La Chine peut-elle penser l’universel

The advent of universality is generally thought to be the product of European Enlightenment philosophy and the “triumph of Reason”, yet Chinese universality is tied to a certain idea of civilisation – organised around a centre radiating outwards – onto which the reality of imperial authority was superimposed.The geographic transposition of this outward-radiating power was the “Sinicised world” encompassing a large part of East Asia. Imperial China’s self-representation as “civilisation-world” was only challenged in the nineteenth century by the intrusion of the colonial powers, as well as Japanese modernist criticism. Yet it is this China-as-world universality that is currently making a comeback in the ideology of “Greater China

Art · Humanities · Chinese history and philosophy · Philosophy