Overview

China in Later Enlightenment Political Thought examines the ideas of China in the works of mid- to late-eighteenth century European Enlightenment political thinkers. Like its predecessor volume, China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought, this book is distinctive in providing in-depth comparative analyses of works by seminal late Enlightenment thinkers that specifically link their views on China to their political concerns. It traces the shifts between metaphysical, naturalistic, economic, technological, cultural, idealist, and materialist accounts, and philosophical histories of Chinese politics, society, and culture. It argues that, unlike earlier thinkers, most of the later Enlightenment authors assessed in this book—including Christian Wolff, Voltaire, François Quesnay, Adam Smith, contributors to the Encylopédie, Abbé Raynal, Denis Diderot, and Johann Gottfried Herder—developed conceptions of history which increasingly depicted China as unprogressive and even stagnant. Even later Enlightenment enthusiasts of China such as Voltaire were deeply ambivalent about the lessons European societies could draw from China when viewed in relation to progressive visions of world history. The book also discusses the ways in which later Enlightenment theorists who were critical of aspects of European imperialism, especially Diderot and Herder, nevertheless regarded China as backward and despotic and concludes with the influence of Enlightenment conceptions of China on the philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as Mao Zedong’s reappropriation of post-Enlightenment philosophy of history. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of Chinese history, Chinese philosophy, Chinese politics, and political philosophy more generally.

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9781041064343

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Simon Kow is Professor of Humanities and Director of the Early Modern Studies Program at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. His research interests focus on early modern political thought and his publications include China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought (Routledge, 2017).

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