| Joseph R.Levenson,1920-1969,was one of the best scholars in the field of China study,whose research on Confucian China and its modern fate aroused great controversy.To study on Levenson's academic background,China study models and demonstration method is helpful to illustrate the specialty and unique value of Levenson's China study.Judaism,which Levenson believed,and Confucianism,which Levenson studied,both are transmuting from traditional version to a modern one.Levenson's perseverance and deep concern about the Jewish faith gave him deep sympathy and thinking about the ideological dilemma the Chinese people faced when they entered into modern society.The modernization theory,represented by Marx Weber,developed in Europe and the United States since the nineteenth century was the main source of Levenson's modernization concept.At that time Western scholars generally believed that the stable traditional China could not independently develop into modern society.Levenson inherited and developed John Fairbank's"impact-response" model,and enriched its ideological interpretation.Levenson inherited and applied the theory of European and American relativistic history,and developed it into his relativistic history model for China study.The core issue of Levenson's China study can be summarized as the relationship between the universality and the particularity of culture.The three most used dichotomies,"tradition-modernity" "history-value" "provincialism-cosmopolitanism",are three different forms of relationship of culture universality and particularity.The three models,differing in different context,compose Levenson's whole organic analysis model from different perspectives.The main demonstration methods Levenson adopted includes citation based on variation of historical words,comparison based on world history and metaphors based on evolution of society.These demonstration methods make Levenson's narrative tortuous,aesthetic and literary,which forms his unique academic study style. |
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