争夺孔子
西方对中国哲学的研究，一向局限于专业小圈子：几个教授教几个学生，让这几个学生以后能教几个学生。他们组成了一个稀有物种，不过有自尊的大学必备。他们的研究对象在学院内都与他人无干，跟学院外的世界更不沾边。正因如此，在中国如火如荼进行了一个多世纪的辩论，突然延烧进西方汉学家的小圈子，倒让我们大吃了一惊：这个小圈子本来是以幽静安宁取胜。更叫人吃惊的是，法国最负盛名的汉学家，被一个比他更年长的同行批评，名字都写到了封面上：《驳于连》------ 毕莱德著，巴黎阿丽亚出版社去年出版。如果我是于连，我会心中窃喜。
在中国，有关儒学的辩论，总能让争论各方热血澎湃，这在西方汉学家中不可想象，他们事不关己，在安全距离外隔岸观火，向来如此，如今竟然一变！毕莱德（Jean Francois Billeter）的书《驳于连》，字里行间都燃烧着愤怒的火焰。
毕莱德是一位法国-瑞士学者，他研究李贽的著作，以晚明士大夫思潮为背景做社会学研究，毕莱德研究庄子也颇有成就。他创办了日内瓦大学汉学系，在该大学任教直到1999年退休。不过从这本气势逼人的书来看，他远远没有从知识分子身份中退休。
他的论战对象于连（Francois Julien），学术生涯更为光彩夺目。于连目前是巴黎第7大学的中国哲学教授，也是法国公众生活中的熟悉身影，《世界》，《辩论》采访他，想“理解”几千年中国文化的商人和投资家需要他指教：都知道不理解儒学，就难以赢利。
于连七十年代在巴黎高师读希腊哲学时转向汉学，他后来在各种书的后记与谈话中一再说到他的想法：中国哲学可以推翻西方思想的任何普世性重大规律。只有中国能起这样的作用，因为中国文化是欧洲唯一的“伟大的他者”：阿拉伯世界，希伯来世界，与欧洲联系过于紧密，印度则与欧洲语言上连接，梵语与希腊语与之间只是稍有差别，而日本则是中国文明的一个变奏。要完全离开欧洲，中国是唯一选择。
于连1975-1977年在上海和北京学习，博士论文写的是中国现代文学的开山始祖鲁迅。1978-1981年于连载香港任职，1985-1987则把基地放在日本，1989年回到巴黎从事写作，异常多产，平均每年一本书，至今已有23本，最后一本书几乎是直接回应毕莱德。法国媒体对每本书都予以报道，大都赞扬备至。他的书广为翻译成各种语言：有四本译成中文，有趣的是，译成越南文的竟有六本。
于连的第一本主要著作《过程与创造》（1989），是研究17世纪中国哲学家王夫之的专著。这本书已经指明了他今后著作的一贯主题，以及他的比较方法。从这个方面看，他的学术生涯倒是一以贯之始终不变：中国思想不仅是与欧洲有本质不同，而且常常更为优越。例如中国哲学从“道”概念出发，而不是从“创世”出发，由此不必处理“存在”这个笨拙的谜语，也因此不必为形而上学伤脑筋。。这本书奠定了于连作为一个志向高远前程远大的年轻学者的名声。
处理完上帝，于连转向艺术。《平淡赞》（1991）认为“淡”是中国艺术最珍视的东西，看起来好像是“寡味”，实际上比任何潜在的“味”更高明。在艺术上，就如在哲学上，中国就是胜欧洲一筹。
在1992年的《事物之势：中国的效用概念》中，于连处理了一个更宏大的哲学课题。中国字“势”异常多义：字典上的意思有“力量，影响，权威，势力，方面，环境，条件”等等。于连翻译成“Propensite”（倾向），用语明显来自莱布尼茨，这种“欧化”译法，恐怕更是添乱。次年于连出版《内在性：<易经>哲理》，把《易经》称为“怪书中最怪的一本”，但是他用中国的“内在性”对付欧洲的“超越性”，当然更胜一筹。于连说《易经》与西方思想成鲜明对比，因为《易经》不用神秘主义，不用抽象，创造了对世界的理解，而西方人就不得不求救于存在，或上帝。再一次，于连的自由阐释，他的欧化或希腊化术语，彰显了中国先秦哲学的优越性。
这真是一个悖论，因为他自认的学术策略是“借道中国迂回到希腊”。他的下一本大书，长达400多页，《迂回与到达：中国与希腊的意义策略》（1995），就是着重谈这个问题。此书讨论了儒家与道家经典《论语》《孟子》《老子》《庄子》，发现这个经典有个共同点：话语形式不确定，回避对付最本质的共同性，而是把各种困难的角度统合起来，从而发展多样性。此种“迂回”带我们走到离希腊的“逻各斯”最远的地方，由此让我们“到达”希腊，而且一比之下，发现希腊哲学特别“抽象，呆滞”。这本书的讨论与结论，恐怕是最典型的于连。
1995似乎是于连的多产之年，他又出版了一本书《道德对话》，写的是孟子与一个欧洲启蒙运动哲学家的想象对话，这位对话者是于连发明的，看来是帕斯卡，卢梭，叔本华，康德的结合体。不奇怪，他们四不敌一，输给中国亚圣。然后于连从道德转向政治军事哲理，他的《效用论》（1977）发现，西方人（亚里士多德，马基雅维利，克劳塞维茨）比起他们的中国同行（孙子，韩非子，鬼谷子）无论是打仗还是搞外交，都笨拙得出奇：中国人靠“不为”取胜，西方人依赖“耗力克服阻挡”。1998年的《圣人不思》在于连的著作中非法语译本最多。他的论点是：中国思想家使用智慧而不是“理念”，西方哲学家使用的是抽象和建构。中国人接受自然而然的现实，抽象的理念是对自然的偏见。因此圣人不思，而欧洲人的做法只能远离真正的哲学。
在2000年，于连回到美学，出版了《不可能之裸》，把它先前的“论淡”变得更具体。在西方文化中，一直有裸体，但在中国艺术中几乎完全看不到。身体的遮盖程度看来值得好好做哲理探索，于连的探索得出结论是：裸身即在场的暴露，中国人的做法是强调不在场，从而开启了一种“感性接近本体论“的途径。2003年的《大像希形》揭示出西方美术热衷于克服客体的“客体性”，从而一直在追逐现实的幽灵，与此正成对比的是中国艺术不自我限制于课题的外形，“大像”拒绝相似，从而避免成为囚禁于静止形式中的片面形象。
以上简略描述的只是于连至今为止作品的一部分。于连在《辩论》的采访中轻而易之地打发说：他的著作可能显得题目散乱：战略，平淡，道德，五花八门，但是这些都只是一些“籍以回到中心问题即欧洲理性的不同角度。既然无法正面处理欧洲问题，我只有一个可能，即是从一点跑到另一点，织成一张问题之网“。在每一本书中，于连都能发明几个至少在法语中十分悦耳的词儿，能让中国哲学令人赏心悦目地不同，却又不难理解，不仅比西方高明，而且对西方人大有启发。
自然，人们心中疑窦油然而生：要是中国思想比古希腊，比任何其他文明，都高明得多，为什么好多中国人自己看不到中国文明是世界上最伟大的文明？仅仅说”中国不是中国的他者“，好像还不够。
毕莱德就是这个地方切入。他指责于连是“一连串制造中国绝对他者神话的欧洲作家中最新的一个“。毕莱德引用的例子包括谢阁兰(Victor Segalen)，葛兰言(Marcel Granet)，卫理贤(Richard Wilhelm)，李克曼(Pierre Ryckmans)，对他们来说，中国都是”绝对他者“。而中国神话的源头，恐怕要追溯到伏尔泰与十八世纪“亲中国启蒙运动”。伏尔泰与那一代哲人当然是用中国作为障眼法，来反对他们在欧洲要打倒的政权。毕莱德论点的核心是：于连做的是拿过这个神话加以更新，却掩藏这个神话固有的政治意义。伏尔泰与他的同代人关于中国的看法来自他们的敌人耶稣会教士，而这些耶稣会教士制造中国神话则是利益在焉：他们有必要把中国的帝国体制，以及背后的儒家哲学，描写的尽善尽美，因为他们的战略就是努力使皇帝改宗基督教，从而让整个中华帝国改宗基督教。他们的解释是：儒家是打开“士大夫智慧世界大殿”的神奇钥匙。毕莱德认为耶稣会教士是中国“神奇他者”观念的始作俑者，于连只是继承了他们的事业。因此，问题的核心，在于必须看到中国哲学自古至今的政治用途。
毕莱德回顾了儒家政治化过程：公元前六世纪到三世纪，现在往往被称为“儒学第一期”。中国当时是个地理概念，很难说是个国家，一批公侯之国互相对抗，与古希腊非常相似，同样相似的是：诸子百家竞争，力图得到王侯们的注意。孔子（公元前551-479）与他的几代门徒只是百家之一。秦朝（公元前221-206）第一次统一中国的努力，维持不长，却极为残酷：秦始皇焚书，独独赦免法家。汉朝建立后，采取了不同的方针：士大夫政权迫切需要一个哲学来支撑新生的帝国，汉代的廷臣学者重建了“先秦”儒学，毕莱德认为那种儒学是一套宇宙观加伦理教条，其中杂糅了前代使用的法家，不过掩盖了法家的残酷性质而已。由此，汉儒开启了所谓儒学发展第二期。
这些早期意识形态专家非常成功，他们的哲学支撑的帝国在中国延续了两千多年，到二十世纪初帝国政权才垮台。毕莱德的结论是：“我们今日称作‘中国文明’，原本与帝国集权联系在一起。”这与希腊哲学很不相同，希腊哲学看来没有与任何形式的暴政相联系，而是成为“欧洲历史上自由民主思想的一贯源泉”。在中国哲学中，看来纯粹的概念，例如“中庸”，原先也是用来教官员的统治技巧。
儒学后来的发展依然是政治化的。在南宋，在明代，从12世纪到17世纪，一连串的学者吸收佛教与道教影响，建立了哲学上更加成熟复杂的儒学。这被称为入学发展第三期，西方称之为“新儒学”（Neo-Confucianism）。1644年满洲人征服了中国，他们急于为少数民族统治争得合法性，于是把儒学变成一种原教旨教条主义。在十九世纪，中国收到西方屈辱的军事与文化入侵之后，儒家被很多人视为中国现代化的主要障碍。但是在二十世纪下半期，儒学有有几次复兴努力，此时称为新儒学（New Confucianism），常被称作儒学第四期。儒学的历史回顾，倒是让毕莱德批评于连的非政治化有了根据。
