Translation note: This edition translates Lab on Roof’s published Chinese interview and its editorial material. Quotations are translated from the wording reproduced there unless otherwise indicated. Biographical descriptions and bibliographical dates follow the Chinese edition unless otherwise noted. English glosses of non-English titles do not imply that an English edition exists.
Editor’s note
This interview took place at Tsinghua Shuangqing Book Café. Zhang Jinniu was also present throughout, and we thank him for contributing a brief concluding reflection. Murthy addresses the subjects and questions raised here in greater detail in his other writings. The purpose of this feature is, rather, to offer a somewhat panoramic perspective through which to “displace Takeuchi Yoshimi.”
Photograph: Zhang Jinniu.
I. Deprovincializing Takeuchi Yoshimi
Fu Shi: Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule for this interview. I briefly introduced the project to you earlier: we have selected essays by a number of scholars working outside Chinese and Japanese academia to show how you read Takeuchi Yoshimi, particularly the China of his writings. The contributors include Naoki Sakai, Richard F. Calichman, Jon D. Solomon, Christian Uhl, and yourself. We have called the project “Displacing Takeuchi Yoshimi.” Originally, it was called “Takeuchi Yoshimi in the West.” I changed the name because everyone featured in it maintains a highly critical awareness of the so-called “West” and the disciplinary norms founded on that concept. In a sense, choosing Takeuchi as a subject of research already expresses a critical stance toward disciplinary traditions claiming universality. But we also have to confront the fact that there is something heterogeneous in your work. Much of this unfamiliarity comes from your thinking about Takeuchi “between” scholarly traditions—from displacing him through cross-cultural and transnational inquiry, translation, and postcolonial thought. My first question is: how did you arrive at these displacements? What led you to choose this kind of Takeuchi?
Professor at the City University of New York and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. He received his doctorate from Cornell University, where he studied with Naoki Sakai. His wide-ranging research encompasses modern Japanese intellectual history, modern Japanese literature, literary criticism, postcolonial theory, film studies, and the philosophy of time. His books include Before Identity: The Question of Method in Japan Studies (2021), Beyond Nation: Time, Writing, and Community in the Work of Abe Kōbō (2016), The Coming Death: Traces of Mortality Across East Asia (2022), and Takeuchi Yoshimi: Displacing the West (2004). He has also translated a number of works by Abe Kōbō and Takeuchi Yoshimi.
A graduate of Brown University in 1984, Solomon received his doctorate in modern Chinese literature from Cornell University in 1997. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Chinese at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University in France and a researcher at the interdisciplinary multilingual research center at Paris Nanterre University. His research interests include sovereignty and biopolitics, nationalism and globalization, postcolonialism, racism, and modern Chinese literature.
Viren Murthy: The main issue is the relationship between different disciplines and Takeuchi. I think that is the central question. Displacement may have something to do with these disciplinary differences. In the West, particularly in the United States, I think Calichman may have been the first to study Takeuchi systematically. What makes his work interesting to me is that, within East Asian studies, he belongs to the literary studies side, but what he actually studies is philosophy—continental philosophy, especially Derrida. So his Takeuchi has a strong Derridean coloring, which also has something to do with his teacher, Naoki Sakai.
Uhl received his doctorate, with the highest honors, from Heidelberg University; his dissertation won the JaDe Prize in 2003. He was appointed Professor of Japanese Studies at Ghent University in 2007 and is currently a full professor there. At Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Leiden, and Ghent, he has taught a wide range of courses in philosophy, intellectual history, the history of political ideas, Japanese literary history, general Chinese and Japanese history, research methodology, theory, modern and classical Japanese, classical Chinese, and kanbun kundoku—the Japanese reading of Literary Chinese—as well as numerous more specialized courses and seminars. Working from a historical-materialist perspective, he examines questions in Chinese and Japanese philosophy and intellectual history. His research focuses on epochal transformations in systems of knowledge, their political-economic foundations, and the specific historical conditions that make such transformations possible. On this basis, he also addresses broader theoretical questions beyond the conventional boundaries of East Asian studies.
Uhl, too, can be placed within East Asian studies, but he did his doctorate at Heidelberg. His dissertation was also about Takeuchi’s Lu Xun, and his teacher, Wolfgang Seifert, studies Takeuchi as well. Their tradition includes some philosophy, but it is more philological. Uhl is mainly concerned with where Takeuchi’s intellectual resources came from, which is why he focuses on the Kyoto School.
After receiving his doctorate in Frankfurt in 1975, Seifert became Professor of Japanese Studies at Heidelberg University. His research focuses on modern Japanese politics, intellectual and political history, philosophy, and sociology. His books include Nationalismus im Nachkriegs-Japan. Ein Beitrag zur Ideologie der völkischen Nationalisten [Nationalism in Postwar Japan: A Contribution to the Study of the Ideology of Ethnic Nationalists].
If we turn to China, we have to mention Sun Ge. She is an important scholar who also originally came from a Chinese department. But her approach differs from both of theirs. She tends to approach Takeuchi through intellectual history, placing his thought in its historical context. She and Calichman have some things in common: both are interested in postmodern theory. But Sun Ge develops her account from a historical context.
Viren Murthy; Chinese translation by Zhang Chuntian, Ren Zhijun, and others. East China Normal University Press, 2018.
My background is a little different from theirs, so my point of departure is different too. I began by studying comparative philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi, mainly Chinese and Western philosophy, though I also encountered some Kyoto School thought. Only later did I enter a history department. In fact, when I was in philosophy, I did not even know who Takeuchi was. I learned about him while researching Zhang Taiyan in Japan. I was particularly impressed by Japanese scholarship on Zhang, and I began wondering why these scholars understood him in this way. Where did this anti-modern reading come from? Gradually, that question led me back to Takeuchi. I think these scholars were all influenced by him, including Nishi Junzō. Of course, Nishi may have belonged to the same generation as Takeuchi, but Nishi’s student Kondō Kuniyasu told me that he had indeed been influenced by Takeuchi. Then this idea of an anti-modern Zhang Taiyan emerged.
