‘Tianxia’ and ‘Renlei mingyun gongtongti': a revival of cosmopolitanism in a Chinese cultural disguise?

ABSTRACT

Tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti are two Chinese concepts that are of significance for reflecting on ‘China and Global Development.’ Both present a revival of cosmopolitanism in China, while accompanied by a calling for Chinese rejuvenation. In defining cosmopolitanism in terms of two intrinsic conditions – common community and universal equality – I argue that cosmopolitanism rooted in the Chinese philosophical tradition may provide a distinct solution to the equality condition from the Western liberal-individualist ones. I propose the notion of Confucian relational equality. There is indeed ‘inequality’ for the roles in a relation, in the sense that obligations and norms of conduct are defined differently and accomplished codependently. However, ideally, all full-fledged person-ings (understood as life stories in a society in a given historical period) are constituted by a dynamic and unfolding manifold of always specific relations concretized by various social roles, and usually do bear a comparable amount of functionally equivalent primary roles. As roles co-emerge among person-ings, relational equality is only possible when roles are continuously generated and sustained by transmission, which entails that community with a history, rather than an abstract and ontological individual, is a prerequisite.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese cosmopolitanism
• confucianism
• equality
• together

1. The rising of China: looking back vs looking forward

A nostalgia toward the good old days – the reign of the sage-kings Yao, Shun, Yu and Tang - had been the underpainting in the Chinese culture for many centuries. But China now is in an age when the political and social reality is no longer shaped by a longing for the utopian remote past, and political legitimacy is secured by an aspiration for a brighter future. For many people, it is the best of times – stable peace, foreseeable prosperity and realizable personal hope for a better life; while for many others who are also looking at China closely, due to all sorts of reasons, they see nothing to celebrate - if not seeing it as the worst of times. Indeed, not everyone shares this forward-looking historical optimism in mainland China. In the global political arena, the idea of returning to ‘the good old days’ – sometimes seen as an era free of Chinese influence – is making powerful waves. From the Brexit syndrome in the UK, to the Trump phenomenon in the US, the traditional Western democratic beacons find themselves sucked into successive political whirlpools that seem to inaugurate an inextricable sea-change – sometimes going by a convenient but obscure name of populism, in which a nostalgic sentiment can be identified.

When China is steadily becoming a crucial player in global issues – from economic crises, geopolitical conflicts, terrorism, pandemic to climate change – this appreciable forward-looking historical optimism, like it or not, matters to everyone. One can understand or misunderstand China, depict or distort what is happening there, appreciate or condemn its ways of doing things, but it is no longer a sensible option for others to ignore China – ‘an ancient state with its mandate sustained anew.’¹ How China envisages the world and itself in its own terms shall matter to us all, with good or bad consequences, depending on the paths forged by our generation.

2. Promoting cosmopolitanism?

In this regard, tianxia 天下 (all-under-heaven) and renlei mingyun gongtongti 人类命运共同体 (a community with a shared future for mankind) are two popular terms that dominate many recent Chinese political and philosophical discourses that gather significance in our reflection on ‘China and Global Development’. After the publication of Zhao Tingyang’s 赵汀阳 influential work The Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of World Institution (天下体系: 世界制度哲学导论) in (2005), the classical notion tianxia re-emerged as a hot topic in political philosophy in China. Zhao continues to elaborate on his proposal of the ‘tianxia system’ and reply to his critics in his following writings (e.g. Zhao 2015, 2016, 2019). Many scholars such as Liu Qing 刘擎 (2015), Xu Jilin 许季霖 (2017), Bai Tongdong 白彤东 (2018) join his ranks in promoting the tianxia and neo-tianxia concepts, making it one of the most vibrant focuses in the latest Chinese political theorization. Interestingly, many of Zhao’s commentators and critics have pointed out, whether positively or negatively, that the conception of tianxia offers a Chinese cosmopolitan view.² The notion of renlei mingyun gongtongti, characterized by a robust cosmopolitan spirit, also became one of the keywords in the Chinese political narratives after the Chinese President Xi Jinping employed this term in his speech at the World Economic Forum in 2017. In the last few years, this notion has also inspired a great deal of research, leading to an explosion of publications. It is worth mentioning that the current issue includes an article of Zhao Tingyang’s, with some of the latest developments concerning his tianxia theory. In addition, other contributors, such as Roger T. Ames, Guli-Sanam Karimova and Stephen LeMay, also investigate ideas about tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti in their respective discussions in this collection.