毕莱德倒也不难发现于连每本书中有盲点。于连虽然声称是在讨论一个完全不同的哲学传统，他却从来没有让这个哲学的代表人物发言，书中很少引语，也缺少对原始文本的细读，也没有仔细介绍这些思想家的历史背景。于连的方法是摘樱桃似地挑选概念作为讨论焦点，提出一个横跨中国哲学的同质图景。于连的翻译方式也在维持“他者中国”神话。像“道”或“势”这种概念，脱离语境挑出来，译成“新时代”（New Age）普及哲学式的术语，实际上是偷工减料：像于连那样把“道”译成Process，能让外行读来字通句顺。在毕莱德看来，“亲中国派”于连实际上是背叛了中国哲学。毕莱德认为不能集中于个别字眼，应当讨论整个语境，而要如此做，就要明白，人性经验以及基本常识是相通的，中国人自己并不一定认为他们的古人如此高明，正是因为中国人也是“自由的，负责任的人”，他们也不喜欢帝国集权。毕莱德为了对抗于连把中国“希腊化”，反过来把中国人描写成“和我们一样的人”，由此，中国哲学就成为政治上可理解的。
毕莱德描述了中国哲学如何变成帝国意识形态之后，又讨论了帝国崩溃后的中国思想界。从某种程度上说，这些段落是这本书中最有意思的部分：生活在实际之中的中国人，比西方汉学圈中人，更明白问题的复杂性。根据毕莱德的分析，在对待传统思想的态度上，五四时期中国知识界就分成四派：激进偶像摧毁者（如中国共产党的创始人陈独秀）完全拒绝中国传统思想；批评派知识分子（例如自由主义-怀疑主义历史学家顾颉刚）质疑其“神圣起源”；比较派（如第一本中国哲学史作者冯友兰）用来与西方哲学相比较；纯洁派（例如儒家教育家钱穆）坚持认为两者完全不可比，也无法互相交流。
这四派实际上分成两个阵营：批判阵营，辩护阵营。比较派与纯洁派都属于辩护阵营，他们的方式不同，结论却一致-----中国传统思想优越。毕莱德认为于连是一名典型的比较派，与他的中国同行相似，比较的结论永远是中国哲学比任何其他民族的哲学强。
批判阵营和辩护阵营在现代中国的一代代学者中都后继有人，而且两者的对抗，不但没有淡化，反而越来越火爆，尤其在近年中国经济起飞之后益发如此，毕莱德举的例子是两名当代的学者：牟钟鉴教授是今日的纯洁派，他在2005年发表的“中华大道”，用的是文言。在文中他认为西方文明，无论在文化上和经济上，都已经越过其巅峰下降，21世纪将是中国世纪。另一个例子是南开大学女教授李冬君，在2004年出版的《孔子圣化与儒者革命》一书中，她强调说：儒家作为一种再现系统，至今控制着中国人的思维，尽管皇权已经在一个世纪前倾覆，儒家思想依然在引导其臣民履行“为整体利益而牺牲的义务”。
毕莱德提出：应当对中国这个“本质他者”去神话化，认识到其哲学是一种帝国意识形态，这样做政治上是必要的：“这不是贬低中国哲学在历史上起的重大作用，而是决定我们应当如何理解中国哲学”。这个任务在今日更为迫切，“因为中国人与欧洲人过去生活在地球的两边，如今这古代隔离已经消失，今天我们面对同样的历史时刻，我们必须共同行动，彼此理解“，而他者神话只能妨碍中国与西方互相理解。毕莱德这番话，是对于连的最严重攻击，因为于连一直以加强中西互相理解为己任。毕莱德老实不客气地说：”那些对过去进行批评性反思的人，是赞同民主自由，而比较派是在为国家政权服务“。
毕莱德《驳于连》一书的结尾一章，题为“必须选择”，要每个读者采取一定立场。我作为此的书的评者，看来也难逃此义务。但是难道我只能两者选其一，不是毕莱德的立场，就是于连的立场？我的看法是，于连把中国哲学非政治化，毕莱德把中国哲学政治化，恐怕都是基于普世化的西方原则。毕莱德的立足点是现代自由主义立场，这是近现代欧洲的产物，很难说是希腊思想。但是问题并不在于中国思想究竟是特殊的还是普世的-----中国在一定程度上两者兼有。问题在于：一再向中国人重复，说中国文化曾经是今日依然是如此绝妙，可以治疗西方患上的的要命疾病，这种说法对中国人没有好处。这种说法对伏尔泰时代的欧洲有用，可能对于连的欧洲也有用，只是对于中国无益。于连笔下如此具有诱惑性的美妙他者形象，在过去一个多世纪中，没有帮中国人的忙，如今依然没有理由认为这是个可取的方案。中国哲学应当从西方他者的冷茧中破壳而出，不管于连或其他人如何用优越的茧丝把它捆扎起来。
应当说，于连自己很清楚他的非政治化，实际上与政治胶结在一道，在他的报纸访谈中，他说得很明白。在《世界报》的访谈中于连说到，中国政府明白应当如何处理文革后非毛化时期具有爆炸性的形势，邓小平大手笔，巧妙地推行“不争论”政策，胜利地实行了一场“不声不响的革命”，历史证明了这是一个了不起的伟大胜利。于连解释说，邓小平之所以能胜利，是因为他的战略思想的基础是中国的“效用论”。所以说，于连虽然在讨论哲学的书里不提，却自己也承认，在今日中国，哲学是政治性的。
说真的，恐怕中国哲学今日更加政治。在八十年代与九十年代，已经出现了一个声势浩大的“儒学复兴运动，其主要人物是在美国大学任教的一些中国学者。他们力图提出一个与韦伯分析的清教类似的儒家工作伦理，以此说明东亚资本主义令人眩目的成功。哈佛大学的杜维明是这个运动的领袖人物。杜维明的观点，拿他自己的话来说：第一：“强势的经济一定要和权威的政府合作”；第二：“民主制度，精英制度和道德教育需要互相配合”；第三：“个人可以求突出表现，但是基本上，还是讲究大的或小的团队精神”。杜维明一再说，比起西方企业来，东亚资本企业往往在家族基础上运作，由此更为”有效用“------这又是于连喜欢的词。1997年突然爆发的亚洲金融风暴，沿着所谓“龙脉”（或称“儒学影响圈”）从新加坡到南韩，到日本，飞速蔓延，暴露出这些国家经济结构上的问题，甚至有些国家的政治结构问题，儒学复兴突然哑了火，不知如何解释才好。
近年来，另一场儒学复兴又出现了，“国学热”在中国如燎原之火。电视把哲学普及者变成耀眼的明星，很有点像美国八十年代福音主义明星牧师。各级学校的学生要读经，首先要背诵，理解其次。2006年出现了一连串的事件，点燃公众对儒学的热情。五月里，几家大型网站合作选举“国学大师”；七月上海出现了“国学书塾”，引发争论；九月公布了“国际统一标准”的孔子塑像与肖像，一大批学者联名建议把孔子诞辰设为教师节，许多学者要求考生在考试前不要拜佛，要拜孔子，因为孔子才是有学问的人，最后这个建议倒是非常有道理。此类为孔子增光的举措层出不穷，今后只会越来越多。
中国政府对“国学热”的态度，倒是不冷不热。中国共产党的创世人多是偶像破坏者，自从八十年代初改革开放以来，中国发现全球化与国际竞争，对中国大有好处。实际上中国政府对美国，欧洲，俄国正在出现的贸易保护主义，政治孤立主义势头非常敏感。群众性民族主义情绪当然对政权有好处，但是政府也不想看到中国“向内转“。既然政府态度骑墙，国学热至今基本上是一个群众与知识分子自发的运动。在我居住的城市成都，星期天上午群众自发到茶馆听国学讲座，我想他们并不是来听意识形态说教的。国学热本身当然是有意识形态目的，尤其是在中国的价值真空时期。中国的经济力量持续增长，国学热也会迅速发展。这就是为什么毕莱德提出的问题非常重要：关于他者性的哲学思辨，一旦推到极端，会具有危险的魅力。所谓”多样性“会变成一种无法辨认，难以企及的异质性，把他者性变成神话，对生活在神话内和神话外的人都没有好处。因此我们希望，这场发生在法语汉学圈子内的热烈争论，会成为一场更深入的讨论的序曲，讨论的题目是：让他者成为永远的他者，我们能否承受此种代价？
（此文原题为“Contesting Confucius”，刊于New Left Review 2007年3-4月号）
附注：赵先生很少上网。一次偶然机会，我告诉他网上有一篇别人翻译他的学术随笔《挑战孔子》，争议不小。后来，先生让我将译文复制后传给他。先生读后，认为译者在理解上有许多偏颇与不够严谨之处。先生说他自己亲自翻译，到时再让我给《学术中国》等重要的思想型网站。赵先生治学严谨，讲课思路清晰。先生为我们讲《文学符号学》，再枯燥的学问，课上也能在他严谨的分析与介绍中感受他深深的人文关怀与鲜明的思想立场。听先生的课，启发很大，收获甚多。先生一言一行都能感受到他谦卑与严谨的学者人格。这些是我们后生在学术道路上需要一辈子仰望的。先生亲自翻译自己的文章，再一次说明了前辈学者的严谨治学的品格。——董迎春
Western scholarship on Chinese philosophy has long remained within its own small specialized ambit: a few scholars teaching a few students, so that the latter in turn may teach a few more students later on. They have constituted a rare species, which respectable universities have chosen to preserve. The subject appeared to have little wider relevance within these institutions, let alone outside. So it comes as quite a surprise to find a debate over traditional philosophy that has been raging in China for nearly a century suddenly blazing out within Western sinological circles, hitherto characterized by library quietness. It is even more astonishing to find the most famous sinologist in France so resoundingly condemned by a more senior fellow-sinologist, and in an eponymously titled pamphlet. If I were François Jullien, I should consider it an honour.