Nishi Junzō (1914–1984), a historian of Chinese thought, began working as an assistant at the Ministry of Education’s Research Institute for National Spiritual Culture in 1938. In 1942, he was appointed associate professor in the Faculty of Letters at Keijō Imperial University. In 1944, while in Keijō, he was enlisted as a private second class in the 106th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 49th Division, serving for three months. His appointment ended in 1946 when Keijō Imperial University was abolished following the end of the Second World War. He returned to Japan and that year became a professor in the preparatory division of Tokyo University of Industry, now Hitotsubashi University. He was promoted to professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences in 1958 and became its sixth dean in 1966. One of the pioneers of modern Chinese intellectual history in the postwar Shōwa period, Nishi was known for single-handedly compiling Genten Chūgoku kindai shisōshi [Modern Chinese Intellectual History in Primary Sources], originally published in six volumes by Iwanami Shoten. He also took an interest in social issues such as discrimination against Asians living in Japan and actively participated in citizens’ anti-discrimination movements. His works include 満州国の宗教問題 [Religious Problems in Manchukuo], 中国思想論集 [Essays on Chinese Thought], and 日本と朝鮮の間：京城生活の断片、その他 [Between Japan and Korea: Fragments of Life in Keijō and Other Writings].
Kondō served as associate professor at Hokkaido University and professor at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science. On reaching retirement age in 1995, he became professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. He subsequently taught in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, at Daitō Bunka University, leaving in 2006. He served as president of the Japan Association for Modern China Studies and as a board member of the Society for Studies of Chinese Society and Culture. His principal fields were modern Chinese intellectual history, Chinese politics, and Mao Zedong Thought. His books include 毛沢東：実践と思想 [Mao Zedong: Practice and Thought], 中国近代思想史研究 [Studies in Modern Chinese Intellectual History], and 辛亥革命：思想の形成 [The 1911 Revolution: The Formation of Its Thought].
So I think that behind this anti-modern Zhang Taiyan stands an anti-modern Lu Xun, and that anti-modern Lu Xun is connected to Takeuchi. That was how I became interested in him. But my background differs somewhat from these scholars’. I started in philosophy and later moved into history, and it was while studying philosophy that I became interested in Marxism. My work on Takeuchi consequently has a stronger Marxist coloring, particularly compared with Calichman’s and Sun Ge’s. My particular interest in Marxist studies and Hegel also gives it a more Hegelian-Marxist orientation, which leads me toward somewhat different texts and ideas.
That may be the key issue. To give an example, in Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution, I raise a question about time: Takeuchi’s 無限の瞬間, “the infinite instant.” I think the instant itself is infinite here, so there are possible connections with Heidegger and others. This is completely different from Calichman’s translation. He translates the expression as “innumerable instances,”1 and the Chinese translation likewise has “countless instants.” But “countless” means that each instant is the same, and there are countless such instants. My point is that the instant itself is infinite: a revolutionary instant—or a political instant, an instant of action. (Note in the Chinese edition: “History is not an empty form of time. Without countless instants of life-and-death struggle to establish the self, not only the self but history too would be lost.” Takeuchi Yoshimi, Overcoming Modernity, Chinese translation by Sun Ge.)
Viren Murthy, University of Chicago Press, 2023.
That is one example. So I think background and discipline are very important. But what is particularly interesting about Takeuchi is that no discipline can fully grasp him. You need an interdisciplinary perspective to study him.
Fu: So Takeuchi is himself essentially in this displaced condition, as he has always shown.
Murthy: Yes, I think that is how he saw himself. You could say he worked in literature or literary criticism, but he also had a relationship to philosophy. He discusses things like “time,” yet he constantly reminds us that he is not doing philosophy. So he is always in this in-between position, a little like what Lu Xun called a “historical intermediate.” Sometimes he really is like that.
Fu: You have just discussed the differences between yourself and these scholars, particularly Calichman. I think he certainly deserves close attention, not only as a pioneering Takeuchi scholar in the West, but also as Takeuchi’s translator—as Uhl is, of course. You mentioned the connection between Calichman’s and Sakai’s philosophical approaches. As Sakai’s student, Calichman does seem to have pushed Sakai’s positions to an extreme of theorization. From the Sakai essay selected for this project to “‘You Asians’: On the Historical Role of the West and Asia Binary,” Sakai emphasizes that, although Takeuchi gives us an opening for postcolonial reflection and resistance to Eurocentrism, he shares the logic of Hegelian historicism with Maruyama Masao—though perhaps Takeuchi is closer to Nishida Kitarō. Takeuchi can criticize modernism precisely because he is himself a profound modernist, an adherent of modernity. Sakai emphasizes “starting from Takeuchi,” whereas Calichman has completely Derrideanized him.
Sakai taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at Cornell University and was also a member of its graduate field of History. He has published in multiple languages on comparative literature, intellectual history, translation studies, racism and nationalism, and the histories of semiotic systems and diverse literary forms, including speech, writing, bodily expression, calligraphic regimes, and phonographic traditions. He led the founding of Traces, a multilingual scholarly series published in Korean, Chinese, English, and Japanese, with German, Italian, and Spanish added in 2008. Its editorial office was based at Cornell, and he served as its founding senior editor from 1996 to 2004. In addition to Traces, Sakai has served on the editorial boards of positions: east asia cultures critique (United States), Postcolonial Studies (Australia), Tamkang Review (Taiwan, China), the International Dictionary of Intellectual History (United Kingdom and Germany), History of Modern Japanese Culture (Japan), Perspectives (Korea), and Multitudes (France). His internationally acclaimed books include Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse (『過去の声 18世紀日本の言説における言語の地位』), 死産される日本語・日本人：「日本」の歴史－地政的配置 [Stillborn Japanese Language and Japanese People: The Historical-Geopolitical Configuration of “Japan”], and Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism (『日本思想という問題 翻訳と主体』).
