobindo wanted a nation of the spirit to form in India, which would serve as a transforming nucleus for human consciousness. To this end, he desired the spirit of the nation to manifest itself in the creation of a society not just of free individuals, protected by a state of their own making, but a society which recognized a higher aim to human life and strove to realize this in its daily life. He believed that the ancient Indian society and polity, though flawed, had to an extent managed to marshal and deploy its resources for these higher ends to be pursued. He wanted modern India to go beyond what it had achieved in the past so that it could fashion a nation that addressed and nurtured not just the physical, vital, and mental, but also the psychic and spiritual needs of its citizens. This would be an open, robust society, vigorous and strong, full of physical and vital energy, beautiful and free, but also harnessing its energies to the higher cause of human perfection, trying to attain the life divine on earth.

AMBEDKAR In Federation versus Freedom, the Kale Memorial Lecture delivered on January 29, 1939, at the Annual Function of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Gokhale Hall, Pune, we see the source of the deep ideological differences between Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi. Whatever may have been the personal animus that the former bore toward the latter, their intellectual differences arose from the fact that Ambedkar was a modernist and modernizer, while Gandhi was to him an unrepentant and dangerous traditionalist. It was the peculiar kind of reason, which he considered superstitious irrationality, that made Ambedkar so suspect Gandhi. Because he could not understand his adversary, he distrusted him deeply.

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Ambedkar believed that just as the Brahmins of yore had fooled and enslaved the large mass of the populace through their clever mumbo-jumbo, Gandhi, too, was misleading the Indian masses of his day with his mischievously garbed religious rhetoric. In his lecture, Ambedkar divides the history of the Indian national movement into two phases: “The old age was the age of Ranade, Agarkar, Tilak, Gokhale, Wachha, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Bannerjee,” while “The new age is the age of Mr. Gandhi and this generation is said to be Gandhi generation.”21 He sees himself poised between the two: “We are standing today at the point of time where the old age ends and the new begins.”22 But there is no doubt where Amdedkar’s sympathies lie: As one who knows something of the old age and also something of the new I see some very definite marks of difference between the two. The type of leadership has undergone a profound change. In the age of Ranade the leaders struggled to modernize India. In the age of Gandhi the leaders are making her a living specimen of antiquity. In the age of Ranade leaders depended upon experience as a corrective method to their thoughts and their deeds. The leaders of the present age depend upon their inner voice as their guide. Not only is there a difference in their mental make up there is a difference even in their viewpoint regarding external appearance. The leaders of the old age took care to be well clad while the leaders of the present age take pride in being half clad. The leaders of the Gandhi age are of course aware of these differences. But far from blushing for their views and their appearance they claim that the India of Gandhi is superior to India of Ranade.23

As he develops his argument, we realize that the contrast is not only physical and metaphysical, but also epistemological and axiological: The age of Ranade was an age in which men and women did engage themselves seriously in studying and examining the facts of their life, and what is more important is that in the face of the opposition of the orthodox mass they tried to mould their lives and their character in accordance with the light they found as a result of their research. In the age of Ranade there was not the same divorce between a politician and a student which one sees in the Gandhi age. In the age of Ranade a politician, who was not a student, was treated as an intolerable nuisance, if not a danger. In the age of Mr. Gandhi learning, if it is not despised, is certainly not deemed to be a necessary qualification of a politician.24

When we contrast Amdedkar’s statements with Gandhi’s in Hind Swaraj (1909), we see how deep the differences run. Gandhi considered the English-educated Indian elite, made up of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, to be exploitative, parasitical and oppressive. For Ambedkar, some of these people were actually modernizers, bringing the light of reason to a benighted continent, shackled by false gods and backward beliefs.

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What underlies the terms that Ambedkar uses to contrast the old and the new is his deep antipathy to the non-rational, the atavistic, and the traditional in Gandhi. Ambedkar displays an almost Brahminical horror for what he sees as the contamination of the irrational, the pollution that “impure” reason engenders both in the individual and the body politic: To my mind there is no doubt that this Gandhi age is the dark age of India. It is an age in which people instead of looking for their ideals in the future are returning to antiquity. It is an age in which people have ceased to think for themselves and as they have ceased to think they have ceased to read and examine the facts of their lives. The fate of an ignorant democracy which refuses to follow the way shown by learning and experience and chooses to grope in the dark paths of the mystics and the megalomaniacs is a sad thing to contemplate.25

Indeed, the figure of the dhoti-clad, half-naked Mahatma, in wooden sandals is the very antithesis of Ambedkar, clad in a suit, wearing shoes, holding a book in one hand and pointing to the future with the other, which is how he is depicted in innumerable blue statues all over India. In the second edition of What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1944; 2nd ed. 1945), Ambedkar, the outstanding leader of the Untouchables, added an extra chapter called “A Plea to the Foreigner: Let Not Tyranny Have Freedom to Enslave” (Chapter IX). The aim of the chapter was not different from that of much of Ambedkar’s politics: to refute the Congress claim to represent all sections of the Indian population. But he does so not just by the vilification of Gandhi or a criticism of Congress policies, but by making a sophisticated argument about the reality of an “anti-nationalism” that is contained within the ambit of any major nationalist movement. He alludes to this at the outset of the chapter by stating that “there are two different aspects to the politics of India, which may be distinguished as foreign politics and constitutional politics. India’s foreign politics relate to India’s freedom from British Imperialism, while the constitutional politics of India center round the nature of a constitution for a free India.”26 I would like to argue that these two politics were at odds with one another. Ambedkar stood for the latter, while Gandhi stood for the former. Of course, we might concede that Gandhi also took deep interest in the latter, that is, he was as concerned with the kind of freedom India would achieve as he was with the fact that India must, first of all, be free of British yoke. Ambedkar, however, realized that try as he might, he would not be able to determine the larger politics of anti-imperialist nationalism, but he certainly knew that he had a major role to play in the constitutional politics of India, so much so that he ended up becoming the chief architect of the Indian constitution. Ambedkar argues that there is a distinction between fighting for the freedom of India and fighting for the freedom of the people in India:

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The foreigner does not stop to make a distinction between the freedom of a country and the freedom of the people in the country. He takes it for granted that the freedom of a country is the same as the freedom of the people in the country and once the freedom of the country is secured the freedom of the people is also thereby assured.27

Ambedkar elaborates upon this distinction: Not to make a distinction between the freedom of the country and the freedom of the people in the country is to allow oneself to be misled, if not deceived. For, words such as society, nation and country are just amorphous if not ambiguous terms. There is no gainsaying that “nation” though one word means many classes. Philosophically, it may be possible to consider a nation as a unit but sociologically it cannot but be regarded as consisting of many classes and the freedom of the nation, if it is to be a reality, must vouchsafe the freedom of the different classes comprised in it, particularly of those who are treated as the servile classes.28

While this distinction is not just valid, but extremely useful in trying to understand the politics of competing nationalisms, Ambedkar’s attempt to show that the “Congress far from planning for democracy is planning to resuscitate the ancient form of Hindu polity of a hereditary governing class ruling a hereditary servile class”29 may not be equally persuasive with the passage of time. Ambedkar then goes on to argue that India’s governing class was made up of high caste Hindus, who also ran the Congress party. He considered these upper castes, especially Brahmins and Banias, the most despicable and untrustworthy of any in the world: But is there anywhere in the world a governing class with such selfish, diseased and dangerous and perverse mentality, with such a hideous and infamous philosophy of life which advocates the trampling down of the servile classes to sustain the power and glory of the governing class? I know of none.30

Next Ambedkar compares the Indian ruling classes (or castes) with the ancien regime of France and the feudal elites of Japan, which were overthrown by the Revolution in the one and the Restoration in the other, respectively. According to Ambedkar, both of these ruling elites voluntarily gave up their privileges and embraced modernity, but not the Indian elites which use the “two weapons” of nationalism and satire to stop reservations (constitutional guarantees) for the “servile classes”: First is the weapon of nationalism. Whenever the servile classes ask for reservations in the legislatures, in the Executive and in Public Services, the governing class raises the cry of “nationalism in danger”. What are these reservations for? To put it briefly they are intended to provide floorings below which the

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governing class will not be able to push down the servile classes in their struggle for existence. There is nothing sinister and nothing wrong in this demand for reservations. How does the governing class react to them? It loses no occasion to deprecate them and to ridicule them. People are led to believe that if they are to achieve national freedom, they must maintain unity, that all questions regarding reservations in the Legislatures, Executives and the Public Services are inimical to national unity and that, therefore, for anyone interested in national freedom it is a sin to support those who ask for such reservation. That is the attitude of the governing class in India. It stands in glaring contrast with that of the governing class in Japan. It is a misuse of nationalism. But the governing class does not feel any compunction for such misuse.31

The second weapon that Ambedkar deplores is “the writing of the lampoons and parodies calculated to pour ridicule on the demand for reservations.”32 The lampoon cited and quoted at length elsewhere is by R. P. Paranjpye, then India’s High Commissioner to Australia, printed in 1926 in Gujarati Punch, an obscure magazine. I do not know of any such widespread publications of such satires on Dalit demands in the Indian press of that time. For Ambedkar to pick up this one article and focus on it at such length suggests that his pride and self-respect were hurt by this superciliousness. Of course, he failed to see any humor in the piece. It is this sense of hurt pride that probably contributed considerably to making him an implacable and inveterate foe of the upper castes. Ambedkar was angry that well-meaning foreigners, including liberals and leftists, support only the Congress. As every one knows, the Congress is only fighting for national liberty and is not interested in political democracy. The party in India who is fighting for political democracy is the party of the Untouchables who fear that this Congress fight for liberty, if it succeeds, will mean liberty to the strong and the powerful to suppress the weak and the down-trodden unless they are protected by constitutional safeguards.33

Further, he remarks that leftists and radical leaders have been giving blind and unquestioning support to the Congress which admittedly is run by capitalists, landlords, moneylenders and reactionaries, only because the Congress calls its activities by the grandiloquent name of “Fight for Freedom.”34

The dominant nationalism championed by the Congress Party for Ambedkar is nothing more than a camouflage for perpetuating an internal imperialism of the upper castes over the lower castes. Whether or not the Congress actually aimed to do so, Ambedkar ensured that it could not do so even if it had wished to. Using all the skills of his

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razor-sharp intellect and his long experience as a lawyer, Ambedkar makes a foolproof case to distinguish between the freedom of a nation and the uneven spoils of this freedom for the classes that constitute the nation. In his “Preface” to the second edition of Pakistan or the Partition of India (also published in 1945), Ambedkar admits that nationalism involves an unfolding dynamic in which a “conflict between the forces of the authority of the State and of anti-State nationalism within” is inevitable.35 To support his argument, he quotes from Friedmann’s book, The Crisis of the National State: There is not a single modem State which has not, at one time or another, forced a recalcitrant national group to live under its authority. Scots, Bretons, Catalans, Germans, Poles, Czechs, Finns, all have, at some time or another, been compelled to accept the authority of a more powerful State whether they liked it or not. Often, as in Great Britain or France, force eventually led to co-operation and a co-ordination of State authority and national cohesion. But in many cases, such as those of Germany, Poland, Italy and a host of Central European and Balkan countries, the forces of Nationalism did not rest until they had thrown off the shackles of State Power and formed a State of their own.36

That this is what would happen not just to Indian Muslims after partition but to the Untouchables whose cause he championed was something he might have anticipated. But he ensured that constitutional safeguards to protect the interests of the Dalits, including reservations in educational institutions and government jobs, become a part of state policy. Today, those very provisions, though they have resulted in much good, have ensured hereditary entitlement for the Dalits, something he so deeply resented in the traditional caste structure. Ambedkar also inaugurated a politics of distrust and separatism among the Dalits, which culminated in his calculated conversion out of Hinduism into Buddhism. Ambedkar had long contemplated and announced his plan to convert as early as October 13, 1935 at the Yeola Conversion Conference, but waited till after Gandhi’s death and the ratification of his Constitution actually to do so on October 14, 1956 at Nagpur. To his credit, though Ambedkar held the “conversion card” as a threat for such a long time, ultimately he converted only when there could be no immediate or visible gain from the act. In other words, though this was a political act, its motives were not just political but social, religious, and personal. In the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), Ambedkar appears 371 times in thirty-six documents. Because the index is not always reliable, I suspect this frequency is actually an understatement of how serious Gandhi took him. Not too long after Ambedkar’s above-mentioned attack on Gandhi and the Congress, Gandhi replying to a letter from Vallabhbhai Patel lamented:

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The main problem is about Ambedkar. I see a risk in coming to any sort of understanding with him, for he has told me in so many words that for him there is no distinction between truth and untruth or between violence and non-violence. He follows one single principle, viz., to adopt any means which will serve his purpose. One has to be very careful indeed when dealing with a man who would become a Christian, Muslim or Sikh and then be reconverted according to his convenience.37

Gandhi’s approach to the issue of reservations was different from Ambedkar’s, though not entirely opposed. He believed that the real changes had to be in the hearts and minds of people, not just in constitutional safeguards and legal agreements: If the caste Hindus are true to themselves, all will be well. But if the number of fair-minded persons is small and if power passes into the hands of fanatics, there is bound to be injustice, no matter what agreements you make today. You may come to any understanding you like today—but who are the people who beat up Harijans, murder them, prevent them from using public wells, drive them out of schools and refuse them entry into their homes? They are Congressmen. Aren’t they? It is very necessary to have a clear picture of this. I therefore feel that at present we should not insist on an agreement such as you suggest. However, we should stress the capacity of the Congress to do justice. Mine may be a voice in the wilderness. Even so I prefer it that way. Therefore, if we negotiate with Ambedkar out of fear of the League we are likely to lose on both the fronts.38

Gandhi did not want the Congress to succumb to Ambedkar’s pressure tactics or to concede anything in haste. As it happened, though, independent India, led by the same Congress government that Ambedkar criticized so bitterly, gave 22.5 percent reservations to the schedule castes and tribes, more than the 20 percent Ambedkar wanted in 1946. Ambedkar’s appeal to foreigners from which I have quoted did not go on deaf ears either. On December 2 of that year, we find Gandhi replying to a letter from Carl Heath, explaining his stand vis-à-vis Ambedkar’s: I understand and appreciate your remarks about Dr. Ambedkar. I suppose you are aware that I know him very well and that I have met him often enough. He represents a good cause but he is a bad advocate for the simple reason that his passion has made him bitter and made him depart from the straight and narrow path. As I know to my cost, he is a believer in questionable means so long as the end is considered to be good. With him and with men like him the end justifies the means. Have you read his book? It is packed with untruths almost from beginning to end. I am sorry to have to say this of a countryman who has himself been obliged to put up with insults which have embittered men mightier than Dr. Ambedkar.39

It is not my purpose here to take sides in this debate. I have only tried to show that the differences were not just personal, but philosophical.

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Did Ambedkar’s position make him an anti-Sanatani? To all appearances, his was certainly an anti-Hindu position in that he identified Hinduism with all that was wrong in it and also converted out of it, as he had both threatened and promised to. To Gandhi, the ills of Hinduism, as of other religions, were not the essential elements of these faiths, but the non-essential parts which could be rejected when the tradition modernized or reformed itself. Yet, Ambedkar, the most unrelenting critic of both Gandhi and Hinduism, remained a co-Sanatani, that is, not an enemy, but a fellowtraveler of the mainstream of Indian thought and politics. Buddhism itself is co- (not anti-) Sanatani. In the end, Ambedkar, the severest internal critic of Indian nationalism, became one of the members of Jawaharlal Nehru’s first Cabinet of Ministers in independent India. Not only was he the Chair of the committee that drafted the Indian constitution, but he was India’s first Law Minister. As the Law Minister, he played a significant role in framing the Hindu Code Bill, which was a landmark document for the reform of Hindu society. In this bill, Ambedkar altered many of the most obnoxious aspects of Manu, the ancient lawgiver of the Hindus. Of course, in that Manu does not designate a person but a function, Ambedkar, ironically, became a modern Manu for the Hindus. Even before India became independent, on April 29, 1947, Article 17 of the Constitution of India for the abolition of Untouchability was moved by Vallabhbhai Patel in the Constituent Assembly and it was passed unanimously.

AFTER: HINDUTVA TODAY The BJP had three stints in power in Indian national politics. The first in 1996 lasted for thirteen days; the second in 1998, when BJP led a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, lasted for thirteen months; and the third lasted for nearly the full term of five years from 1999–2004. But ten years earlier, in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP by capturing eighty-eight seats had already signaled its arrival on the national center stage. Founded in 1980, the BJP’s rise has been phenomenal and, to some, disturbing. It has most perturbed leftist and “secularist” intellectuals, who have fought bitterly waged ideological battles against the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. That most of these critics have themselves been, at least notionally, Hindu suggests that these battles are a part of an ongoing civil war among the Hindus in specific and Indians in general. The struggle is not just over who we are, but who rules India. In a peculiar way, the problem with the Hindu psyche is not too unlike that of the ruling Punjabi community in Pakistan. The Punjabis, who dominate Pakistani national life in almost every department, are the staunchest champions of both Urdu and Islam. These two become ways of masking their identity and justifying their

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domination; they rule as Pakistani nationalists, not as Punjabis. Similarly, Hindus rule India in the name of secularism; to admit that they are actually Hindus would be too embarrassing. How, then, does one account for the rise of a party whose agenda is to safeguard Hindu interests? Some have tried to account for it by arguing that the recrudescence of religious identities is a part of a worldwide phenomenon occasioned by the triumph of capitalism and the spread of globalization. In the more specific context of India, it would be more accurate to say that the BJP rise was because of the decline of the Congress Party, which had held sway in post-independence India for fifty years. The decline of the Congress, paradoxically, may be attributed to subnationalism, that is, to the rise of regional political coalitions which targeted specific, often linguistic vote banks more effectively than the Congress, which was seen as a pan-Indian party. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its offshoots, for instance, represented Tamil nationalism, while the Telugu Desam Party, led by film star N. T. Rama Rao, championed the cause of the Telugu-speaking people. Other regional parties include the Akali Dal in Punjab, the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar, Devi Lal’s Lok Dal in Haryana, and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. Many of these parties appealed to specific caste groups and interests; for instance, Kanshi Ram and Mayavati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, formed specially to cater to the interests of Dalits. Even the communists, especially the Communist Party of IndiaMarxist (CPM), have functioned mostly as a regional, Bengal-based party, though as allies of the Congress in the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, they have played a significant role as both watchdogs and policy makers behind the scenes. Overall, it would not be inaccurate to say that the electoral politics of India split into two main factions, the national and the regional. In this process of reformation, BJP found itself as India’s second national party, next only to the Congress. In the 2004 elections, though the BJP lost to the Congress, it made significant inroads into southern India, notably Karnataka, emerging as the single largest party, and recently a part of the ruling coalition. The BJP is commonly referred to as the Hindu nationalist party, but as Koenraad Elst points out: “The strange thing about the BJP is that its voters consider it a Hindu party, its enemies denounce it as a Hindu party, but the party will call itself anything except a Hindu party.”40 Upon joining the party, every BJP member makes the following pledge: “I believe in Integral Humanism which is the basic philosophy of Bharatiya Janata Party. “I am committed to Nationalism and National Integration, Democracy, Gandhian Socialism, Positive Secularism (Sarva Dharma Samabhava) and value-based politics.

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“I subscribe to the concept of a Secular State and Nation not based on religion. “I firmly believe that this task can be achieved by peaceful means alone. “I do not observe or recognize untouchability in any shape or form. “I am not a member of any other political party. “I undertake to abide by the Constitution, Rules and Discipline of the Party.”41

The BJP’s Five Basic Commitments (Panch Nishthayen), as laid out in the party’s Constitution, are: nationalism and national integration, democracy, the Gandhian approach to socio-economic issues leading to the establishment of an egalitarian society free from exploitation, positive secularism (Sarva Dharma Sama Bhav) and value-based politics. In the statement issued during the National Convention held at the Rajat Jayanti Nagar from 28th to 30th December, 2005, the party declares: The BJP also reaffirms its commitment to the establishment of a progressive social order, based on the ideals of equality, equity, compassion, cooperation, social justice, social harmony, gender justice, Antyodaya—upliftment of the poor—protection of the environment, preservation of family and social values, and the all-round development of the individual self as an essential precondition of human evolution. We believe in the goal of Sarve Janah Sukhino Bhavantu (May all be happy).42

These statements suggest two things: first that the BJP’s notion or definition of nationalism is different from the one advocated by V. D. Sarvarkar in his treatise on Hindutva. Sarvarkar’s notion of Hindutva was territorial, cultural, and ultimately exclusive in that those who did not consider India as their fatherland and holy land could only be second class citizens. The BJP’s official philosophy, on the other hand, is the integral humanism of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. This ideology, which seems to draw on the notion of Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, seeks a full development of the human beings through a holistic integration of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Upadhyaya was for a culture rooted in the indigenous traditions of India but not averse to Western ideas or technology. He also accepted many of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas including sarvodaya, communal harmony, and removal of caste and social distinctions. Second, both Hindutva and Hinduism as concepts and entities are travelers, and Hindutva has moved closer to Hinduism than Hinduism has to Hindutva. The deep structures of modern Hinduism are inimical to any sectarian or fanatical impulse; the latter are only permissible as aberrations and exceptions, never as the rule. In trying to capture and take over Hinduism, Hindutva itself got captured and transformed. The BJP and its even more radical allies found that there was no formula that could instantly unite all Hindus to turn

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them into a coherent vote bank. Majoritarian, yes, but anti-minorities, no; this seemed to be Hinduism’s answer to Hindutva. “Right-wing,” “fascist,” “Hindu fanatic,” and “anti-minority” are some of the epithets that have been commonly used to brand the BJP by its critics. My purpose here is neither to defend the BJP nor to refute its critics, but I am not persuaded by the latter’s ad hominem arguments. If we cannot just tolerate but accept major political parties which have names like “Christian Democrats” or “Muslim League,” I am puzzled by an allergy to the word “Hindu” appearing anywhere in the political sphere in India. Ironically, neither Hindu nor Hindutva are a part of the BJP’s constitution or rules, though in some official documents, to promote Hindutva, which is defined as synonymous with “Bharatiyata” or Indianness, is indeed a stated objective. If I take a more charitable view of the BJP, it is not because I am in sympathy with Hindu chauvinism, which, like other forms of chauvinism, including secularist fundamentalism, is ugly and threatening to a healthy state and civil society. Hindu chauvinism, the worst form of which is Hindu supremacism, must indeed be opposed, but not by demonizing Hindus and Hinduism or appeasing minorities and tolerating minority fanaticism. The real reason why a fanatical Hindutva must be rejected is quite different from what its critics advance. Hindutva is “bad” not because it is “too” Hindu, but because it is not Hindu enough. I will explain this later. What I wish to do immediately is to propose another way of reading and accounting for the rise of the BJP in India. Briefly, my argument is that the BJP succeeded in capturing power not because Indians became disenchanted with secularism or that Hindus turned more fanatical. The Indian polity did not reject pluralism, but felt that Hinduism, which underwrote “Indian values,” was a better guardian and guarantor of pluralism than “secularism,” which was an imported and little understood ideology. Secularism in the West was born out of a struggle between church and state; it represented indifference and disregard for religion and the separation of religion from matters of state. In India, secularism came to be redefined as equal respect, not indifference, towards all religions, or what Vinoba Bhave, expounding Gandhi, called sarva dharma samabhava. Under Congress rule, this equal respect turned into appeasement of Muslim clergy, as in the Shah Bano case, or murderous rage against Sikhs as in the riots after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The Babri Masjid, too, was demolished when a Congress Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, ruled India. The Congress lost the trust of both Hindus and Muslims, not to mention the Sikhs, by its equivocations and mendacity. When the Babri Masjid fell, Muslims learned that the Congress could not be relied upon to defend their interests; this signaled, so to speak, the end of minoritarianism as the official policy of the state. In accepting BJP majoritarianism, I would suggest, Indians came grudgingly to acknowledge that the best guarantee for

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pluralism in India was neither hyper-secularism which showed contempt to all religions or pseudo-secularism that allowed the cynical manipulation of religion for political ends, but an acknowledgement of critical Hinduism as a source of plural values and ways of life. “Critical Hinduism” is, of course, my phrase and my interpretation of why the voters chose to support the BJP. That is what the country needed; whether they got it is another matter. I would contend that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance failed to seize the opportunity that was created by the decline of secularist-socialism, failed to rise to the occasion by providing an alternative “Dharmic” vision for India. The Hinduism or Hindutva of the Rashtriya Swavamsevak Sangh (RSS)43 and the BJP, unfortunately, were neither critical nor even Hindu at times. It is not secularism, but “critical Hinduism,” that ensures pluralism in India. In fact, secularism itself is a product of “critical Hinduism.” But when secularism threatened to destroy Hinduism, a reaction was bound to set in. It is this reaction that pushed the BJP to power. I use the term “critical Hinduism” to underscore the fact that Hinduism is not some unchanging essence, but an ever-renewing stream of thought and conduct that is capable of self-correction. As I have said in another paper, the ultimate choice is not between Hinduism and secularism, but between genuinely self-critical Hinduism and an authentic Indian secularism on the one hand versus a false and chauvinistic Hinduism and a pseudo and opportunistic secularism on the other.44 In other words, hypermodernity, either of the communist or the secularist variety, is alien to India’s cultural traditions. Similarly, hyper-rationality or hyper-scientism is also inimical to us. What will work is moderated and mediated rationality, moderate and mediating secularism. Neither disrespect for religion, nor religious fanaticism—this appears to be India’s way. Interestingly, the problem with Indian secularism is also a crisis of reason and of Indian modernity. A purely rationalistic approach to religion does not work in India, nor does a descent into fanatical irrationalism. A moderate secularism, bolstered by a moderate Hinduism whose expression it is, might be the way ahead. Ultimately, my criticism of the BJP and RSS is based not on secular values, but on “Hindu” or sanatani ones. They are not “Hindu enough” in that they do not represent what might be the best of our tradition. Instead, I believe they come from that part of the Hindu psyche which was severely wounded, even defeated, first by dominant Islam, then by the imperialist West. This part of the Hindu mind does not need rejection and demonization, but healing and acceptance. I say this because there is ample evidence of the patriotism and sincerity of even the RSS. Its members do love India and feel greatly exercised over its moral, cultural, and political decline. Their solution is indoctrination, organization, and, at times, retaliation. But the “wrongs” of history cannot be righted by present reactions. Moreover, the

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problem with the RSS view of Hindu history is that Hindus were defeated because they were not like the Abrahamic faiths. So the RSS would like to Semiticize Hinduism. This is both a real and tactical blunder. A Semitic Hinduism would be no Hinduism at all. At the same time, something needs to be done so that Hinduism is reformed. This was the problem of the nineteenth century, which also offered many different “solutions.” The RSS solution of Hindu domination is neither convincing nor practical. I consider Gandhi the greater Hindu because his response came from the “undefeated” part of the sanatani psyche. Only this part may rightfully be called sanatan or perennial because it is not destroyed or defeated by the most adverse of material circumstances. The RSS response is born not out of strength of faith in Hinduism, but out of weakness and anxiety. Ultimately, its raison d’être is that unless something drastic is done, Hindus and Hinduism will vanish from the face of the earth. What Gandhi teaches us, on the other hand, is that if we really have something worthwhile in our traditions, we will rise to the occasion regardless of how great the challenge or threat is. It is interested in reform of the self rather than injury to others. Of course, my critique of the RSS-BJP does not exonerate self-hating Hindus on the other side of the political spectrum. They, too, represent the defeated part of the Hindu psyche, “converting” to secularism to escape the “stigma” of being Hindu or Indian. But what I do wish to say is that the way of dealing with the RSS is not by isolating or demonizing them. This was the new form of “untouchability” that the Indian left so excelled in. It was actually by embracing them and making them feel secure. The same left-liberals who advocated reaching out to “terrorists,” naxalites, and other violent agents, treated right-wing Hindus as less than human, fit only to be shamed out of existence. But such “othering” was bound only to make these groups stronger. The way out was shown not by the theorists, but by Bollywood. In the film Rang de Basanti (dir. Rakyesh Mehra 2005), about five youths who rebel against the state, one is a right-wing Hindu, who becomes very much a part of the group after the initial ideological conflicts between him and the others. The vacuum created by the collapse of Nehruvian secularism and socialism has only been filled partially. The failure of socialism has been acknowledged by both the Congress and the BJP. Socialism, whatever its initial advantages and contributions to nation-building, simply did not work as an economic policy in the long run. It created huge and inefficient state undertakings, which blocked India’s economic progress and stifled competition. It led to state and private monopolies and seller’s markets, thus to both inflation and stagnation. Economic liberalization has worked wonders for the Indian economy, doubling our growth rate from a modest 2.5 percent to 5 percent and, more recently, raising it even higher to above 7 percent. This has led to a significant reduction in poverty, though

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inequality and distributive justice remain important problems. Both the Congress and the BJP are thus supporters of qualified capitalism and optimal globalization—qualified, that is, by attempts to safeguard the interests of the poor and socially disadvantaged sections of the population. Similarly, India’s response to globalization is neither an outright rejection nor an enthusiastic affirmation, but a guarded acceptance. Despite continuing noises by the communists, both the mainstream political parties in India seem to have arrived at a similar economic policy. The decline of Nehruvian secularism, on the other hand, has not yet led to the creation of an alternative. This is the opportunity that the BJP did not fully grasp. Admittedly, an alternate vision for India is not easy to forge. It requires more than just political acumen or ideological posturing. Deep thinking, careful study, intense debates, and then a propaganda offensive—all these would be the necessary steps for such a vision to prevail. The challenge for Indian political thought is to articulate this vision. It remains to be seen which political group or party can succeed in offering a newer and more persuasive version of Indian nationalism. The resources of Sanatana Dharma, which is the perennial philosophy of India, are available to all, non-Indians and non-Hindus included, to help fashion such as an imagi-nation.

