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China in the German Enlightenment
Bettina Brandt (Edited by), Daniel Purdy (Edited by)
9781487545550
Paperback / softback, published 17 January 2022
224 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.32 kg
‘The volume as a whole and each individual essay will inspire future scholarly interest in the German reception of China.’ ‘The book collects eight remarkably coherent essays by historians, philosophers, and Germanists… After reading these well-crafted essays, we cannot help feeling the gratification afforded by new historical knowledge.’ "This collection of essays by both older and newer voices in Asian-German studies does an excellent job of illuminating both ‘the problem of China’ and ‘the problem of Europe’ from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. It will undoubtedly spur on new and, hopefully, equally productive responses."
Over the course of the eighteenth century, European intellectuals shifted from admiring China as a utopian place of wonder to despising it as a backwards and despotic state. That transformation had little to do with changes in China itself, and everything to do with Enlightenment conceptions of political identity and Europe’s own burgeoning global power. China in the German Enlightenment considers the place of German philosophy, particularly the work of Leibniz, Goethe, Herder, and Hegel, in this development. Beginning with the first English translation of Walter Demel’s classic essay “How the Chinese Became Yellow,” the collection’s essays examine the connections between eighteenth-century philosophy, German Orientalism, and the origins of modern race theory.
Introduction 1. How the Chinese became Yellow: A Contribution to the Early History of Race Theories 2. Leibniz on the Existence of Philosophy in China 3. Leibniz between Paris, Grand Tartary, and the Far East: Gerbillon’s Intercepted Letter 4. The Problem of China: Asia and Enlightenment Anthropology (Buffon, de Pauw, Blumenbach, Herder) 5. Localizing China: Of Knowledge, Genres, and German Literary Historiography 6. Eradicating the Orientalists: Goethe’s Chinesisch-deutsche Jahres- und Tageszeiten 7. China on Parade: Hegel’s Manipulation of His Sources and His Change of Mind 8. Neo-Romantic Modernism and Daoism: Martin Buber on the Teaching as Fulfillment
Daniel Purdy and Bettina Brandt
Walter Demel
Franklin Perkins
Michael C. Carhart
Carl Niekerk
Birgit Tautz
John K. Noyes
Robert Bernasconi
Jeffrey S. Librett