Abstract or Concrete Utopia? Concerning the Ideal Society in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript, in its current state, is methodically sound, provides valuable insights, and contributes effectively to the existing body of research in this field. The clarity of the language used, the structure of the paper, and the depth of the analysis are commendable.

Consequently, I believe this manuscript is now ready for publication and strongly recommend its acceptance. I am confident that it will be an important contribution to the literature and stimulate further research and discussion.

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to review this excellent piece of work. I look forward to seeing it published and influencing the field.

Author Response

There is not much to say here, since the reviewer is highly appreciative of the argument’s rigorous and logical structure, as well as its contribution to scholarship.

Reviewer 2 Report

The investigation of ideal societies in Chinese philosophy is a good topic. The author makes some valuable points such as the misinterpretation of Chinese philosophy with the categories of transcendence and inner transcendence. However, the overall arguments in this article are weak and sloppy. The structure is not well organized. I am listing a few places to be improved below.

1. The analysis of utopia is too brief and lopsided. Utopia bears richer meanings than, as the article claims, mere ontological transcendence. An ideal society is always a critique of reality while pointing out an ideal wherein certain social values should be realized. In this sense utopia does not have to be an ontological transcendence. One can simply look at the famous example of Plato's Republic. 

2. The author then moves onto a lengthy recount of the discourse on the inappropriate application of transcendence and inner transcendence in the modern history of Chinese philosophy, which does not have much to do with the topic of utopia. 

3. The analysis of He Xiu's Theory of the Three Worlds seems inadequate. It does not give the readers a clear image of what the three worlds are like, particularly the world of "great peace".

4. Different philosophical schools' descriptions about the ideal society can be very different. An ideal society for Daoism means something far from a Confucian ideal society, given that Daoism vehemently criticized Confucian norms. It seems the author has not taken this into consideration. 

5. The article quotes too much, which makes it lack creativity. 

English in this article can be improved.

Author Response

These will be dealt with in terms of topics raised:

1. Language. English is my first language and I have written and published extensively in English (along with translations into 15 languages). The text is not an oral or casual presentation.
2. Utopia. It is difficult to miss one of the major points of the article: the word and concept of “utopia” is of Western provenance. Thomas More coined the word from classical Greek: “ou/utopos,” a “good place” that is simultaneously a “no place. More was also a theologian and in the very structures of his and subsequent thinking and writing about utopia is the core category of ontological transcendence. This point leads logically to the question of what an ideal society might be in a cultural and philosophical tradition that has no need of ontological transcendence.
3. Referencing: the article contains more than 50 references to research. It is difficult to see how more can be added to an already long article.
4. Examples from the Chinese tradition. Of course, there are other examples that one might consider: the Book of Rites and Peach Blossom Spring, mediated through He Xiu’s “three worlds” theory, are representative examples that carry the argument further.
5. Chinese philosophy. The reality in mainland China is that Marxist philosophy is the over-arching framework, through which the best of China’s traditional culture and philosophy is sublated (Aufhebung is the term used by Marx and Engels). It seems that neither reviewer 2 nor reviewer 3 have as yet recognised this reality. Many of the references and engagements are with Chinese Marxist philosophers, and therefore reflect the most current and most representative research.
6. Logical structure and coherence. A careful reading of the article will show that it has a rigorous structure and coherence – as noted by reviewer 1.

Reviewer 3 Report

The author should reconstruct his/her article thoroughly. It is hard to find any research purposes and significance in this article. This article does not reach the criteria to publish in an international journal. It seems directly taken from the speech at conferences. The article presented a casual discussion of the topic. But when it comes to empirical research, it lacks logical coherence and academic soundness. 

For example, does the author want to show something new perspective or opinions related to this topic? What are the research contributions of this study? How could the author's view engage with the current discussions of the ideal society in Chinese philosophy?

Some additional comments:

Besides Confucianism, it is important too to concern about the ideal society advocated in Taoist philosophy（道家）. Daodejing（道德经） mentioned also the world of Datong. The thought of Sanxuan三玄 was popular in Jin to the Southern and Northern dynasties, the time near to the appearance of the term “Peach Blossom Spring”.  

The language style does not meet the academic criteria.

It is more in the oral term.