CONCLUSION I have tried to argue that there are many roads to modernity and that the Indian one is uniquely its own. Though this road was fashioned by an intense dialogue with external, mostly Western, sources, what obtains in India is neither a copy of the West nor an outright rejection of it. Similarly, Indian notions of the nation were not mere reflections or derivatives of Western ones. On the contrary, India’s project was grander, more ambitious. In forming its own nation-state, India also sought to give an alternate model to the world. That is why my chapter is called “alternations.” I have used the plural because Indian nationalism actually consists of many competing, even contradictory, nationalisms. Nationalism, as I have tried to show, is not a unitary phenomenon, but contains multiple narratives. Because we take the nation-state to be a model, when we look in the past we look at those structures and forms which resemble that of a nation-state. Actually, a variety of formations existed side by side then, as they do now, even after the height of the nation-state, and its more recent recession from the popular imagination. It would be too premature to call India a post-nation; instead, it would be more accurate to say that it is at once a nation in the making, a well-formed nation, and a post-nation. This is possible not only because of multiple and plural levels of national

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consciousness, but also because of the multifarious structures and formations that obtain on the ground. Not the least because of an uneven and incomplete process of modernization, the power of the state is diffused rather than direct. This allows many premodern forms to coexist with contemporary and postmodern ones. The common thread that runs through them all, as I have tried to suggest, is the problematic of reason. Ultimately, the Indian way, if there is any such thing, is neither to enshrine reason as the sole arbiter in the realm of human affairs nor to reject it and lapse into irrationality or bigotry. The attempt instead has been to temper hyperrationality on the one hand and on the other hand to counter superstition and other “errors” in the light of reason. It is this complex and nuanced negotiation with rationality that marks Indian modernity as different from other modernities as it indeed does Indian nationalism, which is the main constituent of Indian modernity.

NOTES 1. See Anthony Parel’s chapter in this volume. 2. Y. Dion-Buffalo and J. C. Mohawk, “Thoughts from an Autochthonous Center,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 7, no.4 (1994), 33–35. 3. See “Saundarya, Modernity and the Aesthetics of Non-Duality,” in Saundarya: The Perception and Practice of Beauty in India, ed. Harsha V. Dehejia and Makarand Paranjape (New Delhi: Samvad India Foundation, 2003), 351–365. 4. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ahsram, 1983), 6. 5. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 3. 6. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 4. 7. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 5. 8. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 5. 9. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 5–6. 10. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 10. 11. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 10. 12. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 11. 13. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 11–12. 14. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 12 (my emphasis). 15. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 13. 16. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 13–14. 17. Sri Aurobindo, Sanatan Dharma: Uttarpara Speech, 14. 18. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 26 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972), 404–406. 19. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 26, 404–406. 20. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 26, 273. This is from the same radio broadcast that I have cited earlier.

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21. Federation versus Freedom, the Kale Memorial Lecture delivered on January 29, 1939, in Anand Teltumbde, ed., E-Compendium on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar [electronic resource] (Mumbai: Ambedkar Institute, 2000). 22. Federation versus Freedom. 23. Federation versus Freedom. 24. Federation versus Freedom. 25. Federation versus Freedom. 26. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1944; 2nd ed. 1945, in Teltumbde, ed., E-Compendium on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. 27. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 28. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 29. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 30. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 31. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 32. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 33. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 34. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. 35. Pakistan or the Partition of India (1945), in Teltumbde, ed., E-Compendium on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. 36. W. Friedmann, The Crisis of the National State (London: Macmillan, 1943), 4. 37. Collected Works Of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 91 no. 460, Letter to Vallabhbhai Patel Poona, August 1, 1946 (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1998), 393–94. 38. Collected Works Of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 91, 393–94. 39. Collected Works Of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 93, 86–87. 40. Koenraad Elst, BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (New Delhi : Voice of India, 1997), Chapter 2. 41. Constitution and Rules of the BJP (New Delhi: BJP, 1992). 42. Rajat Jayanti Sandesh at the National Convention, Rajat Jayanti Nagar, December 28–30, 2005, (6 Dec. 2006). 43. Rashtriya Swavamsevak Sangh is a right-wing, Hindu cultural organization which is seen as the progenitor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which led the NDA coalition government from 1999–2004. 44. Makarand Paranjape, “Secularism vs. Hindu Nationalism: Interrogating the Terms of the Debate,” Dialogue 5, no. 3 (January–March 2004), 14–27; also in Dharma: The Categorial Imperative, ed. Ashok Vohra et al. (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2005), 262–275.

11 Chinese Conceptions of the State during the Late Qing Dynasty (1860-1911) Peter Zarrow

How did Chinese political and intellectual elites conceptualize the “state” as they came in contact with Western political theories during the crises of the late Qing period? Chinese intellectuals had to find a way from the imperial dynasty to the modern nation-state. As it turned out, the Qing (1644–1912) was the last of a series of dynasties or ruling families that had controlled the empire from the Qin unification in 221 BCE. Founded by Manchu warrior tribes, it controlled unprecedented territories, populations, and wealth, before beginning to founder in the nineteenth century. Under the twin pressures of domestic rebellion and foreign imperialism, the Qing tried to reform political institutions just enough to ensure dynastic survival beginning in about the 1860s. However, the Qing’s own reforms helped set free forces demanding a more thorough reconstruction of the polity. This chapter examines one aspect of that reconstruction: new ideas about the state. Late Qing intellectuals could not simply deduce the state from observation. The state required acts of imagination.1 Yet they did not have to create statehood de nihilo: pre-modern Chinese political philosophy had much to say about what we would now call the state—both in terms of abstract principles and in terms of practical operations. As it developed over the centuries after Confucius (c. 551 BCE–479 BCE), the politically dominant Confucian school did much to root the emperorship in the cosmic and moral nature of the universe, highlighting the analogy between the patriarchal family and the state. Filial piety and loyalty to ruler were, in this sense, much the same thing, although the emperor stood alone as the pivot between Heaven and earth: the “Son of Heaven” and holder of “Heaven’s mandate.” All Under Heaven belonged to the emperor (or so it might be said). 235

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However, it is also worth noting that Confucian discourse focused on the duties of the ruler to the people. Confucianism thus provided late Qing thinkers with a rich political vocabulary and certain predispositions. One of these predispositions was to assume the need for the government to raise the level of the people (in the traditional vocabulary, jiaohua 教化); another was to assume the need for morally superior generalists to control the levers of government. By the end of the nineteenth century, the need to build a modern state capable of assuring domestic order and protecting the borders was obvious. The study of modern China, however, has neglected the question of the state itself, to focus on three other problematiques: the rise of Chinese nationalism;2 the transition from empire to nation-state;3 and the institutional changes of the late Qing and early Republic.4 Late Qing thinkers built new foundations for the state and destroyed its old cosmological moorings. A new element of state legitimation was certainly nationalism. Nationalism implied a commonality and homogeneity, whereas the dynastic empire was built on difference and hierarchy. Although late Qing nationalists could retain elements of Confucianism, its central moral plank, the Three Bonds (emperor-subject, parent-child, husband-wife) had to be abandoned. As well, the late Qing vision of evolutionary history and endless progress was at odds with the eternal truths of imperial legitimization. The late Qing view of the state displayed what might be called Weberian themes: bureaucratic and instrumental rationality, disenchantment (secularization), and the separation of society from the cosmos. Late Qing intellectuals saw the state in secular terms: it was a human artifact. At the same time, late Qing thinkers saw the state as more than an accidental assemblage of people: it was a juristic person, it was a living being (the organic state), and, insofar as it was an abstraction that transcended the people, something almost mystical.

DIALOGUE, HERMENEUTICS, HISTORY In the wake of the Opium War (1839–1842), Britain and the other powers demanded that China join the British-dominated capitalist world order. These demands were based on modern political-legal conceptions of the state: that is, that the Qing regards itself as but one of a number of formally equal sovereign states. For only when sovereignty was ascribed to the Qing could it sign treaties and be held responsible for the terms of those treaties. To put it another way, the global imaginary of the nineteenth century depended on the mutual recognition of different political authorities, which required a certain common language of state norms or legal frameworks.5 Qing leaders, while fully aware of the hypocrisy of the West’s insistence on formal equality while imposing unequal terms, had no choice but to learn

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this language. They supported a limited program of military and technological modernization, establishing several arsenals and new schools to teach foreign languages and the natural sciences. By the 1880s, several hundred Western works, on political economy as well as the sciences, had been translated by Westerners and Chinese working together. A turning point occurred in 1895, when China’s military forces were defeated by its longdespised neighbor Japan in a fight over influence in Korea. This inspired a new radical phase of reform, which was initially promoted through Kang Youwei’s 康有為 reinterpretation of Confucianism. Kang (1858–1927) and his disciple Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1873–1929) envisioned turning China into a constitutional monarchy like Japan or Britain. In 1898 the young emperor was won over to this view, and the “hundred days of reform” attempted to streamline the bureaucracy. However, the empress dowager, allied with conservative forces fearful of any threat to their positions, staged a coup, bringing reform to an end and setting the stage for the disastrous Boxer Uprising against Westerners and Christians. Only after the powers put down the Boxers and their Qing allies, again invading Beijing in 1900, did a humbled Qing court turn to fundamental reforms. The Qing began to streamline the bureaucracy and to establish modern educational and legal systems, and in 1905 they abolished the civil service examination system and promised a constitution. New schools and the end of the examination system, based on classical learning, finally opened the way to widespread acceptance of “Western learning.” But the results were disappointing to reformist elites, not to mention a growing number of explicitly anti-Manchu revolutionaries. Later generations have often seen the knowledge gained by Chinese of modern Western thought through the perspectives of “influence” and “cultural borrowing.” Both perspectives reflect modernization theory—the notion that all societies will modernize roughly along the lines pioneered by the North Atlantic nations. Both perspectives are Eurocentric in that they take Western developments as normative, an assumption that I wish to avoid here. Rather, I seek to understand how Chinese elites came to an understanding of Western political philosophy—in particular the notion of the state—and what they did with this knowledge. “Influence,” along with even stronger versions of Western hegemony, provides a misleading perspective insofar as it neglects the agency of Chinese elites who made up their own minds about what they believed. “Cultural borrowing,” “diffusion,” “absorption,” and the like better capture the agency of the process.6 However, that perspective is still too limited, slighting the active and creative nature of the process. It also slights the role native traditions play in the adaptations involved in confronting new ideas. My goal here is to strike a balance between localized explanations that verge on a historical determinism, neglecting the novelty of new intellectual formulations, on the one

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hand, and an over-emphasis on the comprehensiveness or revolutionary nature of intellectual change, on the other. Rather, we need to focus on a kind of dialectic between the local and the outside, the translation of new concepts into local idioms. One result of “translation” in this broader sense was a large expansion of the hermeneutical field. When Liang Qichao thinks about Hobbes and Rousseau, for example, he also thinks about the philosophers of China’s classical age, Xunzi 荀子 (c. 310–238 BCE) and Mencius 孟子 (c. 372–289 BCE). He does so not because he wants to claim that the Chinese thought of certain ideas first nor even simply because the former remind him of the latter, but because he finds the ideas of all four men dancing around in his head at the same time. This is not to deny that questions of power haunt all attempts at understanding distinct cultures. Power shapes inequalities across which any attempts to translate a “project” such as modern statehood inevitably take place. Yet the hegemonic may also be intellectually liberatory, or at any rate produce radical change. In a formulation of Talal Asad, “When a project is translated from one site to another, from one agent to another, versions of power are produced. As with translations of a text, one does not simply get a reproduction of identity. The acquisition of new forms of language from the modern West—whether by forcible imposition, insidious insertion, or voluntary borrowing—is part of what makes for new possibilities of action in non-Western societies.”7 The Chinese who sought knowledge from the West in the nineteenth century did so for entirely practical reasons. Yet they also became genuinely interested in the new knowledge for its own sake. Neither inequality nor sheer difference need prevent understanding. However self-interested, attempts to comprehend foreign ideas lead to constant interpretation and reinterpretation of the self and the other—a kind of hermeneutics. This is a question of positioning the self, in Gadamer’s terms; and, while stressful, also enlarges the availability of intellectual resources.8 For Chinese reformers of the first generation in the 1860s, the brute reality of Western power was difficult to come to terms with. One response was to separate the spheres of values and of politics (or the spiritual and the material)—a response found not only in China.9 The first generation of reformers had no doubt of the West’s superiority in the material sphere, and they drew on a kind of binary between “substance” (ti 體) and “function” (yong 用) that had been first proposed in philosophical discussions during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Now, Chinese learning was to provide the substance or essence while Western learning was to solve practical, technical problems.10 Actually, in traditional Chinese thought, ti and yong were different aspects of a single object, not distinct entities. The late Qing intellectual Yan Fu嚴復 (1854–1921) pointed out as much at the time. He said that the function of military technology does not exist without its

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essence, which referred to particular political, social, and cultural institutions supporting scientific research. Yan—the greatest translator from English of his day—was pointing out that you cannot simply pluck what you want from another culture with no consideration of what made it work. This seemed to be proved, as Chinese did indeed find that to make artillery required engineering and mathematics, which required far-reaching educational changes, which in turn depended on social and political reforms. Yet Yan did not think that that culture had to be imported whole, either. Yan believed it was necessary to understand the other in its totality, but even fundamental reform was not a process of sheer imitation. Ti-yong may not have been intellectually coherent, but the formula did encourage openness to Western ideas and allowed innovative Chinese thinkers to justify their ways to conservatives. Central to any consideration of cross-cultural political theory are the problems and opportunities of translation. Cross-cultural dialogue is not only always situated in specific power relations, but subject to the problem of incommensurability.11 It is often impossible to capture in one language the meaning of terms used in another. Many terms from Asian religious traditions have resisted translation into Western languages (hence karma, Dao, and so forth). Thus did Chinese and Japanese struggle to find a vocabulary for terms they wanted to import from the West in the nineteenth century. They found a term for the Western legal-political “state” by repacking an ancient term that meant something like “realm” or even “dynasty” (guojia 國 家). In a sense, then, this chapter deals with how guojia came to be used to translate state. Neither term can claim a stable meaning (the English “state” is etymologically derived from the Latin status); both terms carry historical baggage. The modern meaning of guojia (or, better, its range of meanings) has been determined by Chinese usage.12

TRANSLATING STATEHOOD Qing officials learned about the Western concept of sovereignty through treaty-making, especially in the wake of the Second Opium War in 1860.13 Better knowledge of the international system was provided in no small part through the work of an American, W. A. P. Martin, and his team of Chinese assistants, who carefully translated Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law in 1863.14 Initial Chinese reception of Elements of International Law was skeptical, and its language, trying to convey alien concepts, was difficult. But it soon proved its practical worth, providing effective arguments that Chinese officials could use in dealing with foreigners. Much of Elements of International Law might be considered a practical guide to diplomats, but it also dealt with the fundamental legal principles that formed the basis

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of the relationships among states. Wheaton did not explicitly follow the theory of the “social contract.” However, he cited a common definition of the state as “a body political, or society of men, united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by their combined strength.”15 Furthermore, the state was ultimately rooted in “natural law” (xingfa 性法).16 Wheaton specified the constituent elements of the state—“habitual obedience” to authority, “fixed abode,” and “definite territory”—all of which are necessary before a true state exists. In other words, the state is more than simply any kind of “body political.” Thus, Wheaton cited four cases of non-states: first, civil associations whose powers are actually derived from the state, such as merchant’s associations; second, criminals’ associations, which lie outside the state’s laws; third, nomadic tribes, which obviously lack the criteria of fixed abodes and boundaries; and fourth, nations or peoples (renmin 人民), since a state can be composed many peoples (e.g., the Austrian, Prussian and Ottoman empires) while a single people might be divided among several states (e.g., the Poles under the Austrian, Prussian and Russian empires). Wheaton’s state was thus an abstract legal concept, on the one hand, and a political fact, on the other. For the purposes of statehood, any particular form of government—as long as there is some form of government—will do. Wheaton defined “sovereignty” precisely in terms of the rule of the state: Sovereignty is the supreme power by which any State is governed. This supreme power may be exercised either internally or externally. Internal sovereignty is that which is inherent in the people of any State, or vested in its ruler, by its municipal constitution or fundamental laws ... [i.e.,] constitutional law. External sovereignty consists in the independence of one political society, in respect to all other political societies ... [i.e.,] international law.17

And how does sovereignty originate? “Sovereignty is acquired by a State in cases when the people mutually agree to establish the State.”18 Wheaton’s tone here was, again, contractarian. Once founded, the state continues. That is, the individuals (ren 人) in the state obviously change but the “society” (min 民) does not. States are not eternal: they certainly can perish. However, even civil war and revolution do not necessarily terminate the state. For one thing, its international obligations continue. The principle of independence (zizhu 自主) was critical for Wheaton’s definition of external sovereignty: “A sovereign State is generally defined to be any nation or people, whatever may be the form of its internal constitution, which governs itself independently of foreign powers.”19 At the same time, the concept self-governance (zizhi 自治) speaks to the domestic political situation as well. Although Wheaton denied the relevance of domestic political forms to the status of the state in international law, a nation that could not govern itself could not claim to be sovereign. As well, a state

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that lost too much of its independence to other states had clearly lost full sovereignty. The notion of the world consisting of a plurality of independent states was soon affirmed by Zheng Guanying 鄭觀應 (1842–1922). Zheng, a comprador and merchant, was an early reformist voice, perhaps better able to see the future than the classically educated members of his generation. In his essay on international law, Zheng noted that in spite of the rhetoric of “all under Heaven” (Tianxia 天下—the universalistic claims of the traditional empire), in fact the world was composed of many different states.20 International law enabled states to cooperate in diplomacy, trade, and the like, in spite of their cultural and political differences. Such cooperation rested on natural law and precedents. However, Zheng also noted that in spite of the rhetoric of natural law, international law was not in fact respected by strong states. International law provided no mechanism for weak states to defend themselves from outside pressure. In Zheng’s view, then, in the international sphere the state is defined by its power. But the state was also shown to be beneficent and progressive in another translation that appeared in 1885. John Fryer and his team translated Political Economy for Use in Schools and for Private Instruction by the Scottish brothers William and Robert Chambers.21 The Chambers’s work fit the state into a framework of social progress. The “origins of government” lie in the moment when primitive societies attempt to even out natural inequalities.22 Inequalities of strength are natural, and in primitive societies, the strong exploit the weak, while equality marks civilized states. And where does civilization come from? The Chambers, too, sounded a contractarian note by attributing the origins of law to a combination of “the weak,” who insist on the protection of individual autonomy (geren jie neng zizhu 各人皆能自 主), personal safety, guarantees of property, and, in a word, government or “a power concentrating the national will.”23 The “government” (guozheng 國政) stabilizes the opinions of the masses and entrusts them to one person to carry them out. Thus the administration of the state, in addition to pursuing benefit and eliminating harm for the masses, cannot confuse their preferences and violate their wishes. Decision-making must be turned over to one person or a few persons, or otherwise political orders will end in confusion; if governance is chaotic, opinions will be in disarray, and nothing will get done ... Furthermore, as long as the government rests on satisfying the people, the state’s affairs will certainly benefit the people, and the people will then be happy to follow it, offering their own wealth for the state’s use.24

Both Wheaton and the Chambers brothers treated the state as a natural product of cultural evolution: a secular construction rather than rooted in any transcendental cosmological order. An advanced state was a sign of advanced civilization.

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THE STATE IN LAW AND ETHICS In spite of such “missionary translations,” by the end of the century Chinese were turning to Japanese translations of Western works and Japanese debates on questions of the state. Japanese, sharing the Chinese ideographic script, themselves adopted some, though by no means all, of the key neologisms invented by the missionaries. For Chinese interested in political questions, both the Japanese written language (one style of which was classical Chinese) and the Japanese experience seemed more accessible than in the case of the West. Furthermore, by the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese had been debating issues that were still new to most Chinese for thirty years. In regard to statehood, the Japanese brought three terms into Chinese discourse.25 First, shuken (Ch. zhuquan 主權) for “sovereignty” or supreme power.26 Second, kokutai (Ch. guoti 國體) to refer to the structure and institutions of a state: the politic or, almost literally, “body politic.”27 And third, seitai (Ch. zhengti 政體), which was originally used by Japanese thinkers like Katō Hiroyuki 加藤弘之 (1836–1916) for what we might call “forms of government.”28 Katō and other Japanese political writers recognized such basic seitai as absolute monarchies, constitutional monarchies, republics, aristocracies, and so forth. This was a language useful for the kinds of political distinctions Chinese intellectuals were making in the 1890s and early 1900s. Other textual genres that discussed the state in the late Qing included law and morality books. Law books often began by introducing the topic of the state as the source of laws.29 They defined the state in terms of people, territory, and sovereignty. The 1902 General Discussion of Legal Learning further related sovereignty (called the “ruling power”) to a notion of the nation: people engaged in mutual cooperation on the basis of common language, customs, and ancestors.30 But nation alone does not make a state, which is formed through a coercive force that requires obedience. Another legal writer, Wu Renda 吳仁達, defined sovereignty as power to rule over the group (tongzhi tuanti de quanli 統治團體的權力).31 He emphasized that sovereignty is the highest inherent power (zuigao guyou zhi quanli 最高固 有之權力): power that is not delegated by another nor, within the state’s territory, affected by another’s sovereignty. And finally, sovereignty for Wu was unitary and indivisible: it cannot be divided, as for example between the people and the ruler, nor is it divided among legislative, judicial, and executive branches, since these are only separate functions of a single sovereignty.32 The constitutional activist Yang Tingdong’s 楊廷棟 law book of 1908–9 also emphasized the inherent nature and indivisibility of sovereign power.33 For Yang, the notion of “sovereignty” (zhuti) or “supreme power” (zuigao zhiquanli 最高之權力) explains the independence of the state.34 He thus

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linked the notions of domestic sovereignty and international sovereignty. Supreme power does not literally refer to omnipotence, but rather to three main elements. First, that it is the only indivisible power; second, in the domestic realm, that it is the source of all other powers; and third, in the international realm, that it is equal to all other sovereignties: sovereign states are independent and free from outside interference. Sovereign power is not the collection of various powers together; rather, its “supremacy” lies in its uniqueness. The state can delegate its powers to other associations, but those are always derived powers (the state can revoke these powers). So the powers of other associations are never supreme or sovereign, but such associations do possess certain powers, and therefore—like the state—in public law have legal personality (gongfashang zhi renge 公法上之 人格). Yang stressed that modern states are not simple, unitary things, even if sovereignty is indivisible.35 Rather, states are assembled out of smaller associations. But what was the state and where does it come from? The General Discussion of Legal Learning regarded the state as the product of social evolution from simple clans and tribes.36 Yang Tingdong, on the other hand, highlighted two main schools of thought about the state: the concrete and the abstract.37 Concretely, a state is an “association formed by humans coming together” (renlei jihe tuanti 人類集合團體). People, territory, and sovereignty were necessary but not entirely sufficient to make a state. Rather, “the State emerges when the shared existence of humans begins to make steady progress.” The abstract view of the state, according to Yang, held much in common with the concrete view but treated the state more as a legal concept. Here, he noted two distinct legal views of the state. First, the state as a legal person in public law (gongfashang faren 公法上法人), and second, the state as the subject (i.e., holder) of power (quanli zhi zhuti 權力之主體). For his part, Yang strenuously denied that the state was a legal person, because this would imply that the law created the state rather than the state the law.38 He defined law as precisely “regulations enforced by the state,” though he also noted that state and law are inextricably mixed.39 Most authorities held that states were indeed legal persons, particular in the international sphere.40 Yang, however, treated the state as distinct from both legal persons and individuals, on the grounds the state did not have rights but possessed power. Indeed, states are virtually the opposite of persons. Persons are subjects of rights in civil law (minfa 民法), but states are the subjects of inherent power in public law (gongfa 公法). It follows that the legal meaning of the state never changes. Regardless of any particular state’s form of government (zhengti)—monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, parliamentarian—its state-ness never changes. This is not to say that the state’s powers are without limit. Of course, states always face limitations on their power, but these are not limits imposed by other human associations.

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States can be legally restrained by constitutions and other laws—but in this case Yang emphasizes that the state is restricting itself. It is not subject to outside restraints.41 As for ethics, the new Ministry of Education emphasized the importance of teaching “loyalty to the monarch and patriotism” (zhongjun aiguo 忠君 愛國).42 Ethics textbooks covered a range of values and behavior: filiality, friendship, justice, diligence, hygiene, and so on. These texts did not specifically define the state, but they discussed the proper attitude of the individual to it. Children were expected to learn that they had duties toward the state, but at the same time, it was expected that the state would protect the people. In a sense, then, the state had duties toward the people. At a deeper level, a number of morality textbooks emphasized the strong links between the state and its people—even their virtual unity. According to the Common Citizen’s Required Reader: You need to know that the term for “citizen” (guomin 國民) originally referred to the inseparability of the people (renmin) and the state (guojia). The reputation of the state is the reputation of the people; the glory of the state is the glory of the people ... The survival of the state is the survival of the people.43

This notion could be taken in either a radical or conservative direction. Yet even a relatively conservative emphasis on the duties of the people also spoke of their duty to become involved in affairs of state, a notable break with the tradition of restricting state affairs to high officials. The Primary School Textbook on Self-Cultivation began with the common observation that if citizens took it as their personal responsibility to be strong and civilized, then the state would be strong and civilized as well.44 This is precisely why citizens needed self-cultivation. This textbook nicely adapted traditional Confucian self-cultivation for modern purposes: self-cultivation not to produce sageliness (shengren 聖人) but a stronger state. In its beginning chapters, this textbook does not explicitly treat the state as “belonging” to the people, but it does note that the people are prior to the state. And a later chapter explicitly concludes: The empire is not the private property of a few individuals but rather the public property of the billions of people. As well, the state is not the property of one or two individuals but rather the public property of the billions of people. Since it is public property, nothing at all in this empire and state is not public property. Therefore, anyone who tries to take this public property as his own, is the public enemy of the empire and the state.45

The Introductory Textbook on Self-Cultivation also treated the people as prior. “The state is established by the people, while the people are maintained by the state.”46 Coming close to a republican stance, it stated:

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“There are no states without governance (zhengzhi 政治), but governance that is not in accord with reason (gongli 公理) is no different from lacking governance.”47 Morality textbooks also discussed, at least briefly, the old trope of the state as extended family. The more radical view used the contrast between private/selfish (si 私) and public good (gong 公) to emphasize that just as a family could not be “privatized,” so the state should not be “privatized.”48 The state is the common property of its people just as a family is the common property of its members. This implied a distinction between patriotism and loyalism. However, in the more conservative view, the goal was harmony: “The family is the basis of the state, and the relationship between husband and wife is the basis of the family.”49 And so, “If there is harmony between husband and wife, then the country will be at peace.”

