When Chinese Confucian scholars escaped from Mao’s armies and his anti-Confucian campaign, taking refuge in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere, Qian Mu and Tang Junyi set up New Asia College in Hong Kong in the hope of conserving Confucian studies there (somewhat like the New School in New York as a “university in exile”). Much later, when Mao’s successors shelved the Marxist-Leninist class struggle and turned back to Confucian “harmony” as a better basis for a stable political and economic order, Confucian studies began slowly to resume on the mainland. Still, it was a sign of the times—of the displacement of Confucian studies abroad—that when honorary lectureships were established at the New Asia College in the names of Qian and Tang, an American scholar like myself would have been asked to inaugurate them.
It was, however, only when I went to honor Tang Junyi at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that I learned from my hosts what a parlous state Confucian studies were actually in and why—now it was neglect, not repression.1 This was disappointing news to me but not entirely a surprise. The problem, it turned out, was cultural rather than political. The long-term trend toward technological modernization and economic globalization had caught up with the Chinese here as everywhere else—not just in high-tech Singapore. As the educational centerpiece of a port city open to the world, the Chinese University of Hong Kong wished to establish itself as being in the very forefront of what was then called “internationalization.” Even the People’s Republic’s eventual concession to the idea that Confucianism would provide the essential Chineseness of “Chinese socialism” did not count for much compared to the growing importance of a global culture now expressed in English. Hong Kong increasingly attracted Chinese students from the mainland itself because they could gain quicker access to English as the lingua franca of the new economic, scientific, and technological culture. It is no more than what had already been occurring in places like Singapore and Taiwan—and to some degree, all over Asia.
But if this could have a detrimental effect on the humanistic traditions of Asia, the process had already begun well before this in Europe and America—the process of abandoning classical languages in favor of modern languages, the dropping of language requirements in Latin and Greek for entrance to the most prestigious colleges in the United States, and the replacement of Latin as the language of science up to the eighteenth century—all these changes presaged the global trend that would overtake the classical cultures of Asia as well.
In this respect, the worry of my colleagues at the New Asia College—that even there it would be difficult to sustain the reading of Chinese classics in the original—was anticipated by developments at Columbia in the early twentieth century, when John Erskine and his colleagues insisted that, if the great classics of the Western tradition were no longer to be read in Latin and Greek, they should still be read in English as part of a required core curriculum.
In view of the problems that have arisen at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as at the general education programs in Taiwan National University and Chiao Tung University (the MIT of Taiwan), and earlier at the Singapore National University, it seems to me the time has come to move to a third stage, that is, to identify the classics of the major world traditions that could constitute a master list for a global counterpart in English to the scientific and technological lingua franca that now dominates the educational scene. Nothing guarantees the enduring dominance of English, and nothing says that it is the most beautiful of languages, but the New York Times (May 15, 2007) confirms the simple fact of the matter today: it reports that hundreds of thousands of South Koreans are competing to take the TOEFL English test and that thousands more scramble to gain access to it in other countries, so as to qualify for admission to universities abroad and even for employment in South Korean businesses.
If this seems unduly to privilege English as a global second language, it is in accord with the long-term historical trend and should not be thought wholly prejudicial or unmanageable (i.e., a dead loss to other languages and cultures). The Bible is rarely read in its “original languages” but is still the most widely read book in the world. Leaders of India including Gandhi and Nehru first read Sanskrit classics in English, and Martin Luther King read Gandhi in English. If world-class classics can survive in a global curriculum, their inherent appeal will lead some to go back to classic texts that they might not otherwise have even known of.
WHAT TO DO
The process can be manageable, as I have said, if it is done in stages. First, it must be recognized that in using the word “classics” we do so in a way that confirms this concept as understood in its original discursive contexts. Every major tradition has its own canon or canons, and in considering what texts might be worthy of global attention we start first with the idea that their classic status has been confirmed over time by the respect they have continued to receive in their own tradition. These are works that have commanded attention, been appreciated or contested, and have survived scrutiny over the ages. In this sense, they are the surviving artifacts of a civilization and warrant the respect we show to what has endured. We do not read them because they conform to our own ideas or norms but to show respect to what other human beings have valued. It is, on our part, an act of civility, without which we cannot expect to live in the company of others whose traditions differ from ours (though we hope these are not wholly different or “other”). We are looking for common ground, but respect for differences is part of the process.
For this reason, our initial listings in what follows are given in terms of the traditions from which they emerge. Sometimes, these represent the convergence of several traditions, in which cases cross-referencing is in order. In conformity with this basic postulate, we assume that no such “classic” will first be read outside its own cultural company. How much company—how many other works of the same tradition are necessary in order to establish the context—is not a fixed quantity and depends partly on the genre or nature of the works in question. But it would be prejudicial to the whole enterprise if one simply removed a work (for its first reading) from its own context and inserted it, by itself, in strange discursive company, which only encourages one-sided comparisons. From our experience at Columbia, a minimum of four or five related works are needed to establish the classic context of each tradition.2
When it comes to “modern” classics, however, different criteria apply. Most of these cannot be judged primarily as products of largely self-contained traditions with their own norms and canons. Many respond to challenges from abroad and in turn enter into a larger realm of discourse. Their “classic” importance is enhanced by the way they take up themes of major importance in the larger world and contribute to new cross-cultural dialogues. This applies especially to representations of late developing cultures that become articulate as literate discourse only in modern times.
A prime example of a “modern classic” is Mahatma Gandhi, who, in his autobiography, speaks of the deep impression made on him not only by the New Testament but also by the modern writer John Ruskin, reminding us that Ruskin was a major nineteenth-century influence on other “modern classic” writers, such as William Morris, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Clement Atlee, as well as Gandhi.
Another example is Okakura Kakuzō, a prominent twentieth-century Japanese contributor to the East-West values debate who, in his “classic” Book of Tea, acknowledged a deep indebtedness to the American John La Farge, less well known in the West today than he was as a leading voice in American arts and crafts in the early twentieth century.
These cases obviously do not conform to the model of traditional classics. They have not endured the test of time, they have not met the test of “canonization,” nor have they even survived “canonization” itself; indeed, they are not even by “dead white boys,” as some black critics of the “canon” would have it.
If this distinction between traditional and modern classics is acceptable, I believe we could proceed to update the original syllabus of Erskine, Barzun, Van Doren, et al. in four stages, by workshops or seminars dealing with:
1. A review of the master lists of classics used in the core curriculum at Columbia and elsewhere (including Asia as well as the United States, but in this first stage focusing on Western classics as the original syllabus did), to produce a master list of recommended works, which might be drawn upon at local option to fit specific educational programs.
2. A review of classics of the major Asian traditions that might qualify for treatment in courses parallel to those in the Western classics, updating the Columbia Guide of 1989, on the basis of input from Asian programs of general education (Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, etc.).
3. A review of “modern classics” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that might produce another master list from which selections could be made for courses or programs that focus on nineteenth-century–twentieth-century interactions among major world traditions on core issues, i.e., perennial human issues that are reexamined in a comparative light and in a modern context.
4. Preparation of guides or manuals corresponding to each of these stages, listing available translations, scholarly studies useful for general education purposes, and core issues or genres exemplified by each work.