Naoki Sakai, Kōdansha, 2015.
What stands out here is the reflection on theory, especially within historical research. Calichman’s work may be excessively theoretical, but he takes a resistant stance toward precisely this objection. At the end of Before Identity: The Question of Method in Japan Studies, he recalls a job interview shortly after completing his dissertation, when a professor of Asian studies challenged him: “Don’t you think all these assorted theoretical claims only get in the way of our reading the original texts?” His response in the book is that theoretical work helps us rethink those original texts. For him, there is no unmediated text, and ignoring this is precisely the arrogance of Japanese studies in the West. This resistant stance also appears in his translations of Takeuchi. Besides the example you mentioned, he translates 観想の場 as “place of theoretical contemplation” and 行為の場 as “place of action.” Yet in his translation from more than a decade earlier, What Is Modernity?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, he used “site of contemplation,” without “theoretical.” In the essay selected for this project, he also states explicitly that Takeuchi’s opposition between the “place of contemplation” and the “place of action” is the opposition between theory and practice. I actually find this difficult to imagine in Japanese, even if 観照 was indeed originally Nishi Amane’s translation of theōria.
Richard F. Calichman, State University of New York Press, 2021.
Richard F. Calichman, Columbia University Press, 2005.
Many Chinese-language scholars, especially historians, may find your language excessively philosophical and theoretical too. But as I mentioned earlier, this stance may express your reflection on theory itself. It may prompt you to consider the complicity between theory and the West, and between universality and particularity, and how that complicity works to construct a form of universal hegemony. Calichman develops his critique through Takeuchi and the relation between theory and practice. Takeuchi, too, is certainly “resisting,” as we can see from his criticism of traditional Sinology. What role do you think Takeuchi’s resistance plays in this context?
Murthy: How to think about theory is, of course, an enormous question. We have been discussing theory and philosophy, and this may be precisely where Calichman and I differ. He is also very fond of philosophy, but we could say that his presuppositions are basically Derridean. As you say, he criticizes a kind of positivism: the idea in American Japanese studies that the texts are simply there, without theory. On this point I basically agree with him. I also think theory is unavoidable. Just because I do not consciously use theory does not mean there is no theory. The point is that reading any text involves presuppositions. Without theory, those presuppositions are used uncritically.
The next step is more abstract and concerns the difference between Hegel and Derrida. Calichman’s next step differs from mine. Since there are always presuppositions, all we can do is acknowledge ours and then choose them. Calichman chooses Derrida’s. But this presupposition carries a further presupposition: that Derrida’s presuppositions are better than others. Here, I think, we encounter Hegel’s question: how can we demonstrate that one presupposition is better than another? The whole of Hegel’s Logic addresses this problem—how to clarify these presuppositions. It deals with mediation and self-mediation. Hegel argues that we must begin with the most basic category, Sein, or being. In Chinese this is sometimes translated as 有 or 在, and sometimes as 存在—though 存在 is closer to Existenz. The Logic begins with the simplest, most indeterminate category and derives the others from it. For example, it derives Dasein, determinate being, from being. I think this is what genuinely critical theory means.
What this position has to do with Takeuchi is a question. Takeuchi is not a philosopher in Hegel’s sense; he is more inclined to participate in history. But what categories do we use to discuss him? I think this question helps us consider how we view history. How we view Takeuchi’s history or Japanese history is connected to the larger question of how we view history as such, and thus to how we understand basic categories: being, purpose, life, and human life. This may be a very important difference between Calichman and me.
So, returning to Sakai: he thinks Takeuchi is actually too Hegelian. My view is exactly the opposite—Takeuchi is not Hegelian enough. He has neither a complete logic of history nor a basic logic. To return to 無限の瞬間, the “infinite instant”: Takeuchi sees it as an instant of action. But what is the purpose of that action? That is difficult to say. We can interpret it historically; we can say revolution, or liberation, and so on. But Takeuchi does not theorize these things. He only hints at them. You could also bring them together through his writings on Mao Zedong. I may have made Takeuchi more Hegelian and more revolutionary, whereas Calichman takes the same phenomena—though he reads their temporality differently—and makes him postmodern. Sakai also discusses Asia, but thinks Takeuchi is too Hegelian and too supportive of Asianism. He sees support for Asia and support for Eurocentrism as two sides of the same coin. Those are the differences among the three of us.
Calichman might then say that perhaps Takeuchi is not Derridean enough, but that he can make him Derridean. I do Hegelianize Takeuchi somewhat, because I think his implicit presuppositions may contain Hegelian ideas. Sakai might think this makes Takeuchi too teleological. But there is another question I must raise here: the question of “Asia.” I return to this throughout my book, and I think it is also the principal difference between me and the two of them. They both think that once you distinguish Asia from the West, you have already fallen into a kind of essentialism and bad identity politics. But I think that, in the context of imperialism, we cannot completely give up identification with the nation-state; we cannot even give up nationalism. In the book, I also discuss Takeuchi’s dialogue with Umesao Tadao, which I mentioned at Nankai the other day. “Asia” here is not simply a cultural or geographical concept. It is an anti-imperialist concept: wherever there is opposition to imperialism, that is Asia. So he says Cuba can be in Asia too. Seen this way, Takeuchi effectively sublates Asia, and Asia becomes the Third World. But Sakai and Calichman are not particularly interested in Third World movements or Third World Marxists. So they throw away this whole possibility and then proceed to criticize. Their conclusion is basically that Takeuchi is not postmodern enough, and that is where they stop.