The passionate intensities that arguments over Confucian philosophy have generated in China had seemed unimaginable among those foreign scholars accustomed to watching the conflict with a marveling gaze, but always from a safe distance. Until now. Jean-François Billeter’s pamphlet, Contre François Jullien, burns with the fire of indignation on almost every page. Billeter himself, born in 1939, is a French-Swiss scholar best known for his sociological study of the sixteenth-century rebel thinker, Li Zhi, in the context of the late Ming mandarinate, and for his works on the Daoist classic Zhuangzi. Billeter was responsible for establishing the Sinology Department at the University of Geneva, where he taught until his retirement in 1999. Judging from this blistering text, however, he has not retired from intellectual life. Billeter’s target, François Jullien, has had a more spectacular career. Currently professor of Chinese Philosophy at Paris University vii, Jullien is also a familiar figure in French public intellectual life: interviewed on his work by Le Monde and Le Débat; much in demand by businessmen and investors seeking ‘an understanding’ of China’s multi-millennial culture—without which, they have been assured, it will be harder to turn a profit in the People’s Republic of Confucius, Sunzi and Laozi.
Born in 1951, Jullien switched from studying Greek philosophy at L’École Normale Supérieure to Chinese studies in the early 1970s in the hope—as he has explained in numerous books and interviews over the past fifteen years—that Chinese philosophy would throw into question all the ‘great universals’ of European thinking. It had to be China because, for Jullien, this is the only historic culture to constitute Europe’s ‘great other’: the Arabic and Hebraic worlds are ‘closely connected to our own history. We are also linked with India linguistically, with only a few divisions between Greek and Sanskrit. In order to get away from Europe completely, China is the only choice: Japanese culture is only a variation.’ There duly followed a spell in Shanghai and Beijing (1975–77) and a doctoral thesis on Lu Xun, the pioneering iconoclast of modern Chinese literature. From 1978–81 Jullien had an official posting in Hong Kong, and was based in Japan from 1985 until 1987. Since his return to Paris in 1989 Jullien has been remarkably productive: a book a year on average, amounting to 23 to date, the latest an almost immediate response to Billeter. The French press has met each new release with blanket coverage and generous approval. His books have been widely translated; four have appeared in Chinese and, interestingly, six in Vietnamese.
Jullien’s first major work was Process or Creation (1989), a study of the seventeenth-century Confucian philosopher, Wang Fuzhi, whose writing Jullien dubs ‘the thought of Chinese literature’. The book maps out the themes and the ‘comparatist’ method that he would deploy in all his later works; in this sense, his scholarship may be regarded as very consistent. Chinese thought is not only fundamentally different to that of Europe, Jullien argues, but often far superior to it. Thus by starting with the notion of ‘process’, rather than that of ‘creation’, Chinese philosophy dispenses with the cumbersome enigma of being and, therefore, with metaphysics. The book made his reputation as an ambitious and promising young scholar and, having dealt with God, Jullien moved on to art. In Praise of Blandness (1991) argues that the plainness treasured in Chinese aesthetics, even though it seems to betoken an ‘absence of flavour’, is in fact superior to any flavour as it is open to all potential variations, and even to a possible ‘internal deliverance’. In aesthetics as in philosophy, China achieves an elegant victory over Europe.
In 1992 Jullien tackled another grandiose philosophical topic in The Propensity of Things: Towards a History of Efficacy in China. The character Shi is notoriously ambiguous—dictionary definitions include ‘power, influence, authority, strength; aspect, circumstances, conditions’—but Jullien’s interpretation is not made any easier by his translating it as ‘propensity’, a term he borrows, tellingly, from Leibniz. The following year, his Figures of Immanence offered ‘a philosophical reading of the I-Ching’, ‘the strangest of all strange books’. Once again, Chinese immanence is pitted against Western transcendence, and wins the match. The Book of Changes, Jullien claims, is in sharp contrast to European thinking because it creates an understanding of the world without recourse to mystery or abstraction, whereas European thought is focused on being, or on God. Once again, however, the superiority of early Chinese philosophy is elucidated by Jullien’s very free interpretation of it, via Hellenized or Europeanized terms. This is paradoxical, since his avowed intellectual strategy is ‘to take China as a detour to access Greece’. Indeed his next big (400-page) book, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece (1995), is an explicit attempt at this. It examines the earliest Confucianist and Daoist classics—the Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi—and discovers that they share a common characteristic: an indefinite form of discourse, which refuses to tackle essentialist universalities but instead integrates all possible perspectives, so as to develop diversity. This ‘detour’ takes us to the point furthest removed from the Greek logos, which we can now ‘access’—and find to be particularly ‘abstract and stagnant’ by comparison. Both the argument and the conclusion are typical of Jullien’s work.
In a particularly productive year, Jullien published a second book in 1995, a Dialogue on Morals, featuring an imaginary debate between Mencius and an Enlightenment philosopher; the latter is a confection of Jullien’s, an unlikely combination of Pascal, Rousseau, Schopenhauer and Kant, and it will come as no surprise to learn that he is worsted by the sage. Turning from ethics to political and military philosophy, Jullien’s Treatise on Efficacy (1997) finds that, in war or diplomacy, Westerners (Aristotle, Machiavelli, Clausewitz) are clumsier operators than the Chinese (Sunzi, Hanfeizi, Guiguzi), who see effectiveness as primarily achieved by non-action whereas the former apparently rely on ‘consumption to overcome resistance’. His 1998 work, A Sage Has No Ideas, is the most widely translated of Jullien’s books. Chinese thinkers use wisdom, he argues, but not ‘ideas’, whereas Western philosophers work through abstraction and construction. The Chinese accept reality as nature provides it; any abstract idea is thus a prejudice against nature. The sage therefore avoids these, while the Europeans merely distance themselves from true philosophy.
Jullien returned to aesthetics in 2000 with The Impossible Nude, which renders the ‘absence of flavour’ that he explored in Blandness more tangible. Nudity has always existed in Western culture, yet it is almost completely absent in Chinese art. These degrees of body covering warrant a further philosophical comparison, which leads Jullien to conclude that nakedness is an exposure of the present; the Chinese approach, by emphasizing the absent, opens up a ‘sensual access to ontology’. In 2003, The Great Image Has No Form showed Western art to be obsessed with overcoming the ‘objectivity’ of the object, and thus constantly chasing the ghost of reality. Chinese art, by contrast, does not limit itself to the appearance of the object; the ‘great image’ refuses resemblance and thus avoids becoming a partial image, imprisoned in a static form.
The above-mentioned are just a selection of Jullien’s books to date. To the charge of eclecticism, he breezily admits (in Le Débat, for example) that his work may appear ‘discontinuous’: strategy, blandness, morality, etc. But these are ‘angles from which to return to the central question about the prejudices of European reason generally. Not being able to take on the latter forthright, I was left with only one possibility: to run from one point to another in order to weave a kind of problematic network.’ In each book he manages to come up with a couple of catchy phrases, neat in French at least, to make Chinese philosophy seem appealingly different yet understandable; and not only superior to that of the West but highly illuminating to Westerners. Doubt naturally arises in one’s mind: why is it, if Chinese thought is so much better than that of Ancient Greece or any other civilization, that some Chinese themselves fail to see that theirs is the greatest culture in the world? Just to say that it is because China is not ‘the other’ to China is not enough.
This is where Billeter comes in. His counter-blast identifies Jullien as the latest in a series of European writers who have founded their work on the myth of China’s absolute otherness. Billeter cites Victor Segalen, Marcel Granet, Richard Wilhelm and Pierre Ryckmans, for whom China also constitutes ‘the fundamental other’. But the origins of the myth can be traced back to Voltaire and the ‘sinophile Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century. Voltaire and the philosophes, of course, used China as a foil, to represent the opposite of the regime they were fighting against at home. Jullien, Billeter claims, has taken this myth and updated it to the present, while at the same time hiding its political significance. This is the core of his argument. For Voltaire and his contemporaries founded their vision of China on the picture provided by their enemies, the Jesuits, who themselves had a keen material interest in painting a favourable picture of Imperial institutions and the Confucianism that structured them, since they hoped to convert the Empire from above, through the person of the Emperor. It was Confucianism, they explained, that constituted the astonishing ‘key to the vault of the intellectual universe of the mandarins’. The Jesuits, for Billeter, are the originators of this myth of the marvellous Chinese ‘other’, of which Jullien is the latest propagator. The crux of the matter, Billeter argues, lies in understanding the political uses of Chinese philosophy, both historically—as Imperial ideology—and in the present day.
Billeter gives a succinct account of the first process. During what has become known in retrospect as the ‘first stage’ of Confucianism, from the sixth to the third centuries bc, China was more of a geographical concept than a country, with numerous principalities and kingdoms confronting each other, in a situation akin to that of Ancient Greece; and as in Greece, different schools of philosophers competed for the ears of kings and princes, with Confucius (551–479bc) and the generations of disciples who succeeded him forming only one of the many schools. The first attempt to consolidate a Chinese empire under the Qin dynasty (221–206bc) was short-lived and ruthless; its rulers burnt all classic texts with the exception of Legalist works. From 206bc the second attempt, under the Han, adopted a different approach. Han ministers-cum-court-philosophers reconstructed ‘pre-Imperial’ Confucianism, as Billeter calls it, into a set of cosmological and moral doctrines. The mandarinate was badly in need of a philosophy that could serve as ideological support to the new-born Empire. Mingling it with, and so disguising, the brutally coercive ‘Legalism’ of the previous era, the Han mandarins thus launched the ‘second stage’ of Confucianism.
These early ideologues were so successful that the imperial institutions their philosophy helped to sustain persisted in China for over two thousand years, before finally collapsing in the early twentieth century. ‘What we today regard as “Chinese civilization”’, Billeter concludes, ‘is closely linked to imperial despotism’—in contrast to Greek philosophy which, apparently unconnected to any form of despotism, has served as the source of the ‘political freedom and democracy that runs through European history’. In China, however, even seemingly pure philosophical concepts such as Zhongyong—usually translated as ‘golden mean’, but which Jullien calls ‘regulation’—were originally proposed to imperial officialdom as a technique of rule, Billeter argues.