In my opinion, while cosmopolitanism is, to some extent, a social reality in the West (especially in the EU) where academic and non-academic debates on cosmopolitan topics have significantly shaped the pedagogic and political agenda,³ it is not yet part of China’s socio-political agenda, nor is it a settled matter in the minds of ordinary Chinese people. Does the change towards cosmopolitanism within Chinese intellectual circles signal an evocation of the Chinese cosmopolitan consciousness? How will Chinese cosmopolitanism – if there is anything distinctive about it – contribute to the future global governance and value system? Will a Chinese model, following the awakening of cosmopolitanism, eventually facilitate global development instead of merely consolidating a self-made success story?

3. Against cosmopolitanism? The reinforcement of Chinese identity

When we regard the notions of tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti as presenting a revival of cosmopolitanism in China, we cannot overlook that what accompanies this enthusiasm is a strong sense of Chinese rejuvenation. Callahan (2008) describes the Chinese phenomenon as ‘a patriotic form of cosmopolitanism,’ which sounds like an oxymoron.⁴ One might also ask, how could a sense of rejuvenating the Chinese identity not collide with any authentic cosmopolitan spirit?

In the last century, in the name of modernization, China endeavoured to ‘understand Western culture … digest, transform, utilize and reform it for the sake of forging new Confucian thinking and a new national culture’ (He 1947). Modernization is de facto westernization. Consequently, ‘cosmopolitanism’ means tacitly catching up with the world in the course of westernization (including democratization, capitalism, etc.). However, nowadays, modernization is no longer enchanting, and the ongoing globalization in many aspects turns the once unidirectional cultural assimilation into two-way traffic. With the vigorous revival of Chinese traditional culture (e.g. Confucianism) arising from an ongoing domestic grassroots movements of seeking identity as a reaction to the rapid globalization and the officially promoted ‘Chinese Dream,’ the present Western-centric global value system can expect formidable challenges from yet another corner within China. Will the twenty-first century further see the assertion of Chinese culture threaten or even replace the Western worldview? What is the impact of the Chinese cultural renaissance on Western societies and the global community? Will it be the case that ‘the emergence of China as a global power in effect relativizes everything,’ as Martin Jacques has suggested? Is the ‘Chinese Dream’ inevitably against cosmopolitanism?

4. Defining cosmopolitanism

There are various views of what the cosmopolitanism of our age is. To give some examples, David Hollinger (2001) proposes the idea of ‘modified cosmopolitanism’, which aims to reconcile universalism and pluralism and rejects the ‘unmodified’ universalistic Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. Ulrich Beck (2006, 10) is skeptical about the so-called ‘banal cosmopolitanism’ and argues that ‘not unlike the ‘banal nationalism’ characteristic of the first modernity … . Banal cosmopolitanism is manifested in concrete, everyday ways by the fact that differentiations between us and them are becoming confused, both at the national and at international level’. Robert Fine regards contemporary cosmopolitanism as a ‘vibrant, interdisciplinary movement’ and he argues that ‘the new cosmopolitanism is an endeavour to denature and decentre the nation-state – to loosen the ties that bind the nation-state to theories of democracy in political theory, theories of society in sociology, theories of internationalism in international relations, theories of sovereignty in international law and theories of justice in political philosophy.’(Fine 2007, 5–6) Despite different emphases, almost all proposals try to engage ‘an epochal change’, viz., globalization, no matter whether it is considered positive or negative, no matter whether it connotes global economy, global media, global risk or even perhaps global sentiment.

By reviewing several historical cosmopolitan arguments, e.g. Greco-Roman Stoic Cosmopolitanism, Medieval Religious Cosmopolitanism, Renaissance ‘Hybrid’ Cosmopolitanism, Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism,⁵ I argue that there are two intrinsic and indispensable elements or conditions in any typical cosmopolitanism: (1) The idea of a common community, and (2) the idea of universal equality.⁶ Any adequate cosmopolitan theory needs to justify these two conditions in some way. For instance, the first condition might lead to the proposal of a common political structure (e.g. a possible world government/federation for all humans on earth). The second can lead to the idea of membership in such a community (e.g. world citizenship). Historically, all the influential versions of Western cosmopolitanism have provided justification for these two intrinsic cosmopolitan conditions. For the common community condition, historically cosmopolitan proposals have referred to such things as human species as a whole (Socrates, see E. Brown 2000), ‘the whole inhabited earth,’ (Zeno, see Plutarch’s 1962 Moralia IV, 397-399), ‘the universe … [as] a kind of community’ or a ‘common city,’ (Aurelius 2006, see Meditations, 4.4, 2.16), Christendom (Erasmus 1917, see The Complaint of Peace, 60-61; Hugo Grotius, see Parker 2015, 374), etc.. The equality condition then may rest on either moral equality such as ‘the same potential for virtue’ (Socrates, see Brown 2000), equal mind and rationality (Aurelius, see Meditation, 4. 4) or Christian fraternity (Erasmus, see The Complaint of Peace, 60-61; Hugo Grotius, see Parker 2015, 374).

