HISTORY AND RELIGION IN THE MODERN AGE

This essay seeks to clarify the relationship between history and religion in the modern age. It proceeds in three steps. First, it draws attention to the radical asymmetry between first‐person and third‐person statements that Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations rescued from the metaphysical exile to which it had been condemned by Descartes's definition of the self as a thing. Second, it argues that religion is designed to alleviate the peculiarly human kind of suffering arising from this asymmetry. Third, it maintains that history relies on the same means as religion in order to achieve the same results. The turn to historical evidence performed by historians and their readers is more than just a path to knowledge. It is a religious ritual designed to make participants at home in their natural and social environments. Quite like the ritual representation of the death and resurrection of Christ in the Mass, the historical representation of the past underwrites the faith in human liberty and the hope in redemption from suffering. It helps human beings to find their bearings in the modern age without having to go to pre‐industrial churches and pray in old agrarian ways. History does not conflict with the historical religions merely because it reveals them to have been founded on beliefs that cannot be supported by the evidence. History conflicts with the historical religions because it is a rival religion.     

THE STORY BEHIND AGYA AND HIS ALBUM THE SOUND OF HEART

<正>In Tibet,people often give alms to the pilgrims who get down and give a kowtow every three steps,by which they place their will to pay pilgrimage to them so as to comfort their own sense of loss that they cannot make by themselves.Getting the alms,no matter more or less,the pilgrims usually do nothing but give a smile     

PARADIGMS IN THE STUDY OF HEALTH POLICY

This essay identifies and analyzes four different paradigms in the study of problems in the American health system. The paradigms, which are labelled the individual–deficiency, the economic, the organizational, and the Marxist perspective, are examined as “diagnostic paradigms” according to the way in which problems are conceptualized and the way in which remedial strategies are chosen. The essay shows the differences and similarities between characteristic diagnoses and policy solutions within the four perspectives. It is argued that such paradigms can easily be identified in recent health reform proposals.     

THE TRUE FACE OF MOUNT LU: ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PERSPECTIVES AND PARADIGMS1

From a hermeneutic point of view, understanding is always conditioned by one's own horizon and perspective. as the great poet Su Shi remarks, we do not know the “true face of Mount Lu” because what we see constantly changes as we move high or low, far off or up close. But the point of the “hermeneutic circle” is not to legitimize the circularity or subjectivity of one's understanding, but to make us conscious of the challenge. How do we understand China, its history and culture? What should be the appropriate paradigm or perspective for China studies? More than twenty years ago, Paul Cohen argued for a “China‐centered” approach to understanding Chinese history, but to assume an insider's perspective does not guarantee adequate understanding any more than does an outsider's position guarantee emancipation from an insider's myopia or blindness. By discussing several exemplary cases in China studies, this essay argues that neither insiders nor outsiders have monopolistic or privileged access to knowledge, and that integration of different perspectives and their dynamic interaction beyond the isolation of native Chinese scholarship and Western Sinology may lead us to a better understanding of China and its history.     

A MOST MODERN SUBJECT: THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY AND THE FASHIONING OF NATIONALIST AND OTHER MODERN SUBJECTIVITIES

This book takes an ethnographic approach to its topic by endeavoring to observe how social and disciplinary subjects shaped by modernity go on to constitute modern worlds. Specifically, it attempts to “explore modernity as a contradictory and checkered historical-cultural entity and category as well as a contingent and contended process and condition” (1). Most of the subjects considered are intellectuals and academic disciplines (specifically history and anthropology), although the argument occasionally focuses on artists as well. The book particularly recognizes and analyzes the ambiguities, ambivalences, and contradictions generated within modernity not as mistakes or gaps like so many potholes to be fixed over time, but as constitutive of the modern landscape itself. This accepting acknowledgment, in turn, stands central to the book's endeavor to resist the teleological paradigms inherent in many modern metaphors regarding roads that must be traveled to move from what is backward to what is forward, from a superseded past to a promising future. Central to the volume—and its most original contribution—are various deliberations on the productions of time and space by various subjects. To be clear, by “time” the book means history and temporality whereas “space” suggests tradition and culture. It resists the naturalization of modern constructs such as secularized time and cultural traditions, and forces them under an analytic lens. Critical to these investigations is Saurabh Dube's appropriately insistent claim that these temporal and spatial regimes can exist in tandem and coevally, even when they are seemingly in contradiction. Among other outcomes, the volume prompts further reflection on the manner in which historiography plays a role in the formation of nationalist and modern subjectivities among nonhistorians. This essay seeks to think through the history of history as a discipline emerging during the coalescence of a hegemonic European episteme and the emergence of a popularly embraced scientism. Despite its roots in Europe long preceding modernity and its parallels in South Asia preceding British rule, history underwent a transformation when inflected through European modernity, especially the influence of empirical science paradigms. Although its emergence as a discipline promoted and employed by both the empire and the nation-state created professional historians, an expanding public sphere has meant that research into its role in fashioning modern subjectivities (including nationalist ones) must consider its reshaping and redeployment by those resisting European-originated modernity and promoting alternative modernities.     