Fu: You have identified many differences. But at Nankai you also mentioned drawing on Calichman and Uhl, as well as Chinese and Japanese scholars such as Sun Ge, Wang Hui, Nishi Junzō, and Mizoguchi Yūzō. Of course, this is much less evident in Calichman: whether discussing Takeuchi or Abe Kōbō, he seldom develops his argument by citing specific positions. What particularly interests me is Sun Ge’s and Mizoguchi’s engagement with Takeuchi’s China, which is also one of your concerns. Both criticized the fictive image of China in Takeuchi. Mizoguchi, for example, argued that Takeuchi’s “China” remained “Sinology without China,” still circling within Tsuda Sōkichi’s framework of knowledge. For Mizoguchi, Takeuchi’s affirmation of “China” was ahistorical; his understanding of it amounted to no more than “longing.” Sun Ge likewise writes that Takeuchi’s work “was strongly colored by commentary and excessively idealized China” (Takeuchi Yoshimi to iu toi [The Question of Takeuchi Yoshimi]). Such criticism is widespread. But it seems to me that Takeuchi was profoundly aware of this problem. I remember a passage in “What Is Modernity?”: “Only through encountering a heterogeneous object can the self establish itself. Europe’s longing for the Orient has existed since ancient times—or rather, Europe itself was originally a confused, amorphous existence—but this movement in the form of invasion appeared only with modernity.” I think that, for Takeuchi, such “longing” has existed “since ancient times,” but it is only with modernity that it becomes a problem. Or rather, the desire for an authentic object and a heterogeneous other is precisely an expression of the historical violence of modern capitalism.
Sun Ge; Japanese translation by Suzuki Masahisa, Shimizu Ken’ichirō, and Satō Ken. Iwanami Shoten, 2026.
I think Takeuchi clearly recognized the inevitably fictive character of his “China.” This was a conviction he and his associates had proclaimed since founding the Chinese Literature Research Society. In his dispute with Yoshikawa Kōjirō over translation, Takeuchi said: “For me, it is I who make Chinese literature [Shina bungaku] Chinese literature. For Yoshikawa, the scholarly attitude consists in approaching Chinese literature ever more closely.”2 “China” has meaning only in relation to one’s own life. For Takeuchi, the most urgent issue is first of all one’s own way of existing. How do you view these criticisms of him? Or, to put it another way, how do you view Takeuchi’s China?
Murthy: Yes, Mizoguchi’s and Sun Ge’s criticisms of Takeuchi raise a very important question, especially Mizoguchi’s “Sinology without China.” What he is saying is that China becomes a mirror: Japanese Sinologists are not looking at “China.” He also criticizes Nishi Junzō, saying that these Sinologists’ “China” is not the real China, but an imagined China—a China of resistance. We cannot say that this criticism is entirely wrong. I think Takeuchi grasps one aspect of the whole experience of the Chinese Revolution. As you just said, when Europe invaded and global capitalism entered China, China began to resist, and through this acquired subjectivity. Mizoguchi’s question is: what was China like before the invasion? Without understanding that, how can we explain why China reacted as it did when invaded? In particular, when it received foreign ideas, why did it interpret them in these ways? So I think we have to bring the two together. I do not see Mizoguchi and Takeuchi as completely opposed, and Mizoguchi himself would certainly not deny Takeuchi’s great influence on him.
At the end of “Asia as Method,” Takeuchi speaks of 巻き返す—a “counteroffensive.” Discussing a cultural counteroffensive, he says: “When [we] launch a counteroffensive, there must be something distinctive within [us]. If we ask what that something is, perhaps it is not a substance. But it may exist as method.” This seems a little empty to Mizoguchi. I find the passage interesting because it reminds me of Hegel’s discussion of substance and subject. Takeuchi is basically saying that what we need is “subject,” not “substance.”
But Hegel wants precisely to break down that opposition. He says that substance is not unchanging; it is constantly changing. From this perspective, we can understand Mizoguchi. What he calls Chinese culture or Chinese thought is itself constantly changing, and this change has a logic intimately connected to the revolutions of the twentieth century. His The Vicissitudes and Development of Premodern Chinese Thought describes an important transformation during the Ming and Qing. The formation of the subject is implicit in the thought of figures such as Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu, as well as Song-Ming Neo-Confucians such as Zhu Xi. That formation must be situated within changes in substance—that is, historical conditions and community—before we can understand “resistance.” So I think we need to bring Takeuchi and Mizoguchi together to understand the Chinese Revolution.
Mizoguchi Yūzō; Chinese translation by Gong Ying. SDX Joint Publishing, 2011.
Fu: You say that the formation of subjectivity needs to be situated within changes in substance. Could we understand this in terms of “being” and “becoming”?
Murthy: Yes. In fact, on substance and subject, Hegel says in the Phenomenology of Spirit: “We must grasp and express the true, or truth, not only as substance but also as subject.” Hegel himself places the emphasis on subject. He thinks that people see things as real, but substance actually also includes history, community, and other factors. Subject and substance are inseparable for him. The subject is not empty: it always operates within the domain of history, with an immanent logic. Mizoguchi wants to grasp this logic in Chinese history and intellectual history, and to observe how it changes. This becomes the presupposition for his understanding of the Chinese Revolution. He thinks that without understanding it, we cannot understand modern China. Many people studying China in the West emphasize rupture. Takeuchi does too. Mizoguchi, however, thinks that although there are ruptures, continuity lies behind them.
II. Within “Tianxia,” Between “Tianxias”
Fu: At this point, if we follow Spinoza’s understanding of substance, I think we could see it as a kind of immanent universal, or a universal of universals—somewhat like Hegel’s “the universal.” In the sense you have been discussing, “substance is subject” can indeed prompt us to think about possible configurations of universality and particularity today.