Now, we find that tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti both offer an intuitive and immediate solution for the first cosmopolitan condition, namely, the common community condition. I am convinced that in Zhao Tingyang’s proposal of the tianxia system, especially in his notion of guanxi lixing 关系理性 (relational rationality) and co-existence ontology (Zhao 2019, 73–74), we can find a resolution basis for the second cosmopolitan condition. However, it is not the task of this introduction to provide a critical evaluation of the current theorization of tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti in terms of the cosmopolitan criteria proposed above. As a comparative philosopher, I aim to explore whether cosmopolitanism rooted in a Chinese cultural tradition may contain something distinctive, and my contention is that accounts of the second cosmopolitan condition regarding universal equality can be culturally relevant.

In proposing his eight cosmopolitan principles, David Held (2005, 12) stresses that ‘the first [cosmopolitan] principle is that the ultimate units of moral concern are individual human beings, not states or other particular forms of human association … .This notion can be referred to as the principle of individualist moral egalitarianism or, simply, egalitarian individualism’. In establishing the cosmopolitan idea of ‘global citizenship’, Western scholars often invoke the concept of universal human rights based on an ontological notion of individual personhood, conventionally understood as a rational and autonomous moral being. It is quite evident that these theoretical efforts involve a robust rationalistic and individualistic approach. For them, the second cosmopolitan condition concerning universal equality is grounded in an ontological notion of equal personhood.

Turning now to the Chinese philosophical tradition, on the Chinese pre-Qin intellectual scene, Confucianism and Mohism are two dominant schools and strong rivals.⁷ In the ten core Mohist doctrines, at least four directly challenge Confucian practice – these are feiyue 非乐 (rejection of music), feiming 非命 (rejection of fate), jieyong 节用 (thrift in utilization), jiezang 节葬 (frugality in funerals).⁸ However, the most philosophically profound disagreement between Mohism and Confucianism lies in their disputation on impartiality. The famous Mohist doctrine jian-ai 兼爱 (concern for all) proposes that one (one house, one state) ought to treat all others (every other house, every other state) equally as one’s own. Jian-ai is conceived as replacing the Confucian idea of scaled concern. For the Mohist, human equality is justified by the authority of tian or heaven, for tian accepts sacrifices from all people from different times and places without discrimination, and ‘all people – young or old, noble or humble – are equally tian’s subjects’.⁹ The Mohists regard bie 别 (differentiation) as the source of major calamities.¹⁰ The Confucian contention that ‘love among relations should depend upon the degree of relationship, and honour to the virtuous should be graded,’ from the Mohist perspective, is ‘to endorse a differentiation among the near and the distant relations and the respectable and the humble.’¹¹ The Mohists take such differentiation as discrimination or partiality, which they believed were the cause of the social turmoil in their troubled age. On the contrary, the Confucians regard jian-ai as the elimination of natural human affection towards one’s close relations and the abolishment of necessary social roles and social distance. Mencius even accuses the Mohist jian-ai concept of being anti-humanity (‘being in the state of the beasts’), and states that upon allowing Mohist jian-ai to prevail, ‘beasts will be led on to devour humans, and humans will devour one another.’¹²

In the Chinese Mohist essential doctrine ‘jian-ai (concern for all)’, one may extract Chinese philosophical elements concerning impartiality close enough to the Western notion of equality. One may even argue that contemporary Western cosmopolitanism finds a sufficient Chinese correlative in Mohism and thus strengthens its explanatory power. However, two facts render this attempt problematic: (a) the historical failure of Mohism in China and its vanishing since the 2nd century BCE, and (b) the triumph of Confucianism in the Mohist-Confucian disputation and its long dominance in Chinese culture. Indeed, it is the Confucian perspective that has had a long-lasting impact on the Chinese mindset and social reality.