The succeeding stages of Confucianism have been equally political. During the Southern Song and the Ming dynasties, from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, a number of scholars influenced by Buddhism and Daoism contributed to the more sophisticated development of Confucian philosophy. This revival is often referred to as the ‘third stage’, or—in the West—as Neo-Confucianism. From 1644 however the emperors of the Manchu dynasty, anxious to legitimate their ethnic-minority rule, resorted to a more conservative brand of Confucian ethics, turning it into a kind of fundamentalist dogmatism. After China’s traumatic nineteenth-century encounter with Western military and cultural invasion, Confucianism was widely regarded as the major obstacle to China’s modernization. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century it has experienced several attempts at resurrection. These efforts, known as New Confucianism—Xin Ruxue—are often referred to as the ‘fourth stage’. Billeter is on strong ground, then, when he attacks Jullien’s airbrushed, depoliticizing account.
Billeter also has little difficulty demolishing Jullien’s philosophical claims, pointing out the ‘missed encounter’ in each of his works. Though Jullien purports to engage with a different philosophical tradition, he never lets any of its representatives speak: there are few direct quotations or close readings of primary texts and he provides no full contextual accounts of the thinkers he mentions. Instead, his technique is to cherry-pick discrete notions as a thematic focus, presenting a homogenized account of the whole philosophical landscape in China. Jullien also entrenches the myth of China’s otherness through his method of translation. Concepts such as Dao or Shi cannot simply be plucked from their contexts, and rendered by some New Age approximation. To translate Dao as ‘process’, as Jullien does, is a misnomer that succeeds only in impressing the layman. Jullien the sinophile is accused of betraying what is truly Chinese. Rather than focus on particular words one must translate the whole context, Billeter argues, and this is only possible if one starts from the assumption of shared human experience and an understanding of basic ‘commonalities’. The Chinese might not, Billeter argues, have such a high opinion of their ancients because, paradoxically, they are ‘free and responsible people’ who might not have enjoyed despotism that much. To counter Jullien’s Hellenization of Chinese concepts Billeter tries to describe the Chinese as ‘people among us’, thus making their philosophy politically comprehensible.
Following his account of the remodelling of early Chinese philosophy as imperial ideology, Billeter discusses the intellectual ferment that attended its downfall. In some respects these are the most interesting passages in his book, for the attitudes of the Chinese who live in the real rather than the sinological world can shed some light on these complicated issues. According to Billeter, in the early decades of the twentieth century the modern Chinese intelligentsia of the May Fourth generation split into four factions over their attitude to traditional Chinese thought. Radical iconoclasts (like Chen Duxiu, founder of the Communist Party) reject it completely; critical intellectuals (like Gu Jigang, the liberal-sceptic historian) question its ‘sacred’ source; comparatists (like Feng Youlan, author of the first history of Chinese philosophy) try to compare it to Western philosophy; purists (like Qian Mu, a Confucianist educator) insist that it is simply incomparable, as well as incommunicable to the West.
The four factions can actually be divided into two camps: the critics and the apologists. Among the latter, both the comparatists and the purists, though differing in approach, arrive at the same conclusion: Chinese superiority. Jullien, according to Billeter, is a typical comparatist and, like his Chinese counterparts, unfailingly concludes that Chinese philosophy far surpasses all other varieties. Both critics and apologists have successors among younger generations of scholars in modern China, and the confrontation, instead of petering out over the years, has become even more heated, especially after China’s economic take-off. Billeter cites the examples of two younger scholars. Mou Zhongjian is today’s purist; writing in archaic Chinese in his 2005 essay, ‘The Grand Chinese Way’, he declares that Western civilization has passed its peak, culturally as well as economically, and the twenty-first century will be China’s. Li Dongjun, at Nankai University, represents the new iconoclasts. In her 2004 book, The Canonization of Confucius and the Confucianist Revolution, she argues that Confucianism as a system of representation still has a tenacious grip on the Chinese mentality and, despite the demise of the Empire a century ago, still leads its subjects to fulfil a ‘duty of abnegation in favour of totality’.
Billeter calls for the demythification of China as a ‘fundamental other’. The necessity to understand its philosophy as an imperial ideology is a political one: ‘not in order to reduce the role it has played in history, but to determine the approach we want to take to it’. This becomes all the more urgent because, although ‘in the past the Europeans and the Chinese lived apart, this ancient separation is no more. Today we are facing the same historical moment, and should act together and understand each other.’ The myth of the other now deters mutual understanding between China and the West. This is the ultimate insult to Jullien, whose purported aim has always been to bring about this understanding. Billeter puts it bluntly: ‘Those who endorse a critical reflection on the past in fact subscribe to political liberty and democracy, while the comparatists accommodate more readily to the state of power’.
The last chapter of Contre François Jullien, ‘One Must Choose’, calls for readers to take a stand. As Billeter’s reviewer, I guess I am not allowed to refuse. But are these the only choices on offer? I would say that both Jullien’s de-politicization of traditional Chinese philosophy and Billeter’s insistent politicization, according to the ‘universal’ standard of modern liberalism—hardly a Greek thought, but rather a very recent European product—are highly problematic. The issue is not whether China is specific or universal; China is both, to a certain degree. But it is simply not to the benefit of the Chinese to be told again and again that their culture was (and is) so unique that it can actually cure the deadly Western disease. Such an attitude was popular in Voltaire’s Europe and it might play well in Jullien’s. But the fantastical otherness that Jullien so seductively depicts has worked to the detriment of the Chinese over the last few centuries, and there is no reason to believe that otherness is a preferable projection today. Chinese philosophy has to break out of its cold cocoon of alterity to the West, regardless of how tightly Jullien and other comparatists have been wrapping it up with their claims for its supremacy.
To be fair, Jullien knows perfectly well where philosophy intersects with politics. If the discussion of Chinese modes of ‘effectiveness’ in his books has always been somewhat mystifying, to a Chinese reader at least, in his press interviews he has been more clear-cut. In a 2005 Le Monde interview, he explains that, in the spring of 1989, only the students and a minority in the Communist Party were in favour of democracy. The vast majority wanted the maintenance of order, which the ccp was best equipped to provide, so that they could carry on working hard and getting richer. The Chinese government had known how to regulate the explosive situation that followed the end of the Cultural Revolution and de-Maoization. In masterful fashion, Deng Xiaoping had deftly avoided being dragged into debates on his economic reforms, and instead pushed through a ‘silent revolution’ which has proved a resounding success. Jullien explains that the reason for Deng’s triumph is because his strategic thinking was based on the Chinese notion of effectiveness. Even Jullien acknowledges, then, though not explicitly, that in China today, philosophy is political.
Indeed, it is arguably more political than ever. During the 1980s and 1990s there was a powerful movement for the ‘revival of Confucianism’, mainly fanned by Chinese scholars teaching in the United States, who proposed that a Confucianist work ethic, comparable to that of Weberian Puritanism, lay behind the spectacular success of capitalism in Far Eastern countries. Du Weiming at Harvard is the leading star of this movement. ‘First of all’, he argues, ‘in Far Eastern countries there is a cooperation between a powerful economy and the State; and secondly, there is a coordination between democracy, elitism and moral education; and, lastly, there is a strong sense of team spirit, although an individual is also allowed to claim personal achievements’. Du frequently states that most of the companies in those countries are run on a family basis, and therefore more ‘efficiently’—Jullien would be proud—than their Western competitors.
The 1990s ‘revival’ was, somehow, muffled by the Asian financial crisis that suddenly exploded in 1997 and spread rapidly along the so-called ‘Dragon Path’ (or Confucianist sphere of influence) from Singapore to South Korea and Japan, exposing the fragility of the economies and, in some cases, the political structures of those countries. In recent years, however, another movement, the guoxue re or ‘native philosophy fever’, has been sweeping mainland China like a prairie fire. Popularizers of philosophy have been turned into stars by state-run television, reminiscent of the evangelists in the United States in the 1980s. School students are made to learn Confucius by rote, without any requirement to understand or interpret him. In 2006 there were a series of efforts aimed at reviving popular interest in Confucianism. In May, several internet giants sponsored the selection of ‘national philosophy masters’; in July, publicity around a traditional ‘Confucianist Primary School’ in Shanghai caused great controversy; in September, a ‘standard’ Confucius statue and portrait were released internationally, and a large number of scholars signed a proposal to establish Confucius’s birthday as an official ‘Teachers’ Day’. Many encourage students to burn incense and kowtow to the statue of Confucius before taking exams, rather than to Buddha, because the latter is not scholarly. A sound and wise suggestion. But these attempts to do more and more for Confucius are unending, and we shall definitely see many more of them prevail. Jullien may not have realized that his idealization of early Chinese philosophy could help to provide this ‘fever’ with an innocently apolitical veil.
The government’s attitude towards the ‘native philosophy fever’ has been ambiguous. Though its founders were all iconoclasts, the Communist Party has ‘opened up’ since the early 1980s. China has discovered that globalization and international competition work in its favour. In fact, the ccp is now extremely sensitive to hints of economic protectionism and political isolationism on the rise in the United States, Europe and Russia. That is why it is not eager to see China ‘turning inwards’ itself. On the other hand, the government considers nationalist sentiment among the masses to be a unifying force which legitimizes its rule. Since the authorities are sitting on the fence, the ‘fever’ has been, until now, a more or less spontaneous movement among the masses and intellectuals, stoked by a newly found national pride among the populace, but only half-heartedly encouraged by the government. In Chengdu, the city where I have resettled, people gather in tea-houses on Sunday mornings to hear lectures on traditional philosophy, though I doubt they would want to hear ideological admonitions. But the ‘fever’ itself is, beyond doubt, ideological in its agenda, an attempt to fill the vacuum of values in modern-day China. Spurred by China’s increased economic strength, the ‘fever’ will develop rapidly. This is why the issues Billeter raises are of such importance. Philosophical speculation on otherness, once pushed to an extreme, risks becoming dangerously attractive. Diversity can be encouraged without rendering difference into something unrecognizable, unreachable. When otherness is made into myth, it may serve neither those inside it nor those outside. This fiery debate among French-speaking sinologists is, we may hope, only the prelude to a fuller discussion on the price of keeping the other as the other.