For Sakai, this possibility lies in translation, in homolingual and heterolingual communities. Harry D. Harootunian locates it in everyday life’s subversion of historical time, through which he seeks to make history and philosophy answerable to one another. For you, this possibility seems to take the form of tianxia, “all under heaven.” But here, too, tianxia seems to be a product of mediation in Hegel’s sense. In your many discussions of tianxia—which I think you understand very differently from the way it is understood in Chinese philosophy in mainland China—we encounter Nishi Junzō, Roger T. Ames, and Prasenjit Duara. In your reading of Zhao Tingyang, “Toward a New World Order: Reading Tianxia with Hegel and Marx,”3 I can also see the presence of Mizoguchi as you have just described him. At the same time, your conception of tianxia seems to respond to a proposition advanced by Wang Hui. Why do you think about tianxia in this way? And how does tianxia open up possibilities for universality and particularity?
Harootunian received his doctorate in history from the University of Michigan in 1958. He subsequently taught at the University of Chicago for more than twenty years, becoming Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations and serving as chair of both the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Department of History. After leaving Chicago, he moved to New York University, where he taught in History and East Asian Studies. Following retirement, he taught at Duke and Columbia. He has served as editor of the Journal of Asian Studies and coeditor of Critical Inquiry. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. His areas of specialization are modern Japanese history and intellectual history, the philosophy of history, and Marxism.
Viren Murthy, Routledge, 2024.
Murthy: Yes, I also find the relationship between universality and particularity in tianxia very interesting. I spoke about tianxia at Tsinghua last week. One of the important points I made was that its universality does not eliminate particularity. Many people are actually afraid of universality; we are rather reluctant to discuss it now. When they encounter concepts such as the “whole,” their presupposition is that the whole eliminates the parts, that universality eliminates particularity. But tianxia points precisely to a universality that goes beyond the opposition between particularity and universality. Takeuchi discusses this too in “Asia as Method.” At the end, he says that we need a new universality: the cultural “counteroffensive” is meant to reshape universality, and this new universality can actually encompass particularity.
Of course, this is related to Zhao Tingyang’s tianxia as well. I was asked questions about this at Tsinghua. Many people think Zhao does not see it that way, and that he is not really trying to overcome capitalism. I did not fully develop this in my essay on him. I say that Zhao has some doubts about capitalism—possibly more than I acknowledged. He does mention the Third World and Mao Zedong Thought, but he has not developed a theory that brings them together into a whole. I think tianxia can be realized only by overcoming capitalism, but he does not state this so clearly. At my lecture, a student also suggested that Zhao might be more inclined toward liberalism. If that is the case, I think his tianxia cannot be realized. The new universality of tianxia, as I understand it, is opposed to capitalism. From this perspective, the immanent logic of Zhao’s position should lead him to think about a postcapitalist society. I think Karatani Kōjin’s logic is similar. Karatani says we need a new world. This is why, despite being an anarchist, he keeps returning to the United Nations. Of course, he can say that it would be a new United Nations, one beyond capitalism, and this may be very close to Zhao’s ideal.
These ideas are also related to Wang Hui. Wang has long been concerned with a new universality, with going beyond capitalism, and with their relationship to revolution. In this sense, you could say that I have inherited his interests and basic arguments. In fact, Zhao and Wang are quite similar. Of course, Wang places more emphasis on history. When discussing the Qing Empire, he stresses that it contains particularity within itself.
There is, of course, a question I may have to answer: is difference in conflict with capitalism? Zhao might say there is no real conflict. Capitalism contains so many differences—why should there be a conflict? This is a complicated question. On the one hand, cultural pluralism is not in conflict with capitalism. Capitalism also shapes differences to a certain extent: the gap between rich and poor, for example, or class differences. We can say that capitalism does negate certain differences. These are related to the commodity form, to exchange-value. In terms of exchange-value, differences among all goods are only differences of quantity. Similarly, concrete differences cannot appear within the nation-state’s system of formal equality. So although we tend simply to speak of difference, we have to clarify which kinds of difference have critical force. …
Fu: As in Harootunian’s discussion of colonialism as capitalism, and of formal subsumption.
Murthy: Yes. Many Marxists, including Harootunian, have made this point. At the same time, many Marxists would say that capitalism basically operates according to the logic of the commodity, which itself entails identity. From this perspective, capitalism has an inherent tendency to eliminate difference. But besides capitalism, there is the nation-state. We often speak about empires and nation-states; how does the nation-state eliminate difference? I find this a very interesting question. Patchen Markell raises it in his critique of Marx’s “On the Jewish Question,” because Jews do indeed raise a crucial question of difference in the Western context. He says the nation-state appears to recognize Jews: Jews can become German citizens. But when Jewish religious practices conflict with citizenship, Judaism will certainly be sacrificed. The nation-state thus eliminates difference by placing it in the private sphere, whereas Judaism did not originally have a clear division between public and private. What is subtle about the nation-state’s elimination of difference is that it changes difference through recognition. I think this is important, but it still does not return us to the fundamental question. It is not enough simply to discuss difference, and not every difference should be preserved. If we speak only of difference, we lose determinacy. From this perspective, we must have a “purpose.” Some differences have to be abolished, or at least changed. The question then is who decides which differences need to change. Every political system has to make decisions of this kind. (Note in the Chinese edition: See Bound by Recognition.)
Markell received his doctorate in political science from Harvard University in 1999. He taught at the University of Chicago and is currently Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. His research addresses a range of questions in contemporary social and political theory. He has written and taught on action and responsibility, agency, democratic theory, gender and sexuality, and the role of emotions in politics. He has also worked on Hegel, Marx, Hannah Arendt, Habermas, and Aristotle. He is the author of Bound by Recognition.
Fu: How, then, have Duara, Ames, and others contributed to your conception of Chinese philosophy?