The Confucian Classic Book of Rites, Chapter ‘Li Yun’ records a classic cosmopolitan ideal, namely, datong 大同 (grand union):

When the great Dao is pursued, tianxia is shared by all, with the virtuous and the capable selected, sincerity emphasized, and harmony cultivated. Therefore, people do not merely look after their own kin, or exclusively take care of their own children; all the elderly will enjoy old age, all the grown-ups will find proper employment, and all the children will be brought up carefully; the widows, the orphans, the childless, the disabled and the sick are all sufficiently provided for … this is the so-called datong (grand union).¹³

Throughout Chinese history, the Confucian tradition has provided rich resources for developing cosmopolitanism; nevertheless, it would be naïve not to register the incommensurability between the Confucian basis and the Western liberal basis for the second cosmopolitan condition. To illustrate the potential difference, I would like first to propose the conceptual apparatus of ‘relational equality’.

There are at least two valid ways of conceiving equality. When one argues that A is equal to A – for instance, X as a moral being per se is equal to Y as a moral being per se – one refers to a sort of equality that ultimately illustrates the logical law of identity. This equality is abstract and is an ontological construction; perhaps it can also be called ‘qualitative equality’. By contrast, when one says that 1 plus 9 is equal to 2 times 5 (of course, there are more complicated equations), though the two sides of the equation are qualitatively non-identical because they are presented in different forms, they are still equal in a computational and quantitative sense.

In the liberal proposal of the second cosmopolitan condition, invoking the idea of equal rational and autonomous moral beings appeals to qualitative ontological equality. However, Confucian equality combines both qualitative and quantitative dimensions and forms what I call ‘relational equality’. Confucianism clarifies qualitatively different social roles and regards the principle of reciprocity with a scale of concern as its core teaching. For a specific role relation, there is indeed ‘qualitative inequality’ in the sense that obligations and norms of conduct for the involved parties are defined differently and accomplished codependently. For example, in a parent–child relation, X, as Y’s parent, is not qualitatively equal to Y, as X’s child. There is significant inequality in authority, for instance Y is supposed to be deferential to X. There is also significant inequality in duty, for X is supposed to take care of Y’s needs as a priority even at the cost of self-sacrifice. The norm for X is ci 慈 (love, kindness, benevolence, showing affection to the younger, etc.), while for Y is xiao 孝 (filial piety, familial reverence, devotion to the elderly, etc.).¹⁴ But, ideally, all full-fledged persons or ‘person-ings’ – I use the gerund to emphasize my processual understanding of humans as life stories – in a society in a given historical period, are constituted by a dynamic and unfolding manifold of always specific relations concretized by different social roles, and usually do bear a comparable amount of functionally equivalent primary roles. Also, because roles have to co-emerge among persons during the engagement, relational equality is only possible when roles are continuously generated and sustained by transmission, which is only possible when community with a history, instead of an abstract and ontological individual, is assumed as a prerequisite. In other words, the idea of relational equality is more than qualitative equality. Also, relational equality embraces within itself the first cosmopolitan condition regarding the common community.¹⁵

If cosmopolitanism with Chinese cultural characteristics is possible, it is likely to challenge the popular Western liberal-individualist solution for the equality condition. That explains why it can appear to be an oxymoron (‘a patriotic form of cosmopolitanism’) from a certain mainstream perspective in the West. Given the current revival of traditional culture in China and the political mentality of ordinary people shaped by a long history of Confucian primacy, David Held’s cosmopolitan meta-principles and its core of ‘egalitarian individualism’ would not be so self-evident as it appears to be. In addition, it is worth noting that the Western (especially the Anglo-American) academic discourse on cosmopolitanism often leads to the debate concerning individuals’ rights, while the notion of rights is not present in the Chinese tradition – a well-discussed issue from the comparative study of human rights since the 1990s (Rosemont [1991]2017; De Bary and Wei-ming 1998; Chan 1999; Wong 2004).

An introduction is not the place to make any ‘conclusion,’ and I do not claim that my above reflection is substantially related to all the articles included in this volume. However, these ideas may serve as a starter for thinking through the China model and global development. To replace a standard conclusion of my arguments, let us open up to another idea.

