Anthropologist and political scientist Alan McFarlane recorded many of
his lectures while visiting China [0]. I really enjoyed some of them I
found online, but it raised a hard question for me; outside of SOAS or
Harvard, where are the visiting professors from China teaching
Westerners some of the great stories and value from 5000 years of
Chinese history (the stuff the CCP now wants to bury).
> where are the visiting professors from China teaching Westerners some of the great stories and value from 5000 years of Chinese history
A great question, and I would love to take a class - even online - from a top Chinese professor on leading Chinese texts.
I imagine part of the answer is that the reputations of and demand for American universities have been far beyond Chinese universities, though recently that's changing some. (That's not a criticism of people in China - it takes awhile to build those institutions and they are already moving pretty fast.)
I suspect there's also the language barrier... If an institution in China invites a western scholar to teach the Iliad for example, they wouldn't insist the person teach it in Chinese.
But I presume, when you said you wanted to take a class from a top Chinese professor on leading Chinese texts, that you would want English instruction, and that you'd prefer the material be translated from Classical Chinese to English? (Just knowing Mandarin isn't quite enough)
But then, it's really hard to translate Classical Chinese to English. Even the longer important texts haven't been fully translated, eg. 史記 ("Records of the Grand Historian", which has kind of a similar standing as the Iliad in the West) is only partially translated AFAICT.
Written Chinese is admittedly quite hard to learn given that you have to recognize the characters etc. Classical Chinese is even harder since there's nobody you can converse with.
But if you know Mandarin, there's probably a huge amount of high quality stuff you can find online that satisfies what you want.
Speaking generally: learning those things is often the best thing you can do for your brain, and then you won't be so old anymore.
I think people overestimate the effect of age on learning. Children spend years becoming fluent in their native language, and with little focus or study of it. I could learn a language faster. (Not an apples-apples comparison, obviously, because children's brains and behavior are so much different.)
We learned Confucius, Mencius, Daosim, legalism, the dynasties, bits of the Chinese language etc. I still remember all the dynasties in order.
Of course that didn’t really pay the bills so I redid a bachelors in STEM. But its pretty common in many liberal arts curriculums. Taught right alongside the classics.
An occidental account, tainted by orientalism and packaged for, as you
say, liberal arts students.
My point was to the asymmetry of authentic visiting pedagogy. In other
words, for the past 20 or 30 years Chinese universities have been
enthusiastic and open to first hand accounts of western culture,
ancient and modern. They've been keen to take the best of what we have
and learn from it. On our side we have a cannon prepared for the
most-part before 1900 and taught by aging white professors.
McFarlane seems unusual, albeit that he is indeed the archetypal
western Oxford don.
It would be nice to avoid the implication of a "successful and
scientific" Western cannon versus "failed" and primitive alternatives
that don't pay bills. FWIW, I like to assume, in all discussions of
interest, that the bills have been paid. Bill paying is, after all
rather dull.
On the other hand I casually wondered on Friday, amidst all the
fireworks and what with it being a dragon new year, what we're missing
about a problem that we seem to be struggling with - namely how a
society, despite huge technological change and diversity, remains
relatively stable for thousands of years.
I would love to watch a YouTube video lecture series on something like
that, from the horse's mouth as it were, but I suspect all the
authentic professors who would have taught us were rounded up or
starved in some Great Leap Backwards.
> namely how a society, despite huge technological change and diversity, remains relatively stable for thousands of years
Most people in the west wouldn't want to hear the solution: value the collective over the individual, install benevolent authority figures empowered to make the final decision so that minor disputes don't get out of control (i.e. "authoritarianism"), ensure everyone is incentivized to perform their roles, and discourage troublemakers.
> suspect all the authentic professors who would have taught us were rounded up or starved in some Great Leap Backwards
The sad thing is that the Chinese tradition didn't just get wrecked during the Mao era. It started much earlier, though Mao probably handed them the nail in the coffin. In the early 20th century when the Qing dynasty collapsed, the prevailing theory among Chinese intellectuals was that China was weak because the Chinese cultural/intellectual tradition was inferior to that of the West, so to make the nation strong, everyone should just adopt Western thought instead. Within a decade or two the old system of learning was abandoned, and then there were decades of war and strife in China. This is one of the various reasons communism took a hold in China -- back then in the early 20th century, communism seemed like a progressive(?) "western" idea, and it sounded like a great way to run a nation.
By the time of the "Great Leap" and the "Cultural Revolution", there wasn't that much left of traditional Chinese thought to destroy. Some prominent academics went to Taiwan or Hong Kong, but if you ask me, they were faint echos of what the classical Chinese thought had to offer.
If you actually wanted to "hear from the horse's mouth", you might have to go back a couple hundred years.
Thanks for these thoughts. One point of departure is that our western
concept of authoritarian is incompatible with benevolence. The rest,
as you say is uncomfortable for many of us to contemplate as
necessary.
Authoritarianism is definitely "compatible" with benevolence at least on some levels.
China had always been a large empire, so the rulers did not rule directly. To the rulers at the very top, their interests aligned with the peasants in that both wanted stability, and given that China was such a vast empire, stability was more important to the rulers than squeezing every drop of excess productivity from the peasants.
So at least for the rulers at the very top, especially those who became emperor due to being the son of the previous one, their concerns were how to ensure the middle tier officials, who actually ran the day to day affairs, administered their lands fairly without corruption.
So basically they invented a system of "scholar-officials" where education consisted of brainwashing aspiring officials about the virtues of "filial piety" and applying concepts of parenthood in governance. "Love the peasants as if they were your children", and "be loyal to the ruler as you would to your parents". This might sound hypocritical to the cynics in modern society, but back then it was not just rhetoric, they were absolutely expected to fully believe in it, because it was intentional brainwashing of the "scholar-official" class by the top-tier ruling elite.
So basically that's where the "benevolence" comes from. It's not that the rulers at the top are benevolent per se, but that their interests generally don't come from squeezing the last drop of productivity from peasants for short term gain, but rather their main risk is corrupted middle/lower tier officials abusing their power, so they install systems to ensure the administrators are "benevolent" as far as possible.
I'm not saying it's a great system, and I don't think it can or should be replicated outside of China, I'm just trying to describe, as a historical fact, how the Chinese empires were run (ideologically speaking).
I sometimes pick up criticism for my belief in positive influence.
Somewhere in my world as a teacher is line between heartfelt
benevolence and the accusation that all is manipulation and only
serves the extant ruling classes. Somewhere in the middle is a truth.
My theory is that in the West we've forgotten the real meaning of
authority, with the same root as author/writer/architect. We've
confused it with entitled power.
Anyway, thanks indeed for a thoughtful explanation. I'll avoid my
immediate instinct to connect it to Plato or other structural ideas
I've been educated (brainwashed) with :), and give it some serious
thought.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54229792-understanding-t...
(sorry for low quality link, but the book is a good summary )