THE CONCEPT OF CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT (EA) EDUCATION

The paper explores the role of education in environmental assessment (ea), identifies the range of techniques used to conduct ea education, and develops a rationale for the concept of critical ea education. The literature on public involvement in ea indicates that public education plays a significant, but poorly defined, role in current thinking on public involvement and reveals a diverse range of education techniques. To clarify the role that education can potentially play in the ea process, consideration of the theories of critical pedagogy and transformative learning led to the concept of critical ea education. Empirical support for critical ea education is presented through consideration of the recent Manitoba ea case involving the Pembina Valley Water Supply System. Nonparametric statistical analysis of variables at work in the Pembina Valley case reveal strong correlations that support the principles of critical ea education. Cette communication explique le rôle que l'gducation joue dans l'haluation de I'environnement (EE), elle identifie la gamme de techniques utilisées dans cette éducation, et elle développe un raisonnement pour le concept de l'importance de l'gducation dans l'EE. La littgrature qui traite le rdle du public dans l'EE indique que l'gducation publique joue un rôle important, mais mal défini, dans la penske courante au sujet de la participation du public dans DE. Cette littgrature révde ggalement toute une gamme de techniques pgdagogiques. Afin de mettre à jour le rôle que l'gducation pourrait jouer dans 1'EE, une considgration des théories de l'gducation critique et de l'apprentissage de la transformation a abouti au concept de l'importance de l'éducation dans 1'EE. Nous présentons en tant qu'appui empirique de l'importance de l'gducation dans l'EE une discussion du cas récent au Manitoba qui concerne le Système deau de la vallée Pembina. Une analyse statistique non-parametrique des variables qui jouent un rôle dam ce cas révélent dimportantes corrdations qui servent à appuyer les principes de l'importance de l'bducation dans 1'EE.     

MODERNITY IN RELIGION: A RESPONSE TO CONSTANTIN FASOLT'S “HISTORY AND RELIGION IN THE MODERN AGE”

Contrary to Constantin Fasolt, I argue that it is no longer useful to think of religion as an anomaly in the modern age. Here is Fasolt's main argument: humankind suffers from a radical rift between the self and the world. The chief function of religion is to mitigate or cope with this fracture by means of dogmas and rituals that reconcile the self to the world. In the past, religion successfully fulfilled this job. But in modernity, it fails to, and it fails because religion is no longer plausible. Historical, confessional religions, then, are no longer doing what they are supposed to do; yet the need for religion is still very much with us. Fasolt's account would be a tragic tale, if not for his claim that there is a new religion for the modern age, a religion that fulfills the true reconciling function of religion. That new religion is the reading and writing of history. Indeed, for Fasolt, reading history is religiously redemptive, and writing history is a sacred act. The historian, it turns out, is the priest in modernity. In my response, I challenge both Fasolt's remedy (history as religiously redemptive) and its justification (the fall of historical religions). Indeed, I reject both his romantic view of past religion as the peaceful reconciler, as well as his pessimistic view of present religion as the maker of “enemies” among modern people. In the end, I argue that the way Fasolt employs his categories—“alienation,”“salvation,”“religion,”“history”— is too vague to do much useful work. They are significant categories and they deserve our attention. But in my view, the story Fasolt tells is both too grim (on human alienation) and too cheerful (on historian as modern savior).     