A Canadian philosopher, translator, and writer, Ames is Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University in Beijing, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and a Berggruen Fellow. He is known for interpreting early Chinese thought from a process-relational perspective and for systematically criticizing readings of Chinese philosophy through fixed Western metaphysical categories. This work finds its fullest expression in his studies of Confucian role ethics and his philosophically interpretive translations of classical texts. His books include The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China, 和而不同：中西哲学的会通 [Harmony without Uniformity: Bringing Chinese and Western Philosophy into Conversation], and 自我的圆成：中西互鉴下的古典儒学与道家 [The Fulfillment of the Self: Classical Confucianism and Daoism in Chinese-Western Dialogue].
Murthy: [Laughs.] That is a very complicated question, but it is interesting to raise it now. I entered the University of Hawaiʻi as a graduate student in 1990 and became Ames’s student. I wanted to study Heidegger and Daoism—purely philosophical questions. I have always admired his approach, while also feeling that our approaches differ somewhat. He always starts from philosophy. He has some interest in history, but not that much. For a long time, he has said that Dewey and Confucius are very similar. His book, Thinking Through Confucius, also points to similarities between Derrida and China.
Roger T. Ames; Chinese translation by He Jinli. Peking University Press, 2005.4
At the time, this seemed a little strange to me historically. How did a Derrida turn up in the Zhou dynasty? [Laughs.] From the Zhou through the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods—Derrida, Dewey, and then Deleuze: how were they all there? All my favorite philosophers seemed to be living in that period. I was also very fond of Chinese philosophy, so I thought, perfect, two birds with one stone. [Laughs.] I read Laozi, and I read Heidegger. But after getting my master’s degree, I began thinking: if Laozi and Confucius are Heidegger, Dewey, and Derrida, I might as well study Derrida and Heidegger, because understanding them would include an understanding of pre-Qin thought. So I left Hawaiʻi and went to DePaul to study with David Farrell Krell, who specializes in Heidegger and Derrida. I was planning a dissertation on Heidegger and French literature. That was a completely different subject, though perhaps the questions that concerned me were still the same.
A British philosopher, Houlgate formerly taught at DePaul University and is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is known for his interpretations of Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. His books include The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reader’s Guide.
Around that time, I gradually became interested in Marxism. After that, I found it difficult to stay at DePaul, because everyone there worked on continental philosophy and Marx was somewhat marginal. Hegel was better represented, so I learned some of the basics there. Stephen Houlgate, who was teaching at DePaul then, had a profound influence on me. My understanding of Hegel remains deeply influenced by him. I returned to Hawaiʻi after a year. By then, I was interested in Marxism and modern China. Ames is an easygoing and accommodating teacher. He had no problem with this change. He said, “That’s fine—study the modern period.” And from the standpoint of his theory, all of China can resemble Dewey, Heidegger, and Derrida: modern China can, and Mao Zedong can too. My topic at the time was whether a Chinese form of democracy was possible. Essentially, I wanted to explore Confucianism and democracy.
An Indian historian of China, Duara received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1983. He is Oscar Tang Family Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University. He previously held the Raffles Professorship in Humanities at the National University of Singapore, where he was also Director of the Asia Research Institute and Director of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences. He has taught in the history departments of George Mason University and the University of Chicago, serving as chair of Chicago’s Department of History from 2004 to 2007. Beyond Chinese history, his research encompasses twentieth-century Asian history, the history of historical thought, and historiography. His early work focused on rural society in early twentieth-century China; he later turned to nationalism, imperialism, and the origins of modern historical consciousness. His books include Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942 and Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China.
The rest is a long story, but I can keep it brief. Once I went to an Indian music concert at the University of Chicago. My parents were living in Chicago then, and I met Duara at the concert. Rescuing History from the Nation had just come out, and I happened to be writing a review of it. At Hawaiʻi, everyone was doing philosophy, and not many people wanted to review books on modern Chinese history. Ames was editing a journal at the time and asked whether I would write the review. Since I worked on the modern period, he thought I might be interested, so I agreed. When I met Duara in Chicago, I told him I was reviewing his book. He said I could come to his office to discuss it, and afterward I sent him the review. He said, “This is quite philosophical. It’s not bad. But what are you researching now?” I said, “Whether a Chinese form of democracy is possible—Confucius and democracy.” He said, “But historically, Confucius and democracy don’t have much to do with each other. So there’s a problem with the question itself.” I said, “Yes, I may develop a critique.” He said, “Then you won’t find a job. Your problem is that if you criticize the philosophers, they won’t give you a job. We historians aren’t interested in this to begin with, so we won’t give you a job either.” That was a little upsetting. I asked, “What should I do, then?” He said I should start over and study history, because questions such as a Chinese form of democracy were historical questions. I should gradually learn how to do intellectual history. At the time, I was not very clear about what intellectual history was. I had hardly encountered anything outside philosophy. So I applied to the history department at Chicago and entered in 1999. That is how I became Duara’s student.
Prasenjit Duara; Chinese translation by Wang Xianming. Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2009.
But I never gave up philosophy, so in that sense I have always remained a student of both of them. The reason I am taking part in so many events in China on this visit is that Ames is retiring from Peking University. I have attended almost all of them. It is quite interesting: the occasion has led me to look back on many of my experiences at Hawaiʻi. In fact, my research has always unfolded between these two teachers. Duara wants me to become a real intellectual historian, but he knows I have never given up philosophy. I would not say he is disappointed, but he thinks I still need to make progress. [Laughs.] I keep studying history, but I think philosophy still interests me more—its pursuit of universality, the way reading a text involves not only its historical context but larger questions as well. Duara has nevertheless had a profound influence on me. When I am with philosophers, I may seem like a historian; when I am with historians, I may seem more like a philosopher. Overall, though, I probably lean more toward philosophy, because I am also interested in whether ideas themselves are justified and rationally defensible.