Author Response

These will be dealt with in terms of topics raised:

1. Language. English is my first language and I have written and published extensively in English (along with translations into 15 languages). The text is not an oral or casual presentation.
2. Utopia. It is difficult to miss one of the major points of the article: the word and concept of “utopia” is of Western provenance. Thomas More coined the word from classical Greek: “ou/utopos,” a “good place” that is simultaneously a “no place. More was also a theologian and in the very structures of his and subsequent thinking and writing about utopia is the core category of ontological transcendence. This point leads logically to the question of what an ideal society might be in a cultural and philosophical tradition that has no need of ontological transcendence.
3. Referencing: the article contains more than 50 references to research. It is difficult to see how more can be added to an already long article.
4. Examples from the Chinese tradition. Of course, there are other examples that one might consider: the Book of Rites and Peach Blossom Spring, mediated through He Xiu’s “three worlds” theory, are representative examples that carry the argument further.
5. Chinese philosophy. The reality in mainland China is that Marxist philosophy is the over-arching framework, through which the best of China’s traditional culture and philosophy is sublated (Aufhebung is the term used by Marx and Engels). It seems that neither reviewer 2 nor reviewer 3 have as yet recognised this reality. Many of the references and engagements are with Chinese Marxist philosophers, and therefore reflect the most current and most representative research.
6. Logical structure and coherence. A careful reading of the article will show that it has a rigorous structure and coherence – as noted by reviewer 1.

Reviewer 4 Report

Let me preface my remarks on this essay by noting that I come to it not as a religious studies scholar but as a utopian studies scholar: my emphases and possible biases will therefore quite probably reflect this orientation. I must also add that I am by no means an expert on the Chinese cultural and philosophical tradition, so inevitably, my comments will focus on the more properly “western” references in the text. Finally, I must note that some of my remarks depend, as to their significance, on the orientation of the journal itself: if its audience is international/global, it is more likely that the points I raise may concern questions this audience may have.

Overall, the essay makes a clear, coherent and (as far as I can judge) convincing argument regarding the inoperability of notions of transcendence and of utopia in the Chinese cultural context. It is also clearly written and needs minimal editorial work on its language. I also have no revisions to recommend on the essay’s structure, which is simple, clear and straight-forward.

My suggestions and queries therefore essentially all regard the argumentative content of the essay. As I noted above, the author makes a clear case against the idea that one may understand perceptions of the ideal society in Chinese philosophy and culture in terms of either transcendence or utopia; but I think that we need a more developed sense of what is an appropriate philosophical framework for understanding Chinese perceptions of the ideal society. The essay, it seems to me, offers a number of answers to this question, of which I find the following particularly important and interesting: “the social activity of thinking and feeling…subsisting agency” (p. 7) “a relational order of difference” (p. 9); “the integrated relationality of differential existence” (p. 9, p. 11). One my questions here is: is this emphasis on “difference”, “differential” existence itself compatible with/translatable to the significant preoccupation with “difference” in western philosophy? I suspect that in a number of ways it is not. Can this be clarified a little in the essay? Further, is the rejection of “transcendence”, including of “immanent transcendence” in the Chinese context compatible with a concept of “materialism” in western philosophy or is this also a case of cultural and theoretical incompatibility? This too, I feel, would benefit the essay’s international significance if it were clarified.

Second, in the first section of the essay, we read that transcendence originates conceptually in the idea of a “super-ordinate principle” that cannot be known directly by those who live in the mundane world; and that this is also the case with utopia (p. 2). However, it is also a fact that utopian texts in the west are distinguished by not presupposing the transformability of humankind to a higher ethical principle via transcendent means: utopian subjects are not “better” human beings via some sort of transcendent principle, but because they live laws, institutions and often the mode of production itself are more rational and more just. J.C. Davis’s Utopia and the Ideal Society (to which I will return later) is insistent and clear on this point, which is widely accepted as a given by the scholarly community. In fact, it is usually opponents of utopias who assume that they presuppose the qualitative transcendence of humankind to something unattainable or impossible; the advocates of utopias very frequently insist that they presuppose no such drastic change in human nature itself.

Third, there are a number of complications that I can see with the use of the “Peach Blossom Spring” story: first, following Davis’s taxonomy, at least, no western scholar would likely call this a “utopia” anyway; the generic label would far more likely be “Arcadia”, i.e., (as per Davis’s explication) a society of moderate needs, natural abundance and harmony among humans and between them and nature. There is no emphasis in the story on social institutions, laws or the organization of production as there is in western utopias from More onward.