5. Final remark: being together

Chinese mentality is best characterized by what I call the cultivated sense of comprehensive harmony, in unison with which man and life in the world can enter into a fellowship in sympathetic unity so that a bliss of peace and well-being may be enjoyed by all. (Fang 1980, ii)¹⁶

Martin Schönfeld first conceived of the project of an edited issue of Journal of Global Ethics and invited me into it in the most orderly of times, following his panel ‘Global Ethics, Human Development and China’ at the World Congress of Philosophy (Beijing) in 2018. Two years have gone by since Martin and I published the call for papers for this special issue, and life is gradually sinking into a world of the surreal.¹⁷ Martin wrote to me during the unprecedent Wuhan lockdown in Jan 2020, offering his consolation and sharing his experience with the SARS epidemic. At that time, he was himself suffering from severe injuries following a cycling accident from the previous month, and he would die due to complications of that accident the following June. Only a few weeks after the re-opening of Wuhan, I went to a local temple to mourn him remotely.¹⁸ In my article ‘Toward the Post-coronial: Thinking Life and Uncertainty Through Chinese Philosophy,’ my focus on the notion of ming (destiny, fate, life, etc …) directly reflects on my personal experience from this period.¹⁹ At the end of that article, I wrote, ‘when we experience the vulnerability of ourselves, we would be more sympathetic and caring towards others. As the world is fraught with uncertainty, we realize that we survive better when we stick together and aid each other, like a family. In my view, humanity is not manifested merely through overcoming one particular catastrophe, but in the co-existence with and its self-accomplishment in reoccurring catastrophes.’ ‘Together’ – the newly added word in the official Olympics motto²⁰ – for me is the secrecy of human greatness. Together – it is precisely the reason why Martin and I wanted to start such a project and how we were carrying it out. Neither American model nor Chinese model? Roll them together! Neither Chinese dream nor American dream? Let us dream together!²¹

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Eric Palmer. If it were not for his professionality, patience, and timely and generous help, this issue would never have come out, and all of Martin’s hard work devoted to this special issue would go down the drain.

Let us dedicate this special issue to our great friend Martin, and may he rest in peace.

Lo! All things rise from the earth and return to it.

Therefore, I shall leave you too.

Entering the Gate of the Endless,

Wandering in the Wilderness of the Limitless,

I shine when the sun and moon shine,

I endure while heaven and earth endure.

(Zhuangzi, Chapter ‘Zai You’)²²

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Xiao Ouyang

Xiao Ouyang is an Associate Professor at Wuhan University, China. He mainly works on comparative philosophy and is interested in various topics in aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. He has publications in international journals such as Philosophy East and West, Monumenta Serica, Australasian Philosophical Review, and Rivista di Estetica. He also works on translation, with publications such as Chen Guying's The Annotated Critical Laozi: With Contemporary Explication and Traditional Commentary (Brill Press 2020, co-edited with Paul D'Ambrosio). Besides academic work, he devotes himself to Chinese classical arts such as poetry, calligraphy, painting and literati music.

Notes

1 Here I am borrowing a famous phrase “周虽旧邦, 其命惟新” from the Confucian classic The Great Learning, which is itself a quote from the Book of Odes. (Liji Zhengyi 2000, vol. 60, 1861)

2 For instance, William A. Callahan, a notable critic of Zhao, regards Zhao’s tianxia system as a patriotic form of cosmopolitanism that satisfies the desire within China of solving world problems in a Chinese way and engaging global issues with a nationalist approach. (Callahan 2008, 50, 56). Tong Shijun (2006, 310) points out that the core of Zhao’s idea is a vision of a cosmopolitan order.

3 For instance, “global citizenship”, as one of the core conceptions from and a coherent justification for various contemporary cosmopolitan proposals, has been an extremely influential notion in European pedagogic schemes for the last two decades.

4 It is interesting to compare this notion with Kwame Anthony Appiah’s“cosmopolitan patriotism.”Appiah would argue that there is no intrinsic contradiction between cosmopolitanism and patriotism. For, unlike nationalism, they are both sentiments more than ideologies. “We cosmopolitans can be patriots, loving our homelands… our loyalty to humankind so vast, so abstract, a unity does not deprive us of the capacity to care for lives nearer by.”(Appiah 1997, 618–619, 622).

5 My historical classification of cosmopolitanism is mainly adapted from Derek Heater’s (1996) World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought.

6 My two conditions are inspired by Pauline Kleingeld’s (2013) discussion of “the nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan view” and David Held’s (2005) reflection on “the grounds of cosmopolitan thought.” Kleingeld (2013) argues that “the nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community.” Held (2005, 19–20) proposes two meta-principles of cosmopolitanism, and he writes, “the justificatory rationale of cosmopolitan principles is dependent on two fundamental metaprinciples … the metaprinciple of autonomy and the metaprinciple of impartialist reasoning.”