TOWARD A MODERN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STATE Intellectuals in the late Qing asked what states are supposed to do and what makes a state legitimate. In so doing, they inevitably touched on the meaning of statehood. It is worth noting that, generally speaking, late Qing intellectuals took the state for granted, although anarchists did challenge the supposition that humans need the state. Space constraints prevent a thorough examination of all their views on the state. Below, I will concentrate on Liang Qichao, on the grounds that he was the leading publicist of Western ideas in the decade preceding the Revolution of 1911, that he wrote about the state extensively, and that his opinions, while often controversial, influenced both the reformers and the revolutionaries of the day, as well as informing the views of later generations. From the West, three views of the state seemed particularly important for late Qing intellectuals: first, social contract theory; second, the organic state; and third, sovereignty and the territorialization of the state. Perhaps none of these views was entirely a new idea. But together they represented a new conception of the state. Late Qing intellectuals understood the state to be a secular human construct, to have in some sense its own goals and even personality, and to exist in a world of other states. The influence of the contractarian view of the state on Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, and Tan Sitong譚嗣同 (1865–1898), cannot be overstated. Contractarianism was compatible with social Darwinism’s emphasis on competition.50 In its simplest form, the social contract describes the origins of the state, but it says little about how a state should develop. Nonetheless, in the Rousseauean form initially popular in Japan and China, the social contract stood for the equality of citizens and the notion that the purpose of the state was strictly to serve its members. Based on his reading of Rousseau and

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other Western authors, but no less on his reading of Buddhism, Tan Sitong was the first Chinese to attack the Confucian Three Bonds that linked the cosmos to the imperial state through their moral demands. Tan thus left the interlocking bases of traditional state legitimization in ruins. Tan was executed in the wake of the failed “hundred days of reform” in 1898, while Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao fled with their lives into exile. Kang was to continue to be entranced with the notion of equality, eventually writing a massive utopian fantasy where all the “boundaries” between people had been torn down. But he continued to advocate a constitutional monarchy for China: since the only road to the future lay through steady, modest political progress as the Chinese (and other) people gradually became more enlightened. Liang Qichao took a different road, eventually abjuring equality and universalism even as distant goals.51 Liang is most closely associated with the constitutionalist movement that sought to turn the Qing into a constitutional monarchy. He consistently sought to strengthen China and promote nationalism based on civic virtues. From the late 1890s through about 1902, Liang supported a Rousseauean view of the social contract that emphasized that a legitimate state must be essentially democratic. From about 1903, Liang turned to a “statism” that emphasized the authority of government.52 Before 1903, then, the young Liang offered a vigorous critique of the monarchy for “privatizing” (si 私) the realm.53 This left the people without either power or responsibility, in a state of political infancy. To determine what kind of state the Chinese had created, Liang compared the differences between Chinese and Western conceptions of the state.54 Based on Johann Kaspar Bluntschli’s outline of the differences between modern and traditional Western concepts, Liang added China to the mix. Bluntschli (1808–1881), a Swiss-German jurist, had proffered a distinctly progressive view of Western history, from theocracy and feudalism to democracy and law. If traditional Europe had thought the state was derived from God, while modern Europe thought that the people created their state, Liang believed that the Chinese state was established for the emperor.55 Liang borrowed a framework of political analysis that would have been familiar to his readers: Mencius’s distinction between people, ruler, and state. In these terms, eighteenth-century Europe had placed the ruler first, the state second, and the people third; nineteenth-century Europe had placed the people first, the state second, and the ruler third, while the twentiethcentury was giving the state itself priority, followed by the people and the ruler.56 As noted above, Liang was distressed by the political backwardness of the Chinese people, but he did not blame them. The Chinese had suffered not only from emperors who privatized the realm, but failed to see themselves as a state due to historical and geographical circumstances.57 He attributed

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the lack of “nationalist” or “statist” consciousness (guojia sixiang 國家思 想) to a view of China’s neighbors as barbarian statelets.58 Geographically, China had long towered over relatively tiny neighbors, while historically, in spite of interruptions, long periods of political unity had given Chinese a very weak sense of other peoples. Liang despaired that the Chinese did not even have a name for their country!59 Liang meant that China had always been called by the name of the reigning dynasty, which collapsed the state and the dynasty. He did not think there was no “China” nor even a complete lack of national consciousness, but that the state had failed to progress after its initial founding 4,000 years before. Now, however, China was under threat. “The national consciousness of the people is an important element in the protection of the country (guo 國). The development of the state (guojia 國家) and the perfection of its administrative organs both depend on it. Without nationalist consciousness, the state will decline and fall, even if its territories be large, its population great, its military strong, and its wealth great.”60 Traditional China had localism (village and family) and universalism, but no nationalism.61 The young Liang defined statehood in terms of territory, population, and international standing.62 He argued that the basic duty of the state was simply to preserve the security of the people.63 The state existed because individuals could not protect themselves on their own; individuals and state are bound together through mutual duties. For the people, too, must try to work on their own behalf. Indeed, to the extent they can do this, the state will be strengthened. We can thus see that for Liang, the key issue was not the form of the state but the relationship between the people and the state. For Liang, constitutional monarchies were substantially the same as republics.64 Indeed he argued that constitutional monarchism was the best form of government, because democracies tended to be unstable while autocracies tended to be oppressive.65 A constitution is the basic law (xiandian 憲 典) that is never changed and is obeyed by all, including monarch, officials, and people; it is the source of all the laws and institutions of the state; and all laws and orders must be in accordance with constitutional principles. Constitutions serve to limit the powers of all the organs of government, including the king, officials, and the people themselves. Liang thus envisioned a political system of mutual checks but also mutual support. At the same time, Liang’s sense of the origins and early development of states was informed by social Darwinism: the struggle for survival led to ever more complex forms of political organization. Liang pictured an originary moment of states arising out of clans.66 When clan leaders became kings, their relations with the people changed from that of putative kinship to that of master-slaves. As slaves, the people could not interfere in matters of state and eventually did not even want to. Liang contrasted China’s decadence to the West, where the state is “shared” between ruler and people.67

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Liang’s binary approach to Chinese and Western political forms may seem a form of self-Orientalizing today, but it provided a powerful rhetoric of self-critique. At this point, he was essentially saying that only a democratic state counted as a true state. He began, again, with a standard view of the origins of the state—“when people come together to form it” (jimin er cheng ye 積民而成也). But this is to say the people are managing their own affairs, and state power (guoquan) rests directly on democracy (or popular power, minquan 民權). And if democracy is destroyed, the state cannot survive.68 So in Europe, in Liang’s view, an essential democracy was maintained even in monarchies, since the state was not privatized but maintained as the “public utility” (gongqi 公器) of the people. This is not to deny the West suffered from tyrants, but Westerners (unlike Chinese, that is) have recognized tyranny for what it is and fought for liberty.69 Liang wrote brief critiques of both Hobbes and Rousseau, which allow us to locate him on a map of Western views of the state. Overall, Liang was quite dismissive of Hobbes, seeing him as a spokesman for the kind of absolutism he thought was holding China back and seeing his ideas as overtaken by more recent trends in political theory.70 Liang compared Hobbes’s views on human selfishness and morality with those of Xunzi. Xunzi also held that people needed strong kings and that they needed rituals to restrain their selfishness. Liang found the biggest difference between Hobbes and Xunzi was precisely the former’s invention of the social contract, while Xunzi had thought that the norms of state order were created by the sagekings. The notion of the social contract itself, for Liang, was a bit like the theory of Mozi 墨子 (c. 470–390 BCE) that the people selected leaders to adjudicate their conflicts. But Mozi, unlike Hobbes, at least hypothesized the existence of Heaven above the emperor, thus providing a check on despotism.71 For Liang could not accept Hobbes’s thorough-going amoralism; and if humans cannot be reduced to their desires, then Hobbes’s basis for the social contract is simply mistaken.72 Furthermore, Liang rejected Hobbes’s belief that only despotism could maintain the social contract, on that grounds that Hobbes ignored the reality that the despot’s unchecked powers must lead to much evil. Rather, Liang said, even if we grant that people pursue self-interest, then only free institutions will create a system of mutual checks that can preserve the social contract. Liang’s opinion of Rousseau was much more favorable.73 Above all, he saw a theoretical progress from Hobbes through Locke to Rousseau. Liang understood that Rousseau’s version of the social contract was not meant to be history but rather a philosophical truth (liyi 理義) or, as Kant had noted, a theory of the state. The state was not literally formed by free agreement among previously unattached individuals, for in reality persons had long had no choice but to live together. Indeed, the roots of the social contract lay in the natural emotional ties among family members, which carried

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over into tribes and ultimately states. Liang emphasized that for Rousseau, the essence of the social contract lay in the equality of the members of the state. Here, unlike the Hobbesian social contract that rested on individuals giving up their rights, Rousseau shows that it is precisely the social contract that protects the liberties that make us human. At the same time—and this was a notion dear to Liang’s heart even after his “conservative turn”—people have the responsibility to protect their “liberty rights,” which are the basis of all other rights. Furthermore, he noted that without liberty there can be no morality, since moral standards only apply to people who possess decision-making capacity. Yet Liang saw a contradiction at the heart of Rousseau’s thesis. For Rousseau too says that while people cannot relinquish their rights to other people, they do relinquish them to the state. This is how the state becomes a “common political form” (gongyou zhengti 共有 政體). Liang attributes to Rousseau a Platonic faith that the state represents the whole while individual persons make up its part.74

LIANG QICHAO AND THE ORGANIC STATE Many of the themes in the young Liang’s writings—democracy, confidence in the educability of the people, the Rousseauean social contract, and the sharp critique of monarchism both as tyranny and as hindering national consciousness—disappeared after 1903. Liang henceforth preached the doctrines of the organic state; defined the state as the highest power, functioning above society; saw a role for despotism in reforming China; and treated China’s major problem not as tyranny but lack of unity. In 1903, Liang noted that the Chinese state structure was still incomplete.75 The Chinese were still basically “tribal” and needed to become citizens. Specifically, whereas Europe in the eighteenth century had to battle against autocracy to achieve liberty, China today needs organic unity and order. Yet, channeling Bluntschli, Liang complained, first, that it was simply impossible to create a state on the basis of the voluntary unanimity premised by Rousseau’s social contract, since people’s desires naturally differed; in other words, purely voluntary agreement would create only a brief-lived association, not a unified and eternal state. Second, Rousseau called for equality, but in sheer practical fact every state is ruled by a minority. And third, the social contract rests on unanimous consent, but complete voluntary agreement is unachievable.76 Liang seemed to feel that Rousseau might have been good for Europeans fighting tyranny, but was dangerous and unnecessary for Chinese who needed unity. Perhaps even more important to Liang, who opposed the ethnic nationalism of the revolutionaries, was Bluntschli’s insistence on the distinction between the nation (minzu) and citizens. Citizens and state, not nation and

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state, are essentially identical.77 Sovereignty lies only in the state, never in a nation. Liang did link the concept of national identity with the concept of statehood. Human groups form on the basis of consanguinity, customs, language, and so forth, and—through struggle with other such groups— eventually take the form of states. In that sense, loyalty to one’s own group and to one’s state are the same thing.78 But it is the state and not the nation that is simultaneously the largest form the group can take and the point of highest struggle. Utopian visions of world harmony simply weaken the state.79 The notion of the “organic state” was not to say the state was natural. Of course, it was a human creation. But the state was more than a mere assemblage of people, more even than simply a government: it had both a distinct will (yizhi 意志) and praxis (xingdong 行動). Like people, the state links spirit and form; the different parts of government function like limbs and organs; these limbs and organs combine to form a whole through the constitution. What the state is not, then, is a machine. Neither its capacity for growth nor its response to outside stimulus is machine-like.80 “States”—as Liang had noted before—are formed “when people come together” to augment their individually held powers.81 But since states are organisms, they cannot be any stronger than their individual members. As a body needs limbs, organs, muscles, and blood, so, too, the state cannot survive if the people are ignorant, backward, fearful, and divided. Generally, there should be no conflict between the interests of the state and the people: when the people are intelligent, the state is civilized; when the people are brave, the state is strong.82 However, sometimes the goals of the state and people may indeed conflict. Ultimately, the state is primary, and the state can sacrifice people’s lives to save itself (and certainly sacrifice their peace and property). Indeed, such sacrifices are inevitable.83 Or, in another formulation, there was no conflict between the state and the “whole of the people” (renmin quanti 人民全體), but there might be conflict between the state and specific persons.84 However, the state must act impartially: it may not abuse its powers, and if it does so, people have the right to oppose the state and protect their liberties.85 Overall, Liang favored a strong state but not autocratic rule. He did publish one essay promoting “enlightened despotism” that emphasized that the state was inevitably coercive (qianzhi 強制).86 Coercion was true of all rulership, regardless of institutional or legal framework, though it also remained true from an equally realistic point of view that all power was limited.87 Society does not precede the state but is dependent on it. The state creates an inequality of rulers and ruled, but without the state, society would create even larger inequalities (as the Chamber brothers had said). Liang also argued that political power wanted to be unified (zhengquan zhi yu quyu yi 政權之欲趨於一).88 True, constitutional systems are inherently

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non-despotic, and were particularly designed to break up the power of traditional monarchs. But even in constitutional countries, power tends to focus on a few leaders in the executive or party leaders in the parliament. Yet Liang insisted that no matter how strong the ruler-as-ruler, as long as the state is a legal person, it cannot be considered despotic.89 Liang’s point was that all rulers—as natural persons—were still limited by the state. Japan was Liang’s example of a constitutional state where the “ruling powers of the state” (guojia tongzhiquan 國家統治權) itself were unlimited but the rulers, as private persons, had only limited powers. The evident tensions in Liang’s thought stemmed from his desire for a strong ruler to reform China but not act in a self-interested way. He understood the problems that arose in a despotic state when the ruler completely monopolizes all the organs of state rule and completely distances himself from the people.90 Only the very survival of the state (guojia zhi shengcun 國 家之生存) justifies the sacrifice of the people’s liberties.91 But given China’s political realities, outside threats, and the ignorance of the populace, enlightened despotism was necessary for its survival. In his Hobbesian homecoming, Liang found the roots of what he regarded as the most advanced theories of the late nineteenth century. Liang thus dismissed Kant, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, and others of their libertarian ilk as outdated. Natural law theorists who thought that the state exists solely for the sake of the people were not entirely wrong. But this is an unbalanced view, precisely because the people also exist for the sake of the state, which they depend on for their survival.92 The state, for Liang, is not an object (wu 物): it is a person in law. It is the subject (carrier) of rights, not the object of rights like property. In accord with his organic view of the state, Liang found that due to its personhood, the state has consciousness and purposes and the capacity for action.93 Indeed, all groups are unitary beings just like individuals, and, each possessing its own “personality,” all are persons in the eyes of the law. The state is the highest of all such groups, “transcending” the people and emperor (junzhu) alike as one body (yiti 一體).

CONCLUSION Statism continued to influence Chinese political leaders throughout the twentieth century. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 (1866– 1925) had a strong theory of the nation but no theory of the state. In his definitive explanation of his theory of the “Three People’s Principles” in 1924, Sun claimed that his first principle, the doctrine of ethnic nationalism (minzu zhuyi 民族主義), was simply a doctrine of the state-nation (guozu zhuyi 國族主義).94 He argued that the conflation of state and nation

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was uniquely true for China. Elsewhere, the state consisted of several races or nations, or else one race was dominant in several states. But “in China since the days of the Qin [221–206 BCE] and Han [206 BCE–220 CE], the country has been made up of one race (minzu).”95 In other words, the Chinese people had a unitary state throughout their history.96 Put this way, Sun’s proposition, which seems to deny obvious ethnic and cultural differences among the Chinese, perhaps looks more reasonable—but also completely tautological. Partly, Sun was arguing that both hereditary and cultural factors (such as assimilation) could account for the natural development of Chinese nationality. Sun thus concluded that China was already a nation: it just needed his minzu doctrine to break out of its traditional clannishness. Whether Sun’s description of China was right or wrong, he conflated the state with the nation. Unlike Sun, Mao Zedong 毛澤東 thought about the state in theoretical ways. In his 1940 “On New Democracy,” Mao emphasized the importance of politics as well as economics. Citing Lenin, he noted, “Any given culture (as an ideological form) is a reflection of the politics and economics of a given society, and the former in turn has a tremendous influence and effect upon the latter; economics is the base and politics is the concentrated expression of economics.”97 Thus as a Marxist, Mao held that the nature of the state was determined by its dominant class. Yet Mao held it necessary to understand the specific institutions of a government as well as its economic base. “As for the question of the system of government (zhengti), this is a matter of how political power is organized, the form in which one social class or another chooses to arrange its apparatus of political power to oppose its enemies and protect itself.”98 In the context of the anti-Japanese War, Mao saw the Chinese state as transitional. The main point of “new democracy” was to include all anti-imperialist classes, even the bourgeoisie. However, Mao did not turn to the “dictatorship of the proletariat” even in the post-war period. In June 1949, in his “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” Mao signaled that the new government of the People’s Republic of China would be both dictatorial and democratic.99 It would be dictatorial toward class enemies but democratic for the people. In my view, this kind of democracy is still a form of statism. But Mao also foresaw the future abolition of the state. His views were based on an understanding of the state as the expression of class power. So when classes have disappeared, all the “instruments of class struggle” will also wither away. That is, neither political parties nor the state will be necessary. Indeed, to reach this point is the task of the working class and the Communist Party. However, the time for “Datong” (大同, utopia) has not yet arrived. As a “democratic dictatorship,” the Chinese state would be made up of the “people” (renmin). That is to say, “the working class, the peasantry, the

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urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government ...”100 For Mao, the institutions of the state are based on violence, but the evolution of the state eventually leads to its own abolition. Today, that Marxist dream—and anarchist dream—seem far away. The current Chinese state, after much turmoil, seems to have replicated the Western model of the state. This model is largely based on a nineteenthcentury philosophy of state—Bluntschli is a good example. That is to say, the state is the representative of the nation, a product of historical progress, and the agent of a civilizing mission. While the notion of a “civilizing mission” has much in common with the traditional dynastic state’s task of transforming the people (jiaohua), the Chinese state now is based on technical prowess and professional specialization, not ritual. Today’s state remains firmly above society, not only due to its civilizing mission, but to its need to provide scientific management: to guide competing interest groups to a common objective. Specific policies can be criticized, but statism is virtually unchallenged. In essence, late Qing intellectuals first destroyed the old imperial cosmology and then began to build a new theory of state based on an unstable mix of national identity, popular sovereignty, and raison d’état. The modern Chinese concept of the state was constructed on the basis of both Western and traditional intellectual resources. For late Qing intellectuals, the emperor was no longer needed, or at least no longer transcendent. No human (or god) could transcend the people: only the state itself could do that.

NOTES 1. See David Runciman, “The Concept of the State: The Sovereignty of a Fiction,” in States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, ed. Quentin Skinner and Bo Stråth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 28–38; John Dunn, The Cunning of Unreason: Making Sense of Politics (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 68–69. 2. Most recently, Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002); Edward J. M. Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); see also Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 3. Peter C. Perdue, “Where Do Incorrect Political Ideas Come From? Writing the History of the Qing Empire and the Chinese Nation,” in The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China, ed. Joshua A. Fogel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 174–199; Pamela Kyle Crossley,

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A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 337–361; the classic account is Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate: A Trilogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965). 4. Philip A. Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); Julia C. Strauss, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); and William C. Kirby, “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928–1937,” in Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, ed. Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 137–60. Broader perspectives are provided in two important recent works: Alexander Woodside, Lost Modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea and the Hazards of World History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); and Patricia M. Thornton, Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence, and State-Making in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: HUAC, Harvard University Press, 2007). 5. Cf. Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3. 6. Fred Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 18–24. 7. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 13. 8. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshal (New York: Crossroad, 1989). 9. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 10. This “formula” was invented by the high-ranking statesman Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837–1909) writing about education in 1898, but represented the basic thinking of the self-strengthening movement since the 1860s. See Timothy Weston, “The Founding of the Imperial University and the Emergence of Chinese Modernity,” in Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China, ed. Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow (Cambridge, Mass.: HUAC, Harvard University Press, 2002), 102–05; and Luke S. K. Kwong, “The T’i-Yung Dichotomy and the Search for Talent in Late-Ch’ing China,” Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 2 (1993): 253–79. 11. A good introduction is Douglas Howland, “The Predicament of Ideas in Culture: Translation and Historiography,” History and Theory 42 (February 2003): 45–60. 12. Guojia is also used in modern Chinese to designate “country” and “nation”—slippery terms in English as well. In this chapter, when I cite Chinese usages of “state,” I am translating guojia and sometimes guo; yet I do not invariable take these terms to refer to “state.” Context is all. Space constraints make it impossible to discuss translation issues further; they are important and complex, but secondary to figuring out how Chinese thinkers actually used various terms. 13. Richard S. Horowitz, “International Law and State Transformation in China, Siam, and the Ottoman Empire during the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of World History 15, no. 4 (December 2004): 445–86; Tian Tao 田濤, “Shijiu shiji xiabanqi Zhongguo zhishijie de guojifa guannian (19世紀下半期中國知識界的國際法觀念),

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Jindaishi yanjiu (近代史研究) 2000 (2): 102–35; Shi Jianxing 施建興, “Guojifa de shuru yu Zhongguo jindai guojia zhuquan guannian de faren” (國際法的輸入與 中國近代國家主權觀念的發韌), Nanping shizhuan xuebao (南平師專學報) 22, no. 1 (March 2003): 46–50. 14. He Qinhua 何勤華, ed., Wanguo gongfa (萬國公法), (Beijing: Zhongguo zhengfa daxue chubanshe, 2003). I have consulted the English edition, Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law, ed. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 8th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1866). Henry Wheaton (1785–1848) was an American lawyer and diplomat whose Elements of International Law, originally published in 1836, was immensely successful, translated into many languages and issued in new editions over the next generation. 15. Wanguo gongfa, 24–25; Elements, 29–30. 16. Wanguo gongfa, 14; Elements, 14. 17. Elements, 31–32; Wanguo gongfa, 27–28. 18. Wanguo gongfa, 28; Elements, 32. 19. Elements, 53; Wanguo gongfa, 37–38. 20. Zheng Guanying 鄭觀應, “Gongfa” (公法), in Zheng Guanying ji (鄭觀應集), Xia Dongyuan 夏東元 ed. (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin, 1982), 1: 387–89. 21. Zuozhi chuyan (佐治芻言), trans. Fu Lanya 傅蘭雅 (John Fryer) (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2002); William and Robert Chambers, Political Economy for Use in Schools and for Private Instruction, reprint ed. (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999 [1852]). It should be noted that the Chambers used the terms “state,” “nation,” and “government” more or less interchangeably; Fryer’s translation was also quite free; possibly readers of the 1880s found it easier to make sense of than readers of the 1860s had found the Chinese Wheaton. 22. Zuozhi chuyan, 27–28; Political Economy, 20–21. 23. Zuozhi chuyan, 28; Political Economy, 21–22. 24. Zuozhi chuyan, 29. I back-translate; the original passage was somewhat less populist in tone. 25. The Japanese neologisms to translate key Western political concepts only emerged in stable form toward the end of the Meiji period (1868–1912), after a period of experimentation and development. See Douglas R. Howland, Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 61–93, 122–29. 26. Howland, Translating the West, 138–46. 27. So-go- Masaaki 惣鄉正明 and Hida Yoshifumi 飛田良文, Meiji no kotoba jiten (明治のことば辭典), (Tokyo: Tokyodo, 1998), 164. 28. Suzuki Shu-ji 鈴木修次, Nihon kango to Chu-goku: kanji bunkaken no kindaika (日本漢語と中國：漢字文化圈の近代化), (Tokyo: Chu-o-ko-ronsha, 1981) 3–21. 29. Late Qing law books certainly paraphrased Japanese legal textbooks, and followed similar organizational principles. See, e.g., Kawana Kaneshiro- 川名兼四郎, Kaitai zo- ho minpo- so-ron (改訂增補民法總論), (Tokyo: Kinshi ho-ryu-do-, 1906); Tomii Masaakira 富井政章, Minpo- genron (民法原論), (Tokyo: Yu-hikaku, 1914 [1906]). But so far as I can determine, the late Qing law books cited here were not direct translations. 30. Xinbian faxue tonglun (wubian) (新編法學通論[五編]), ed. Zuo xinyi shuju biancuan 作新譯書局編簒, (N.p.: Guangzhi shuju, 1902), 2–4.

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31. Wu Renda 吳人達, Falu” tonglun (法律通論), (N.p.: Shanxi fazheng xuetang, 1907/1908). The preface calls this book a translation but does not name a specific source; perhaps Wu abridged and edited several Japanese works. 32. Wu, Falu” tonglun, 11a. 33. Yang Tingdong 楊廷棟, Falu”xue 法律學 (Shanghai: Zhongguo tushu gongsi, 1908), 49–52; 54–57. 34. Yang, Falu”xue, 54–57. 35. Yang, Falu”xue, 56–58. 36. Xinbian faxue tonglun, 4–7. 37. Yang, Falu”xue, 52–54. 38. Yang, Falu”xue, 53. 39. Yang, Falu”xue, 3, 49. 40. Xinbian faxue tonglun, 183, 206. 41. Yang, Falu”xue, 57. 42. Qu Xingui 璩鑫圭 and Tang Liangyan 唐良炎, eds., Zhongguo jindai jiaoyushi ziliao huibian: xuezhi yanbian (中國近代教育史資料彙編：學制演變), (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991), 1: 294–95, 534–39; Da Qing xin falin (大清新 法令), seventh catalog (Bejing: Shangwu yinshugan, 1909); see also Yvonne Schulz Zinda, “Propagating New ‘Virtues’—‘Patriotism’ in Late Qing Textbooks for the Moral Education of Primary Students,” in Mapping Meanings: The Field of New Learning in Late Qing China, ed. Michael Lackner and Natascha Vittinghoff (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 685–710. 43. Gao Buying 高步瀛 and Chen Baoquan 陳寶泉, Tongsu guomin bidu (通俗國 民必讀), (Shanghai: Nanyanguan shuju, 1905), 1: 1a–b. 44. Liu Jianbai, Xiaoxue xiushen jiaokeshu 小學修身教科書 (Shanghai: Wenmin shuju, 1903), 1a–2a. 45. Liu, Xiaoxue xiushen, 45b; see also Li Jiagu 李嘉穀, Mengxue xiushen jiaokeshu (蒙學修身教科書), (Shanghai: Wenming shuju, 1905), 34b–35a. 46. Li, Mengxue xiushen, 38a. 47. Li, Mengxue xiushen, 35b. 48. Liu, Xiaoxue xiushen, 46a. 49. Gan and Chen, Tongsu guomin, 2: 15a–b. 50. Shi Wen 史文and Xu Min 許敏, “Wan-Qing shiqi dui guojia qiyuan de sixiang de sikao he quanshi” (晚清時期對國家起源的思考和詮釋), Wuhan daxue xuebao, Renwen kexue ban (武漢大學學報，人文科學版) 59, no. 1 (January 2006): 56–61. 51. Liang’s political thought has long received much scholarly attention. I am here especially indebted to Hao Chang Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971); Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Qingji geming; Hazama Naoki 狹間直樹, ed., Kyo-do- kenkyu- Ryo- Keicho-: Seiyo- kindai shiso- juyo- to Meiji Nihon (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 1999); Li Xisuo 李喜所, ed., Liang Qichao yu jindai Zhongguo shehui wenhua 梁啓超與近代中 國社會文化 (Tianjin: Tianjing guji chubanshe, 2005). 52. Li Qunfu 李群馥, “Lun Liang Qichao guojia zhuyi guandian jiqi zhuanbian guocheng” (論梁啓超國家主義觀點及其轉變過程), Qingshi yanjiu (清史研究), May, 2004 (2): 46–60; Chang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, 238–48. The reasons for Liang’s famous “conservative turn” included disillusionment with the revolutionaries and a deeper

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disillusionment with the capacity of the Chinese people; intellectually, as we will see, Liang’s social Darwinian sense of the precariousness of China’s position led him to support a stronger state. 53. Liang Qichao, “Lun Zhongguo jiruo youyu fanbi” (論中國積弱由於訪幣), in Yingbingshi heji (飲冰室合集) (hereafter, YBSHJ), wenji 文集 2:70; Liang, “Lun jinshi guomin jingzheng zhi dashi ji Zhongguo qiantu” (論近世國民競爭之大勢及中國前 途), YBSHJ, wenji 4:56. 54. Liang Qichao, “Guojia sixiang bianqian yitong lun” (國家思想變遷異同論), YBSHJ, wenji 6:12–22. 55. Liang, “Guojia sixiang bianqian,” 17. 56. Liang, “Guojia sixiang bianqian,” 21–22. Mencius (14:14) had advocated the system Liang attributed to the nineteenth century (min wei gui, sheji ci zhi, jun wei qing 民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕). 57. Liang Qichao, “Aiguo lun” (愛國論), in Qingyibao chuanbian (清議報全編), Xinminshe 新民社, ed., reprint ed. (Taipei: Wenhai, 1986), 1, 1:16–32. 58. Liang Qichao, “Lun Zhinaren guojia sixiang zhi ruodian” (論支那人國家思 想之弱點), Qinyibao chuanbian 1, 2:19–27. 59. Liang, “Lun Zhinaren guojia sixiang,” 24–25. 60. Liang, “Lun Zhinaren guojia sixiang,” 19. 61. Liang Qichao, “Lun guojia sixiang” (論國家思想), YBSHJ, zhuanji 專集 4:21–22. 62. Liang Qichao, “Lixianfa yi” (立憲法議), YBSHJ, wenji 5:1–7. 63. Liang Qichao, “Shanghui yi” (商會議), YBSHJ, wenji 4:6. 64. Liang Qichao, “Geguo xianfa yitong lun” (各國憲法異同論), YBSHJ, wenji 4:71–79. 65. Liang Qichao, “Lixianfa yi” (立憲法議), YBSHJ, wenji 5:1; see also Liang, “Lun Zhongguo yu Ouzhou guoti yitong” (論中國與歐洲國體異同), YBSHJ, wenji 4:61–66. 66. Liang Qichao, “Yao Shun wei Zhongguo zhongyang junquan lanshang kao” (堯舜為中國中央君權濫觴考), YBSHJ, wenji 6:26; “Zhongguo shi xulun” (中國史敘 論), YBSHJ, wenji 6: 10. See Peter Zarrow, “Old Myth into New History: The Building Blocks of Liang Qichao’s ‘New History’,” Historiography East and West 1, no. 2 (December 2003): 204–41. 67. Liang, “Aiguo lun,” 22. 68. Liang, “Aiguo lun,” 26. Liang here distinguished between a loosely democratic order (minquan) and a system of strictly republican institutions (minzhu 民 主)—the term used today for “democracy.” His point was that minquan democracy was compatible with constitutional monarchism and was, indeed, first developed in Britain and is now seen in Japan as well. Liang could therefore argue that minquan was not only compatible with the Qing monarchy (albeit a reformed and constitutional one), but would even make the Qing imperial house stronger. Ibid., 30–31. 69. Liang, “Aiguolun,” 27–29. 70. Liang Qichao, “Huobushi xuean Hobbes” (霍布士學案 HOBBES), YBSHJ, wenji 6:89–95. 71. Liang, “Huobushi xuean,” 94–95. 72. Liang, “Huobushi xuean,” 92. 73. Liang Qichao, “Lusuo xuean” (盧梭學案), YBSHJ, wenji 6:97–110.