III. Rethinking East Asia through Hegel and Marx
Fu: That is very interesting. As you mentioned, you developed a deep interest in Marxism during your studies, and today you describe yourself as a Marxist. Gavin Walker, Victor Koschmann, and of course Harootunian all have profound insights into Marxism and Japanese Marxism, much of which you have already discussed. How do you see Marxism’s influence on how East Asia is imagined and on East Asian studies? Particularly in light of the accounts of East Asia offered by postcolonial Marxist thinkers such as Harootunian, how do you conceive the value of Marxism and East Asia?
Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. Walker received his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his doctorate from Cornell, where he studied with Naoki Sakai. His work focuses on critical theory and intellectual history at the intersections of philosophy, history, literature, and art. He is particularly interested in the relationship between the logic of capital and its political and aesthetic manifestations, as well as what lies outside that logic: the cultural sphere, linguistic undecidability in translation, the role of labor-power in structural concepts, and changes in the role of the political subject. His research spans philosophy, literature, visual art, history, and criticism, with particular attention to modern Europe, North America, and Asia. His books include Marx et la politique du dehors [Marx and the Politics of the Outside] and The Sublime Perversion of Capital: Marxist Theory and the Politics of History in Modern Japan. He edited The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese ’68.
Professor Emeritus of Japanese History at Cornell University, Koschmann received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1980. His principal field is Japanese history, with an interest in the relationship between political thought and action. His research focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on twentieth-century Japan. It explores new perspectives on thought and action in relation to pan-Asianism, economic ethics, colonialism, and left-wing movements during Japan’s wartime period, 1931–1945. He also studies the postwar rise and decline of new social movements in Japan and elsewhere, especially in relation to neoliberalism, the history of Marxism, and the development of imperial systems. His books include Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan, The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform and Insurrection in Late Tokugawa Japan, 1790–1864, and Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders.
Murthy: Yes, that is a very important question. I can continue with what I was saying about Duara and Ames, because my move—or transition—from Ames to Duara really was connected to Marxism. Duara told me that if I was a Marxist, I had to take history seriously. We say that Marxism always situates ideas in history, and I have always thought that approach was correct. But Duara also made another point, in his criticism of Arif Dirlik or of Marxists—
—many Marxists study intellectual history rather than economics. Instead of placing ideas in their political-economic context, they discuss the relationship between ideas and society in rather abstract terms. I think this is a very important issue. Duara leans toward postcolonialism, while Dirlik also criticizes postcolonialism for neglecting capital.
Your question concerns Marxism and East Asia. We can approach this from two sides. One is historically, through Marxism’s reception: how intellectuals in Japan, China, and Korea received it. The other is how to use Marxism to study East Asia. The East Asian scholarship you mentioned, by Harootunian and others, includes both. Most scholars of Japanese Marxism in the United States, whether Ken Kawashima or Gavin Walker, can ultimately be traced back to Harootunian. Walker was Sakai’s student, and Harootunian was Sakai’s teacher.
Kawashima received his master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago and his doctorate in history from New York University. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His main research areas are modern Japanese history, East Asian colonial history, Marxist theory, and fascism. He is the author of The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan, an editor of Tosaka Jun: A Critical Reader, and the translator of Uno Kōzō’s Theory of Crisis (『恐慌論』).
Harootunian’s adoption of Marxism also involved a transition. His first book was Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan. I do not know whether it has been translated into Chinese. It discusses the Meiji Restoration. Put simply, it argues that the Restoration was already foreshadowed in the Edo period. At that point he was not particularly Marxist, though it is an excellent book. His second book was Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism. It is rather difficult but very influential. There are traces of Marxism, but also a great deal of postmodernism. He brings the two together. I think he became a Marxist with his third book, or his fourth. Both are more clearly Marxist—though of course there were other essays and collections in the 1990s. History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice and the Question of Everyday Life is the third, published only a year apart from the fourth, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan. Things Seen and Unseen does have some Marxist elements—for example, it discusses how peasants and class shaped kokugaku, or Japanese nativist studies—but they are much clearer in History’s Disquiet and Overcome by Modernity. He uses Benjamin to interpret Tosaka Jun, a Japanese Marxist. Overcome by Modernity uses Marxism to criticize the Kyoto School. “Overcoming modernity” was a rhetorical formulation of the Kyoto School. Harootunian says that in trying to overcome modernity, the Kyoto School was actually trying to overcome capitalism. But they did not understand capitalism, so they were themselves overcome. This is a very Marxist analysis, very close to Moishe Postone’s theory. Postone argues that those right-wing movements also wanted to overcome capitalism, but failed to grasp its nature. They were overcome by capitalism instead, and ended up as fascists. It was through developing arguments of this kind that Harootunian became more Marxist. (Note in the Chinese edition: Umemori Naoyuki, the translator of Overcome by Modernity into Japanese as 『近代による超克』, was also Harootunian’s student.)
Harry D. Harootunian, University of California Press, 1970.
Harry D. Harootunian, University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Harry D. Harootunian, Columbia University Press, 2002.
Harry D. Harootunian, Princeton University Press, 2002.
You can also see when Harootunian became a Marxist by looking at his students. Among his early students, Sakai, for example, is not a Marxist; he leans more toward postmodernism. There is not much Marxism in Stefan Tanaka’s Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History, either. It is more postmodernist, with postcolonial theory such as Said’s. Koschmann was also Harootunian’s student. Marxism is not particularly evident in his work either. Although he discusses Marxists in Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan, he uses post-Marxism to criticize them. If you look at his later students, though, Kawashima is a Marxist.
Tanaka received his doctorate in history from the University of Chicago and is currently a professor at the University of San Diego.5 His early research examined how history, the past, and time were constructed to define Japan’s worldview and its conception of itself. More recently, he has turned toward history as a technology of communication. This shift toward understanding history as a medium opened an inquiry into how historical knowledge, categories, and practices are connected to particular literary systems, and how they might change in the digital age. This interest has led him to work on scholarly communication and the digital humanities. His books include Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History, History without Chronology, and New Times in Modern Japan.