7 According to the Chapter “Xian Xue” of the Han Feizi, a book attributed to the legalist philosopher Han Fei 韩非 (ca.280 BCE-233BCE), “the contemporary prominent studies are Confucianism and Mohism. Confucianism is represented by Kong Qiu (Confucius) while Mohism is represented by Mo Di.” (Han Feizi Jijie, vol. 4, 63).

8 See the Chapter “Lu Wen” of the Mozi. (Mozi Jiaozhu, 737)

9 See the Chapter “Fa Yi” and the Chapter “Tian Zhi” of the Mozi. (Mozi Jiaozhu, 30, 319) The direct quotation is a translation of the following text: “人無幼長貴賤, 皆天之臣也.”

10 See the Chapter “Jian Ai” of the Mozi. (Mozi Jiaozhu, 176)

11 See the Chapter “Fei Ru” of the Mozi. “儒者曰: ‘親親有術, 尊賢有等.’ 言親疏尊卑之異也.” (Mozi Jiaozhu, 436)

12 See the Chapter “Teng Wen Gong” of the Mencius. Mencius criticizes both Mohism and Yangism (an early version of Daoism) in this passage: “墨氏兼愛, 是無父也. 無父無君, 是禽獸也 … 楊, 墨之道不息, 孔子之道不著 … 仁義充塞, 則率獸食人, 人將相食.” (Mengzi Zhushu, 210-211)

13 My translation. The Chinese original text: “大道之行也, 天下为公, 选贤与能, 讲信修睦. 故人不独亲其亲, 不独子其子, 使老有所终, 壮有所用, 幼有所长, 矜寡孤独废疾者, 皆有所养 … 是谓大同.” (Liji Zhengyi, 769)

14 It is worth mentioning that the Confucian principle of reciprocity, with social roles as a prerequisite, does not endorse perfect symmetry. Perfect symmetry in reciprocity also appeals to qualitative ontological equality. Moreover, I like to contend that Confucian reciprocity also does not necessarily embody a closed-loop structure. Confucian reciprocity can be realized in an ever-extending chain of beneficiaries, which is especially true for intergenerational practice. For a typical Chinese mind, the following case makes perfect sense. One’s ci (to his or her children) is in a sense to reciprocate his or her parents’ ci (to him or her). They are all integral parts of the growing genealogy.

15 In addition to its traditional sources, I want to acknowledge that my conceiving of ‘relational equality' is inspired by Confucian role ethics advocated by the two prominent contemporary comparative philosophers Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. In particular, Ames’ (2021) recent explication of “Confucian relationally–constituted, narrative, focus–field conception of persons” or “human becomings” that contests foundational individualism, proposes a relational understanding of personhood, providing a solid interpretive ground for the notion of relational equality.

16 Thomé H. Fang or Fang Dongmei 方東美 (1899-1977), a former professor at National Taiwan University, is one of the most influential Chinese philosophers in the 20th century.

17 Just when I am writing, unprecedented floods are making Zhengzhou a center of calamity. “From Saturday to Tuesday, 617.1 mm (24.3 in.) of rain fell in Zhengzhou, almost the equivalent of its annual average of 640.8 mm (25.2 in.). The three days of rain matched a level seen only ‘once in a thousand years’, the Zhengzhou weather bureau said.” (News from Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/heavy-rainfall-kills-12-central-chinas-henan-provincial-capital-xinhua-2021-07-20/)

18 See the obituary of Martin published by this journal, “Martin Schönfeld (1963-2020),” in Journal of Global Ethics 16:2, 138. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449626.2020.1814532

19 See https://labontblog.com/2020/07/22/toward-the-post-coronial-thinking-life-and-uncertainty-through-chinese-philosophy/

20 The tripartite motto adopted in 1924 by the International Olympic Committee was supplemented this summer as: "Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together."

21 During my years in Ireland, every Christmas, this song would be played in every bar and pub, with my favorite lyrics: "You took my dreams from me, When I first found you. I kept them with me, babe. I put them with my own. Can't make it all alone, I've built my dreams around you." ("Fairytale Of New York")

22 My translation. The Chinese text is “今夫百昌皆生於土而反於土, 故余將去女, 入無窮之門, 以遊無極之野. 吾與日月參光, 吾與天地為常.” (Zhuangzi Jishi, 383-384)