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74. Liang, “Lusuo xuean,” 102. 75. Liang Qichao, “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili” (政治學大家伯倫知理之學 說), YBSHJ, wenji 13:68–69. Bastid has shown that Liang’s essay was almost all a “word-for-word plagiarism of Bluntschli’s Deutsche Staatslehre für Gebildete as translated by Azuma Heiji” 吾妻兵治 into literary Chinese in 1899, but the point here is that Liang now adopted Bluntschli’s views as his own, adding a few comments on China’s situation. Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, “The Japanese-Induced German Connection of Modern Chinese Ideas of the State: Liang Qichao and the Guojia lun of J. K. Bluntschli,” in The Role of Japan in Liang Qichao’s Introduction of Modern Western Civilization to China, ed. Joshua A. Fogel (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2004), 118. 76. Liang, “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili,” 67–68. 77. Liang, “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili,” 71–72, 87–88. In a sense, the state (an advanced structure) comes out of the nation (a natural form of community), but then transcends it. See Bastid, “The Japanese-Induced German Connection,” 113–114. 78. Liang, “Lun guojia sixiang,” 17. 79. Liang, “Lun guojia sixiang,” 20. Liang was attacking both traditional Confucian universalism and the anarchist vision of voluntary cooperation. 80. Liang, “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili,” 70–71. This was an argument Liang used to attack the revolutionaries’ claim that China could adopt the most advanced political form (republicanism), just as it could adopt the most advanced locomotives for its railway system. See “Kaiming zhuanzhi” (開明專制論), YBSHJ, wenji 17:59–60. 81. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin shuo” (新民說), YBSHJ, zhuanji 專集 4:1: “guoyezhe, jimin er cheng” (國也者，積民而成). 82. Liang, “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili,” 88. 83. Liang Qichao, “Zhengzhi yu renmin” (政治與人民), YBSHJ, wenji 20:7; and see also “Xianzheng qianshuo” (憲政淺說), YBSHJ, wenji 23:43–44; “Lun guojia sixiang,” 17–18. 84. Liang, “Zhengzhi yu renmin,” 7. 85. Liang, “Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili,” 88–89. 86. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 13–83. 87. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 14. 88. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 43–44, 48–49. 89. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 18. 90. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 19. 91. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 21–22. 92. Liang, “Kaiming zhuanzhi,” 35–36, 42–43, 29–31. 93. Liang, “Xianzheng qianshuo,” 34, 44. 94. Qin Xiaoyi 秦孝儀, ed., Guofu quanji 國父全集 (Taibei: Jindai Zhongguo, 1988), 1:3. 95. Guofu quanji, 1:4. 96. Cf. John Fitzgerald, “The Nationless State: The Search for a Nation in Modern Chinese Nationalism,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs no. 33 (January 1995): 87–88. 97. Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji (毛澤東選集), (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe,

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1969), 624. See Nick Knight, “On Contradiction and On New Democracy: Contrasting Perspectives on Causation and Social Change in the Thought of Mao Zedong,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 22, no. 2 (April–June 1990): 18–34. 98. Mao Zedong xuanji, 637–638. 99. Mao Zedong xuanji, 1357–1371. 100. Mao Zedong xuanji, 1364.

12 Is There a Confucian Perspective on Social Justice? Joseph Chan

In recent years there has been a growing interest among Chinese and Western scholars in reconstructing Confucian philosophy for contemporary or comparative purposes. Is Confucian philosophy still relevant or attractive today? What are its strengths and weaknesses when compared with other philosophical traditions such as western liberalism? To answer these questions, there have been interesting works examining the compatibility between Confucianism, on the one hand, and civil liberties and democracy, on the other. However, the relation between Confucianism and justice has been left relatively unexamined. This chapter is an attempt to partially fulfill the gap. It aims to reconstruct early Confucian views of justice. My focus is not general justice or justice as a virtue, but distributive justice and social justice. The questions I want to discuss are: Does Confucianism contain the concepts of distributive justice and social justice? Are there ethical principles governing the distribution of resources in Confucianism? Are they principles of justice, and, if so, are they still relevant and viable today? Because a short discussion of this nature obviously cannot cover the 2,500year-long tradition of Confucianism without doing injustice to its breadth and complexity, I confine my analysis to early Confucianism (i.e. the preQin period 770–221 BCE), focusing on such main texts as The Analects, Mencius and Xunzi. These works, however, have been the paradigm of and basis for critical reflection throughout the entire Confucian tradition. Distributive justice has not attracted much attention in the contemporary literature on Confucianism. This may be due to a widely held view that there is little room for justice in Confucianism, which sees politics as the continuation of personal ethics and the state as the family writ large. In this interpretation of Confucianism, cultivation of virtue is more 261

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important than enforcement of justice, and benevolent leadership (ren) more important than the exercise of law and policy. I argue, however, that this understanding of Confucianism is heavily one-sided. Confucianism also contains fundamental political principles and policies, including one regarding distribution of offices and resources, and these are not reducible to family-based principles. Moreover, central to the ideal of benevolent rule is proper distribution of economic resources. In the limited number of contemporary writings on Confucian justice, a majority argue that Confucianism cannot share the philosophical presuppositions of Western conceptions of justice. A typical strategy that these writings employ is to take John Rawls’s theory of justice as a point of reference, and then argue that Rawls’s theory presupposes liberal conceptions of persons and community radically different from those in Confucianism.1 This kind of discussion, illuminating as it may be, often ends without any serious treatment of distributive justice. I believe it is not necessary or desirable to reconstruct Confucian views through a comparison with Rawls, for doing so leads us to approach Western and Confucian philosophical visions as diametrically opposed ideal types and distracts us from distributive issues that concern Confucian and Western thinkers alike. Here, I hope to explore Confucian justice in a way that assumes the fewest philosophical presuppositions about human nature, personhood, and community. First, I will discuss various difficulties that may stand in the way of a reconstruction of Confucian justice. Some of these have to do with the concepts of distributive justice and social justice, and some with our understanding of the nature of Confucianism and the historical conditions within which it developed. Second, I will reconstruct from the main classical texts major principles of distribution which may form a coherent approach to justice. In the final section, I will very briefly discuss the appeal and difficulty of this approach from a contemporary perspective.

IS THERE A CONCEPT OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE IN CONFUCIANISM? Let us start with the classic formula of the idea of justice:2 “render to each his due.” Although this broad formula leaves open what is to count as a person’s due, it is not empty. It tells us several things. First, justice is a distributive idea. It concerns how benefits and burdens should be passed out among individuals according to some principle of rightness, and not according to some aggregative ends that make distribution a mere means.3 Jeremy Waldron has given a nice example to show that the primary concern of justice lies in distribution rather than in aggregation. Consider the following news report: “A judge today sentenced five members of an organized

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crime ring to a total of two hundred years in prison.”4 Waldron says, rightly, that this report is “uninformative” from the angle of justice, for it does not contain information about individual sentences. What justice cares about in this case is not the aggregate outcome of sentencing, but whether each convicted criminal gets the sentence he or she deserves. Second, and a corollary of the first, justice is an individual-oriented idea. The formula “to each his due” expresses a particular way of assessing the rightness of distribution. The distribution of a benefit is to be made on the basis of the personal characteristics and circumstances of an individual involved—his efforts, contributions, merit, needs, well-being, or worth as a person, etc.—and not on the basis of things that have nothing to do with the individual. And the same holds for distribution of burdens. Third and last, justice expresses a moral idea. To give what is due to people is a moral requirement, not a matter of personal favor or grace bestowed by the distributor.5 In sum, the concept of justice expresses a moral concern about how individuals fare—what they ought to receive as their due—in distribution of benefits and burdens. Is there such a concept in Confucianism? The answer, I believe, is a clear yes. The most obvious places in the classical texts where the concept of justice is at work are passages that discuss the justice of punishment and the distribution of offices. Among pre-Qin masters, Xunzi (approx. 340–245 BCE) is the most explicit on the importance of justice or fairness in government affairs. For him, the activity of governing has to be “fair” [ping] (Xunzi 9.19a).6 “Public-spiritedness and impartiality [gong ping] are the balance by which affairs of government are to be weighted, and the mean of due proportion [zhung he] is the marking line by which they are to be measured” (Xunzi 9.2). Now Xunzi fleshes out the idea of fairness or impartiality in exactly the same way as ancient Greek philosophers do—that justice or fairness consists in rendering to each person his due according to his personal characteristics, circumstances, or conduct. “As a general principle, every rank and official responsibility, and each reward or punishment, was given as a recompense that accorded with the nature of the conduct involved” (Xunzi 18.3). The coming of honor or disgrace, therefore, must be a reflection of one’s inner virtue [de] (Xunzi 1.5), so that offices must be matched by appropriate ability, rewards must correspond to achievement, and penalties to offenses (Xunzi 8.3). It is important to note that for Xunzi, when it comes to justice, each person should be treated as an independent individual who is separate from other individuals, including family members: If rank fits the worth of the individual holding it, there is esteem, where it does not, there is contempt. In antiquity, penal sanctions did not exceed what was

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fitting to the crime, and rank did not go beyond the moral worth of the person. Thus although the father had been executed, his son could be employed in the government; although the elder brother had been killed, the younger could be employed ... Each was allotted what was his due according in every case to his true circumstances. (Xunzi 24.3, italics mine; see also 24.4)

Nothing could show more clearly that Xunzi understands the individualoriented feature of justice, in the sense that justice concerns the proper treatment of each individual taken separately. Confucius also understands this very well. In a story told in The Annals of Lu Buwei (Lushi Chunqiu), a major classical text that incorporated Confucian, Legalistic, Daoist, and Mohist ideas, Confucius (551–479 BCE) was reported to have praised Qi Huangyang’s spirit of impartiality (gong) because when Qi recommended people to his Duke as candidates for public office, he did it purely on the basis of their merit and not their personal relations with Qi himself. This long passage is worth quoting: Duke Ping of Jin questioned Qi Huangyang, saying, “Nanyang is without a commandant. Whom should I appoint? Qi Huangyang replied, “Xie Hu would be suitable.” Duke Ping said, “Is not Xie Hu an enemy of yours, sir?” “Your grace asked who would be appropriate for the office not whether he was the enemy of your servant.” Duke Ping declared this “Excellent!” and as a result employed Xie Hu. All the people praised the excellence of the decision. Sometime later Duke Ping again asked Qi Huangyang, “The state lacks a military guardian. Whom should I appoint?” Qi Huangyang replied, “Wu would be appropriate.” Duke Ping asked, “Is not Wu your own son, sir?” “Your grace asked who would be appropriate for the office not whether he was my son.” Duke Ping declared this “Excellent!” and as a result employed Wu. All the people praised the excellence of the decision. When Confucius learned of it, he said, “Excellent indeed were the assessments of Qi Huangyang. When recommending those from without, he did not avoid even personal enemies, and when recommending from within, he did not avoid even his own son.” Qi Huangyang may properly be called impartial (gong).7

Mencius (c. 379–289 BCE) and Xunzi also take justice as a moral imperative that trumps political goals such as the gaining of an empire. Mencius says that it is wrong to “kill an innocent man” or “take what one is not entitled to” in order to gain the empire, for doing so is contrary to rightness (yi) and benevolence (ren).8 Xunzi is of the same view that a gentleman (ru) “would not commit a single act contrary to the requirements of justice nor execute a single blameless man, even though he might thereby obtain

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the empire. Such a lord acts with justice (yi) and faithfulness (xin) toward the people” (Xunzi 8.2; see also 11.1a, 4.8). For Mencius and Xunzi, then, justice is a moral constraint on people’s pursuits of goals and benefits. Justice is understood as a non-consequentialist, non-utilitarian idea. If my analysis is correct, then Confucianism does have the concept of (distributive) justice, and it is the same as the Greek one: to render to each person his due. Like the Greek concept, Confucian justice is distributive, individual-oriented, and moral.

IS THERE ROOM FOR A CONCEPT OF SOCIAL JUSTICE IN CONFUCIANISM? From Distributive to Social Justice We have seen that in the Confucian texts the concept of distributive justice is at work in the discussions about distribution of honor, offices, and punishment. But how about economic matters like the distribution of land or other forms of material goods like grains? Do Confucian thinkers approach economic matters from the perspective of justice as well? In particular, is there a concept of economic justice or social justice in Confucianism? Is distribution of material resources a matter of justice for Confucians? The Confucian concept of justice reconstructed so far is close to the traditional Western concept of justice in that it links justice with a person’s merit or desert. Some theorists argue that this traditional Western concept—sometimes called a meritorian perspective of justice9—is very different from the modern concept of economic or social justice. The former concept confines the scope of justice’s concern to the civil sphere (offices, honor, and punishment), while the latter extends it to the economic sphere (material goods).10 Samuel Fleischacker argues that major thinkers in the Western tradition from Aristotle to Adam Smith held the traditional, meritorian concept of justice, and that they would reject the concept of social justice, for they did not believe that it is the poor’s due, merit, or desert to receive allocation of material goods by society or the state.11 Modern theorists of social justice (of the egalitarian kind), however, take the opposite view. They believe that justice morally entitles each member of a society to a level of material goods and that it is the responsibility of society—of which the government is the agent—to provide each member with material goods. The Centrality of Material Goods to People’s Lives On Flesichacker’s view, premodern Western thinkers tend to hold some of the following views about the nature or origin of poverty, any one of which

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can block a transition from the traditional concept of distributive justice to the modern concept of social justice:12 • Poverty is a punishment for sin. • Material things do not matter, hence poor and rich can live equally good lives without any change in the material condition. • Poverty is a blessing, enabling one to learn humility or to turn away from material obsessions. • Poverty is a natural evil that cannot be overcome by human efforts. If people in a society do not think that poverty is bad for an individual or that anything can be done about it, then poverty (or the distribution of material goods) will not be considered as a subject of concern for justice. Interestingly, Confucianism holds none of these views. No doubt the Confucian thinkers expect people of high virtue to be able to live nobly whether in poverty or riches, and to take pride and delight in virtue rather than in material possessions (Analects 1.15, Mencius 7A.21, Xunzi 2.5, 12.3). Yet none of them say that material goods do not matter to people’s lives. Quite the contrary, the desire people have for material goods and wealth is natural and, if pursued within moral boundaries, legitimate. Confucius says, Wealth and rank are what every man desires; poverty and low station are what every man dislike.13 If wealth were a permissible pursuit, I would be willing even to act as a guard holding a whip outside the market place. If it is not, I shall follow my own inclination. (Analects 7.12)

Mencius affirms even more explicitly the centrality of material goods to the lives of ordinary people. In a well-known passage, he says that people who lack stable, sufficient material possessions will go astray, and it is the responsibility of the ruler to prevent them from falling into the trap of poverty and illegal acts: Only a Gentleman can have a constant heart in spite of a lack of constant means of support. The people, on the other hand, will not have constant hearts if they are without constant means. Lacking constant hearts, they will go astray and fall into excesses, stopping at nothing. To punish them after they have fallen foul of the law is to set a trap for the people. How can a benevolent man in authority allow himself to set a trap for the people? (Mencius 1A.7)

Material goods, in Mencius’s view, are not only important to keep people from going astray; they are necessary conditions for them to live a good life. Immediately following the passage in 1A.7 is this important one:

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Hence when determining what means of support the people should have, a clear-sighted ruler ensures that these are sufficient, on the one hand, for the care of parents, and, on the other, for the support of wife and children, so that people always have sufficient food in good years and escape starvation in bad; only then does he drive them towards goodness. (Mencius 1A.7, italics mine)

For Mencius, material goods enable people to support the physical existences of themselves, their parents, and family members, which are important ethical duties. Moreover, having sufficient material means to support their family, people will “learn, in their spare time, to be good sons and good young brothers, loyal to their prince and true to their word, so that they will, in the family, serve their fathers and elder brothers, and outside the family, serve their elders and superiors” (Mencius 1A.5). This is what constitutes Mencius’s conception of good life, for which material goods are an important, necessary condition. The Circumstances of Social Justice We have shown that in the view of Confucian thinkers, material goods are important to the good life, and people’s desire for them is natural and legitimate. But this is not sufficient to establish that such a concern for material goods is, or can be, part of a concern of social justice. As David Miller has argued, we need some premises about the kind of society that can give rise to the circumstances of social justice. “If we do not inhibit bounded societies, or if people’s shares of goods and bads do not depend in ways we can understand on a determinate set of social institutions, or if there is no agency capable of regulating that basic structure, then we no longer live in a world in which the idea of social justice has any purchase.”14 If we follow Miller’s understanding of the circumstances of social justice here, then we need to show that Confucian thinkers do understand society to have something like the characteristics described above. In a moment, I shall show that Mencius and Xunzi do see society as a scheme for the division of labor in the production and distribution of goods that are necessary for the well-being of each and every member. This scheme is regulated by rules enforced by a ruler and his government, and fairness and entitlements concerning resources distribution are questions of importance within such a scheme. But first, it is important to look at the historical conditions in which the two thinkers developed their conceptions of society.15 While their prescriptions for what society ought to be like contain a good ideal of idealism, they corresponded to, and were made possible by, the historical conditions of their times. Drawing heavily upon Xu Zhouyun’s Ancient China in Transition,16 I shall briefly sketch the changing nature of society in the pre-Qin period and highlight the characteristics relevant to concerns of social justice.

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Ancient China in the early Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu) period (772– 464 BCE) was marked by a clear and deep social stratification based primarily on political rank. At the top level were the rulers of states. Immediately below was the level of nobles or aristocrats, who were relatives of the rulers or hereditary heads of prestigious clans who had kin relations with the rulers’ family. They were landlords who occupied high positions in government. The lowest level of the ruling group was the shi, who were retainers to their lords and did not see themselves as constituting an independent social group. Below the ruling group were the commoners, mostly peasants but also merchants and artisans, who were expected to follow the lead of political elite in social and political affairs. From late Spring and Autumn to the Warring States (Zhanguo) period (463–222 BCE), interstate wars and interfamilial struggles within states had brought rapid and significant social changes throughout China. There were several aspects of social mobility that are especially relevant to our purposes: 1. The appearance of a new type of state and the rise of the intelligentsia (shi). The downfall of noble ministerial houses created a political vacuum for political talents. This meant, on the one hand, that rulers were able to wield power directly, but also, on the other, that they had to recruit talent from among the commoners to serve as ministers and advisors to help them win or consolidate power in interstate wars. As Xu Zhouyunh describes, “At the start of the Zhanguo [Warring States] period a new type of state appeared—a state in which the ruler wielded despotic power and ministers could be brought into and discharged from a bureaucratic system that selected and promoted competent men and rejected the unqualified.”17 This was the social background for the prominence of the principle of personal merit and desert (in terms of moral and intellectual caliber) in the distribution of offices in the early Confucianism, especially in Xunzi’s thought. 2. The emergence of urban cities and commercialization. The political unification of large areas and the relative security of travel led to “the change in the functions of cities from that of mere fortified strongholds to that of industrial-commercial centers.”18 In the cities, the use of metallic money in exchange was common; occupational specialization and differentiation proliferated; a new social stratum of wealthy and sometimes politically influential merchants emerged along with prospering trades and commercial activities. 3. The widening of economic inequality. The expansion of state’s territories and changes in the land policies and tax system facilitated the private possession of land. “Land became concentrated in the hands of fewer people because of heavy taxation, high rent, and usury, which caused farmers in desperate financial straits to sell their land to whoever

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could buy it.”19 Those who lost their land usually became hired field laborers with low wages. Some became tenants of the new landlords and were charged up to 50 percent of their crop yield for rent.20 It was against this historical background that Mencius and Xunzi developed their understanding and vision of political society. Responding to the major social issues of their day, Mencius and Xunzi went to great length to discuss issues such as poverty, differentiation of social roles and functions, inequality of income and status, and the distributive role of government. Both thinkers see society as an interdependent complex that requires specialization and differentiation of occupation in the political and economic spheres. Both think that trade between “the hundred crafts” is necessary to satisfy everyone’s needs (Mencius 3A.4, 3B.4; Xunzi 4.12, 11.5b). But they also realize that if left completely to their own, free trade and the market may result in monopoly and excessive profits and also the tragedy of the commons in forestry and fishing,21 and so government interference in economic activity is necessary (Mencius 1A.3, 2B.10; Xunzi 9.16b). More important, as will be shown, they believe rulers and their governments have the capacity and the obligation to ensure fairness or equity in the management of government and economic affairs through enforcement of the right kinds of laws and policies in taxation, distribution of lands, and social welfare. To sum up, the historical conditions of pre-Qin China presented distributive issues that naturally fall in the domain of social justice, and Confucian thinkers did look at society in such a way that it is possible to conceive that they viewed society’s distributive impact on the people’s well-being as a concern of social justice. But whether these thinkers framed this concern as one of justice is a further question that requires a detailed analysis of the texts.

DISTRIBUTIVE PRINCIPLES What Mencius and Xunzi subscribe to is sometimes called today the principle of sufficiency regarding the government’s responsibility for the material well-being of the people. People who are badly off have first priority for care. Inequality of wealth and income beyond the threshold of sufficiency does not matter. In the distribution of offices, occupational positions, and emolument, the proper principle is one of merit and contribution. Natural inequality in talents does not give rise to moral concerns. Sufficiency for All Mencius was keenly aware of the seriousness of poverty and inequality of wealth in his times. He refers to the situation where some people have “so

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plentiful good to be thrown to dogs and pigs,” while “some drop dead from starvation by the wayside” (Mencius 1A.3). He also says that “nowadays, the means laid down for the people are sufficient neither for the care of parents nor for the support of wife and children. In good years life is always hard, while in bad years there is no way of escaping death” (Mencius 1A.7). Part of the cause is the unequal distribution of land and the inability of the government to take proper measure to redistribute land or provide the poor with material subsistence. Mencius therefore takes the equity of land distribution to be the first task of a benevolent government: Benevolent government must begin with land demarcation. When boundaries are not properly drawn, the division of land according to the well-field system (ching) and the yield of grain for paying officials cannot be equitable. For this reason, despotic rulers and corrupt officials always neglect the boundaries. Once the boundaries are correctly fixed, there will be no difficulty in settling the distribution of land and the determination of emolument. (Mencius 3A.3)

To use modern terminology to express Mencius’s point, economic justice is the backbone of good governance. Now, what counts as equitable distribution of land? From the following two passages, the answer, I believe, is: an equal distribution of land sufficient for each person to live a good life. Hence when determining what means of support the people should have, a clear-sighted ruler ensures that these are sufficient, on the one hand, for the care of parents, and, on the other, for the support of wife and children, so that people always have sufficient food in good years and escape starvation in bad; only then does he drive them towards goodness. (Mencius 1A.7, italics mine)

And how much land is needed for ensuring material sufficiency? Mencius tells King Xuan of Qi: If you wish to put this into practice, why not go back to fundamentals? If the mulberry is planted in every homestead of five mu22 of land, then those who are fifty can wear silk; if chickens, pigs and dogs do not miss their breeding season, then those who are seventy can eat meat; if each lot of a hundred mu is not deprived of labor during the busy season, then families with several mouths to feed will not go hungry. (Mencius 1A.7; see also 1A.3)

Mencius further elaborates on the well-field system (ching), which he regards as the first task of benevolent government: A ching is a piece of land measuring one li square, and each ching consists of 900 mu. Of these, the central plot of 100 mu belongs to the state, while the other eight plots of 100 mu each are held by eight families who share the duty of caring for the plot owned by the state. Only when they have done this duty

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do they dare turn to their own affairs. This is what sets the common people apart. (Mencius 3A.3)

Mencius remarks that this is a rough outline, and it is up to the ruler to make adjustments. But it seems clear that the well-field system contains three related principles: 1. Sufficiency: Each person should have an amount of land that is sufficient for his material well-being and also his ethical life; 2. Equality: The amount of land to be allocated should be more or less the same for every person who is a commoner (officials receive more land because they make a greater contribution to society); and 3. Government obligation: It is the duty of the government to ensure that the land demarcation is “properly drawn” (cheng) and the division of land according to the well-field system is “equal” (jun). Like Mencius, Xunzi subscribes to the principle of sufficiency and regards it as central to benevolent government (Xunzi 9.5, 10.2, 12.6). In a later book of Xunzi, he makes reference to something like Mencius’s well-field system as a basis for sufficiency: A people that is not made prosperous will have no means of caring for the needs of their essential natures ... Hence, the way to make families prosperous is to allot five mou lots for the abode and one hundred mou for the fields, to devote one’s attention to their concerns, and not to rob them of the time required for their fields. (Xunzi 27.52)

However, apart from land distribution, Xunzi also talks about income from jobs and assignments as another basis for sufficiency. He advises a ruler to [e]mploy the people so that they are certain to succeed in their assigned tasks; make certain that the profits from their assigned tasks are sufficient to provide a means of living for them. In all these to cause income to match outgo in regard to clothing, food, and the hundred other necessities of life so that with certainty the harvest surplus will be stored up at the proper season is called the “art of [achieving the plan].” (Xunzi 10.3a)

There is an important point to note about Mencius’s understanding of government obligation. Mencius thinks that if people die of starvation under a ruler, then that ruler has not only failed in his obligation but has behaved no differently than if he had killed them: Now when food meant for human beings is so plentiful as to be thrown to dogs and pigs, you fail to realize that it is time for collection, and when men

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drop dead from starvation by the wayside, you fail to realize that it is time for distribution. When people die, you simply say, “It is none of my doing, It is the fault of the harvest.” In what way is that different from killing a man by running him through, while saying all the time, “It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the weapon.” Stop putting the blame on the harvest and the people of the whole Empire will come to you. (Mencius 1A.3; see also 1A.4; italics mine)

How to make sense of this strong condemnation of a ruler’s failure to help the needy? One possible answer is that Mencius believes it is the people’s due to have sufficient means to live a good life, and that the government should supply this through prudent management and proper policies. So the failure of the ruler to help the needy is a serious failure in justice, i.e., having no regard for people’s due in economic distribution. This issue, however raises some important questions: What is the moral foundation of distribution of resources in Mencius’s thought? Is the foundation one of justice? Unfortunately, Mencius never attempts to provide an answer. But I believe that from the ideas of Mencius discussed above, we can construct a perfectionist theory of justice that justifies the distributive role of government as a duty of justice. This is a perfectionist theory because its ultimate basis is a certain conception of the good life. This theory tries to link up Mencius’s conception of the good life and the distributive role of government and social justice. It runs like this: 1. It is morally important that every human person can live a good life. 2. Living a good life requires sufficient material resources. 3. The natural world provides human beings with enough material resources to meet the material needs of everyone. 4. But the availability of, and access to, those resources depend on a well-ordered social structure in which the ruler (or government) plays a critical role. A well-ordered structure requires a proper set of laws and policies in land distribution, taxation, and the management of common pool resources such as forest and fish. 5. The fact that people’s access to material resources is affected by the way social and legal rules and institutions are set up by rulers and how well they are managed gives rise to a duty of justice on the part of the ruler. 6. In setting up distributive rules and institutions, the ruler has a duty of justice to provide everyone with a fair share of material resources (according to the sufficiency principle), because everyone has the capacity to lead a good life (and therefore has worth and need). In a well-ordered society, any person can claim it is his or her due to have sufficient material resources. If the ruler fails to maintain the well ordered structure even though natural resources are sufficient, and if as a result some people die of starvation while others have excessive