西方对中国哲学的研究，一向局限于专业小圈子：几个教授教几个学生，让这几个学生以后能教几个学生。他们组成了一个稀有物种，不过有自尊的大学必备。他们的研究对象在学院内都与他人无干，跟学院外的世界更不沾边。正因如此，在中国如火如荼进行了一个多世纪的辩论，突然延烧进西方汉学家的小圈子，倒让我们大吃了一惊：这个小圈子本来是以幽静安宁取胜。更叫人吃惊的是，法国最负盛名的汉学家，被一个比他更年长的同行批评，名字都写到了封面上：《驳于连》------ 毕莱德著，巴黎阿丽亚出版社去年出版。如果我是于连，我会心中窃喜。
在中国，有关儒学的辩论，总能让争论各方热血澎湃，这在西方汉学家中不可想象，他们事不关己，在安全距离外隔岸观火，向来如此，如今竟然一变！毕莱德（Jean Francois Billeter）的书《驳于连》，字里行间都燃烧着愤怒的火焰。
毕莱德是一位法国-瑞士学者，他研究李贽的著作，以晚明士大夫思潮为背景做社会学研究，毕莱德研究庄子也颇有成就。他创办了日内瓦大学汉学系，在该大学任教直到1999年退休。不过从这本气势逼人的书来看，他远远没有从知识分子身份中退休。
他的论战对象于连（Francois Julien），学术生涯更为光彩夺目。于连目前是巴黎第7大学的中国哲学教授，也是法国公众生活中的熟悉身影，《世界》，《辩论》采访他，想“理解”几千年中国文化的商人和投资家需要他指教：都知道不理解儒学，就难以赢利。
于连七十年代在巴黎高师读希腊哲学时转向汉学，他后来在各种书的后记与谈话中一再说到他的想法：中国哲学可以推翻西方思想的任何普世性重大规律。只有中国能起这样的作用，因为中国文化是欧洲唯一的“伟大的他者”：阿拉伯世界，希伯来世界，与欧洲联系过于紧密，印度则与欧洲语言上连接，梵语与希腊语与之间只是稍有差别，而日本则是中国文明的一个变奏。要完全离开欧洲，中国是唯一选择。
于连1975-1977年在上海和北京学习，博士论文写的是中国现代文学的开山始祖鲁迅。1978-1981年于连载香港任职，1985-1987则把基地放在日本，1989年回到巴黎从事写作，异常多产，平均每年一本书，至今已有23本，最后一本书几乎是直接回应毕莱德。法国媒体对每本书都予以报道，大都赞扬备至。他的书广为翻译成各种语言：有四本译成中文，有趣的是，译成越南文的竟有六本。
于连的第一本主要著作《过程与创造》（1989），是研究17世纪中国哲学家王夫之的专著。这本书已经指明了他今后著作的一贯主题，以及他的比较方法。从这个方面看，他的学术生涯倒是一以贯之始终不变：中国思想不仅是与欧洲有本质不同，而且常常更为优越。例如中国哲学从“道”概念出发，而不是从“创世”出发，由此不必处理“存在”这个笨拙的谜语，也因此不必为形而上学伤脑筋。。这本书奠定了于连作为一个志向高远前程远大的年轻学者的名声。
处理完上帝，于连转向艺术。《平淡赞》（1991）认为“淡”是中国艺术最珍视的东西，看起来好像是“寡味”，实际上比任何潜在的“味”更高明。在艺术上，就如在哲学上，中国就是胜欧洲一筹。
在1992年的《事物之势：中国的效用概念》中，于连处理了一个更宏大的哲学课题。中国字“势”异常多义：字典上的意思有“力量，影响，权威，势力，方面，环境，条件”等等。于连翻译成“Propensite”（倾向），用语明显来自莱布尼茨，这种“欧化”译法，恐怕更是添乱。次年于连出版《内在性：<易经>哲理》，把《易经》称为“怪书中最怪的一本”，但是他用中国的“内在性”对付欧洲的“超越性”，当然更胜一筹。于连说《易经》与西方思想成鲜明对比，因为《易经》不用神秘主义，不用抽象，创造了对世界的理解，而西方人就不得不求救于存在，或上帝。再一次，于连的自由阐释，他的欧化或希腊化术语，彰显了中国先秦哲学的优越性。
这真是一个悖论，因为他自认的学术策略是“借道中国迂回到希腊”。他的下一本大书，长达400多页，《迂回与到达：中国与希腊的意义策略》（1995），就是着重谈这个问题。此书讨论了儒家与道家经典《论语》《孟子》《老子》《庄子》，发现这个经典有个共同点：话语形式不确定，回避对付最本质的共同性，而是把各种困难的角度统合起来，从而发展多样性。此种“迂回”带我们走到离希腊的“逻各斯”最远的地方，由此让我们“到达”希腊，而且一比之下，发现希腊哲学特别“抽象，呆滞”。这本书的讨论与结论，恐怕是最典型的于连。
1995似乎是于连的多产之年，他又出版了一本书《道德对话》，写的是孟子与一个欧洲启蒙运动哲学家的想象对话，这位对话者是于连发明的，看来是帕斯卡，卢梭，叔本华，康德的结合体。不奇怪，他们四不敌一，输给中国亚圣。然后于连从道德转向政治军事哲理，他的《效用论》（1977）发现，西方人（亚里士多德，马基雅维利，克劳塞维茨）比起他们的中国同行（孙子，韩非子，鬼谷子）无论是打仗还是搞外交，都笨拙得出奇：中国人靠“不为”取胜，西方人依赖“耗力克服阻挡”。1998年的《圣人不思》在于连的著作中非法语译本最多。他的论点是：中国思想家使用智慧而不是“理念”，西方哲学家使用的是抽象和建构。中国人接受自然而然的现实，抽象的理念是对自然的偏见。因此圣人不思，而欧洲人的做法只能远离真正的哲学。
在2000年，于连回到美学，出版了《不可能之裸》，把它先前的“论淡”变得更具体。在西方文化中，一直有裸体，但在中国艺术中几乎完全看不到。身体的遮盖程度看来值得好好做哲理探索，于连的探索得出结论是：裸身即在场的暴露，中国人的做法是强调不在场，从而开启了一种“感性接近本体论“的途径。2003年的《大像希形》揭示出西方美术热衷于克服客体的“客体性”，从而一直在追逐现实的幽灵，与此正成对比的是中国艺术不自我限制于课题的外形，“大像”拒绝相似，从而避免成为囚禁于静止形式中的片面形象。
以上简略描述的只是于连至今为止作品的一部分。于连在《辩论》的采访中轻而易之地打发说：他的著作可能显得题目散乱：战略，平淡，道德，五花八门，但是这些都只是一些“籍以回到中心问题即欧洲理性的不同角度。既然无法正面处理欧洲问题，我只有一个可能，即是从一点跑到另一点，织成一张问题之网“。在每一本书中，于连都能发明几个至少在法语中十分悦耳的词儿，能让中国哲学令人赏心悦目地不同，却又不难理解，不仅比西方高明，而且对西方人大有启发。
自然，人们心中疑窦油然而生：要是中国思想比古希腊，比任何其他文明，都高明得多，为什么好多中国人自己看不到中国文明是世界上最伟大的文明？仅仅说”中国不是中国的他者“，好像还不够。
毕莱德就是这个地方切入。他指责于连是“一连串制造中国绝对他者神话的欧洲作家中最新的一个“。毕莱德引用的例子包括谢阁兰(Victor Segalen)，葛兰言(Marcel Granet)，卫理贤(Richard Wilhelm)，李克曼(Pierre Ryckmans)，对他们来说，中国都是”绝对他者“。而中国神话的源头，恐怕要追溯到伏尔泰与十八世纪“亲中国启蒙运动”。伏尔泰与那一代哲人当然是用中国作为障眼法，来反对他们在欧洲要打倒的政权。毕莱德论点的核心是：于连做的是拿过这个神话加以更新，却掩藏这个神话固有的政治意义。伏尔泰与他的同代人关于中国的看法来自他们的敌人耶稣会教士，而这些耶稣会教士制造中国神话则是利益在焉：他们有必要把中国的帝国体制，以及背后的儒家哲学，描写的尽善尽美，因为他们的战略就是努力使皇帝改宗基督教，从而让整个中华帝国改宗基督教。他们的解释是：儒家是打开“士大夫智慧世界大殿”的神奇钥匙。毕莱德认为耶稣会教士是中国“神奇他者”观念的始作俑者，于连只是继承了他们的事业。因此，问题的核心，在于必须看到中国哲学自古至今的政治用途。
毕莱德回顾了儒家政治化过程：公元前六世纪到三世纪，现在往往被称为“儒学第一期”。中国当时是个地理概念，很难说是个国家，一批公侯之国互相对抗，与古希腊非常相似，同样相似的是：诸子百家竞争，力图得到王侯们的注意。孔子（公元前551-479）与他的几代门徒只是百家之一。秦朝（公元前221-206）第一次统一中国的努力，维持不长，却极为残酷：秦始皇焚书，独独赦免法家。汉朝建立后，采取了不同的方针：士大夫政权迫切需要一个哲学来支撑新生的帝国，汉代的廷臣学者重建了“先秦”儒学，毕莱德认为那种儒学是一套宇宙观加伦理教条，其中杂糅了前代使用的法家，不过掩盖了法家的残酷性质而已。由此，汉儒开启了所谓儒学发展第二期。
这些早期意识形态专家非常成功，他们的哲学支撑的帝国在中国延续了两千多年，到二十世纪初帝国政权才垮台。毕莱德的结论是：“我们今日称作‘中国文明’，原本与帝国集权联系在一起。”这与希腊哲学很不相同，希腊哲学看来没有与任何形式的暴政相联系，而是成为“欧洲历史上自由民主思想的一贯源泉”。在中国哲学中，看来纯粹的概念，例如“中庸”，原先也是用来教官员的统治技巧。
儒学后来的发展依然是政治化的。在南宋，在明代，从12世纪到17世纪，一连串的学者吸收佛教与道教影响，建立了哲学上更加成熟复杂的儒学。这被称为入学发展第三期，西方称之为“新儒学”（Neo-Confucianism）。1644年满洲人征服了中国，他们急于为少数民族统治争得合法性，于是把儒学变成一种原教旨教条主义。在十九世纪，中国收到西方屈辱的军事与文化入侵之后，儒家被很多人视为中国现代化的主要障碍。但是在二十世纪下半期，儒学有有几次复兴努力，此时称为新儒学（New Confucianism），常被称作儒学第四期。儒学的历史回顾，倒是让毕莱德批评于连的非政治化有了根据。