Further, the argument that the village in the story differs from western Utopias in that it’s “a known world” (something that for the author seems to also relate it to the world of “great peace” that is “seen and heard”) is problematic, particularly when one bears in mind a text like Morris’s News from Nowhere, which the author explicitly refers to as an antithetical example (p. 17): all of the places Morris’s narrator visits in the utopian London of the future are known and familiar places; they are not outside the known map of England, and the itinerary up the Thames river is extremely detailed in registering the “real” places one would find. Likewise, if the Chinese story uses “clear historical references” (p. 17), so does Morris (or Bellamy and many others). News from Nowhere makes extensive references to social life and history, as well as art, in medieval England. Finally, that the fisherman gains “direct evidence rather than hearsay” (p. 17) is also a problematic claim: the village is no more accessible than are the classical geographical western utopias of the Renaissance, or the 19^th-century “uchronias” of the future: “After that no one tried to find the way there”, we read. None of the criteria used in this case therefore seem to me to be very helpful in building a “contrastive” case: the village is not a utopia in the usual sense but rather an arcadia; western utopias since the 18^th century at least are not all about places “not seen or heard” by everyone (Paris in Mercier, Boston in Bellamy, London in Morris); they do not lack “clear historical references”; the Chinese village is no more accessible (or no less removed from access) than any European utopia, geographical or historical, or than the “isles of the Blessed” or “Elysium” or “Paradise”. Perhaps, then (I cannot know this since I lack the author’s knowledge of Chinese literature and culture) the case is being overstated in this regard. It is also important to know if this is the only representation that shares some elements with the broader utopian tradition in the west, which I also do not know.

Some brief remarks on a number of other points, where further development may be called for, depending on the intended readership of the essay and the journal:

p. 3 The remark that Mou’s reference to Kant is “telling” needs some explication: why is it telling? What does Kant stand for here? In Europe, his legacy is by no means a simple or straightforward affair, so there is no readymade answer to the question.

p. 4 Perhaps the reference to “City of God” needs a brief explanatory note as to the significance of the phrase in relation to St. Augustine’s treatise.

p. 14 The three worlds in He Xiu’s schema “are not simply historical stages but are integrally related”. Does this relate to the point that “the risk of chaos increases as one gets closer to Great Harmony”? If so, this point, listed second, should probably be moved first and possibly developed somewhat.

Conclusion: This is a clearly structured, well-written, interesting and mostly persuasive essay on the differences between western and Chinese traditions of thought on the ideal society which should be published given a few revisions: first, more emphasis (and earlier on) on what distinguishes the Chinese conception positively rather than negatively (on what it is rather than what it is not) and, if possible, some clarifications on the terminology used to account for its difference; secondly, some care in not entirely conflating “utopia” and “transcendence” given the fact that it is not simply utopian diagnoses of social evil that are rather materialist in nature but also utopian remedies as well; thirdly, some rethinking of the accuracy of the contradistinction of the western utopian tradition to the “Peach Blossom Spring” story. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The essay is clearly written and needs minimal editorial work on its language. I have a translation recommendation on pp. 4 and 5, one spelling correction on p. 13, and a few suggestions regarding phrasing on pp. 7, 9, 11, and 15.

Author Response

After reading the reviewer's detailed observations a number of times and making notes as to how a revision would be made, I undertook the following tasks.
First, I added a sub-section in Part 1 entitled "An Early 'De-metaphysicalising Move." This section has a double purpose: to begin with, it addresses the developments in Western utopias that are more specific and grounded, seeking societies with laws, institutions, and social formations that are more just and equitable. As suggested by the reviewer, I engage with Davis's influential typology of utopias. Further, I develop the argument that Chinese culture undertook a "de-mythologising" (or "secularising") move some 2,500 years ago and that this development has had a significant impact on concepts of the ideal society.
Second, and as also suggested, I have sought to frame some of the anaysis in the sections on the Great Harmony and Peach Blossom Spring in terms deriving from the Chinese philosophical tradition: regeneration, home, and intimacy. This is particularly the case with the revised (and now separate) sub-section on Peach Blossom Spring.
Third, in the discussion of Peach Blossom Spring, I added a section that considers the proposal that it may be considered as a form of "Arcadia" (a category proposed by Davis), and provide some comparisons (as suggested by the reviewers) with works of a Western provenance. I then argue that perhaps a better framework is in terms of regeneration, home, and intimacy.
Finally, both the conclusion and title of the revised article reflect these revisions in the content of the article.