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wealth, then the ruler has actively committed a serious wrong of injustice (on a par with killing the starved) rather than merely a wrong in failing to help them. 7. Of course, this is not just the ruler’s responsibility alone. Everyone has a part to contribute to the government revenue through the working of the public land in the well-field system or paying other forms of tax. In other words, everyone has some responsibility in providing for everyone’s due. In modern language, we can say that people have a claim of justice to material sufficiency and an obligation to work to provide that sufficiency for all. Many of the above statements are drawn from Mencius or at least fully consistent with his ideas, and so this perfectionist theory of justice can properly be called Mencian. This theory helps us see why the sufficiency principle can be a principle of social justice. Priority for the Badly Off If sufficiency for all is the proper distributive goal for society and government, then it follows naturally that those who are farther below the threshold of sufficiency than others should have priority in receiving proper treatment from the government. And this is exactly the position Mencius and Xunzi take. Both thinkers say that there are some disadvantaged groups of people who cannot normally help themselves: Old men without wives, old women without husbands, old people without children, young children without fathers—these four types of people are the most destitute and have no one to turn to for help. Whenever King Wen put benevolent measures into effect, he always gave them first consideration. (Mencius 1B.5) Those who have one of the Five Defects [deaf, dumb, crippled, armless, dwarf] should be raised up and gathered in so that they can be cared for. They should be given official duties commensurate with their abilities and employment adequate to feed and clothe themselves so that all are included and not even one of them is overlooked. (Xunzi 9.1) Select good and worthy men for office, promote those who are honest and reverent, reward filial piety and brotherly affection, gather under your protection orphans and widows, and offer assistance to those in poverty and need. (Xunzi 9.4)

Notice that the way to help those who are badly off is not necessarily by handouts, although that may often be the case. Assistance can take the form of jobs protected by a level of wage sufficient for subsistence. As Xunzi notes, people with disabilities “should be given official duties

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commensurate with their abilities and employment adequate to feed and clothe themselves.” Merit and Contribution As seen above, for Mencius and Xunzi the salary or income from one’s productive activity should be based on one’s merit or contribution. They do not believe in equality of outcome. Some people may legitimately get a greater reward or possess more wealth than others because of their merit or contribution. Xunzi writes that the amount and substance of one’s emolument should fit one’s “station”: [T]he ancient Kings acted to control men with regulations, ritual, and moral principles, in order thereby to divide society into classes, creating therewith differences in status between the noble and base, disparities between the privileges of age and youth, and the division of the wise from the stupid, the able from the incapable. All of this caused men to perform the duties of their station in life and each to receive his due (yi); only after this had been done was the amount and substance of the emolument paid by grain made to fit their respective stations. (Xunzi, 4.12; italics mine) When a humane man occupies the highest position, farmers labor with all their energy to exhaust the potential of their fields, merchants scrutinize with keen eyes to get the utmost from their goods, the various artisans use their skills to the fullest in making utensils and wares, and the officials, from the knights and grand officers up to the feudal lords, all execute fully the functions of their offices with humanity, generosity, wisdom, and ability. This may be called perfect peace. So though one may have as his emolument the whole word, he need not consider it excessive, and though one be only a gatekeeper, receptionist, guard, or nightwatchman, he need never think his salary too meager. Anciently it was said, “Unequal yet equivalent, bent yet obedient, not the same yet uniform.” This refers to the constant relationship of mankind. (Xunzi 4.12; italics mine)

Note that Xunzi is not advocating a discriminatory, class-based hierarchy of society. Rather, he presents a hierarchy of status and emolument that is defined with reference to people’s ability, not their family background. In fact, Xunzi is an advocate of class mobility based on merit. He writes, Although they be the descendants of kings and dukes or knights and grand officers, if they are incapable of devotedly observing the requirements of ritual and moral principles, they should be relegated to the position of commoners. Although they be the descendants of commoners, if they accumulate culture and study, rectify their character and conduct, and are capable of devotedly observing the requirements of ritual principles and justice, they should be brought to the ranks of a prime minister, knights, or grand officers. (Xunzi 9.1; italics mine)

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Mencius also endorses contribution or merit as the basis for emolument. He says one should be paid in accordance with one’s work or contribution (gong), not one’s intention (Mencius 3B.4). He stresses in particular that a gentleman who gives advice to the ruler deserves emolument, even though he does not engage in a productive activity like that of farmers and carpenters. This is because helping to make the prince secure and honored and to educate people to be dutiful is a kind of contribution (Mencius 7B.32). We have seen that once past the level of material sufficiency, Mencius and Xunzi do not object to economic inequalities that arise from personal factors such as merit and contribution, which are largely based on the possession of abilities (moral character and intelligence). Neither thinker is a “luck” egalitarian, one who believes that those who become worse off than others through no fault of their own should be compensated. Instead, both believe that desert should be based on a person’s achievements and contribution. Interestingly (and controversially), both men believe that human beings are born with the same nature, including even natural talent. “In natural talent, inborn nature, awareness, and capability, the gentleman and the petty man are one” (Xunzi 4.8). What accounts for the eventual differences in ability and moral development are two factors, one personal and the other social. The personal factor is the extent to which a person is willing to think, learn, and cultivate himself (Mencius 6A.17, Xunzi 4.8, 4.10, 23.5b). The social fact is a person’s environment and the customs of his community. “The habituation of custom modifies the direction of will, and, if continued for a long time, will alter [a person’s substance]” (Xunzi 8.11; see also 4.8). Mencius also says that a person’s surroundings can transform his temperament (qi) (Mencius 7A.36). Although people’s achievements depend in part on the environment and customs in which they grow up, neither thinker asserts that those who become worse off through such uncontrollable kinds of factors should be compensated. I suspect that even if they were shown that people are born with different levels of talent, they would still not go so far as to endorse luck egalitarianism.

TOWARD A CONFUCIAN PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL JUSTICE The main principles of a Confucian perspective on social justice, if only a rudimentary one, can be summarized as follows: 1. Sufficiency for all: Each person should have an amount of resources sufficient to live a materially secured and ethical life. 2. Priority to the badly off: People who fall below the threshold of sufficiency—those who have special needs and are badly off—should have priority in being taken care of.

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3. Merit and contribution: Offices and emolument should be distributed according to people’s merits and contributions. Inequality of income that arises from this source is not illegitimate. Needless to say, much more work needs to be done to develop the perspective into a full-fledged theory. No early Confucian thinkers justified their views with the kind of philosophical arguments and reasoning commonly found in contemporary philosophy. Those who today wish to defend a Confucian perspective on social justice must therefore supply their own substantive philosophical arguments. This is a tall order, for there is a vast, complicated contemporary literature on philosophical theories of social justice. In any case, it cannot possibly be done here. For now, I simply want to point out that the Confucian perspective I have outlined bears striking resemblance to the position of a recent group of theorists who challenge the egalitarian theory of justice and have developed an alternative perspective sometimes called the doctrine of sufficiency.23 Like the doctrine of sufficiency, a Confucian perspective will need to defend itself against opponents from either end of the spectrum of theories of social justice. At one end is the libertarian, who argues that it is not a matter of justice or moral right for society to provide material assistance, let alone to the level of sufficiency, to those who are economically badly off. At the other end is the egalitarian, who argues that economic inequality at above the level of sufficiency still matters as far as justice is concerned. No verdict can be made on the reasonableness of the Confucian perspective until these challenges have been examined.

NOTES 1. See, for example, Fan Rui-ping, “Social Justice: Rawlsian or Confucian?” in Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy, ed. Bo Mou (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 144–68. 2. Beginning here the word “justice” denotes distributive justice, unless otherwise stated. 3. See David Miller, Social Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 19–20. 4. Jeremy Waldron, “The Primacy of Justice,” Legal Theory 9 (2003): 275. 5. See Tom Campbell, Justice (London: Macmillan, 2001), 24. 6. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols., ed. John Knoblock (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988–1994), Chapter 9, Section 19a (hereafter references will appear in the text). 7. The Annals of Lu Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study, ed. John Knoblock and Jeffrey Ridge (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), Book 1, Chapter 5, Section 4. 8. Mencius: A Bilingual Edition, trans. D.C. Lau (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003), 2A.2, 7A.33; see also 4B.4 (hereafter references will appear in the text).

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9. See Campbell, Justice, Chapter1. 10. For a contrast of civil justice and social justice, see J. A. Passmore, “Civil Justice and Its Rival,” in Justice, ed. Eugene Kamenka and Alice Erh-Soon Tay (London: Edward Arnold, 1979), Chapter 2. 11. Samuel Fleischacker, A Short History of Distributive Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), Introduction. 12. Fleischacker, A Short History, 9. Fleischacker mentions other views on poverty as well, but they are less relevant for my purposes here and so are not included. 13. The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau, bilingual ed. (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1992), 4.5 (hereafter references will appear in the text). 14. David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 6. 15. Confucius’s conception of society is much less developed than the other two, and so he is not included in the discussion. 16. Xu Zhouyun (Hsu Cho-yun), Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 B.C. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965). 17. Xu Zhouyun, Ancient China in Transition, 105–06. 18. Xu Zhouyun, Ancient China in Transition, 137. 19. Xu Zhouyun, Ancient China in Transition, 138–39. 20. Xu Zhouyun, Ancient China in Transition, 113. 21. “If it is the season when the grasses and trees are in the splendor of their flowering and sprouting new leaves, axes and halberds are not permitted in the mountain forest so as not to end their lives prematurely or to interrupt their maturation. If it is the season when the giant sea turtles, water lizards, fish, freshwater turtles, loach, and eels are depositing their eggs, nets and poisons are not permitted in the marshes so as not to prematurely end their lives or to interrupt their maturation” (Xunzi 9.16b). 22. D. C. Lau notes: “As a mu is one nine-hundredth part of a square li, it works out to be somewhat less than 200 square meters” (Mencius, 9). 23. The most influential defense of this alternative perspective is Henry Frankfurt’s “Equality as a Moral Ideal,” Ethics 98 (1987): 21–43. Other important discussions include Elizabeth Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality,” Ethics 109 (1999): 287–81; Roger Crisp, “Equality, Priority, and Compassion,” Ethics 113 (2003): 745–63; David Miller’s Principles of Social Justice; Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), Chapter 9; and Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). For a recent, critical discussion of the doctrine of sufficiency, see Paula Casal, “Why Sufficiency is not Enough,” Ethics 117 (2007): 296–326.

13 Imagining the Body Politic: Metaphor and Political Language in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan Takashi Shogimen In the Western tradition of political thought, medical metaphors are prevalent and the ways in which they were used were diverse. Some metaphors are anatomical and/or physiological: the “body politic” is ruled by the “head” in cooperation with other “organs.” Others are therapeutic: a political leader uses “drugs” and sometime has resort to a “surgical” means to resolve political conflicts. Still others compare the ruler with the physician: a good ruler maintains the “health” of the body politic and a tyrant harms its well-being. Medical metaphors are not, however, unique to the West. They can be found in Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese political discourses. I have suggested elsewhere that the bodily metaphors in medieval European political texts were not merely ornaments of language but were grounded in contemporary medical knowledge. The medical debate over the question of the most important organ in the human body (“head or heart?”) influenced the political use of medical metaphors as some political commentators compared the ruler with the head and others compared him with the heart in order to refute the “head” metaphor.1 The metaphorical transference of medical knowledge to political language, however, was not distinctive to the medieval Latin West. I have also shown that the contrasting views of medical treatment between medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan were crystallized in differing notions of government: the Western emphasis on the eradication of the cause of illness resulted in a coercive notion of government, while the Japanese emphasis on the importance of preventative medicine and daily health care corresponded to the rejection of political rule as a means for resolving conflicts.2 This contrasting conceptualization of political rule notwithstanding, the 279

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metaphorical principle that underlies this is the same: “Political rule is medical treatment.” Although framing politics in terms of medicine is a global phenomenon, every aspect of medical theory and practice does not evoke metaphorical images in the political context. This chapter is intended to show that the metaphorical association between the anatomy of the natural body and the structural analysis of the body politic, which is prevalent in the history of European political discourse, is not universally found; Tokugawa Japanese political thinkers hardly made use of anatomical metaphors. Despite the swift introduction of Western medicine which began with the assimilation of anatomy, the anatomical metaphor did not penetrate metaphorical language in post-Tokugawa Japanese political writings. Whereas the literal political language underwent rapid transformation from the late Tokugawa to Meiji period as Western political works circulated widely in Japan through translations, the metaphorical language of Japanese political discourse did not experience a similar change. This chapter, therefore, argues that speaking about politics by means of new concepts is not necessarily the same as thinking about politics in a new way. The deployment of new political vocabularies is one thing; the metaphorical conceptualization of politics is quite another. In order to understand this, however, a few remarks on metaphor as a category of analysis may be required.

METAPHOR AND ITS CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATION This chapter examines metaphorical language in past political and philosophical texts not as figurative linguistic phenomena, but rather as the conceptual phenomena, framing political questions and solutions. Traditionally, metaphor has been seen merely as ornamental language, or a “tool” that serves a rhetorical purpose. Recent theories of cognitive linguistics, by contrast, consider that metaphor is a conceptual, not merely a linguistic, phenomenon. Metaphor is defined as the “understanding of one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain”:3 a construal operation that involves a “mapping” between a source domain, the source of the literal meaning of the metaphorical expression, and a target domain, the domain of the experience actually being described by the metaphor. This new understanding of metaphor is attributed to several cognitive linguists, including George Lakoff and Zoltán Kövecses. They revolutionized the understanding of metaphor by demonstrating that everyday linguistic expressions are permeated by metaphors more often than we assume. For example, such linguistic expressions as “I demolished his argument” and “He shot down all my arguments” are derived from the conceptual metaphor: “an argument is war.” Thus the metaphor is the “mapping” between

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two conceptual domains; for example, the concept of argument is understood in the light of its “mapping” to another conceptual domain of “war.” The existence of metaphorical relations or “mappings” between conceptual domains in the human mind reveals that the ways in which human reason operates are profoundly metaphorical. “[M]etaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words ... on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical … [H]uman conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined.”4 Seen in this way, metaphor is no longer a mere rhetorical device; it actually plays an important role in conceptually categorizing our experience. “We classify particular experiences in terms of experiential gestalts in our conceptual system” and metaphor “picks out the ‘important’ aspects in the experience”5 and also de-emphasizes or hides other aspects of it.6 Metaphor in this sense is nothing other than the human thought process of categorization. The most significant dimension in this new theory of metaphor in connection with our enquiry is the idea that conceptual metaphors are grounded in experience.7 Lakoff and his colleague Mark Johnson emphasize the “embodied” nature of metaphor: the metaphorical language is always rooted in the bodily experience. For example, affection is typically related to bodily warmth, and understanding often correlates with digesting. Both “affection” and “understanding”—the abstract concepts—are understood in terms of our bodily experience of “warmth” and “digestion,” respectively. Lakoffian cognitive linguists thus emphasize that the metaphorical mappings are motivated by the experiential basis, without which a conceptual metaphor does not make sense and hence is incommunicable. If metaphor is thus rooted in human experience, it can be inferred from this that “the dimensions along which metaphors vary reflect differential experience.” Kövecses recently suggested a possibility of applying the cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor to studies of “cultures.” He argued that metaphor variation is produced by differential experience, including differing physical, social, and cultural contexts.8 Some cognitive linguists have already produced case studies of the metaphor of “anger” across cultures. Dirk Geeraerts and Stefan Grondelaers demonstrated that the EuroAmerican conceptualization of anger derived from the classical-medieval notion of the four humors,9 while Yu Ning has shown that the Chinese concept of nu (anger) is related to the notion of qi, i.e., the energy that flows in the human body.10 This example shows that the metaphor of anger is not universal; the choice of the source domain is determined by cultural experience. In this particular case, the selection of the source domain is dependent upon medical knowledge that is diverse cross-culturally. Kövecses’s theory of the cross-cultural variation of metaphor as an analytical framework helps to uncover the cultural-experiential basis of medical metaphors in the political writings of late medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan:

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medical metaphors in medieval European and Tokugawa Japanese political languages entailed the experiential bases of medical learning of medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan, respectively. These considerations dictate the sequence of the following exposition. First, we shall examine medical metaphors in late medieval European political texts. We shall focus in particular on the question: what is the most important part of the body politic, head or heart? We shall then demonstrate that the metaphorical discussion over the primacy of the head or the heart was experientially grounded in the medical debate over the importance of the head and the heart in the natural body. Next, we shall turn to medical metaphors in Tokugawa Japanese political texts. We shall examine the classical Chinese medical views of the most important bodily part because ancient Chinese texts on medicine and natural philosophy were fundamental to Tokugawa Japanese medicine. We shall then see that the anatomical metaphor was seldom used in Japanese political discourse in or immediately after the Tokugawa period. This is particularly intriguing in view of the fact that the period we shall examine witnessed a radical transformation in Japanese medical learning: from the reliance on classical Chinese natural philosophy to the rapid and wide introduction of Western anatomy and physiology. From the absence of the anatomical metaphor, it will be inferred that the pattern of political conceptualization which is manifested in metaphorical language did not change, although the literal political language did change as the new Western political language was introduced.

THE RULING PART OF THE BODY POLITIC IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE The anatomical and physiological metaphor of the body politic in medieval Europe can be traced back at least to the twelfth-century humanist John of Salisbury.11 Allegedly modelled on Plutarch’s work, The Instruction of Trajan, which was in fact John’s own invention, John argued that the position of the head is occupied by a prince.12 The “heart” of the commonwealth, on the other hand, is the senate, “the office of counsel and rulership,” which augments the ruling office of the prince.13 The “eyes,” “ears,” and “tongue” of the prince are the governors of provinces, who would rule provinces in the name of the prince. According to John, the most important bodily part was clearly the head. Thus, the superior function was attributed to the head, namely, the prince, only to be supported by the heart, which is the senate of the commonwealth. The head was supported by other members; financial officers and keepers are compared to the stomach and intestines. The armed hand refers to soldiers and the unarmed one represents tax

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collectors. Finally, the feet are compared with peasants “perpetually bound to the soil” as well as artisans.14 The humblest class is diverse in function and heavily populated; therefore, John compared the “body” of res publica with “not only the eight-footed crab, but even the centipede.”15 This metaphorical analysis of the body politic constituted a discursive tradition: the thirteenth-century republican Ptolemy of Lucca,16 the late fourteenth-century philosopher Nicole Oresme,17 and the early fifteenth-century political author Christine de Pisan18 all made use of John’s metaphorical argument. The exalted status of the head, however, cannot be attributed to John of Salisbury alone: it was a motif of New Testament biblical language. It is widely known that the Church—the community of believers—was considered to be a body of which Christ is the head. The Pauline letters, in particular, the epistles to the Romans and Ephesians, are replete with bodily metaphors. The imagery of Christ or the pope as the head of the body (namely the Church) pervades medieval ecclesiology.19 Theologians and canonists made use of the bodily metaphor in a variety of ways. In the late thirteenth century, however, the primacy of the head was challenged by an alternative view: the superiority of the heart to the head. The source of this idea was newly rediscovered Aristotle. When Thomas Aquinas enquired into the headship of Christ in the Church, for instance, he discussed the view that Christ should be compared to the heart, not the head. The heart is the seat of senses, motions, and life, from which it could be inferred analogically that Christ should be compared to the heart; that is, He is not dependent on any members of the Church. Aquinas’ solution was eclectic: “The heart is a hidden member, whilst the head is an apparent one. The heart can signify the divinity of Christ or the Holy Spirit, whilst the head can signify Christ himself according to his visible nature, whose invisible nature of divinity flows in.”20 Clearly, Aquinas attempted to accommodate the new cardiocentric view without jettisoning the traditional biblical metaphor. The centrality of the heart indeed penetrated the political and ecclesiological discourse at the dawn of the fourteenth century. The well-known “papalist” theologian Giles of Rome (1243/47–1316), for example, elaborates his view of political leadership and government by reference to bodily metaphors, including the primacy of the head.21 According to Giles, the civil community was comparable to the human body. The body consists of diverse functions and movements of various members, which are regulated in a twofold way: one is reciprocal justice (iustitia commutativa) and the other is distributive justice (iustitia distributiva). The bodily members regulate each other to maintain order, which is the state of reciprocal justice. One member is affluent in one thing but may be deficient in others, in which case another member will provide, and vice versa. Thus, both deficiency and excess of each and every member will be reduced to the point of equilibrium. For

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example, feet can walk but do not move without direction from the head. The head can give commands to bodily members but cannot walk by itself. Hence, feet and head are mutually dependent. Likewise, the civil community has members with diverse functions who support each other to achieve a collectively sufficient life. In a civil community a member in affluence supports another in need; mutual help realizes reciprocal justice. However, all the members must be ordered by and to an organ, the heart, which is the fount of life and motions, and this is called the state of distributive justice.22 “A natural body cannot be sustained unless the heart infuses (the vital spirit) appropriately into members thereby maintaining its distributive justice. Likewise, a kingdom or a civic community cannot be maintained unless a king or a prince distributes honors and goods appropriately thereby maintaining distributive justice in it.”23 Mutually dependent bodily members are regulated by the principal organ: the heart. Similarly, Marsilius of Padua (1275/80–1342/3) had recourse to the cardiocentric view. In Discourse I of his work Defensor pacis (The Defender of the Peace), he discussed the formation of a civil community and the diversification of its functions therein. He explained that “the city and its parts, established in accordance with reason, are analogous to an animal and its parts perfectly formed in accordance with nature.”24 Referring to Aristotle’s De partibus animalibus (On the Parts of Animals) and Galen’s De foetuum formatione (On the Formation of the Foetus), he maintained that “a particular organic part of the animal is formed first in time and in nature, and within it a natural virtue or potential together with a certain heat as its active principle.” For Marsilius, the power and heat play a causative role in forming and differentiating various parts of the animal. The bodily part that is formed first is, according to Aristotle and “others of the more expert of the philosophers,”25 “the heart or something analogous to the heart” and is “more noble and more perfect in its qualities and characteristics than the other parts of the animal.”26 Marsilius compared the heart with government or “principate” (principatus). One part “which is analogous to the heart,” namely, civil government, is formed from “the soul of the universal body of the citizens or its prevailing part,” in which consists “a certain virtue or form with the active potential or authority” to establish the remaining parts of the political community. Government’s “virtue or form” is the law and its “active potential or authority” is the authority to judge and command advantageous or just sentences in civil terms.27 Thus, “the authority of principate granted to a particular man is analogous to the heat of the heart.”28 The functional pre-eminence of the head or the heart was not discussed only in the metaphorical discussion of the body politic. It was in fact one of the hotly debated topics in medical circles. As the teaching and research in medicine began to assume a scholastic modus operandi in the latter half of the thirteenth century,29 medical thinkers critically compared and attempted to

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reconcile conflicting texts of medical authorities, including Aristotle, Galen, and Avicenna. The debated medical issues included the origin of sperm, the existence of a female seed taking an active part in conception, and—most significantly for us—the respective role of the head (or the brain) and the heart.30 Political writers who made use of medical metaphors were probably familiar with the contemporary medical debate; indeed, Marsilius of Padua was a physician by training. Marsilius studied medicine with Peter of Abano, a leading medical scientist of the fourteenth century.31 Giles of Rome, too, was versed in medical discourse, as we shall see below. Before turning to medical debate in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, a few remarks on the conflicting authoritative texts may be required. As explained, one of the medical authorities, Aristotle, ascribed the functional primacy of the body to the heart on the grounds that from the heart the blood vessels spread to all the members of the body. The heart was also of primary importance because it is the first organ to form in the foetus. The heart is also believed to be situated in the center of the body, and provides the body with vital heat. The heat generated by the heart was considered to play an important role in the making of the foetus as well as in the production of pneuma that flows throughout the body.32 The brain, by contrast, is the coolest part of the body since it does not contain blood. The only function which he attributed to the brain is to regulate the body temperature by cooling the heart and the blood. The brain was thus limited to a thermo-regulatory function. The rival authority was Galen (129–199), a physician from Pergamum, who argued that there are three principal members in the body: the heart, the brain, and the liver. Galen maintained that three bodily systems revolved around the three principal organs: the nervous system stems from the brain, the arteries originate in the heart, and the veins come from the liver. Thus, the brain and the spinal cord, which form the nervous system, controls sense and motion, while the arteries and veins, which were not distinguished by Aristotle, constitute the circulatory system.33 The medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (980–1037) was well aware of the disagreement between Aristotle and Galen. Avicenna resolved this dispute by drawing a distinction between the perspectives of physicians and philosophers. He notes that many philosophers and physicians subscribe to Galen’s opinion. Thus Avicenna remarks: “Subtly demonstrated, the words of the Philosopher [Aristotle] are much nearer the truth, although the words of physicians are more manifest (magis manifestus) at first glance.”34 Avicenna considered that physicians who do not rely on sense experience alone but take philosophy seriously would agree with Aristotle. Although Avicenna acknowledged that for physicians it is immaterial whether all faculties are centred in the heart or each has its own separate centre, he decided that Aristotle should have the final word.

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These three views, as well as others, were transmitted to the medieval Latin West through Latin translation. One of the key figures in the translation of Arabic medical writings is Gerard of Cremona (fl. 1150–87 in Toledo, Spain). Gerard translated Galen’s Method of Healing, and he and his colleagues produced a translation of Avicenna’s gigantic Canon.35 Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy were translated in the early thirteenth century. Probably before 1220, Michael Scot translated three of the five treatises of the De animalibus—the Historia animalium, De partibus animalium, and De generatione animalium—into Latin.36 Both Michael Scot’s translations and William of Moerbeke’s rival versions circulated widely in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.37 Scholastic debate about discrepancies between the Aristotelian and the Galenic views began to simmer in the late thirteenth century. A number of leading experts in medicine subscribed to the Aristotelian position. Taddeo Alderotti (d.1295) of the University of Bologna, for instance, was clearly a loyal heir to the Aristotelian doctrine.38 Taddeo’s arguments revolved around the views of Aristotle and Avicenna by considering the heart to be the “principal member,” “ ‘first root’ of the virtues,” and “the principal instrument of operation” in the human body. He was an unambiguous Aristotelian, rejecting the view that the nerves have their origin in the brain and attributing their origin to the heart.39 As mentioned earlier, Giles of Rome was, like Marsilius of Padua, one of the medieval political thinkers who had a serious interest in medicine. He produced a medical treatise De formatione corporis in utero (On the Formation of the Body in the Uterus). Giles’s physiological views were largely Aristotelian and anti-Galenic. He drew on Aristotle and his followers extensively and favorably.40 For example, he referred to Averroes, who was, of course, an Aristotelian, to argue that the heart was the seat of nutritive virtue and the organ of final nourishment, thereby rejecting Galen’s view, which attributed this function to the liver. Giles explains that the stomach produces faeces, the liver removes waste material from the blood, and the heart completes the process of producing the pure blood with its nutritive function. “The blood purified by the liver is compared with the blood from the heart rather as must is to wine.”41 Giles also argued that the heart is the common principle of generation in every individual man and woman. It is from the heart that the male seeds, supported by the testes, gain their power of generation.42 This is also unmistakably an Aristotelian argument. Peter of Abano (c.1250–c.1315), who may have taught medicine to Marsilius of Padua, was one of the giants in late medieval medicine. His influential work, Conciliator differentiarum philosophicarum et medicarum (The Mediator of Differences between Philosophers and Physicians), written in 1303, attempted to reconcile over two hundred “differences” or disagreements between a via philosophorum and a via medicorum. One such issue or

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“difference” was whether principal bodily members are plural. Peter’s position is somewhat eclectic as he argued that the bodily organ could be called principal in two ways: fundamentally and primarily (radicaliter et primo) and in appearance and secondarily (manifestive et secundo). Fundamentally and primarily, there is only one principal organ, which is the heart. In the heart reside both soul and intellect. Clearly, Peter subscribed to Aristotelian physiology. In appearance and secondarily, however, the principal organs include the heart, the liver, and the brain, thereby accommodating the Galenic position.43 This way of reconciling the two positions resembles Avicenna. Peter argued for the primacy of the heart by using a theological analogy to the Trinity. Just as the Trinity consists of three (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), so the body consists of three principal organs: the heart, the brain, and the liver. But the Trinity can also be reduced to one: God. Similarly, the principal bodily organs can be reduced to one: the heart.44 More interestingly, Peter also employed a political analogy. He wrote that plurality is imperfect and results in confusion, and he compared this with ill disposition of plural governments.45 Similar metaphors can be found in the anatomical writing of Henri de Mondeville (d. c.1320), one of the pioneers of surgery in the early fourteenth century, who commented on the status of head and heart in the natural body. Mondeville discussed society by reference to the human body; he discussed social order in terms of the members of the body and compared social solidarity with anatomical cohesion. He addressed the question, “What part of the body represents the king as sovereign: the head or the heart?” Although Mondeville was aware that the king was often compared with the head, which in spatial terms occupies the highest position, he attributed the role of the heart to the king as the center of the body. In his view, “The heart is the principal organ par excellence ... It gives to all other members of the whole body vital blood, warmth and spirit. It is … found in the centre of the cavity of chest and in the centre of the entire chest as befits its role as the king in the center of his kingdom.”46 In comparing the centrality of the heart in the natural body with that of the king in the body politic, he did not fail to appeal to the authority of Aristotle. We have seen some key medical thinkers who subscribed to the Aristotelian view. The cardiocentric view, however, did not dominate medical scholarship. Some medical scientists were critical of the Aristotelian position and preferred the Galenic view. However, for the purpose of the present chapter, it suffices to point out that the emergence of the new metaphor of the body politic based on the cardiocentric image coincided with the medical debate over the question of the primacy of the head or the heart in the human body. And, indeed, some political thinkers were familiar with the contemporary medical debate. This suggests that medical knowledge provided the experiential basis for the new metaphorical language. The

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cardiocentric metaphor was not mere ornamental language. It was a mental representation at the interface of medicine and politics.