毕莱德倒也不难发现于连每本书中有盲点。于连虽然声称是在讨论一个完全不同的哲学传统，他却从来没有让这个哲学的代表人物发言，书中很少引语，也缺少对原始文本的细读，也没有仔细介绍这些思想家的历史背景。于连的方法是摘樱桃似地挑选概念作为讨论焦点，提出一个横跨中国哲学的同质图景。于连的翻译方式也在维持“他者中国”神话。像“道”或“势”这种概念，脱离语境挑出来，译成“新时代”（New Age）普及哲学式的术语，实际上是偷工减料：像于连那样把“道”译成Process，能让外行读来字通句顺。在毕莱德看来，“亲中国派”于连实际上是背叛了中国哲学。毕莱德认为不能集中于个别字眼，应当讨论整个语境，而要如此做，就要明白，人性经验以及基本常识是相通的，中国人自己并不一定认为他们的古人如此高明，正是因为中国人也是“自由的，负责任的人”，他们也不喜欢帝国集权。毕莱德为了对抗于连把中国“希腊化”，反过来把中国人描写成“和我们一样的人”，由此，中国哲学就成为政治上可理解的。
毕莱德描述了中国哲学如何变成帝国意识形态之后，又讨论了帝国崩溃后的中国思想界。从某种程度上说，这些段落是这本书中最有意思的部分：生活在实际之中的中国人，比西方汉学圈中人，更明白问题的复杂性。根据毕莱德的分析，在对待传统思想的态度上，五四时期中国知识界就分成四派：激进偶像摧毁者（如中国共产党的创始人陈独秀）完全拒绝中国传统思想；批评派知识分子（例如自由主义-怀疑主义历史学家顾颉刚）质疑其“神圣起源”；比较派（如第一本中国哲学史作者冯友兰）用来与西方哲学相比较；纯洁派（例如儒家教育家钱穆）坚持认为两者完全不可比，也无法互相交流。
这四派实际上分成两个阵营：批判阵营，辩护阵营。比较派与纯洁派都属于辩护阵营，他们的方式不同，结论却一致-----中国传统思想优越。毕莱德认为于连是一名典型的比较派，与他的中国同行相似，比较的结论永远是中国哲学比任何其他民族的哲学强。
批判阵营和辩护阵营在现代中国的一代代学者中都后继有人，而且两者的对抗，不但没有淡化，反而越来越火爆，尤其在近年中国经济起飞之后益发如此，毕莱德举的例子是两名当代的学者：牟钟鉴教授是今日的纯洁派，他在2005年发表的“中华大道”，用的是文言。在文中他认为西方文明，无论在文化上和经济上，都已经越过其巅峰下降，21世纪将是中国世纪。另一个例子是南开大学女教授李冬君，在2004年出版的《孔子圣化与儒者革命》一书中，她强调说：儒家作为一种再现系统，至今控制着中国人的思维，尽管皇权已经在一个世纪前倾覆，儒家思想依然在引导其臣民履行“为整体利益而牺牲的义务”。
毕莱德提出：应当对中国这个“本质他者”去神话化，认识到其哲学是一种帝国意识形态，这样做政治上是必要的：“这不是贬低中国哲学在历史上起的重大作用，而是决定我们应当如何理解中国哲学”。这个任务在今日更为迫切，“因为中国人与欧洲人过去生活在地球的两边，如今这古代隔离已经消失，今天我们面对同样的历史时刻，我们必须共同行动，彼此理解“，而他者神话只能妨碍中国与西方互相理解。毕莱德这番话，是对于连的最严重攻击，因为于连一直以加强中西互相理解为己任。毕莱德老实不客气地说：”那些对过去进行批评性反思的人，是赞同民主自由，而比较派是在为国家政权服务“。
毕莱德《驳于连》一书的结尾一章，题为“必须选择”，要每个读者采取一定立场。我作为此的书的评者，看来也难逃此义务。但是难道我只能两者选其一，不是毕莱德的立场，就是于连的立场？我的看法是，于连把中国哲学非政治化，毕莱德把中国哲学政治化，恐怕都是基于普世化的西方原则。毕莱德的立足点是现代自由主义立场，这是近现代欧洲的产物，很难说是希腊思想。但是问题并不在于中国思想究竟是特殊的还是普世的-----中国在一定程度上两者兼有。问题在于：一再向中国人重复，说中国文化曾经是今日依然是如此绝妙，可以治疗西方患上的的要命疾病，这种说法对中国人没有好处。这种说法对伏尔泰时代的欧洲有用，可能对于连的欧洲也有用，只是对于中国无益。于连笔下如此具有诱惑性的美妙他者形象，在过去一个多世纪中，没有帮中国人的忙，如今依然没有理由认为这是个可取的方案。中国哲学应当从西方他者的冷茧中破壳而出，不管于连或其他人如何用优越的茧丝把它捆扎起来。
应当说，于连自己很清楚他的非政治化，实际上与政治胶结在一道，在他的报纸访谈中，他说得很明白。在《世界报》的访谈中于连说到，中国政府明白应当如何处理文革后非毛化时期具有爆炸性的形势，邓小平大手笔，巧妙地推行“不争论”政策，胜利地实行了一场“不声不响的革命”，历史证明了这是一个了不起的伟大胜利。于连解释说，邓小平之所以能胜利，是因为他的战略思想的基础是中国的“效用论”。所以说，于连虽然在讨论哲学的书里不提，却自己也承认，在今日中国，哲学是政治性的。
说真的，恐怕中国哲学今日更加政治。在八十年代与九十年代，已经出现了一个声势浩大的“儒学复兴运动，其主要人物是在美国大学任教的一些中国学者。他们力图提出一个与韦伯分析的清教类似的儒家工作伦理，以此说明东亚资本主义令人眩目的成功。哈佛大学的杜维明是这个运动的领袖人物。杜维明的观点，拿他自己的话来说：第一：“强势的经济一定要和权威的政府合作”；第二：“民主制度，精英制度和道德教育需要互相配合”；第三：“个人可以求突出表现，但是基本上，还是讲究大的或小的团队精神”。杜维明一再说，比起西方企业来，东亚资本企业往往在家族基础上运作，由此更为”有效用“------这又是于连喜欢的词。1997年突然爆发的亚洲金融风暴，沿着所谓“龙脉”（或称“儒学影响圈”）从新加坡到南韩，到日本，飞速蔓延，暴露出这些国家经济结构上的问题，甚至有些国家的政治结构问题，儒学复兴突然哑了火，不知如何解释才好。
近年来，另一场儒学复兴又出现了，“国学热”在中国如燎原之火。电视把哲学普及者变成耀眼的明星，很有点像美国八十年代福音主义明星牧师。各级学校的学生要读经，首先要背诵，理解其次。2006年出现了一连串的事件，点燃公众对儒学的热情。五月里，几家大型网站合作选举“国学大师”；七月上海出现了“国学书塾”，引发争论；九月公布了“国际统一标准”的孔子塑像与肖像，一大批学者联名建议把孔子诞辰设为教师节，许多学者要求考生在考试前不要拜佛，要拜孔子，因为孔子才是有学问的人，最后这个建议倒是非常有道理。此类为孔子增光的举措层出不穷，今后只会越来越多。
中国政府对“国学热”的态度，倒是不冷不热。中国共产党的创世人多是偶像破坏者，自从八十年代初改革开放以来，中国发现全球化与国际竞争，对中国大有好处。实际上中国政府对美国，欧洲，俄国正在出现的贸易保护主义，政治孤立主义势头非常敏感。群众性民族主义情绪当然对政权有好处，但是政府也不想看到中国“向内转“。既然政府态度骑墙，国学热至今基本上是一个群众与知识分子自发的运动。在我居住的城市成都，星期天上午群众自发到茶馆听国学讲座，我想他们并不是来听意识形态说教的。国学热本身当然是有意识形态目的，尤其是在中国的价值真空时期。中国的经济力量持续增长，国学热也会迅速发展。这就是为什么毕莱德提出的问题非常重要：关于他者性的哲学思辨，一旦推到极端，会具有危险的魅力。所谓”多样性“会变成一种无法辨认，难以企及的异质性，把他者性变成神话，对生活在神话内和神话外的人都没有好处。因此我们希望，这场发生在法语汉学圈子内的热烈争论，会成为一场更深入的讨论的序曲，讨论的题目是：让他者成为永远的他者，我们能否承受此种代价？
（此文原题为“Contesting Confucius”，刊于New Left Review 2007年3-4月号）
附注：赵先生很少上网。一次偶然机会，我告诉他网上有一篇别人翻译他的学术随笔《挑战孔子》，争议不小。后来，先生让我将译文复制后传给他。先生读后，认为译者在理解上有许多偏颇与不够严谨之处。先生说他自己亲自翻译，到时再让我给《学术中国》等重要的思想型网站。赵先生治学严谨，讲课思路清晰。先生为我们讲《文学符号学》，再枯燥的学问，课上也能在他严谨的分析与介绍中感受他深深的人文关怀与鲜明的思想立场。听先生的课，启发很大，收获甚多。先生一言一行都能感受到他谦卑与严谨的学者人格。这些是我们后生在学术道路上需要一辈子仰望的。先生亲自翻译自己的文章，再一次说明了前辈学者的严谨治学的品格。——董迎春
Western scholarship on Chinese philosophy has long remained within its own small specialized ambit: a few scholars teaching a few students, so that the latter in turn may teach a few more students later on. They have constituted a rare species, which respectable universities have chosen to preserve. The subject appeared to have little wider relevance within these institutions, let alone outside. So it comes as quite a surprise to find a debate over traditional philosophy that has been raging in China for nearly a century suddenly blazing out within Western sinological circles, hitherto characterized by library quietness. It is even more astonishing to find the most famous sinologist in France so resoundingly condemned by a more senior fellow-sinologist, and in an eponymously titled pamphlet. If I were François Jullien, I should consider it an honour.
