Acceptance of Liberal Thought in the Course of Economic Transformation: Comparative Analysis of Russia and China

Abstract

American historian of social thought, Peter Gay says “I think it is now apparent that politics presented the enlightenment with a dilemma of heroic proportions. The philosophes stood for reform; they stood, at the same time, for freedom in its many guises – freedom of thought, speech, and the press, freedom to participate in the haping of public policy, to pursue one’s career and realize one’s talents. Reform and freedom were for them two faces of a single hope: freedoms were among the reforms to be accomplished, reforms were among the happy consequences of freedom. But the realities tore this alliance apart: with the overpowering presence of the illiterate masses and the absence of the habit of autonomy, freedom and reform were often incompatible. Libertarians seemed to have no way of initiating reforms; the most effective among the royal reformers were self-willed paternalists who made improvements in their own way and for their own sake. The road to the realization of the philosophes’ political program thus led through the devious and embarrassing detours of repression and manipulation that were a denial or a mockery of the world they hoped to bring into being; the very methods used to distribute the fruits of enlightenment seemed calculated to frustrate enlightenment itself” (Gay, 1973, p. 497). This is an excellently clear presentation of “contradiction of enlightenment”, because it would lead us to an ironical conclusion that the trial of enlightenment could only be realized by anti-enlightenment measures. This contradiction is one of the most important issues to remember when we examine how the imported social thought would function in a country, where deep social reforms are under way. Here I would like to emphasize the importance of “translation”. Let us take a Japanese example in the period of Meiji (1868-1912). Many Japanese social activists, thinkers and teachers endeavored to “translate” western European notions into apanese notions in the Meiji period. It was not only a linguistic matter. For example, the word “philosophy” was translated into Japanese “哲学” [Tetsugaku] by Amane Nishi, Japanese “philosopher”. Nishi did not only connect one European word with one Japanese word. At that time Japanese knew neither the word of “philosophy” nor the notion of “philosophy”. Of course there had been many Japanese who had thought about the structure of the universe, the relation between mind and body, meaning of life and death, etc. They, however, did not call themselves “philosopher” and the domain of their thinking was different from that of western European “philosophers”. Therefore Nishi had to “invented” a new word “Tetsugaku” by borrowing an idea from ancient Chinese classics. In this translation process, Nishi or Japanese people in general, had to experience deep intellectual struggle between the new notion and old way of thinking. In this regard, it would be interesting to investigate the process of translation of western European notions into Russian and Chinese society in comparative perspective. Here we are very much interested in the fact that peoples speaking Indo-European languages can find out a domestic equivalent to a western European word easily. Japanese or Chinese cannot. This comparison would lead us to understand how was the contradiction of enlightenment reconciled in Russia and China. This paper does not intend to assert that Chinese model had to be applied in Russia. It was impossible for many reasons, though Russians could have taken some lessons from Chinese experiences. The purpose of this paper is to highlight difference of the way to introduce foreign social thoughts in the two countries both in social transition and show that the difference had played an important role to produce the difference of the Russian and Chinese system today.