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'What does Heaven ever say?' The Challenge of Chinese Classicism to the Western Model of Cross-Cultural Dialogue
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Jenco APSA draft 2005
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‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ The Challenge of Chinese Classicism to the Western Model of Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Leigh Kathryn Jenco, University of Chicago
## email not listed ##
Prepared for Delivery at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Sept. 1- September 4, 2005. Copyright by the American Political Science Association
ABSTRACT:The most frequently endorsed methodology of comparative political theory invokes a
metaphor of “conversation” or “cross-cultural dialogue” to underscore the openness to new world-views offered by comparative theorizing and to facilitate the hermeneutic insights it promises. But while the dialogic model has been praised for being less susceptible to Western influences than are, say, economic rational choice models, it is far from clear that making conversation the basis of cross-cultural interactions can somehow avoid coloring such interaction with its own potentially distortionary influences. This paper argues for a broadening of comparative parameters to include non-Western methodology, and critically examines the dialogic model by contrasting its assumptions to those promoted by the Chinese traditions of classicism (jingxue). I do this by examining how Wang Yangming and Kang Youwei, two well-known but very different contributors to the Chinese classicist tradition, look at and claim to understand canonical texts. While their own interpretive insights do not explicitly engage the “cross-cultural” encounter, I use their work to pursue further the possibility that how they relate to texts may be important factors in how we comprehend their world of meaning. It is on this second level of my argument that the dialogic model of cross-cultural theorizing meets its most acute challenge: I show how forcing the work of Kang and Wang into a conversation actually does violence to much of what they are seeking to demonstrate because it makes assumptions about what, how, and if things are spoken of.
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Jenco APSA draft 2005
1
‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’
The Challenge of Chinese Classicism to the Western Model of Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Leigh Kathryn Jenco, University of Chicago
## email not listed ##
Prepared for Delivery at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Sept. 1- September 4, 2005. Copyright by the American Political Science Association
ABSTRACT:
The most frequently endorsed methodology of comparative political theory invokes a
metaphor of “conversation” or “cross-cultural dialogue” to underscore the openness to new world-
views offered by comparative theorizing and to facilitate the hermeneutic insights it promises. But
while the dialogic model has been praised for being less susceptible to Western influences than
are, say, economic rational choice models, it is far from clear that making conversation the basis
of cross-cultural interactions can somehow avoid coloring such interaction with its own potentially
distortionary influences. This paper argues for a broadening of comparative parameters to include
non-Western methodology, and critically examines the dialogic model by contrasting its
assumptions to those promoted by the Chinese traditions of classicism (jingxue). I do this by
examining how Wang Yangming and Kang Youwei, two well-known but very different
contributors to the Chinese classicist tradition, look at and claim to understand canonical texts.
While their own interpretive insights do not explicitly engage the “cross-cultural” encounter, I use
their work to pursue further the possibility that how they relate to texts may be important factors in
how we comprehend their world of meaning. It is on this second level of my argument that the
dialogic model of cross-cultural theorizing meets its most acute challenge: I show how forcing the
work of Kang and Wang into a conversation actually does violence to much of what they are
seeking to demonstrate because it makes assumptions about what, how, and if things are spoken
of.
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