The passionate intensities that arguments over Confucian philosophy have generated in China had seemed unimaginable among those foreign scholars accustomed to watching the conflict with a marveling gaze, but always from a safe distance. Until now. Jean-François Billeter’s pamphlet, Contre François Jullien, burns with the fire of indignation on almost every page. Billeter himself, born in 1939, is a French-Swiss scholar best known for his sociological study of the sixteenth-century rebel thinker, Li Zhi, in the context of the late Ming mandarinate, and for his works on the Daoist classic Zhuangzi. Billeter was responsible for establishing the Sinology Department at the University of Geneva, where he taught until his retirement in 1999. Judging from this blistering text, however, he has not retired from intellectual life. Billeter’s target, François Jullien, has had a more spectacular career. Currently professor of Chinese Philosophy at Paris University vii, Jullien is also a familiar figure in French public intellectual life: interviewed on his work by Le Monde and Le Débat; much in demand by businessmen and investors seeking ‘an understanding’ of China’s multi-millennial culture—without which, they have been assured, it will be harder to turn a profit in the People’s Republic of Confucius, Sunzi and Laozi.
Born in 1951, Jullien switched from studying Greek philosophy at L’École Normale Supérieure to Chinese studies in the early 1970s in the hope—as he has explained in numerous books and interviews over the past fifteen years—that Chinese philosophy would throw into question all the ‘great universals’ of European thinking. It had to be China because, for Jullien, this is the only historic culture to constitute Europe’s ‘great other’: the Arabic and Hebraic worlds are ‘closely connected to our own history. We are also linked with India linguistically, with only a few divisions between Greek and Sanskrit. In order to get away from Europe completely, China is the only choice: Japanese culture is only a variation.’ There duly followed a spell in Shanghai and Beijing (1975–77) and a doctoral thesis on Lu Xun, the pioneering iconoclast of modern Chinese literature. From 1978–81 Jullien had an official posting in Hong Kong, and was based in Japan from 1985 until 1987. Since his return to Paris in 1989 Jullien has been remarkably productive: a book a year on average, amounting to 23 to date, the latest an almost immediate response to Billeter. The French press has met each new release with blanket coverage and generous approval. His books have been widely translated; four have appeared in Chinese and, interestingly, six in Vietnamese.
Jullien’s first major work was Process or Creation (1989), a study of the seventeenth-century Confucian philosopher, Wang Fuzhi, whose writing Jullien dubs ‘the thought of Chinese literature’. The book maps out the themes and the ‘comparatist’ method that he would deploy in all his later works; in this sense, his scholarship may be regarded as very consistent. Chinese thought is not only fundamentally different to that of Europe, Jullien argues, but often far superior to it. Thus by starting with the notion of ‘process’, rather than that of ‘creation’, Chinese philosophy dispenses with the cumbersome enigma of being and, therefore, with metaphysics. The book made his reputation as an ambitious and promising young scholar and, having dealt with God, Jullien moved on to art. In Praise of Blandness (1991) argues that the plainness treasured in Chinese aesthetics, even though it seems to betoken an ‘absence of flavour’, is in fact superior to any flavour as it is open to all potential variations, and even to a possible ‘internal deliverance’. In aesthetics as in philosophy, China achieves an elegant victory over Europe.
In 1992 Jullien tackled another grandiose philosophical topic in The Propensity of Things: Towards a History of Efficacy in China. The character Shi is notoriously ambiguous—dictionary definitions include ‘power, influence, authority, strength; aspect, circumstances, conditions’—but Jullien’s interpretation is not made any easier by his translating it as ‘propensity’, a term he borrows, tellingly, from Leibniz. The following year, his Figures of Immanence offered ‘a philosophical reading of the I-Ching’, ‘the strangest of all strange books’. Once again, Chinese immanence is pitted against Western transcendence, and wins the match. The Book of Changes, Jullien claims, is in sharp contrast to European thinking because it creates an understanding of the world without recourse to mystery or abstraction, whereas European thought is focused on being, or on God. Once again, however, the superiority of early Chinese philosophy is elucidated by Jullien’s very free interpretation of it, via Hellenized or Europeanized terms. This is paradoxical, since his avowed intellectual strategy is ‘to take China as a detour to access Greece’. Indeed his next big (400-page) book, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece (1995), is an explicit attempt at this. It examines the earliest Confucianist and Daoist classics—the Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi—and discovers that they share a common characteristic: an indefinite form of discourse, which refuses to tackle essentialist universalities but instead integrates all possible perspectives, so as to develop diversity. This ‘detour’ takes us to the point furthest removed from the Greek logos, which we can now ‘access’—and find to be particularly ‘abstract and stagnant’ by comparison. Both the argument and the conclusion are typical of Jullien’s work.
In a particularly productive year, Jullien published a second book in 1995, a Dialogue on Morals, featuring an imaginary debate between Mencius and an Enlightenment philosopher; the latter is a confection of Jullien’s, an unlikely combination of Pascal, Rousseau, Schopenhauer and Kant, and it will come as no surprise to learn that he is worsted by the sage. Turning from ethics to political and military philosophy, Jullien’s Treatise on Efficacy (1997) finds that, in war or diplomacy, Westerners (Aristotle, Machiavelli, Clausewitz) are clumsier operators than the Chinese (Sunzi, Hanfeizi, Guiguzi), who see effectiveness as primarily achieved by non-action whereas the former apparently rely on ‘consumption to overcome resistance’. His 1998 work, A Sage Has No Ideas, is the most widely translated of Jullien’s books. Chinese thinkers use wisdom, he argues, but not ‘ideas’, whereas Western philosophers work through abstraction and construction. The Chinese accept reality as nature provides it; any abstract idea is thus a prejudice against nature. The sage therefore avoids these, while the Europeans merely distance themselves from true philosophy.
Jullien returned to aesthetics in 2000 with The Impossible Nude, which renders the ‘absence of flavour’ that he explored in Blandness more tangible. Nudity has always existed in Western culture, yet it is almost completely absent in Chinese art. These degrees of body covering warrant a further philosophical comparison, which leads Jullien to conclude that nakedness is an exposure of the present; the Chinese approach, by emphasizing the absent, opens up a ‘sensual access to ontology’. In 2003, The Great Image Has No Form showed Western art to be obsessed with overcoming the ‘objectivity’ of the object, and thus constantly chasing the ghost of reality. Chinese art, by contrast, does not limit itself to the appearance of the object; the ‘great image’ refuses resemblance and thus avoids becoming a partial image, imprisoned in a static form.
The above-mentioned are just a selection of Jullien’s books to date. To the charge of eclecticism, he breezily admits (in Le Débat, for example) that his work may appear ‘discontinuous’: strategy, blandness, morality, etc. But these are ‘angles from which to return to the central question about the prejudices of European reason generally. Not being able to take on the latter forthright, I was left with only one possibility: to run from one point to another in order to weave a kind of problematic network.’ In each book he manages to come up with a couple of catchy phrases, neat in French at least, to make Chinese philosophy seem appealingly different yet understandable; and not only superior to that of the West but highly illuminating to Westerners. Doubt naturally arises in one’s mind: why is it, if Chinese thought is so much better than that of Ancient Greece or any other civilization, that some Chinese themselves fail to see that theirs is the greatest culture in the world? Just to say that it is because China is not ‘the other’ to China is not enough.
This is where Billeter comes in. His counter-blast identifies Jullien as the latest in a series of European writers who have founded their work on the myth of China’s absolute otherness. Billeter cites Victor Segalen, Marcel Granet, Richard Wilhelm and Pierre Ryckmans, for whom China also constitutes ‘the fundamental other’. But the origins of the myth can be traced back to Voltaire and the ‘sinophile Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century. Voltaire and the philosophes, of course, used China as a foil, to represent the opposite of the regime they were fighting against at home. Jullien, Billeter claims, has taken this myth and updated it to the present, while at the same time hiding its political significance. This is the core of his argument. For Voltaire and his contemporaries founded their vision of China on the picture provided by their enemies, the Jesuits, who themselves had a keen material interest in painting a favourable picture of Imperial institutions and the Confucianism that structured them, since they hoped to convert the Empire from above, through the person of the Emperor. It was Confucianism, they explained, that constituted the astonishing ‘key to the vault of the intellectual universe of the mandarins’. The Jesuits, for Billeter, are the originators of this myth of the marvellous Chinese ‘other’, of which Jullien is the latest propagator. The crux of the matter, Billeter argues, lies in understanding the political uses of Chinese philosophy, both historically—as Imperial ideology—and in the present day.
Billeter gives a succinct account of the first process. During what has become known in retrospect as the ‘first stage’ of Confucianism, from the sixth to the third centuries bc, China was more of a geographical concept than a country, with numerous principalities and kingdoms confronting each other, in a situation akin to that of Ancient Greece; and as in Greece, different schools of philosophers competed for the ears of kings and princes, with Confucius (551–479bc) and the generations of disciples who succeeded him forming only one of the many schools. The first attempt to consolidate a Chinese empire under the Qin dynasty (221–206bc) was short-lived and ruthless; its rulers burnt all classic texts with the exception of Legalist works. From 206bc the second attempt, under the Han, adopted a different approach. Han ministers-cum-court-philosophers reconstructed ‘pre-Imperial’ Confucianism, as Billeter calls it, into a set of cosmological and moral doctrines. The mandarinate was badly in need of a philosophy that could serve as ideological support to the new-born Empire. Mingling it with, and so disguising, the brutally coercive ‘Legalism’ of the previous era, the Han mandarins thus launched the ‘second stage’ of Confucianism.
These early ideologues were so successful that the imperial institutions their philosophy helped to sustain persisted in China for over two thousand years, before finally collapsing in the early twentieth century. ‘What we today regard as “Chinese civilization”’, Billeter concludes, ‘is closely linked to imperial despotism’—in contrast to Greek philosophy which, apparently unconnected to any form of despotism, has served as the source of the ‘political freedom and democracy that runs through European history’. In China, however, even seemingly pure philosophical concepts such as Zhongyong—usually translated as ‘golden mean’, but which Jullien calls ‘regulation’—were originally proposed to imperial officialdom as a technique of rule, Billeter argues.