THE METAPHOR OF THE RULING OFFICE IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN Before the end of the eighteenth century, bodily or medical metaphors were widely used in Japanese political writings; the Japanese writers often drew parallels between rulership and the art of physicians, and more specifically between political rule and medical treatment. This may be ascribed to the close kinship between medicine and Confucianism; as Chu-Hsi Confucianism was adopted by the Tokugawa Shogun regime as the official form of orthodox learning, physicians assimilated Confucianism, thus producing a number of “Confucian physicians (jui).” By the end of the seventeenth century, it had become common that physicians lectured on Confucianism and Confucian scholars were versed in medicine.47 It had been widely acknowledged that the role of Confucian scholars was to explore government philosophically, while that of physicians was to heal illnesses: Confucian learning was regarded as the great art of ruling the body politic, while medicine the lesser art of ruling the natural body. The emergence of Confucian physicians facilitated the fusion of medicine and Confucianism. This seems to form the intellectual context in which medical metaphors were employed in political texts.48 However, the ways in which medical metaphors were deployed differed in some ways between medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan. We have seen that the most important functional part of the body politic was one of the major concerns in medieval European political texts. Cutting-edge anatomical and physiological knowledge was metaphorically transferred to the political context to vindicate the supremacy of either the “head” or the “heart” of the body politic. By contrast, Tokugawa Japanese political writings are characterized by the scarcity of anatomical or physiological metaphors: the question of which bodily part was most important in the body politic was of no significant concern. This may not be unconnected with the contemporary state of Japanese medicine. Anatomical and surgical interest in the human body was hardly existent in Japan until the middle of the eighteenth century.49 It was not until 1759 that Zoshi, the first anatomical treatise based on empirical observations of the dissected human body, was written by Yamawaki Toyo (1705– 62). Just over a decade later, Sugita Genpaku (1733–1817) was astonished by the accuracy of anatomical descriptions in Tafel Anatomia, a Dutch translation of a treatise on anatomy by a German doctor as he observed the dissection of an executed criminal. This led to a medical revolution in Japan:

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Genpaku and his colleagues Maeno Ryotaku (1723–1803) and Nakagawa Junan (1739–86) translated Tafel Anatomia. Completed in 1774, this work marked the dawn of the Westernization of Japanese medicine. Why did Japanese medical scientists not express interest in the interior of the human body until the middle of the eighteenth century? It has long been established that at least as early as eighth century, Japanese criminal law treated dismembering a dead body as one of the most heinous crimes. No statutes issued by Tokugawa government (bakufu or kogi) explicitly forbade the dissection of bodies; however, it was widely deemed a de facto crime.50 This forms an intriguing contrast to the medieval European practice of dismembering the bodies of kings and bishops.51 In addition, scepticism about the utility of anatomical knowledge lingered until the eighteenth century. Yoshimasu Todo, for instance, argued that human organs are as such when they are inhabited by the soul. The “soulless” organs are qualitatively different. Hence, the observation of dead organs will not contribute significantly to medical knowledge. The critics of the emerging anatomists were largely uninterested in the ultimate cause(s) of morbid states. Their attention was focused on symptoms. Indeed, no one would dissect a patient’s body to determine the pathological cause(s).52 Although anatomical interest was almost non-existent until the middle of the eighteenth century, this is not to say that Tokugawa Japanese intellectuals had no anatomical knowledge. Tokugawa Japanese learning was predominantly, if not exclusively, shaped through dialogue with classical Chinese philosophical texts, in which some discussion of anatomy can be found. Attention needs to be drawn to the fact that some classical Chinese philosophical texts address the issue of the most important part of the natural body, generally converging on the cardiocentric view. The best example can be found in the Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Internal Medicine. In response to the Yellow Emperor’s enquiry about the differing importance of various organs, Chi Po reportedly stated: “The heart is like the minister of the monarch who excels through insight and understanding.”53 Then, Chi Po explained the functional division of various organs by comparing lungs with “the symbol of the interpretation and conduct of the official jurisdiction,” the liver with “the function of a military leader who excels in his strategic planning,” and the stomach with “the official of the public granaries.”54 Guanzi, which bears the name of a minister of the state of Qi, Guan Zhong (d. 645 BCE), is made up of a number of Legalist writings which are predominantly on political topics. But it is also one of the earliest philosophical works which proposed the cardiocentric view. The book discusses the anatomical and physiological constitution of the body by means of a political metaphor: “In the body, the heart (心) holds the position of the prince. The functions of the nine apertures resemble the separate responsibilities of officials.”55 Guanzi paraphrases this by maintaining that

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the “nine apertures,” including ears and eyes, will function appropriately when the “heart” does not interfere with their activities. In other words, “if a person’s heart is filled with desires, his eyes will not see when things pass by, nor will his ears hear when there are sounds.” Thus, Guanzi asserts that “the art of the heart lies in controlling the apertures through nonassertiveness,” adding that this “statement refers to it as ‘prince.’” 56 Similarly, Xunzi (c. 339 BCE–c. 235 BCE) also asserted that the heart controlled the entire body. When the work of nature has been established and its achievements perfected, the physical form becomes whole and the spirit is born. Love and hate, delight and anger, sorrow and joy, are stored within—these are described as “the emotions given us by nature.” The eye, ear, nose, mouth, and body each have the capacity to provide sense contact, but their capacities were not interchangeable—these are termed “the faculties given us by nature.” The heart/mind (心) that dwells within the central cavity is used to control the five faculties—it is called “the lord provided by nature.”57

This cardiocentric view is restated elsewhere: The heart/mind (心) is the lord of the body and master of the spiritual intelligence. It issues commands but does not receive commands. On its own authority it forbids or orders, renounces or selects, initiates or stops. Thus the mouth can be forced to be silent or to speak. The body can be forced to crouch down or stretched out. But the heart/mind cannot be forced to change its ideas.58

The supremacy of the head or the brain never became the mainstream anatomical view of classical Chinese philosophers.59 Liezi of the Warring States period (403 BCE–221 BCE) did not manifestly reject the primacy of the brain or assert the supremacy of the heart. However, an anecdote he included in his writings interestingly omitted the brain as a significant functional part of the body. The anecdote tells the story of an artisan called Yan Shi, who had an opportunity to meet with King Mu of Zhou. When he was asked what he could do, the artisan replied that he could make anything he was requested to and volunteered to show the king an artificial dancer he produced. King Mu was impressed by the dancer’s ingenuity, since it moved as if it were a real person. But at the end of the performance, when the artificial dancer winked at the king’s concubine, the king was infuriated and wanted to kill Yan Shi, who, in fear, immediately dissembled the dancer to show to the king it was in fact “a mixture of leather, wood, glue, paint, chalk, charcoal, cinnabar and blue mineral.” The king confirmed that the bodily parts including “the internal organs—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, intestines, and stomach—as well as muscles, bones, limbs, skin, hair, and teeth” were all artificial. The king realized that the power of speech

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was lost when the heart was taken out; the power of vision was lost when the kidneys were removed; and the dancer could not move any more when the liver was taken out.60 This anecdote attributed the faculties of speech, vision, and locomotion to the heart, liver, and kidneys respectively and, I emphasize, does not mention the brain at all. This clearly illustrates the insignificance of the brain in classical Chinese medicine.61 Since the classical Chinese philosophy was paradigmatic to the Tokugawa Japanese learning, it can be argued that these medical metaphors were widely known to Tokugawa intellectuals. Indeed, the classical Chinese cardiocentric view was assimilated by some Tokugawa Japanese intellectuals. Miura Baien’s extensive discussion of the human body’s anatomical structure includes the anatomical description of the heart, which is similar to that of the Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Medicine. Baien analogized the heart with the princely palace of the body politic: “The human body embraces the heart and the stomach, which establish themselves as the headquarters that control a hundred offices. The headquarters issue decrees and the offices abide by them … the heart is the solemn palace which, by nature, only receives things. There exists god.”62 Kaibara Ekiken discussed the primacy of the heart in his Yamato Zokukun, a treatise on ethics. He wrote: “It is said that the heart is the heavenly lord, which rules the body. Ears, eyes, mouth, nose and the body are called five sensorial organs. It is therefore natural for the heart to use the five sensorial organs as if the lord rules his subjects.”63 If the heart becomes dysfunctional, it is the five sensorial organs that would rule the heart. Ekiken’s text, which asserts the hierarchical political order, strikingly resembles Xunzi’s. Clearly, Tokugawa Japanese intellectuals’ metaphorical use of the cardiocentric view echoes the classical Chinese position. Modelled on Chinese metaphorical language, Baien deployed the political metaphor in the context of medical discourse in order to clarify the functional status of the heart. As far as I can determine, however, there is no converse example. I have found no instance where Tokugawa Japanese political writers compared metaphorically the ruling office to the heart. Perhaps the only possible exception is the seventeenth-century military philosopher Yamaga Soko. A physician’s son, Soko discussed the division of functional offices in society and argued that “the three classes of people (agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial population) are comparable to the body with members and the lord is to the mind and spirit (心気).”64 As the classical Chinese texts we examined earlier showed, the heart and the mind are one word (心). Since the heart was considered to be the seat of the mind and spirit, the heart as the physical organ and the mind which is normally distinguished from the body cannot be semantically separated. Soko’s reference to “the mind and spirit,” by contrast, appears to be based on the mind/body dichotomy rather than the classical Chinese cardiocentric view.

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This is not to say that Tokugawa political writers deployed another type of bodily metaphor in their discussion of the status of the ruling office within the body politic. The ruler was not compared metaphorically even to the head. The absence of such bodily metaphor seems to suggest that the metaphorical association between the human body and the political community was weak, if not non-existent, among Tokugawa thinkers. Even Ogyu Sorai, whose political works are replete with medical metaphors, did not compare the body politic with the natural body. In the sphere of metaphorical imageries, Tokugawa Japanese political writings generally revolved around the question of rulership—the personality and abilities of the ruler—rather than the non-personal function of the ruling offices and their mutual relationships. However, we know that “modern” (post-Tokugawa) Japanese political discourse used bodily metaphors. Perhaps the best known is Minobe Tatsukichi’s “emperor-organ” theory. So when did the bodily metaphor first emerge in Japanese political writings? The metaphorical reference to the most important bodily part can be traced back to the turn of the nineteenth century. For instance, Takano Choei (1804–1850), who was trained in Dutch medicine, was dismissive of medical discussions of the bodily constitution based on classical Chinese medicine on the grounds that classical Chinese theories were mere speculations which were not grounded in empirical observations. A firm believer in Western medicine, Choei was also a commentator on current affairs. In a treatise in which he discussed Japan’s trade policies in the eighteenth century, he wrote: Cupper is comparable to the bones in the human body. It is not the same as the hair which grows again after it is shaven. Rather it cannot be recovered once it is lost. Cupper can be compared to the head and the foreign products to the legs. The human body can survive without legs as long as the head is present; however, I have not heard of anyone who survived without the head. Hence, it is not reasonable to exchange the head with the leg.65

Choei adds that he is citing the view of “an administrator,” who is probably Arai Hakuseki, a celebrated eighteenth-century philosopher, historian, and political advisor. However, Choei’s reference to “the head and the leg” cannot be found in Hakuseki’s text. Hakuseki wrote: “The emergence of gold and silver between heaven and earth is comparable to the bones, while the other precious goods are to blood, flesh, skin and hair.”66 The metaphor of the head and the leg was probably Choei’s addition. The identification of the head as the indispensable bodily part was thus introduced into Japanese political language. However, this usage relates to the irretrievability of natural resources, not to the structure of the body politic, and the head is not associated with the most important organ of government, but with the irreplaceable

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significance of some natural resources for the body/community. As far as I can determine, the metaphorical primacy of the head in the body politic was first acknowledged by the Confucian physician Hirose Tanso (1782– 1856).67 His Ugen (Circular Talk) is an anonymously published critique of current affairs. In it, Tanso compared the body politic to the human body. The lord is comparable to the head, the subjects to the belly, and the people to the legs. Thus, Tanso maintained that the body whose belly is fat can fall easily if the legs are weak, thereby attacking the misery of the commoners of his time.68 Tanso was trained in Confucianism and other Chinese philosophical traditions in a somewhat eclectic fashion and was not immersed in the emerging Western learning; nonetheless, he did not relate the ruler to the heart but to the head. Tanso’s association of the lord with the head, not the heart, is clearly a break from the traditional language. Attention should be drawn to the fact that Tanso was an isolated case in which the metaphorical primacy of the head was asserted in Tokugawa political writings. This is intriguing in the light of the swift assimilation of Western medicine in late Tokugawa era. For example, we can discern the significant impact of Western medicine on Miura Baien’s natural philosophical work. Baien was well versed in both Japanese and Western medicine by contemporary standards. In Zeigo, the work in which he compared the heart with the princely palace, he quotes Matteo Ricci’s short treatise on physics in order to suggest a Galenic view: the most important bodily parts are the heart, the brain, and the liver. Baien was critical of both the traditional Chinese and the Western views, opting for a via media: “The heart is the government of the Spirit and the head is the office building of the government.”69 The heart is the most important organ of the natural body, which is represented by the head externally. While Baien attributed primacy to the heart in a conventional fashion, other medical thinkers of late Tokugawa Japan departed from the traditional view. Sugita Genpaku’s essay on medical studies asserts the existence of the nerve system and its importance in human physiology. After stating that the nerves stem from the brain, he wrote: “The Chinese maintain that the Spirit resides in the heart; however, the Dutch consider that the heart is the root of blood circulation, while the brain is the seat of the Spirit.”70 The attribution of the directive function to the brain, however, is not Galenic. In the middle of the seventeenth century, medieval and Renaissance anatomy and physiology, which operated largely, if not exclusively, within the Galenic framework, had been subject to a major revision. The Anatomy of the Brain (1664) by Thomas Willis (1621–75) argues in light of his comparative studies of the anatomy of many different animals that the animal spirits flow through the different part of the brain’s substance and evoked and transmitted ideas, sensations, memory and imagination.71 Since Willis’ physiological discovery, medieval views were swept away. Genpaku’s

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anatomical and physiological knowledge derives from Western medicine after Willis’ new direction in anatomical studies of the brain. After Genpaku’s translation, the Western anatomical and physiological views seriously undermined the classical Chinese cardiocentric view. Takano Choei, for example, noted in his anatomical treatise, Kanyo Naikeisetsu, that the Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Internal Medicine’s physiological description of the heart contradicts the established fact of blood circulation. Choei subscribed to the Western view that the human spirit and consciousness reside in the brain. He declared that the idea that “the heart is comparable to the prince from which the spirit flows” is “absolutely groundless.”72 After Genpaku’s translation of Tafel anatomia, a number of private schools for Dutch studies emerged, and the Tokugawa government also established a new school (Kaiseijo) where not only the Dutch language, but also a variety of scientific and technological disciplines, including engineering, mathematics, printing, and most importantly military technology, were taught. The arrival of Western learning in the nineteenth century was a deluge that transformed the Japanese intellectual landscape. However, the Western anatomical and physiological views did not penetrate the metaphorical imageries of politics in post-Tokugawa Japan. Prevailing was a conceptual metaphor that “political rule is medical treatment.” I mentioned earlier that the Tokugawa Japanese political thinkers often explained the role of ruler in terms of physicians who treat the sick body. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901), who was trained in Dutch medicine by Ogata Koan, discussed the difference of purposes between politicians and social scientists by stating that “the treatment of maladies pertains to politicians … The task I take up [as an academic] is to show the state of malaise.”73 Similarly, Kato Hiroyuki (1836–1916), the proponent of state organicism, wrote: A physician gives a patient treatment in order to restore his or her health. The treatment for this purpose is the art of medicine. The first step of this is to examine the patient and decipher the nature of illness. However, if the physician fails to grasp it correctly, any treatment given to the patient would be useless and, in the worst case, could kill the patient. Ruling a state is similar to this. One must know the basics of ruling which are not very difficult to grasp; that is, to know human nature and the law of nature which created government. Ruling without the knowledge of human nature and the law of nature is comparable to a quack’s failure to grasp the nature of illness …74

The metaphorical parallel between politics and medicine was thus widely seen in the sphere of the arts of ruling and treatment during and after the Tokugawa era. If the literal political language of Tokugawa political writings is compared with that of the “enlightened” thinkers, including Fukuzawa and Kato, the

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shift from classical Chinese language to modern Western language is apparent. The appeal to the Confucian ideas of the Way (道) and Benevolence (仁) gave way to the Western language of rights and liberty.75 The intellectual leaders of the Japanese “Enlightenment” translated and assimilated Western political vocabulary into Japanese political language. However, the medical metaphor of politics did not change in and after the Tokugawa period. This suggests that the “embodied” notion of the political community failed to become part of the Japanese metaphorical images of politics. The body politic as the embodiment of the political community is not a universal conceptual metaphor.

CONCLUSION I have argued, on the basis of various examples, that late medieval medical scientists subscribed to the Aristotelian primacy of the heart, which provided a new conceptual metaphor: that the ruler of a political community is the heart of the human body. Moreover, I have attempted to demonstrate that a similar conceptual metaphor of the body politic was hardly existent in Tokugawa Japan and was not assimilated even after the introduction of Western anatomical and physiological knowledge. While medical metaphors are commonplace across cultures, the embodied concept of the political community which is prevalent in European political discourse did not gain currency among Japanese political thinkers, thus rejecting the universality of the metaphor of the “body” politic. Why did the metaphor of the body politic fail to penetrate Japanese political discourse? Zoltán Kövecses argued recently that the causes of metaphor variation can be categorized into two: one is differential experience and the other is differential cognitive preferences or styles. What concerns us here is the former: differential experience. We all live in a world which, we believe, consists of “ourselves (our body), the physical environment and the cultural context.”76 We perceive and grasp some aspects of the world in which we live, and these aspects influence the metaphors we use. We have already seen the case studies of the metaphor of “anger” across cultures. While both the Euro-American and the Chinese conceptualization of anger share a medical context, the marked difference in medical concepts generates metaphor variation. The absence of the anatomical metaphor in Japanese political discourse suggests the lack of a “cultural context” of anatomical knowledge. Of course, this is not to say that Japanese political thinkers lacked anatomical knowledge. We have already seen that in the Tokugawa era, many Japanese intellectuals were probably familiar with classical Chinese anatomical discussions and that, in the post-Tokugawa era, a number of “enlightened”

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thinkers were actually trained in Western medicine. The point is that anatomical knowledge did not become part of the common cultural imagination for Japanese political conceptualization. Indeed, in the Tokugawa period, dissection had long been a taboo and, even after the translation of Tafel anatomia, traditional schools of medicine were sceptical of the utility of anatomical knowledge derived from dissections. The aversion to anatomy was deep seated in Japanese medical culture, a cultural situation that medieval Europeans did not experience. This probably explains why the Western anatomical metaphor did not have any impact on medical metaphors in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji Japan. A number of historical studies in the cross-cultural fertilization of ideas highlight the transformation of the original concept in a foreign intellectual and/or social context. The medieval philosopher Peter Abelard described the translation of ideas from one language or context to another by means of a metaphor: pouring water from one pitcher to another always leaves a few drops behind. Some of the semantic elements of the original concept may be “lost in translation.” But translation may also add new semantic elements to, or may entirely transform, the original concept. The present chapter shows that when Japanese thinkers translated the Western political discourse on rulership as well as the Western anatomical discourse, they did not assimilate the “embodied” concept of the political community. Using a translated concept is one thing; assimilating the mental representation of the embodied images that underpins the concept is quite another. The cognitive linguistic approach to metaphorical language of the past political texts may help to shed light on the multi-level conceptual process in the cross-cultural dialogue between the differing traditions of political ideas.

NOTES 1. Takashi Shogimen, “‘Head or Heart?’ Revisited: Physiology and Political Thought in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” History of Political Thought 28 (2007): 208–29. 2. Takashi Shogimen, “Treating the Body Politic: Medical Metaphor of Political Rule in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan,” Review of Politics 70 (2008): 77–104. 3. Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4. The literature on cognitive linguistic theories of metaphor is enormous. In addition to some key texts which I cite below, the important works include Gilles Fauconnier, Mental Spaces (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press., 1985); Fauconnier, Mappings in Language and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: University

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of Chicago Press, 1987); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh (New York: Basic Books, 1999); and Andrew Ortony, ed., Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For a useful discussion of new theories of metaphor and their implications for the history of ideas, see Jeffery Zavadil’s PhD dissertation “Anatomy of the Body Politic: Organic Metaphors in Ancient and Medieval Political Thought” (Tempe: Arizona State University, Department of Political Science 2006). 4. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 6. 5. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 83. 6. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 66–67. 7. Kövecses, Metaphor, 69. 8. Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 231–58. 9. Dirk Geeraerts and Stefan Grondelaers, “Looking Back at Anger: Cultural Traditions and Metaphorical Patterns,” in Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World, ed. John R. Taylor and Robert E. MacLaury (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995), 153–79. 10. Yu Ning, “Metaphorical Expression of Anger and Happiness in English and Chinese,” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10 (1995): 223–45. 11. For a fuller account of this section, see Shogimen, “‘Head or Heart?’ Revisited.” 12. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), V, ii, 67. 13. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, V, ix, 81. 14. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, V, ii, 67. cf. VI, xx, 125–6. 15. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VI, xx, 126. 16. Ptolemy of Lucca, On the Government of Rulers: De Regimine Principum, trans. James Blythe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). 17. Nicole Oresme, De Moneta, ed. Charles Johnson (London: Nelson, 1956), 42–46. 18. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Body Politic, ed. Kate Langdon Forhan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 4. For Christine’s use of bodily analogies, see Kate Langdon Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), especially Chapter 3. 19. It has been debated, however, whether Christ was the head (caput) due to his divinity or to his humanity. See Yves Congar, L’ecclésiologie du haut Moyen-Age (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1968), 83. For a classic account of bodily metaphor in medieval ecclesiology, see Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: the Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1998). 20. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 29, a. 4, in Opera omnia 22 (Rome: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1973), 860; Aquinas, Commento alle Sentenze di Pietro Lombardo, 10 vols. (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 1999–2001), Book 3, Distinc, 1–22, 682 21. Tilman Struve, Die Entwicklung der organologischen Staatsauffassung im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1978), 185.

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22. Giles of Rome, De regimine principum (Venice, 1502), I, ii, 11. Also Struve, Die Entwicklung der organologischen Staatsauffassung im Mittelalter, 184–85. 23. Giles of Rome, De regimine principum, I, ii, 11. 24. Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacis, ed. C. W. Previté-Orton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), I, xv, 5. The translation is adapted from Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace, ed. and trans. Annabel Brett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 90. 25. Annabel Brett notes that Marsilius’s discussion of the embryo resembles the view of his contemporary Paduan medical scientist Dino del Garbo. See Marsilius, The Defender of the Peace, 91, n. 6. 26. Marsilius, The Defender of the Peace, 91. 27. Marsilius, The Defender of the Peace, 92. 28. Marsilius, The Defender of the Peace, 93. 29. On the reception of scholastic method in medical research and teaching, see for instance Per-Gunner Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy: A Study of Commentaries on Galen’s Tegni (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1982) and Luis GarcíaBallester, “The Construction of a New Form of Learning and Practicing Medicine in Medieval Latin Europe,” Science in Context 8 (1995): 75–102, reproduced in GarcíaBallester, Galen and Galenism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 30. Danielle Jacquart, “Medieval Scholasticism,” in Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. Mirko D. Grmek (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 197–240, especially 216. 31. Nancy Siraisi, Arts and Sciences at Padua: The Studium of Padua before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973), 163–65. 32. Julius Rocca, Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculation in the Second Century A.D. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 28–30. 33. Nancy G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 186–187. On Galen’s physiology, see especially Rocca, Galen on the Brain and Rudolph E. Siegel, Galen’s System of Physiology and Medicine (Basel: Karger, 1968). 34. Avicenna, Avicennae Arabum medicorum principis (Venice, 1608), I, 1, 5, 1, 30. 35. Vivian Nutton, “Medieval Western Europe, 1000–1500,” in The Western Medical Tradition 800 BC to AD 1800, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad, Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter and Andrew Wear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 143. 36. Bernard G. Dod, “Aristotelis Latinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 48. 37. Dod, “Aristotelis Latinus,” 52. 38. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils, 192. 39. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils. 40. M. Anthony Hewson, Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Conception (London: Athlone Press, 1975), 52–53, 241. 41. Hewson, Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Conception, 75. 42. Hewson, Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Conception, 89. 43. Peter of Abano, Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et precipue medicorum (Venice, 1504), f. 56r. On Peter’s biography, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic

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and Experimental Science, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1923), ch. 70, especially 875–84. 44. Peter of Abano, Conciliator, f. 56v. 45. Peter of Abano, Conciliator, ff. 55v–56r. 46. Henri de Mondeville, Chirurgie de Maître Henri de Mondeville, ed. and trans. E. Nicaise (Paris: F. Alcan, 1893), 60. 47. Kiyoshi Yabuuchi, “Chugoku Kagaku no Dento to Tokushoku,” in Chugoku no Kagaku, ed. Yabuuchi (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1979), 91. 48. The standard work on Confucian physicians remains Yasuchika Anzai, Nihon Jui Kenkyu (Tokyo: Seishisha, 1943). 49. Ilza Veith ascribes the dearth of surgical practice in China before the arrival of Western medicine to “the Confucian tents of the sacredness of the body, which counteracted any tendency toward the development of anatomical studies and the practice of surgery.” Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wên: The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 3. 50. Takashi Okamoto, Kaibo Kotohajime (Tokyo: Doseisha, 1988), 9–10. 51. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, “The Corpse in the Middle Ages: The Problem of the Division of the Body,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), 327–41. 52. Okamoto, Kaibo Kotohajime, 32–40. 53. Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wên, 133. 54. Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wên, 133. Note that in this passage there is no reference to the brain. 55. Guanzi: Political Economic and Philosophical Essays from Early China, 2 vols., trans. W. Allyn Ricket (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), vol. 2, 71. I replaced the original translated term “the mind” with “the heart” in order to clarify the cardio-centric view. The original Chinese character of the term (心) refers both to the mind and to the heart as the physical organ. 56. Guanzi, vol. 2, 75. 57. Xunzi: A translation and Study of the Complete Works, vol. 3: Books 17–32, ed. and trans. John Knoblock (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 16. 58. Xunzi, vol. 3, 105. 59. The cardiocentric view persisted well into the twelfth century. Li Gang (1083– 1140), a political leader of the Song dynasty, compared the human body to the body politic and wrote: “The royal house inside is the heart, offices outside reaching in four directions are the four limbs, and the laws, rules, and penal codes are the veins and arteries” (as cited in Zhang Longxi, Unexpected Affinities: Reading Across Cultures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 69. I am grateful to Cary Nederman for this reference. 60. Liezi, trans. Linag Xiaopeng and Li Jianguo (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2005), 129–31. 61. Yoshimitsu Kano, Chugoku Igaku no Tanjo (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1987), 153–55. 62. Miura Baien, Zeigo, in Miura Baien, ed. Keiji Yamada (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1984), 516–17. 63. Kaibara Ekiken, Yamato Zokukun, in Kaibara Ekiken, ed. Matsuda Michio (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1983), 109.

