Confucianism and the Public Sphere: Five relationships plus one?

摘要

Rudyard Kipling's famous adage about East and West appears obsoleterntoday. In our age of globalizafion, the two cultural hemispheres not onlyrn"meet" but also challenge and interpenetrate each other at a steadily acceleratingrnrate. Not implausibly, this process has given rise to anticipations ofrna global civil society or civic culture, perhaps even of the rudiments ofrncosmopolis. Yet, despite such "one-world" visions, the interpenetration ofrnhemispheres has not been entirely mutual or a two-way street. In largernmeasure, contemporary globalization is the result of Western initiativesrnstretching from the Enlightenment to industrialization to the "informationrnrevolution.'" These initiatives, in turn, can be traced to a deeper trait or tendencyrninhabiting Western culture: the tendency to transgress or exceed itself,rnto prefer distance to proximity, new vistas to habitual ways) In a palpablernmanner, this tendency has manifested itself historically in a steadyrnsequence of expansions: from Alexander to the conquest of the Americasrnto later colonialism and imperialism. Seen from this angle, contemporaryrnglobalization--at least in part--follows a long-standing pattern.