The succeeding stages of Confucianism have been equally political. During the Southern Song and the Ming dynasties, from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, a number of scholars influenced by Buddhism and Daoism contributed to the more sophisticated development of Confucian philosophy. This revival is often referred to as the ‘third stage’, or—in the West—as Neo-Confucianism. From 1644 however the emperors of the Manchu dynasty, anxious to legitimate their ethnic-minority rule, resorted to a more conservative brand of Confucian ethics, turning it into a kind of fundamentalist dogmatism. After China’s traumatic nineteenth-century encounter with Western military and cultural invasion, Confucianism was widely regarded as the major obstacle to China’s modernization. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century it has experienced several attempts at resurrection. These efforts, known as New Confucianism—Xin Ruxue—are often referred to as the ‘fourth stage’. Billeter is on strong ground, then, when he attacks Jullien’s airbrushed, depoliticizing account.
Billeter also has little difficulty demolishing Jullien’s philosophical claims, pointing out the ‘missed encounter’ in each of his works. Though Jullien purports to engage with a different philosophical tradition, he never lets any of its representatives speak: there are few direct quotations or close readings of primary texts and he provides no full contextual accounts of the thinkers he mentions. Instead, his technique is to cherry-pick discrete notions as a thematic focus, presenting a homogenized account of the whole philosophical landscape in China. Jullien also entrenches the myth of China’s otherness through his method of translation. Concepts such as Dao or Shi cannot simply be plucked from their contexts, and rendered by some New Age approximation. To translate Dao as ‘process’, as Jullien does, is a misnomer that succeeds only in impressing the layman. Jullien the sinophile is accused of betraying what is truly Chinese. Rather than focus on particular words one must translate the whole context, Billeter argues, and this is only possible if one starts from the assumption of shared human experience and an understanding of basic ‘commonalities’. The Chinese might not, Billeter argues, have such a high opinion of their ancients because, paradoxically, they are ‘free and responsible people’ who might not have enjoyed despotism that much. To counter Jullien’s Hellenization of Chinese concepts Billeter tries to describe the Chinese as ‘people among us’, thus making their philosophy politically comprehensible.
Following his account of the remodelling of early Chinese philosophy as imperial ideology, Billeter discusses the intellectual ferment that attended its downfall. In some respects these are the most interesting passages in his book, for the attitudes of the Chinese who live in the real rather than the sinological world can shed some light on these complicated issues. According to Billeter, in the early decades of the twentieth century the modern Chinese intelligentsia of the May Fourth generation split into four factions over their attitude to traditional Chinese thought. Radical iconoclasts (like Chen Duxiu, founder of the Communist Party) reject it completely; critical intellectuals (like Gu Jigang, the liberal-sceptic historian) question its ‘sacred’ source; comparatists (like Feng Youlan, author of the first history of Chinese philosophy) try to compare it to Western philosophy; purists (like Qian Mu, a Confucianist educator) insist that it is simply incomparable, as well as incommunicable to the West.
The four factions can actually be divided into two camps: the critics and the apologists. Among the latter, both the comparatists and the purists, though differing in approach, arrive at the same conclusion: Chinese superiority. Jullien, according to Billeter, is a typical comparatist and, like his Chinese counterparts, unfailingly concludes that Chinese philosophy far surpasses all other varieties. Both critics and apologists have successors among younger generations of scholars in modern China, and the confrontation, instead of petering out over the years, has become even more heated, especially after China’s economic take-off. Billeter cites the examples of two younger scholars. Mou Zhongjian is today’s purist; writing in archaic Chinese in his 2005 essay, ‘The Grand Chinese Way’, he declares that Western civilization has passed its peak, culturally as well as economically, and the twenty-first century will be China’s. Li Dongjun, at Nankai University, represents the new iconoclasts. In her 2004 book, The Canonization of Confucius and the Confucianist Revolution, she argues that Confucianism as a system of representation still has a tenacious grip on the Chinese mentality and, despite the demise of the Empire a century ago, still leads its subjects to fulfil a ‘duty of abnegation in favour of totality’.
Billeter calls for the demythification of China as a ‘fundamental other’. The necessity to understand its philosophy as an imperial ideology is a political one: ‘not in order to reduce the role it has played in history, but to determine the approach we want to take to it’. This becomes all the more urgent because, although ‘in the past the Europeans and the Chinese lived apart, this ancient separation is no more. Today we are facing the same historical moment, and should act together and understand each other.’ The myth of the other now deters mutual understanding between China and the West. This is the ultimate insult to Jullien, whose purported aim has always been to bring about this understanding. Billeter puts it bluntly: ‘Those who endorse a critical reflection on the past in fact subscribe to political liberty and democracy, while the comparatists accommodate more readily to the state of power’.
The last chapter of Contre François Jullien, ‘One Must Choose’, calls for readers to take a stand. As Billeter’s reviewer, I guess I am not allowed to refuse. But are these the only choices on offer? I would say that both Jullien’s de-politicization of traditional Chinese philosophy and Billeter’s insistent politicization, according to the ‘universal’ standard of modern liberalism—hardly a Greek thought, but rather a very recent European product—are highly problematic. The issue is not whether China is specific or universal; China is both, to a certain degree. But it is simply not to the benefit of the Chinese to be told again and again that their culture was (and is) so unique that it can actually cure the deadly Western disease. Such an attitude was popular in Voltaire’s Europe and it might play well in Jullien’s. But the fantastical otherness that Jullien so seductively depicts has worked to the detriment of the Chinese over the last few centuries, and there is no reason to believe that otherness is a preferable projection today. Chinese philosophy has to break out of its cold cocoon of alterity to the West, regardless of how tightly Jullien and other comparatists have been wrapping it up with their claims for its supremacy.
To be fair, Jullien knows perfectly well where philosophy intersects with politics. If the discussion of Chinese modes of ‘effectiveness’ in his books has always been somewhat mystifying, to a Chinese reader at least, in his press interviews he has been more clear-cut. In a 2005 Le Monde interview, he explains that, in the spring of 1989, only the students and a minority in the Communist Party were in favour of democracy. The vast majority wanted the maintenance of order, which the ccp was best equipped to provide, so that they could carry on working hard and getting richer. The Chinese government had known how to regulate the explosive situation that followed the end of the Cultural Revolution and de-Maoization. In masterful fashion, Deng Xiaoping had deftly avoided being dragged into debates on his economic reforms, and instead pushed through a ‘silent revolution’ which has proved a resounding success. Jullien explains that the reason for Deng’s triumph is because his strategic thinking was based on the Chinese notion of effectiveness. Even Jullien acknowledges, then, though not explicitly, that in China today, philosophy is political.
Indeed, it is arguably more political than ever. During the 1980s and 1990s there was a powerful movement for the ‘revival of Confucianism’, mainly fanned by Chinese scholars teaching in the United States, who proposed that a Confucianist work ethic, comparable to that of Weberian Puritanism, lay behind the spectacular success of capitalism in Far Eastern countries. Du Weiming at Harvard is the leading star of this movement. ‘First of all’, he argues, ‘in Far Eastern countries there is a cooperation between a powerful economy and the State; and secondly, there is a coordination between democracy, elitism and moral education; and, lastly, there is a strong sense of team spirit, although an individual is also allowed to claim personal achievements’. Du frequently states that most of the companies in those countries are run on a family basis, and therefore more ‘efficiently’—Jullien would be proud—than their Western competitors.
The 1990s ‘revival’ was, somehow, muffled by the Asian financial crisis that suddenly exploded in 1997 and spread rapidly along the so-called ‘Dragon Path’ (or Confucianist sphere of influence) from Singapore to South Korea and Japan, exposing the fragility of the economies and, in some cases, the political structures of those countries. In recent years, however, another movement, the guoxue re or ‘native philosophy fever’, has been sweeping mainland China like a prairie fire. Popularizers of philosophy have been turned into stars by state-run television, reminiscent of the evangelists in the United States in the 1980s. School students are made to learn Confucius by rote, without any requirement to understand or interpret him. In 2006 there were a series of efforts aimed at reviving popular interest in Confucianism. In May, several internet giants sponsored the selection of ‘national philosophy masters’; in July, publicity around a traditional ‘Confucianist Primary School’ in Shanghai caused great controversy; in September, a ‘standard’ Confucius statue and portrait were released internationally, and a large number of scholars signed a proposal to establish Confucius’s birthday as an official ‘Teachers’ Day’. Many encourage students to burn incense and kowtow to the statue of Confucius before taking exams, rather than to Buddha, because the latter is not scholarly. A sound and wise suggestion. But these attempts to do more and more for Confucius are unending, and we shall definitely see many more of them prevail. Jullien may not have realized that his idealization of early Chinese philosophy could help to provide this ‘fever’ with an innocently apolitical veil.
The government’s attitude towards the ‘native philosophy fever’ has been ambiguous. Though its founders were all iconoclasts, the Communist Party has ‘opened up’ since the early 1980s. China has discovered that globalization and international competition work in its favour. In fact, the ccp is now extremely sensitive to hints of economic protectionism and political isolationism on the rise in the United States, Europe and Russia. That is why it is not eager to see China ‘turning inwards’ itself. On the other hand, the government considers nationalist sentiment among the masses to be a unifying force which legitimizes its rule. Since the authorities are sitting on the fence, the ‘fever’ has been, until now, a more or less spontaneous movement among the masses and intellectuals, stoked by a newly found national pride among the populace, but only half-heartedly encouraged by the government. In Chengdu, the city where I have resettled, people gather in tea-houses on Sunday mornings to hear lectures on traditional philosophy, though I doubt they would want to hear ideological admonitions. But the ‘fever’ itself is, beyond doubt, ideological in its agenda, an attempt to fill the vacuum of values in modern-day China. Spurred by China’s increased economic strength, the ‘fever’ will develop rapidly. This is why the issues Billeter raises are of such importance. Philosophical speculation on otherness, once pushed to an extreme, risks becoming dangerously attractive. Diversity can be encouraged without rendering difference into something unrecognizable, unreachable. When otherness is made into myth, it may serve neither those inside it nor those outside. This fiery debate among French-speaking sinologists is, we may hope, only the prelude to a fuller discussion on the price of keeping the other as the other.
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