Periodizing Japanese and Chinese Modernity via Hegelian Master Narratives

CSCL invites you to join us for a colloquium with Professor Viren Murthy (Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison). Registration only required to view on Zoom.

Abstract

Scholars of Asian studies have something of a love-hate relationship with Hegel; they love to cite him as the epitome of Eurocentrism, modernization theory and the legitimation of colonialism. Despite their prevalence, such criticisms overlook both the complexities of Hegel’s philosophy and the different ways in which Asian intellectuals attempted to turn Hegel on his head or rescue the rational kernel of his thought in a non-Western context. I contend that for much of the twentieth century, especially in Japan, but also in China, scholars engaged Hegel by incorporating and transforming his ideas. Such incorporations enable us to see that Hegel was not merely a theorist of modernization but one of its most incisive critics. Indeed, it was precisely because of Hegel’s critique of capitalist modernity that conservatives such as Inoue Tetsujirō found him interesting. In this presentation, I will examine two attempts to rethink Hegel, respectively by the Kyoto school philosopher of world-history, Koyama Iwao and the Japanese sinologist, Mizoguchi Yūzō. I argue that each of these thinkers narrates the history of Asia, while implicitly or explicitly responding to Hegel’s idea of the Orient as not having subjectivity. Against this static vision of Asia, these figures reconfigure the historical trajectories of Japan, China and the world to reconstitute both universality and subjectivity beyond Eurocentrism. Towards the end of my talk, I suggest that the contemporary “new leftist” intellectual Wang Hui, continues elements of the various thinkers mentioned above. The contemporary rise of China makes such responses to Hegelian master narratives especially relevant for our contradictory present.

The Speaker: Viren Murthy

Viren Murthy teaches and researches transnational Asian history in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an emphasis on intellectual history/history of philosophy. His works include Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution (University of Chicago, 2023), The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness (Brill, 2011), The Politics of Time in China and Japan, (Routledge, 2022). He is co-editor with Joyce Liu of Marxisms in East Asia (Routledge, 2017), co-editor with Fabian Schäfer and Max Ward, of Confronting Capital and Empire: Rethinking Kyoto School Philosophy (Brill, 2017) and co-editor with Prasenjit Duara and Andrew Sartori of A Companion to Global Historical Thought, (Blackwell, 2014). He has published articles in Journal of Labor and Society, Modern Intellectual History, Modern China, Frontiers of History in China and Positions: Asia Critique.

Cosponsors

Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Center for German & European Studies
Department of English
Department of History
Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change