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64. Yamaga Soko, Yamaga Gorui, in Yamaga Soko, ed. Tsuguo Tahara (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1983), 144. 65. Takano Choei, Chihiichijo, in Watanabe Kazan, Takano Choei, ed. Shosuke Sato (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1984), 360. 66. Arai Hakuseki, Honcho Hoka Tsuyo Jiryaku, in Arai Hakuseki Zenshu vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 1906), 673. I am grateful to Ellen Gardner Nakamura for this reference. 67. Anzai, Nihon Jui Kenkyu, 377–82. 68. Hirose Tanso, Ugen, in Nihon Shiso Taikei 38: Kinsei Seidoron, ed. Tatsuya Naramoto (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1976), 279–44. 69. Baien, Zeigo, 553. 70. Sugita Genpaku, Kaitaishinsho Zengo, in Sugita Genpaku, Hiraga Gennai, Shiba Kokan, ed. Toru Haga (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1984), 187. 71. Conrad et al., The Western Medical Tradition, 347. 72. Takano Choei, Kanyo Naikeisetsu, in Watanabe Kazan, Takano Choei, ed. Sato, 269. 73. Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1962), 214. 74. Kato Hiroyuki, Shinsei Taii, in Nishi Amane, Kato Hiroyuki, ed. Michiari Uete (Tokyo, Chuo Koronsha), 349. 75. See, for instance, Douglas Howland, Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002). 76. Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture, 232.

14 The Meiji Intelligentsia’s Riposte Alistair Swale

RESTORATION AND WESTERNIZATION The phase of reform that ensued in the wake of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 has often been broadly characterized as a period of “Westernization” in Japan. One justification for this assessment stems from the “civilization and progress” movement which swept the urban literati and popular media in the early 1870s.1 The revolution in manners that ensued following the banning of the bearing of swords and the enforced standardization of European hairstyles was, in one sense, a key element in the government’s campaign to cultivate an outward appearance of conformity to the midnineteenth century cult of progress. Nevertheless, it was also to some degree a spontaneous popular movement in that it formed a part of the broader process of unpacking the content of Western learning and culture and exploring how it might impact on the indigenous intellectual and moral outlook. It was never a “one-way street” but a far more nuanced dialogue.2 The very first tentative attempts at intellectual “dialogue” between Japanese literates and the West were essentially conducted by Customs bureaucrats and other officials of the Bakufu (the military regime of the Shogun) in the various trading ports. Openly enthusiastic academic investigation, or what one might term genuine intellectual interlocution, was regarded as academically and politically suspect, to say the very least, and had the potential for serious threat to life and limb. Even when that dialogue had proceeded a considerable distance in diplomatic terms, the residual reluctance to acknowledge that any kind of effectual “interaction” had occurred in the first place was a continuing indicator that genuine dialogue was some way off. As Beasley’s notably detailed and evocative account of the 301

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Bakufu-sponsored tours of the West prior to the Restoration persuasively portrays, the interaction between Bakufu intelligentsia and their Western counterparts was, to paraphrase Fukuzawa Yukichi who was at that time a translator accompanying the mission, an exercise in parading the exclusionist mentality throughout the civilized world.3

PERIPHERY AND CENTER IN RESTORATION JAPAN Ironically, the first genuine cases of “dialogue” seem to have occurred only when they were least regulated or stage-managed by central government. Much has been made of the initiatives of both the Satsuma and Choshu clans, two of the so-called Tozama clans which, as former archenemies of the Tokugawa Shogunate, had been geographically relocated to the country’s southern periphery in the early 1600s. Their attempts to send their “best and brightest” to foreign lands in order to gauge the true dimensions of the outside world despite Bakufu prohibitions has been taken as evidence of a special sagaciousness and perspicacity inherent in their aim of realizing the project of Imperial Restoration. While there was indeed a great deal of foresight evidenced by such initiatives, the simple fact of the case was that an excessively “hands-on” regimentation of the Tozama clans’ tours of study was quite impossible due to the fact that the clan governments had to maintain some convincing semblance that the initiatives were not being promoted by the highest levels of the clan governments themselves. Consequently, the first Satsuma contingent consisted of young men entrusted into the hands of cooperative English patrons who coordinated on the whole the transportation, lodging, and programs of study for the students. The Choshu contingent was less “connected” than the Satsuma clique and did not have things so thoroughly laid on for them (Ito Hirobumi had to work his passage and spent part of that time lashed to the fittings above deck when suffering from seasickness). The Bakufu students, by stark contrast, were well catered for but were ultimately restricted by massed cohabitations and secured away from foreigners through strict curfews and the ever-vigilant eye of their Bakufu chaperones. It is difficult not to feel a keen sympathy for the youths packed off illicitly with false identities on a British postal steamer, quietly stowing away their traditional dress and their traditional emblems of honor, the two swords, and donning pre-ordered English suits with hats to continue with the journey. Their first port of call, Hong Kong, provided an abject picture of what subjection to the Western maritime powers and “world trade” could mean in practice for the “coolie” workforce of the East. Further stopovers in India and the Suez would temper the sense of dread with a sense of genuine awe

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at the sheer scale of what the British Empire then signified on the world stage.4 Hating or fearing the West was in one sense easy, but this spectacle demanded something more intellectually informed and, in quite a different sense, more dynamic and incisive. The Satsuma students in London were to discover that their hosts and teachers could be engaged with more openness and criticism than previously thought possible even with their own countrymen. This did not mean that the English did not have prejudices; it simply meant that you could force an English intellectual into serious debate if you could hang your hat on their sacred totem of “science.” Indeed, the Western intelligentsia were clearly throwing themselves into an agonizing conundrum over the implications of scientific knowledge through the explosive impact of the theory of evolution. The despotic or autocratic response would be simply to ban the theory, and then there would be no more problem. Not so in this other intellectual milieu. An extraordinary number of the students dispatched to the West by the Satsuma and Choshu governments returned to play a significant role in the Restoration of 1868 or would eventually take up high office in the new government. Ito Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, Mori Arinori, Yoshida Kiyonari, Terashima Munenori were just some of the most significant figures to become involved in the shaping of the nation’s foreign policy and internal reform. It was Ito Hirobumi, who later became Japan’s first cabinet-based Prime Minister in 1885, and Mori Arinori, Ito’s first Minister of Education, who were instrumental in persuading the new government of the need to dispatch a high-ranking delegation to the United States and Europe not only to build diplomatic credibility but also to embark on an exercise of extensive investigation of Western institutions and social customs. The Iwakura Mission, named after Iwakura Tomomi, who was the court aristocrat appointed to lead the delegation, was a turn-around from the earlier practice of traveling through foreign nations while attempting to maintain a social cocoon. Kume Kunitaka’s detailed record describes, on the one hand, an endless stream of formal welcomes and entertainments interspersed, on the other, with a vigorous attempt to explore and document in detail every technical and social aspect of the society being visited. Upon the Mission’s return, the results were collated and eventually published as a formal record. There was no apology for the initiative; the act of cultural exploration was being actively and vigorously embraced (even by the Emperor himself, if the photographs of the young Sovereign in Westernstyle regalia were to be taken in their explicit aspect). It was no accident, then that the broad impact of this initiative was to emerge in the form of a “civilization and progress” movement that was partly a governmentsponsored program of reeducation and partly a fever of enthusiasm at a very prosaic and urbane level for entertaining novelty.

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CIVILIZATION, PROGRESS AND THE MEIROKU SOCIETY Within the broader “civilization and progress” movement, the activities of the Meiroku Society have been attributed with a central significance with regard to the promotion of the Westernization policy. The Society took its name from a reference to the sixth year of the reign of the Emperor Meiji and was established by Mori Arinori in 1873 after a posting to the United States as Japan’s Charge d’Affairs in Washington. Most of the members had been scholars of Western Learning (Yogaku in Japanese) which was a field of highly managed study of all things “barbarian” in Bakufu institutions prior to the Restoration. Though hitting upon difficult times professionally in the lead-up to and resolution of the Restoration, they were nonetheless severally rehabilitated within the new regime as employees of the government. They were certainly the leading experts in things Western at that time, and so it has been assumed that their activities, both as a regularly convening Society and as the publisher of the Society’s Meiroku Journal, were commensurably significant.5 The scholarship of Huish and Kinmonth has done much to qualify this perception; Huish was particularly concerned to assert (correctly) the significance of the Society as part of a much broader media milieu where the Meiroku Society was merely one player. Kinmonth has done a great service in painstakingly quantifying the contribution of the great “luminary” of the Society, Fukuzawa Yukichi, by (again correctly) emphasizing the largely post factum exaggeration of his role in the group and to some extent even his own significance within the movement as a whole.6 While accepting these qualifications, it can still be argued that the Meiroku Society was particularly noteworthy because of its singular significance as a vehicle for expressing the views of a variety of “establishment” intellectuals. Some were the elites of Western Learning who owed their status to achievements attained well before the Restoration of 1868; others were up and coming scholars or bureaucrats whose rise to eminence was spurred by their connections to the newly dominant Satsuma and Choshu Clans. It was actually the former group (including Fukuzawa for that matter) who were numerically dominant, while the other “connected” members were in a relative minority. Ironically, although both groups were to remain influential in national politics and cultural affairs, it was arguably the former Bakufu-connected group that came to have the greater influence in the long run. The most well-connected member to the Satsuma clan, Mori Arinori, certainly went on to become Ito Hirobumi’s Education Minister, but this needs to be considered alongside the activities of the former members of the Bakufu intelligentsia such as Kato Hiroyuki (the first President of Tokyo Imperial University), Nishimura Shigeki (a Neo-Confucianist with strong informal links to both the Imperial Household and the national

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educational bureaucracy) along with Nishi Amane (one of the Meiroku Society’s key members who went on to pen “The Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors”).7 It has been commonplace to attribute the latter “conservative turn” in the writings of all these members to some inexplicable “change of heart,” a betrayal of sorts to the Western ideals that they were supposed to have espoused earlier. Yet it is arguable that the espousal of the Western intellectual tradition was never as full-hearted as is supposed; a degree of ambivalence toward Western political and moral philosophy was always evident even in their earliest writings. The “civilization and progress” phase alluded to was in fact a key period of experiment and self-clarification which actually facilitated the conclusion that the Western philosophical outlook, essentially a classical Enlightenment position that embraced individualism, rationalism and natural rights, could be substantially questioned and/or rejected.8 It might be tempting to suggest that the rejection of the Enlightenment outlook was due to a lack of understanding on the part of the Japanese intelligentsia. Yet the Meiroku Journal reveals that their gaze was more rigorous and ambiguous than has been generally countenanced. The contributions of the various members of the Meiroku Society provide an important indication of how the process of dialogue with the Western philosophical oeuvre played out, the weaknesses it exposed, and the possibility of alternatives that may well be unpalatable to the Western outlook (if indeed such a holistic outlook does exist in the sense of the gospel of Enlightenment humanism and rationalism).

INTELLECTUAL DIALOGUE: ADAPTATION AND RAPPROCHEMENT The quality of the various contributions varied enormously. If we take as our standard the degree to which a writer was able to appropriate the Western oeuvre and employ it creatively and constructively within the Japanese context, the work of Nishi Amane is perhaps some of the least rewarding. Nishi was one of the first official students dispatched by the Bakufu to undertake a formal course of instruction at a Western institution of learning, Leiden University. Nishi’s forte seemed to be more in collating knowledge with useful military applications than in turning his substantial training in philosophical reasoning to good effect in commenting on Japanese affairs. Tsuda Mamichi, who studied with Nishi in Leiden at the same time, was ultimately to demonstrate that he was able to graduate from this rather stilted application of Western Learning, although in the pages of the Meiroku Journal he comes across as a more or less unreconstructed economic liberal of the British persuasion.9

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Nakamura Masanao and Fukuzawa Yukichi were intriguing examples of less well-connected Bakufu scholars who, by dent of sheer precocious talent in public communication, were able to rise to otherwise untenable status and financial success through their writing. Even so, Nakamura comes across, in the pages of the Meiroku Journal at least, as someone who still regarded a generous smattering of classical Chinese references as the indispensable mark of a genuine scholar (he even wrote an article admonishing his peers not to denigrate classical Chinese scholarship!). Yet it is his highly successful translation of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty that secured the popular image of him as a major liberal democratic figure of the early Meiji period.10 Fukuzawa Yukichi, by contrast, was a very modern literary character; he understood that Western Learning, when packaged the right way, was potentially a highly profitable source of publishing income, as his bestselling book Gakumon no Susume (An Advancement of Learning) attests to. He also perceived very early on how the Japanese language would need to be modified to enable more accessible and critically robust forms of intellectual expression. His contributions to the Meiroku Journal (which number only three in total as it turns out) exhibit a vigor of intellect and expression rarely seen in the work of the other contributors. But did he contribute the most original insights or responses to the Western oeuvre? In most cases this is debatable. There was arguably less genuine dialogue due to the earlier (Bakufu-imposed) limitations on his Western experience and/or an inability to perceive the need to critically engage with the Western works on offer in light of Japan’s long-term public policy needs (not the same thing as meeting the Japanese readership’s demands). Even Fukuzawa has been noted for the adaptation of parts of existing foreign works with minor alterations to flesh out his best sellers.11 There were in fact two other approaches exhibited in the Meiroku Journal which demonstrated the possibilities of dialogue and, ultimately, a form of intellectual riposte toward the challenges of Western philosophy, including some key aspects of the Enlightenment tradition. Mori Arinori, the founder of the Society and one of the most profoundly transformed figures of the early Meiji period through substantial experience of the West, returned to Japan following a two year immersion in Britain and the U.S. to take up senior roles in the new Meiji government’s foreign affairs bureau, which led to his appointment as Charge d’Affairs for two years from 1871–1873. The “intellectual harvest” of this experience was a strong affinity for the social evolutionism of Herbert Spencer and the administrative writings of J. S. Mill.12 Mori’s first contribution to the Meiroku Journal sets him apart from other contributors in that he is practically the only one to espouse the highly topical schema of social evolution. There is no reference to great

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personages or grand ideas; the object of consideration is human society as an evolving system of increased integration and interdependence.13 Of greater significance is the fact that the evolutionary model that he evokes is not one that holds contemporary Western society as the absolute standard; there is room for alternatives. This in itself was a crucial realization in terms of gauging the difference between what was ideal (in the sense of emulating the highest aims of contemporary Western Enlightenment thought) and what was actually feasible or sustainable in the Japanese context. It also provided a sense of the relativity of Western achievements; the West might be powerful, but it was not necessarily the unqualified embodiment of an ideal social order. Mori was himself a liberal who nonetheless had no illusions about what was achievable. Some commentators, both Japanese and non-Japanese, have characterized this as a betrayal of youthful ideals. The fact is more straight-forward; Mori was beginning to realize that societies have a particular inertia, a direction of their own, and one had to accommodate that propensity if one wanted to influence it. This is not to say that Mori compromised to accommodate Japanese society as it existed; indeed, it was precisely his willingness to challenge long-held tenets that led to his increasing political isolation and eventual assassination. Alongside Mori, Kanda Takahira and Sugi Koji were distinctive in that they, too, recognized the need to accommodate Japan’s existing tendencies, but they also knew how to apply their respective specialist expertise in economics and statistical analysis to flesh out social debate. From the 1880s, it is evident that Tsuda Mamichi was also capable of functioning as an incisive commentator on issues of national administrative significance, although he seemed more intent on developing his rather idiosyncratic notion of materialist philosophy than participating in government.14

INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT: THE POSSIBILITIES OF CRITIQUE At this point, the contributions of Nishimura Shigeki provide an intriguing counter. Nishimura was indeed a Western Learning specialist and was one of the more prolific contributors in the Meiroku Journal’s first year of publication. At first sight, his series of brief discussions of Western society may seem to be an emulation of the grand school of Yogaku (“Western Learning”) commentary in the fashion of Seiyo Jijo published several years earlier by Fukuzawa Yukichi. Yet his essays are neither excessively generalized nor uncritical. Moreover, he demonstrates excellent understanding of the subject matter on its own terms, even when questioning the merit of the custom or practice that is under consideration. Nishimura Shigeki was

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therefore a most unusual figure: someone who understood the West but did not feel the need to review substantially his indigenous outlook. Nishimura was, for example, extremely sophisticated in his rebuttal of Tsuda’s advocacy of free trade. Not only did he incisively refer to England’s history of mercantilism and relative advantage in relation to the weaker economies of the world, he even managed to incorporate a rather barbed reference to the United States’ utilizing trade tariffs to maintain its position in world trade. Yet to demonstrate that he was not entirely blind to the benefits of international economic trade, he acknowledged that open trade nonetheless held out the prospect of benefits for Japan in the future. In making such arguments, Nishimura revealed himself to be a well-informed, non-dogmatic, and effective debater.15 When it came to the matter of discussing the ideal political system, Nishimura was also more nuanced than many of his colleagues. His advocacy of a mixture of “tradition and reason” rather neatly parallels the contemporary British conservative position, accommodating the imperatives of any “reasonable and rational” social observation, while nonetheless retaining an awareness that the political system as it functioned was likely to follow long-standing tendencies quite beyond the constraint of mere words and strictures.16 Indeed his discussion of key terms such as “freedom” and “rights” reveal the working of a keen intellect. His preliminary research into the origins of key terms in the English language in earlier historical contexts yields a sophisticated understanding on a par with the work of contemporary Western scholarship. For example, he comes up with no less than eight classifications of “rights,” including a distinction between those that are inalienable and those that are willingly ceded. He also discusses “private interest” and “public interest” with an acute sense of their mutual necessity and points to their tentative resolution in practice. Ultimately, he advocates the merit of a rationalism which does no mischief to society as a whole. Moreover, for him it was a well-educated populace more than an illustrious set of ideals in the abstract that was requisite to attain a civilized state of society. Nishimura was ultimately drawn away from Western scholarship toward a reinvestment in the traditions of Japanese moral philosophy prior to the infusion of Western influences. The precise process of his reassessment of the Western legacy is expressed in the record of his series of lectures to the young Emperor Meiji, providing a solid yet disinterested account of the latest overviews of moral philosophy before reverting to a more fully engaged mode of exegesis about Japanese traditions of neo-Confucian philosophy and their relevance to the “moral elevation” of the Japanese nation.17 However, in addition to Nishimura, an even more explicit expression of ambivalence toward Western moral and political philosophy was to come from Kato Hiroyuki in his A New Theory of Human Rights (1882).18 Given

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that his contributions to the Meiroku Journal were unremarkable, it is to some extent surprising that he was able to transform some of his grumpiness about Westerners’ deference for women and other such trivial topics into a more mature consideration of “natural rights” theories and the philosophical basis for questioning the manner in which they were being promoted both in Europe and Japan. The line of argument pursued by Kato was not one based on the polemical strategy of denigrating the Western philosophical tradition while lionizing the superiority of Eastern morals (a strategy taken up in a relatively cavalier fashion by the more vociferously nationalistic intelligentsia who were an increasing proportion of the antiWestern social agitators from the 1880s onward). His approach was rooted in the achievements of Western science: the incremental move away from “superstition” in beliefs about the world, starting with the revision of the cosmos through the work of Copernicus and Galileo, to the explication through scientific method of the operation of physical matter by Newton, through to the most recent debunking of superstition in the human understanding of biology by way of the advances of evolutionary theory propounded by Ernst Haeckel and Charles Darwin.19 Kato also seems to have drawn substantially on the views of John William Draper, the British-born American chemist who, apart from establishing an international renown for his research in photochemistry, wrote extensively on the conflict of science with religion (cf. The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe [1862] and the History of the Conflict between Religion and Science [1874]).20 Referring specifically to Draper in relation to his observation that science had yet to fully penetrate into the broader human understanding of human psychology, Kato uses this point to underline his belief that the Western enthusiasm for “natural rights” stems precisely from a residual superstition in political and moral philosophy. His reason for asserting this was that he regarded “rights” as having neither a substantive basis nor a demonstrable justification beyond a negatively established denial of predetermined privileges based on birth. Moreover, given that they were constantly being characterized as “God-given” and/or “inalienable,” it seemed clear to Kato that the power of “rights” to retain an enormous influence on popular thinking despite the lack of a substantive foundation was based on an unreflective mode of thought. As his later work was to explicate in more detail, Kato believed that evolutionary science would dispel the last illusions in our understanding of psychology and morality. More to the point, he welcomed the possibility that the slavish adoption of Western political and moral thought could and should be avoided, and that such a position could be argued for on philosophically “sound” grounds. The position outlined in A New Theory of Human Rights reveals a subtlety that is not so typical of Kato’s earlier work nor in fact much of his latter work. Indeed, he gravitated towards a “social Darwinist” view of

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historical development that owes a great deal more to some of the contemporary Germanic scholarship in that vein than to the British school. The later trend in Kato’s thinking was actually challenged by the contemporary expert on social evolutionism teaching at Tokyo Imperial University, Ariga Nagao, and there was a substantial polemic that appeared in the journal Toyo Gakugei Zasshi between the two. Yet ultimately Kato, and indeed Ariga, were to find their outlook converging toward the Germanic school in the long run.21 Consequently, the quality of debate, along with the degree to which the debaters were well-versed in the essential issues, was not in doubt. As a result, it was not ignorance of the key concepts or misperceptions and misunderstandings of the key proponents of those ideas in the Western context that was in particular doubt; these men were remarkably well-informed.

FROM DIALOGUE TO REJECTION One final case that reinforces the foregoing observations and indicates how dialogue came to be subsumed in a firmer trend toward rejection of Western social and political philosophy is the career of Komura Jutaro (1855–1911). Komura was from Miyazaki (formerly the Obi Clan) and after attending the center for Western Learning in Nagasaki (the Kaiseigakko) as a scholarship student, he was eventually dispatched to the U.S. to study at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1880. After a series of relatively elevated yet unsatisfying positions within the legal system in Osaka he joined the Foreign Ministry in 1884 under the patronage of Mutsu Munemitsu (1844–1947). While in Tokyo he founded the Kenkonsha (乾坤社) with Sugiura Jugo in 1885, a group that was effectively a forerunner to the Seikyosha (a highly influential group of nationalist journalists in the 1880s). After rising to head the translation bureau at the Foreign Ministry in 1888, he also bitterly opposed the treaty revisions being promoted by the then Foreign Minister, Inoue Kaoru, which had the foreseeable consequence of earning disfavor within the Ministry. He nonetheless later rose to prominence under Mutsu when he was sent to the Japanese Legation in Beijing in 1893 and later became Japan’s envoy to Korea in 1895. After two stints as Japan’s representative in the U.S. (1898) and Russia (1900), he was instrumental in moving to thwart Russia’s attempts to win over Great Britain, securing favor for Japan instead. He oversaw the diplomatic initiatives prior to the Russo-Japanese War (1904) and was the chief negotiator at the Treaty of Portsmouth deliberations following the end of that conflict (1905).22 The first thing to emphasize about Komura and his group is that, apart from their relative youth, they were all part of a new cohort of educational

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elites who had come through the post-Restoration education system (partial as that might be in the case of Kuga Katsunan). Of special interest is the fact that Komura and Sugiura were both koshinsei (貢進生), the recipients of special places allocated to the most gifted students of their domains prior to the Restoration, who then went on to be nominated as part of the first wave of government sponsored students to England and the U.S. in the 1870s. They were, academically speaking, the best of the best.23 In connection with this, the second point to emphasize is that they were not enamored with the West that they came into contact with. In many regards, they were better versed and better educated than any of their predecessors in the specializations that they had taken up, especially so in the case of Komura and Sugiura who studied at elite Western institutions. Yet this did not make them West-worshippers, quite the reverse. When Komura and Sugiura were contemplating their course of action as members of the Kenkonsha (prior to the establishment of the Seikyosha), they agreed that the factionalism of Western political parties was something to be avoided at all costs. Democracy in the Western form, so far as they had seen, could only exacerbate existing divisions in Japan. The avenue of the popular newspaper seemed the best means of presenting an alternative to Westernstyle party politics. And as Sugiura was to quip rather pointedly, “It won’t do if it’s just a collection of translated Western texts.”24 The third point to note regarding this group is that, despite their eminent abilities, they nonetheless “suffered” to various degrees from being poorly connected to the Satsuma and Choshu oligarchy, which made career prospects in government service tenuous. Komura succeeded due to the patronage of Mutsu Munemitsu who, despite being imprisoned for five years following the Seinan War (a rebellion against the Restoration government based in the southwest of the country in 1877), managed to rehabilitate himself and attain considerable distinction by dent of sheer ability. Komura was in that sense very much in the mold of his mentor. The final point of note is their redefinition of the conception of “progress” and “civilization” as it had been presented to date. In various forms of critique, they lamented the superficial Westernization that was being pursued by the government, arguing instead for progress based on a cultural and intellectual movement that was more genuinely Japanese. The term that they gave to this ideal was kokusuishugi, literally “national essentialism,” by which they meant to refer to the aim of preserving the essence of Japanese culture and identity while pursuing broad national reconstruction. As a byproduct of this movement, the term for “progress” (kaika) came back into circulation with a renewed vigor, but it was clearly not kaika as it had been presented and promoted by the preceding generation of Western Learning scholars.

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CONCLUSION Ultimately there was not necessarily clear agreement on the nature of kokusuishugi in terms of policy objectives or practical measures. It was an expression of protest against rampant Westernization, on the one hand, and a call to redefine the direction of the country, on the other. It was necessarily open-ended because, as yet, the essence of the new Japan was yet to be defined. The point of greatest interest here, however, is that a relatively subtle and informed critique of the Western philosophical canon occurred in the first place. Nishimura’s relatively brief “engagement” and relatively swift withdrawal should not be dismissed as a merely predetermined response based on either prejudice or ignorance. Kato’s critique is also pertinent and well-informed. What this presents us with is the prospect that perhaps it was actually Western political philosophy that was weighed and found wanting, and that all this was done in good faith. Is the suggestion that the philosophical grounding of “natural rights” in Western Europe and North America was inadequate misplaced? Not entirely. Furthermore, the contemporary Western intelligentsia were being racked by a conundrum that did not particularly perturb or concern the Japanese, the relationship between science and faith. As the memoirs of Isabella Bird, the intrepid solo traveler in the Japanese interior noted briefly, but with great significance, a Buddhist priest in Kyoto was able to perceive clearly how the evolutionary theory shot to the heart of the Western cosmology and did so in a manner that was not of immediate impact to the Japanese outlook.25 The alternative presented by such a realization was, of course, either to reject the Western moral and philosophical package as a whole or to recognize its utility or genuine moral impact in some more limited form. As time showed, it was a majority that chose the former option, spurred on by the perception, not altogether unfounded, that their Western interlocutors were not entirely committed to genuine dialogue themselves, or at least that they were preoccupied with a conundrum that was particular to their own intellectual predicament and predilections.

NOTES 1. Douglas R. Howland, Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 38–40. 2. Nakanome Toru, “Bunmei Kaika no Jidai,” in Meiji Ishin to Bunmei Kaika, ed. Matsuo Masahito (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 2004), 215–27. 3. W. G. Beasley, Japan Encounters the Barbarian: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 72–94.

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4. Andrew Cobbing, The Satsuma Students in Britain (Folkestone: Japan Library, 2000), 39–55. 5. Nakanome, Meiji Ishin, 221. 6. David Huish, “The Aims and Achievement of the Meirokusha—Fact and Fiction,” Monumenta Nipponica 32, no. 4 (1977), 514; Earl Kinmonth, “Fukuzawa Reconsidered: Gakumon no susume and its audience,” Journal of Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (1978), 687–88. 7. William Braisted, Meiroku Zasshi : Journal of the Japanese Enlightenment (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1976), i–xxxiii. 8. Alistair Swale, The Political Thought of Mori Arinori: A Study in Meiji Conservatism (Folkestone: Japan Library, 2000), 57–58. 9. See Nishimura Shigeki’s “Methods for Promoting Social Progress” (my translation for “Kaika wo Susumuru Hoho wo Ronzu”) and “In Opposition to Protective Tariffs” (Issue Five, undated) as per Braisted, Meiroku Zasshi, 56–59. 10. Asukai Mamichi, Bunmei Kaika, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1985), 116–25. 11. Kinmonth, “Fukuzawa Reconsidered”, 687–88. 12. Swale, Political Thought, 68–69. 13. Swale, Political Thought, 71–73. 14. For a general discussion of the late career of the former Meiroku Society members, see Okubo Toshiaki, Meiji no Shiso to Bunka (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1988), 231–64. For a commentary on Tsuda more particularly, see Okubo Toshiaki, Tsuda Mamichi: Kenkyu to Denki (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1997). 15. “On Free Trade” (Issue 29, February 1875), in Braisted, Meiroku Zasshi, 356–58. 16. “Three Types of Political System” (Issue 28 February 1875), in Braisted, Meiroku Zasshi, 346–51. 17. Nishimura, “An Explanation of “Liberty’ and ‘Freedom’: Second of a Series of Expositions on Foreign Words” (Issue 36, May 1875), in Braisted, Meiroku Zasshi, 451–54. See also Fujimoto Akinobu’s commentary in Nishimura Shigeki Zenshu 1, ed. Nihon Kodokai (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 2004), 734–44, and Takahashi Masao, Nishimura Shigeki (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1987), 88–100. 18. Kato Hiroyuki, Jinken Shinsetsu (“A New Theory of Human Rights”), originally published in 1882, reprinted in Volume 5 of Meiji Bunka Zenshu (Tokyo: Nippon Hyoronsha, 1992), 353–88. 19. Kato, Jinken Shinsetsu, 356–58. 20. Kato, Jinken Shinsetsu, 386. 21. Yamashita Shigekazu, Supensaa to Nihon Kindai (Tokyo: Ochanomizu, 1983), 160–75. 22. Okazaki Hisahiko, Komura Jutaro to Sono Jidai (Tokyo: PHP Books, 1998), 12–30. 23. Kuroki Yukichi, Komura Jutaro (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1968), 9–19. 24. Kuroki, Komura Jutaro, 72–74. 25. Bird, Isabella, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (London: John Murray, 1880), Vol. 2, 236–46.

