Despotism above and below: Gu Yanwu's "Record of Daily Learning" on power, money, and mores.

详细信息   

• 作者：Delury ; John Patrick.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2007
• 导师：Spence, Jonathan
• 毕业院校：Yale University
• 专业：Literature, Asian.;History, Asia, Australia and Oceania.;Political Science, General.
• ISBN：9780549065937
• CBH：3267237
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：28252779
• Pages：385

文摘

"Despotism Above and Below" reconstructs the political, economic and social thought of Gu Yanwu (1613-82) in an early Qing context. The central thesis of the dissertation is that Gu's major work, the Record of Daily Learning, developed a "mixed model" approach to power, money and mores that sought to combine central state authoritarianism with local responsiveness. The study further argues that Gu's blend of statism and localism was a response to the problem of two kinds of despotism, one from above and the other from below. The primary source-base is the Record of Daily Learning itself. Comparisons between the first edition, printed in 1670, and the second edition, published posthumously in 1695, highlight the development of Gu's arguments in the 1660s and 1670s. Passages from a rare manuscript version of Gu's research notes also corroborate key points of the dissertation's thesis.;The first two chapters, drawing on Gu's rich correspondence, piece together his intellectual milieu, focusing on the two decades he spent researching, publishing and revising the Record of Daily Learning. Gu's life experiences substantiate the idea that his anxiety over the informal despotism of local elites fed statist undercurrents in his political writings. Gu maintained close relationships with Qing county, provincial and court officials, many of whom were avid readers of his work. Gu's proposals for improved government and Confucian revival resonated with central tenets of court policy in the early Kangxi reign.;Chapter three explains Gu's mixed model approach. Interspersing the writings of other political thinkers gives a wider sense of the debate in the early Qing between the two "constitutional" models of fengjian versus junxian, and the possibility of a third way. In chapter four, on Gu's ideas about economics, the story of his involvement in a 1666 land reclamation project illuminates the complex political environment in which "Ming loyalists" worked closely with Qing "collaborators" at the local level to restore China's stability and prosperity. The final chapter explores Gu's unfinished movement toward putting commonality (tianxia ) ahead of the state (guo). The conclusion looks briefly at the strange fate of Gu's ideas in the twentieth century.