UNIVERSAL AND PROFANE: THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF NATURAL RELIGION

Natural religion in the eighteenth century was seemingly unhistorical or even antihistorical: it “dehistoricized” morality. It posited a morality that was uniform in all ages, not dependent on any particular revelation, watermarked onto the fabric of our nature, and accessible merely by the light of reason. Even so, natural religion played an important role in the secular historiographical turn in eighteenth-century England. There was in fact an organic relationship between the two, one that historians have failed to articulate. Precisely because natural religion was thought to rest on timeless and universally valid rational foundations, it became possible to treat traditional religion (meaning above all, but not only, Christianity) as a subject of secular historical study, in the sense that it was subject to the same laws of historical knowledge and historical development as all other subjects of historical study, and left no room for miracles. A central figure in this conceptual relationship was Conyers Middleton, a once-famous, now-obscure Cambridge librarian. Middleton's account of natural religion has been swamped by the attention lavished on Matthew Tindal, and his turn to secular historiography lies in the shadows cast by Edward Gibbon. Yet Middleton played a crucial and distinctive role in laying historiographical foundations without which Gibbon could not have written as he did. His understanding of natural religion differed from that of other participants in the “deist controversy” in ultimately far-reaching ways. Those differences explain why he could treat Cicero as a kind of saint in the church of natural religion, reversing, as it were, the elevation of the Bible above Cicero that Augustine had put into effect at the beginning of medieval history. They explain above all why Middleton could approach the history of Christianity in a manner that anticipated both Voltaire and Gibbon and made their historical writings possible.     

THE CONCEPT OF TRANSPARENCY,ITS HISTORY,AND THE THEORY OF BEGRIFFSGESCHICHTE

In this review essay, I examine the theoretical assumptions required in order to reconstruct an understanding of another historical period. Stefanos Geroulanos has produced a masterful history of mid‐twentieth‐century French thought, and he argues for a significant difference between that period and our own based on the values and ideas associated with the concept of transparency. The book is innovative in both its method and interpretation of the period of 1945–1984. However, despite the suggestive theoretical framework announced at its start, Geroulanos prefers to explore the theoretical content of conceptual history more than to explain how one might go about identifying, understanding, and translating the concepts of a different epoch. In order to contribute to what is already a successful project, I endeavor to extend some of Geroulanos's theoretical sketches through a comparison with Reinhart Koselleck's theory of Begriffsgechichte. Despite some muted criticism of Koselleck from Geroulanos, I argue that the projects share similar commitments, although Geroulanos needs to develop his theoretical premises at greater length, both for a full comparison and in order to complete the critical project that Transparency appears to be undertaking.     

THE CONCEPT OF YAZHENG 雅正 (ORTHODOX CORRECTNESS)IN THE CHINESE POETIC TRADITION

本文論述中國詩學傳統中「雅正」觀念的意義及其在元代詩學批評中的用法。 現代學人對「雅正」有不同的闡釋，要釐清此觀念可說並不容易。通過研究 此觀念在文學批評中的相關用法，本文指出「雅正」的基本意義可理解為 「正統的標準」(orthodox correctness),而「雅正」中的「雅」又可根據詩歌 的語言運用而理解為「典雅」(elegant; less embellished)和「華美」(decorous; embellished)兩種。在此基礎之上, 本文考察「雅正」觀念在元代詩學中的意 義, 並指出歐陽玄(1283–1357)和蘇天爵(1294–1352)推許元代大都詩人作品 為「雅正」的原因。     

FLORENTINE CIVIC HUMANISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN IDEOLOGY

This article revisits the question of the modernity of the Renaissance by examining the political language of Florentine civic humanism and by critically analyzing the debate over Hans Baron's interpretation of the movement. It engages two debates that are usually conducted separately: one concerning the originality of civic humanism in comparison to medieval thought, and the other concerning the political and social function of the civic humanists' political republicanism in fifteenth‐century Florence. The article's main contention is that humanist political discourse rejected the perception of social and political reality as being part of, or reflecting, a metaphysical and divine order or things, and thus undermined the traditional justifications for political hierarchies and power relations. This created the conditions of possibility for the distinctively modern aspiration for a social and political order based on liberty and equality. It also resulted in the birth of a distinctively modern form of ideology, one that legitimizes the social order by disguising its inequalities and structures of domination. Humanism, like modern political thought generally, thus simultaneously constructs and reflects the dialectic of emancipation and domination so central to modernity itself.     

数字化时代的城市与区域发展构想

随着计算机网络的出现,人类的生产、生活开始进入了所谓的数字化时代。一个新的数字化空间正开始改变着我们所生活的城市和地球。本文首先探讨了数字化对人类活动的影响,其次分析了数字化时代城市与区域发展动力的改变、城市与区域空间结构变化以及一些新的空间现象,最后对数字化时代的城市与区域发展战略提出了相应的对策。