Further Readings

Abelard, Peter. Collationes. Ed. John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Al-Azmeh, Aziz. Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Polities. London: I. B. Tauris, 1997. Aldridge, Owen. Voltaire and the Century of Light. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. Allen, Doug (ed.). The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the 21st Century. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 1985. Bayle, Pierre. The Dictionary historical and critical of Mr Peter Bayle, vol. 4, 2nd ed. London: Printed for J. J. and P. Knapton, D, Midwinter [and others], 1737. Reprinted Eighteenth Century Collections Online. London: Gale Group. Bernal, Martin. Black Athena, 2 vols. London: Free Association Books, 1987. Black, Antony. “Individuals, Groups and States: a Comparative Overview.” In Janet Coleman, ed. The Individual in Theory and Practice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 329–40. ———. The World History of Ancient Political Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. ———. The West and Islam: Religion and Political Thought in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Bowden, Brett. The Empire of Civilization: A Story about Making History and Influencing Peoples. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 315

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Bowen, H.V. Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Chang, Hao. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Chang, Hao. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Confucius. The Analects (Lun Yu). Trans. D. C. Lau. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Also trans. as The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and his Successors. Trans. E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998; and The Analects of Confucius. Trans. Arthur Waley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Cook, Michael. A Brief History of the Human Race. New York: Norton, 2003. Dallmayr, Fred. Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter. Albany, N. Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996. Dallmayr, Fred (ed.). Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 1999. Dalmayr, Fred, and G. N. Devy (eds.). Between Tradition and Modernity: India’s Search for Identity : A Twentieth Century Anthology. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 1998. de Bary, W. M. Theodore, Carol Gluck and Arthur E. Tiedemann (eds). Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1600 to 2000. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. El-Ashker, Ahmed and Rodney Wilson. Islamic Economics: A Short History. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Elukin, Jonathan. Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Euben, Roxanne. Journies to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Fitzgerald, John. “The Nationless State: The Search for a Nation in Modern Chinese Nationalism,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 33 (1995): 75–104. Fleischacker, Samuel. A Short History of Distributive Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. Gasster, Michael. Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911: The Birth of Modern Chinese Radicalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969. Gay, Peter. Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan from Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Grieder, Jerome B. Intellectuals and the State in Modern China: A Narrative History. New York: Free Press, 1981.

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Grmek, Mirko D. (ed.). Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hanley, Michael (ed). Medieval Muslims, Christians and Jews in Dialogue. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. Hobson, John M. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. 3 vols. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974. Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Howland, Douglas. Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone Books, 1998. Jackson, Peter and David Morgan (eds.). The Mission of William of Rubruck. London: Hakluyt Society, 1990. Johnson, Richard L. (ed.). Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006. Keane, John. The Life and Death of Democracy. London: The Free Press and New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Kuran, T. Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Lach, Donald F. and E. J. Van Kley. Asia in the Making of Europe. Volume III: A Century of Advance. Book I: Trade, Missions, Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Larson, Gerald and Eliot Deutsch (eds.). Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Lerner, Ralph and Muhsin Mahdi (eds.). Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1963. Liu, Kwang-Ching (ed.). Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Llull, Raymond. The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men. In Anthony Bonner, ed., The Selected Works of Raymond Llull (1232–1316). 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Mehta, Uday S. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Mehta, V. R. and Thomas Pantham (eds.). Political Ideas in Modern India: Thematic Explorations. New Delhi: Sage, 2006.

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Mellman, Billie. Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718– 1918, 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995. Mencius: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. D. C. Lau. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. Miller, David. Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, The Turkish Embassy Letters, with an introduction by Anita Desai. Ed. Malcolm Jack. London: William Pickering, 1993. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondant. Persian Letters. Trans. C. J. Betts. London: Penguin, 2004. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondant. The Spirit of the Laws. Trans. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Muthu, Sankar. Enlightenment Against Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Naqvi, Syed Nawb Haider. Islam, Economics, and Society. London: Kegan Paul, 1994. Nederman, Cary J. Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100–c.1550. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Nicholas of Cusa. On the Peace of the Faith. In James E. Beichler and H. Lawrence Bond, ed., Nicholas of Cusa on Interreligious Harmony. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Oakley, Francis. Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Omvedt, Gail. Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India. New Delhi and New York: Penguin, 2004. Panikker, Raymundo. The Intrareligious Dialogue. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. Pantham, Thomas. Political Theories and Social Reconstruction: A Critical Survey of the Literature in India. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. Parel, Anthony J. Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Parel, Anthony J. and Ronald C. Keith (eds.). Comparative Political Philosophy. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003. Pearson, Roger. Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2005. Pitts, Jennifer. A Turn to Empire; The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pouchelle, Marie-Christine. The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages. Trans. Rosemarry Morris. Cambridge: Polity, 1990. Pyle, Kenneth B. The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1885–1895. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969.

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Rahmana, Ali (ed.). Pioneers of Islamic Revival. London: Zed Books Ltd, 1994. Reynolds, Douglas R. China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: CEAS, Harvard University Press, 1993. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 2003. Schram, Stuart R. (ed.). Foundations and Limits of State Power in China. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1987. Shklar, Judith. Montesquieu. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Shogimen, Takashi. “‘Head or Heart?’ Revisited: Physiology and Political Thought in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” History of Political Thought 28 (2007): 208–29. Shogimen, Takashi. “Treating the Body Politic: Medical Metaphor of Political Rule in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan,” Review of Politics 70 (2008): 77–104. Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Springborg, Patricia. Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince. Cambridge: Polity, 1992. Stegewerns, Dick (ed.). Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. Takii, Kazuhiro. The Meiji Constitution: The Japanese Experience of the West and the Shaping of the Modern State. Trans. David Noble. Tokyo: International House of Japan, 2007. Thornton, Patricia M. Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence, and StateMaking in Modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: HUAC, Harvard University Press, 2007. Voltaire. “An Important Study by Lord Bolingbroke,” in Voltaire on Religion. Trans. Kenneth W. Appelgate. New York: Frederick Unger, 1974. Whelan, Frederick G. Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. Wilson, Rodney. “The Development of Islamic Economics: Theory and Practice,” in Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi, ed., Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century. London: I. B. Taurus, 2004. 195–222. Wolf, Eric R. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Xu Zhouyun (Hsu Cho-yun). Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 B.C. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works. Ed. John Knoblock, 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988–1994.

Index

Abduh, Muhammad, 174 Abelard, Peter, 48, 296 Acton, Lord, 28 Adair, James, 101 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 6, 163, 170, 174–77, 179 al-Andalusi, Said, 178 Alderotti, Taddeo, 286 al-Farabi, 21, 23 al-Ghazalim, 25 Al-Ghazhali, 172 al-Ghazzali, Abu Hamid, 178 Ali, Muhammad, 169, 170 al-Jabarti, Abdul Rahman, 163–70, 174–75 al-Jazari, 96 al-Khwrizm, 96 al-Muradi, 170 al-Nafis, Ibn, 172 al-Razi, Zakariyya, 96 al-Shaqarwi, Shaykh, 166 al-Shatibi, 99 al-Shatir, Ibn, 172 al-Shawkani, Muhammad bin Ali, 173–75 al-Zabidi, Muhammad al-Murtada, 170 al-Zahrawi, 96 Ambedkar, Dr. B.R., 7, 209, 212, 218–25

America, 36, 65, 70, 72–73, 77, 88, 97, 101, 149, 303, 308, 310–12 Analects. See Confucius Anselm, St. 48 Appadorai, A., 188–89 Aquinas, Thomas, 283 Arai, Hakuseki, 292 Aristotle, 13–18, 20–21, 23, 28, 40, 96, 265, 283–86; Nicomachean Ethics, 14–17, 20, 23 Arthasastra, see Kautilya Astell, Mary, 121 Augustine, 28 Aurobindo, Sri, 7, 188, 209, 212–18, 227; Uttarapara Speech, 216 Averroes. See Rushd, Ibn Avicenna. See Ibn Sı-naAyalon, David, 170 Balfour, Arthur, 93 Bayle, Jacob, 37 Bayle, Pierre, 5, 110–15, 117–19, 121, 127 Bell, Daniel, 37 Benedict XIV, Pope, 119 Bentham, Jeremy, 68, 251 Bernal, Martin, 89, 90, 93–95 Bernardo, Lorenzo, 71 Bey, Achmed, 122–25 321

322

Index

Bhagavad Gita, 16-17, 19, 197, 201– 204, 213–14 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 7, 212, 225–31 Bhave, Vinoba, 228 Bin Laden, Usama, 180 Bird, Isabella, 312 BJP. See Bharatiya Janata Party Black, Antony, 4 Blair, Tony, 38, 179–80 Bluntschli, J.K., 191, 249, 253 Bolingbroke, Lord, 121 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 163–67, 169, 179–80 Botero, Giovanni, 72 Boulianvillier, Henri, 115–16, 119 Bovet, Honorat, 54-6 Bowden, Brett, 5, 21–22, 36 British East India Company (EIC), 5, 66, 77–80 Brumfit, J. H., 112 Buchan, Bruce, 5 Buddhism, 40, 99, 190, 223, 246 Burke, Edmund, 5, 65–66, 68, 77–82, 94–95 Caroline, Princess, 126 Chakravarty, Dipesh, 193 Chambers, William & Robert, 241, 250 Chan, Joseph, 7 Chardin, John, 75 Chesterton, G.K., 189–90 Chi, Po, 289 Cicero, 40 Clarke, J.J., 126 Clive, Robert, 91 comparative political theory, 4, 6, 13, 18–19, 22, 60, 178–79 comparative political thought, 2, 4–6, 13, 17–21, 32, 59 Confucian, Confucianism, 7–8, 29–31, 39–40, 99, 235–36, 242, 246, 261– 76, 288, 293 Confucius, 17, 21, 23, 29, 35, 37, 39–40, 235, 264; Analects, 7, 17, 19, 21, 261, 266 Conti, Abbe, 123–125 Cook, Michael, 177

Copernicus, 172, 309 Cortés, Hernán, 91 Crispin, Gilbert, 48 Crone, Patricia, 177 cross-cultural, 1, 4–5, 7, 13, 17–18, 20, 45, 47, 60, 154 Crusades, the, 87 Curzon-Wyllie, Sir William, 190 d’Alembert, 113 Dalit, 222 Dallmayr, Fred, 4, 45, 110–11, 178–79 Dampier, William, 74 Dark Ages, 96 Darwin, 176, 309 Darwinism, 245, 247 Das, Chitteranjan, 212 Davis, Nancy, 147–48 de Bourrienne, M., 163–65, 167, 169 de Chatelet, Mme., 120 de Gobineau, Arthur, 92 de Meun, Jean, 54–55 de Pisan, Christine, 283 Diderot, Denis, 75, 113 Dion-Buffalo, Y., 211 Diwan, 166–168 Donne, John, 87 Draper, John William, 309 Durant, Will, 102 Durkheim, Emile, 147 Dutt, R.C., 200 EIC. See British East India Company Elias, Norbert, 88 Elst, Koenraad, 226–27 Engels, Friedrich, 92 Enlightenment: European (Western), 5, 65, 67–70, 88, 90, 109, 112, 126, 305, 307; French, 5; Japanese, 295; Scottish, 78–9, 80 Ethics. See Aristotle Euben, Roxanne, 45 Fanon, Frantz, 180 Fascism, 30, 216 Felix, Minucius, 46 Fleischaker, Samuel, 150–52, 265 Foucault, Michel, 179 Fryer, John, 241 Fukuyama, Francis, 37

Index Fukuzawa, Yukichi, 294, 302, 304, 306–307 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 4, 45, 110–11, 122, 138, 238 Gadamerian, 4, 57 Galen, 284–286 Galileo, 309 Galland, Antoine, 113 Gandhi, Mahatma, 6–7, 17, 23, 30, 40, 187, 191–94, 196–206, 214, 216, 218–20, 223–25, 227–28, 230 Gandhi, Indira, 228 Gandhian, 31, 40, 196, 209, 212, 226–27 Geeraerts, Dick, 281 Gellner, Ernest, 141 Geneva Conventions, 19 Gerard of Cremona, 286 Gibbon, Edward, 122 Giddens, Anthony, 38 Gierke, Otto von, 28 Giles of Rome, 283, 286 Gita. See Bhagavad Gita Golden Rule, 102 Goldziher, Ignaz, 163 Golwalkar, M.S., 191 Gramsci, Antonio, 193, 205 Greiffenklau, Carl Philipp von, 69 Grondelaers, Stefan, 281 Grosrichard, Alain, 116 Guan,Zhong, 289 Guanzi, 290 Guha, Ranajit, 91, 194 Haeckel, Ernst, 309 Hartmann, Eduard von, 92 Harvey, David, 90 Hastings, Warren, 77, 80–82 Heath, Carl, 224 Hegel, Georg W.F., 5, 90–94, 98, 100 Heidegger, Martin, 45, 110 Helliwell, Christine, 67 Henri de Mondeville, 287 Henry IV, King, 112, 119 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 5, 94–95, 113 Hindess, Barry, 67 Hindoos. See Hindu Hindu, 7, 91, 143, 190–91, 196, 213– 17, 221, 223–30

323

Hinduism, 29, 40, 223, 227, 229 Hirose, Tanso, 293 Hobbes, Thomas, 14, 28, 238, 248 Hobson, John M., 95–96 Homer, 29 Ibn Sı-na- , 96, 285–287 Ibrahim, Anwar, 99, 103 Illiad, The, 90 Independence of India, 217 Indian National Congress, 198, 226 Inoue, Kaoru, 303 inter-cultural, 1, 4, 46–47, 59 Ito, Hirobumi, 303–4 Iwakura, Tomomi, 303 Jewish, 28, 45, 50, 54–55, 118, 172, 175, 191, 199 Jews, 45–46, 48–50, 55–56, 118, 120, 172 John of Salisbury, 282–83 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 122 Johnson, Mark, 281 Joubin, Rebecca, 112 Kaibara, Ekiken, 291 Kanda, Takahira, 307 Kane, Pandurang Vaman, 196 Kang,Youwei, 281 Kant, Immanuel, 5, 90, 248, 251 Kato, Hiroyuki, 242, 294, 304, 308, 309–310 Kautilya, 25, 27, 37, 194–96; Arthasastra, 6, 194–95 Keddie, Nikkie R., 174–75 Kedourie, Elie, 174 Khaldun, Ibn, 25, 177 Kim, Dae Jung, 99 Kipling, Rudyard, 87 Koran. See Qu’ran Kövecses, Zoltán, 280–81, 295 Krishnavarma, Shyamji, 189–90 Kume,Kunitaka, 303 Kuran, Timur, 140 Kurayyim, Sayyid Muhammad, 167 Kymlicka, Will, 66 Lahoud, Nelly, 6 Lakoff, George, 280–81 Landes, David, 95 Late Bronze Age, 98

324

Index

Leibniz, 92 Lenin, 30, 192, 252 Liang, Qichao, 7, 237–38, 245, 246–51 Llull, Ramon, 49–51 Locke, John, 73, 99, 248, 251 Louis IX, King, 51 Louis XIV, King, 112, 116 Macauley, Thomas Babington, 81–82 Machiavelli, 28, 204 Machiavellian, 28, 114, 118, 126 Mangu, 51–53 Mao, Zedong, 193, 204, 252–53 Marie Antoinette, 80 Marsilius of Padua, 284–86 Martin, W.A.P., 239 Martyr, Justin, 46 Marx, Karl, 5, 92, 100, 192 Marxism, 6, 31, 35, 38, 187, 189, 192– 94, 204–205, 226, 252–53 Maududi, Sayyid Abu’l-A’la, 143, 146, 152–53 medieval Europe, 4, 7, 28, 36, 279–96 Mehra, Rakyesh, 230 Mehta, Uday Singh, 67–68 Meiji period, 8, 280, 296, 301–312 Meiroku Journal, 305–307 Meiroku Society, 8, 304–305 Mencius, 7, 238, 261, 264–67, 269–75 Meng-tzu, 99 Middle Ages, 45, 46, 47 Middle East, 3, 87, 96, 141, 150, 163, 169 Mill, James, 5, 100 Mill, John Stuart, 38, 94 Millennium Development Goals, 135 Miller, David, 267 Mills, James, 91, 100 Milton, John, 72, 81 Minobe,Tatsukichi, 292 Miura, Baien, 291, 293 Mohawk, J., 211 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley , 5, 110– 11, 121–28 Montesquieu, 74–78, 81, 110, 112–113, 115–18, 121, 127, 251; Persian Letters, 113, 116–117; Spirit of the Laws, 117, 127

Morgan, Lewis Henry, 101 Mori, Arinori, 303–304, 306–307 Morosini, Gianfrancesco, 71 Mozi, 248 Muhlberger, Steven, 98, 100–101 Murray, Charles, 95 Muslim League, 198 Muthu, Sankar, 68 Nakamura, Masanao, 306 Namboodiripad, E. M. S., 193 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 200 Napoleon. See Bonaparte, Napoleon Naqvi, Syed Nawb Haider, 143–44 Nazis, 191 Nazism, 216 Nederman, Cary J., 4, 8, 177 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 191, 225 Nel, Philip, 5 Netton, Ian Richard, 119 New World, 1–2, 67, 91 Nicholas of Cusa, Cardinal, 57–59 Nicomachean Ethics. See Aristotle Nietzsche, Friedrich 120 Nieuhof, Johan, 73 Nisbet, Robert, 89, 95 Nishi, Amane, 305 Nishimura, Shigeki, 304, 307–308, 312 Nobel Prize, 178 Nussbaum, Martha, 190–91 Oakeshott, Michael, 29 Oakley, Francis, 35 Ogata, Koan, 294 Ogyu, Sorai, 292 Old World, 91 Opium Wars, 92, 236 Ottoman Empire, 5, 69, 122, 125, 127 Pagden, Anthony, 67 Paine, Phil, 98, 100–101 Pantham, Thomas, 188–89, 205 Paranjape, Makarand, 6, 7 Parekh, Bhikhu, 67 Parel, Anthony, 6, 17, 209 Paul, St., 57, 59 Pergamum, 285 Persian Letters. See Montesquieu Peter of Abano, 285–87 Peter, St., 57

Index Pitts, Jennifer, 68 Plato, 15, 28–29, 40 Plutarch, 282 Pocock, J.G.A., 78, 80 Pope, Alexander, 122 Prideaux, Humphrey, 109, 114 Pryor, Frederick, 147–148 Qi, Huangyang, 264 Qing, 7, 235–36, 238, 242, 245, 253 Qur’an, 57–58, 110, 115, 117, 121, 123–24, 126–27, 137, 145, 169, 172, 175, 180 Qutb, Sayyid, 45 Rao, Narasimha, 228 Rashtriya Swavamsevak Sangh (RSS), 229–30 Rawls, John, 38, 144, 153, 262 Raynal, Abbe, 5, 65–66, 69, 76–77 Realpolitik, 21, 60 Renan, Ernest, 163, 170–73, 175, 176–79 Rica, 113, 116 Ricci, Mateo, 293 Ricoeur, Paul, 21–22, 103 Ripa, Cesare, 70 Robinson, Francis, 141 Robinson, Robert, 147–48 Rodinson, Maxime, 174 Rodrigues, Joao, 72 Roy, M.N., 192–93 Rubies, Joan-Pau, 72 Rushd, Ibn, 170–72, 286 Rycaut, Paul, 124 Said, Edward, 22, 93, 103 Sardanapallus, King, 15 Sarvarkar, V.D., 190–191, 227 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 92 Schiller, Ferdinand, 91 Schiller, Friedrich von, 89 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 92 Scot, Michael, 286 Second Opium War, 92, 239 Seinan War, 311 Sen, Amartya, 95 September 11, 2001, 1, 22, 103 Seven Years War, 76 Shklar, Judith, 117

325

Shogimen, Takashi, 7 Skinner, Quentin, 27, 29 Smith, Adam, 68, 81, 265 Sowden, Reverend Benjamin, 122 Spencer, Herbert, 93, 189–90, 192, 306 Spencer, Vicki, 5 Spengler, Oswald, 89 Spirit of the Laws. See Montesquieu Strauss, Leo, 28–29 Subaltern Studies, 193–94 Sugi, Koji, 307 Sugita,Genpaku, 288–289, 293–94 Sultana Halfise, 125 Sun,Yat-sen, 251–52 Swale, Alistair, 8 Takano, Choei, 292 Tan, Sitong, 245–46 Te-Hsiu, Chen 21 Tertullian, 46 Tiepolo, Gianbattista, 69–70 “Three People’s Principles,” 251–52 Tokugawa Japan, 7–8, 279–96 Tolstoy, 30, 199 Tonghak, 99 Tsuda, Mamichi, 307–308 Tully, James, 67 Uday, Singh Mehta, 67 United Nations, 39 United States of America. See America Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 19 Upadhyaya, Deen Dayal, 227 Usbek, 113 Valensi, L., 71 Vivekananda, Swami, 216 Voltaire, 5, 94–95, 110–13, 118–22, 124, 127 Waldron, Jeremy, 262–63 waqf, 6, 145–155 Weber, Max, 3, 25–26, 40, 147, 152– 53, 179, 204 Weinberg, Steven, 178 Westphalian system, 19 Wheaton, Henry, 239–41 Whelan, 80 William of Moerbeke, 286 William of Rubrick, 51–54

326 Willis, Thomas, 293–94 Wolf, Eric, 88, 101 World Bank, 136 World Social Forum, 103 Wortley, Edward, 111 Xu, Zhouyun, 267–68 Xuan of Qi, King, 270 Xunzi, 7, 238, 248, 261, 263–69, 271, 273–75, 290–291 Yamaga, Soko, 291 Yamawaki, Toyo, 288

Index Yang, 242–44 Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Internal Medicine, 289–91, 294 Yoshida, Kiyonari, 303 Yoshimasu, Todo, 289 Young, Iris Marion, 66, 153 Yu, Ning, 281 zakat, 6, 145–46, 148–51, 155 Zarrow, Peter, 7 Zheng, Guanying, 241 Zhengchi, Minben, 99

Contributors

Antony Black is Professor Emeritus in the History of Political Thought in the Politics Programme at the University of Dundee, where he lectured for 39 years. Recent publications include Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge University Press, 1992), The History of Islamic Political Thought from the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh University Press and Routledge New York, 2001), and The West and Islam: Religion and Politics in World History (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is at present completing A World History of Ancient Political Thought, a study of political thought in ancient China, India, Israel, Greece, Rome and the Middle East, due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Brett Bowden is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He has held visiting positions in the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the Australian National University, the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster, London, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is a member of the International Academic Advisory Board of the London-based think-tank, the Institute for Policy Research & Development. Brett’s recent major publications include: The Empire of Civilization: A Story about Making History and Influencing Peoples (University of Chicago Press, 2008); Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (co-edited, University of Queensland Press and Routledge, 2008); Great Expectations: The Role of International Law in Rebuilding Societies after Conflict (co-edited, Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Global Standards of Market Civilization (coedited, Routledge, 2006). He is presently editing a four volume major work titled: Civilization: Critical Concepts in Political Science (Routledge, 2009). 327

328

Contributors

Bruce Buchan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts at Griffith University. His research focuses on tracing the colonial dimensions of Western (especially British) political thought. This has resulted in a series of published papers on the conceptualization of indigenous government, the development of colonial concepts of society, and the meaning and impact of ideas of civilization and savagery in Western thought and colonization. It has also led to the production of a monograph, The Empire of Political Thought: Indigenous Australians and the Language of Colonial Government (Pickering and Chatto, 2008). He is currently working on a joint research project funded by the Australia Research Council on the intellectual history of the concept of corruption. Joseph Chan is Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration and Honorary Director of the Centre for Civil Society and Governance, The University of Hong Kong. He received a D.Phil. in political philosophy from Oxford University. His research interests include Confucian political philosophy, liberalism and perfectionism, and civil society and governance. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled Confucian Political Philosophy: A Critical Reconstruction for Modern Times. Fred Dallmayr is Packey J. Dee Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Munich and a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Hamburg University and at the New School for Social Research, and a Fellow at Nuffield College in Oxford. During 1991–92, he was in India on a Fulbright research grant. Among his recent publications are: Dialogue among Civilizations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Small Wonder: Global Power and its Discontents (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); and In Search of the Good Life: A Pedagogy for Troubled Times (University Press of Kentucky, 2007). Nelly Lahoud teaches political theory, including Islamic political thought, at Goucher College; and she is a postdoctoral fellow at the International Security Program, The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University for the 2008–09 academic year. In 2002, she completed her PhD at the Australian National University; and in 2003, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. In 2005, she was a Rockefeller Fellow in Islamic studies at the Library of Congress. Her publications include Political Thought in Islam: A Study in Intellectual Boundaries (Routledge, 2005); and co-editor (with A.H. Johns) of Islam in World Politics (Routledge, 2005). She is currently completing a manuscript about past and present Jihadis.

Contributors

329

Cary J. Nederman is Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University, where he teaches a range of courses on political theory, including comparative political thought. He also holds a position as a research associate in the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including, most recently, Lineages of European Political Thought: Explorations along the Medieval/Modern Divide (Catholic University of America Press, 2009), Machiavelli (Oneworld, 2009), and John of Salisbury (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2005). In addition, he has published more than one hundred articles and book chapters, including contributions to leading political science, history, and medieval studies journals. Philip Nel is Professor and Head of the Department of Politics, University of Otago, New Zealand. His research focuses on the politics and ethics of development, and his latest book is The Politics of Economic Inequality in Developing Countries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). He is one of the editors of the journal Foreign Policy Analysis. Makarand Paranjape is Professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. A scholar, critic, and poet, with over twenty-five books in a variety of fields to his credit in addition to over one hundred academic papers, he considers himself a public intellectual, who is deeply involved in the civilization enterprise that is modern India. He served as the Chair and Coordinator of the UGC Special Assistance Programme, Centre of English Studies at JNU, and is currently the Principal Investigator of an international project on “Indian Perspectives on Science and Spirituality.” Anthony Parel is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Calgary, where he taught political philosophy from 1966 until retirement in 1994. His principal works are The Machiavellian Cosmos (Yale University Press, 1992), Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, a critical edition of Gandhi’s fundamental work (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Gandhi’s Political Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Together with R. C. Keith he edited Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies Under the Upas Tree (2nd ed., Lexington Books, 2003). Takashi Shogimen is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He has previously been Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor in History at the University of Helsinki. His publications include Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and various articles on medieval European political thought, comparative history of political thought (with special emphasis on medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan),

330

Contributors

and Christian political thought in twentieth-century Japan. He is currently writing a monograph entitled Medicine and the Body Politic in Medieval Europe (Brepols, forthcoming). Vicki Spencer received her DPhil from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar from South Australia. She then tutored at Flinders University of South Australia and lectured at the University of Adelaide before joining the Department of Politics at the University of Otago as a lecturer in political theory in July 2006. She has published in various international journals including History of European Ideas, Review of Politics, and, most recently, Nations and Nationalism. She is also the co-editor of Disclosures (Ashgate, 2000) and a Special Edition of the Australian Journal of Politics and History: Rethinking Nationalism (1997). She has a long-term interest in issues relating to language, culture and identity specializing in the thought of Johann Gottfried Herder, contemporary Anglo-American political theory, and the Enlightenment more generally. Her most recent project is on the concept of tolerance and Locke’s thought. Alistair Swale is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, specializing in intellectual history and the history of political communication. He holds a PhD from the Law Faculty of Kyoto University and is the author of The Political Thought of Mori Arinori: A Study in Meiji Conservatism (Japan Library, 2000), in which he analyzes the intellectual legacy of Mori Arinori, Japan’s envoy to the United States and Great Britain, as well as the Minister of Education in the first Cabinet of Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi. He has recently completed a volume on the Meiji Restoration of 1868 which analyzes the conservative impetus behind the political upheaval of that time while challenging preconceptions that attribute excessively liberal implications to both the “Civilization and Enlightenment” movement of the early 1870s as well as the “Freedom and People’s Rights” movement of the 1880s. Peter Zarrow is Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, having previously taught at universities in the United States and Australia. His recent publications include China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 (Routledge, 2005) and Creating Chinese Modernity: Knowledge and Everyday Life, 1900–1940 (edited volume, Peter Lang, 2006). He is the author of numerous articles on modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history and is currently engaged in two projects: a study of changing Chinese views of the monarchy before and after its collapse in 1911; and an exploration of textbooks and the socialization of children in the modern Chinese school system that was started in 1904.