Stefan Tanaka, University of California Press, 1995.
You could say that Harootunian was always interested in Marxism, but I think he really became a Marxist in the mid- or late 1990s. Overcome by Modernity took him a very long time. I think he originally intended to write it with Tetsuo Najita, but eventually completed it alone. I think that if he had written it with Najita, it might not have been so Marxist.
Najita received his doctorate from Harvard University and served as an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin before joining the University of Chicago in 1969. He later became Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. In 1998, Grinnell College honored him with an Alumni Award. Five years after his retirement from Chicago, the university established the Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture series in 2007. His work focused on history and East Asian languages and civilizations. His books include Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics and Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period, 1600–1868: Methods and Metaphors.
Harootunian’s Marxism has also changed. Overcome by Modernity is particularly close to Postone, but Marx After Marx: History and Time in the Expansion of Capitalism (2015) emphasizes formal subsumption. This concept is actually closer to postcolonialism, because he says that things capital cannot absorb can in fact resist capitalism. Yesterday at Beijing Foreign Studies University, I spoke about Dipesh Chakrabarty’s History 1 and History 2, and about Indian music. History 2 is precisely those things capital cannot absorb, which is why I say formal subsumption is close to postcolonialism. When Harootunian wrote Overcome by Modernity, he criticized postcolonial thought for placing too much emphasis on difference. In Marx After Marx, however, he brings difference inside the Marxist system. There is a tension here: if he says difference is central to capitalism, then difference cannot really resist. Yet in Marx After Marx, he also says difference has the possibility of resistance. Within the process of formal subsumption, we have to distinguish different kinds of difference.
An Indian historian and leading scholar of postcolonial theory and Subaltern Studies, Chakrabarty studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, earning a bachelor’s degree in physics. He also received a postgraduate diploma in management, equivalent to an MBA, from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He subsequently earned his doctorate in history from the Australian National University in Canberra. He is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and received the Toynbee Prize in 2014. His books include Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies, The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth, and The Climate of History in a Planetary Age.
Harry D. Harootunian, Columbia University Press, 2015.
We have discussed this before. You can look at the collection published in Taiwan, Historical Memory and the Everyday.
Harry Harootunian; Chinese translation by Chen Chun-yen and Wang Mei-chun. National Chiao Tung University Press, 2017.
Fu: Yes, that is one of only two books by Harootunian in Chinese. (Note in the Chinese edition: There are also two Harootunian essays in the three Chinese-language volumes of Traces: “模式性” [“Modality”] and “Ghostly Comparisons.”)
Murthy: Yes, I think this collection exists only in Chinese. It was compiled and translated by Chen Chun-yen, who teaches in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University. I organized a conference that brought Postone and Harootunian into dialogue. After seeing it, Chen wanted to put together a collection devoted to Harootunian. Massimiliano Tomba was also involved. Tomba places particular emphasis on formal subsumption, but this has also become their predicament. On the one hand, like postcolonial thinkers, they stress difference, arguing that it cannot be fully absorbed and remains in conflict with capitalism. On the other hand, they criticize postcolonial thought and say that all differences are capitalist. How to deal with these two positions becomes a problem.
Tomba received his doctorate in political philosophy from the University of Pisa. He is currently Professor of the Philosophy of Human Rights at the University of Padua, where he previously taught political philosophy.6 During periods in Germany—in Würzburg, Munich, and Hamburg—he specialized in classical German philosophy. Since 2012, he has codirected an international project reexamining dominant frameworks for interpreting global society and challenging the Eurocentrism prevalent in theories of universalism, space, and time. His books include Krise und Kritik bei Bruno Bauer. Kategorien des Politischen im nachhegelschen Denken [Crisis and Critique in Bruno Bauer: Categories of the Political in Post-Hegelian Thought], La vera politica. Kant e Benjamin: la possibilità della giustizia [True Politics: Kant and Benjamin—the Possibility of Justice], Marx’s Temporalities, Attraverso la piccolo porta. Quattro studi su Walter Benjamin [Through the Narrow Gate: Four Studies on Walter Benjamin], and Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity.
Fu: So this is why you choose to return to Hegel. You recently wrote a paper on the Hegel–Marx question. You have also said that some Marxists reject Hegel’s political philosophy because they reduce his metaphysics entirely to historical categories, sometimes interpreting it through empirical concepts as well. Within the postcolonial tradition, many thinkers, including Robert Young and Naoki Sakai, have criticized Hegel’s historicism. Yet here you take Hegel up again.
One passage reads: “Because the structure of reason is not purely historical, it provides a standpoint for social criticism. By bringing Hegel and Marx together, we can criticize capitalism on this basis—we might regard capitalism as a deficient, alienated form of objective spirit. We can also explore ways of bringing about a determinate transformation of capitalism, toward a new society consonant with the spirit of right. More specifically, Hegel’s metaphysics and concept of spirit can provide a theoretical perspective from which to examine critically Marx’s concept of the ‘automatic subject.’” (“Hegelian Critiques of Capitalism: Rethinking Modernity through Speculative Metaphysics.”)7
You have answered the question of how to bring Hegel and Marx together, how to uncover the specter of Hegel, and how to find Marx within the postcolonial field in many places. You could say that most of what we have discussed already addresses it. But could you explain this passage further for our readers?
Murthy: This is a very complicated question. If I place it within my own experience and the development of my thinking, I have to return to Postone. He had a particularly strong influence on me when I was writing my dissertation. Postone develops the Marxism of the Frankfurt School. One of his fundamental claims is that absolute spirit and capital coincide: Hegel’s absolute spirit is actually a misrecognition of capital. Postone thinks Hegel grasped capital but dehistoricized it, turning a historical category into absolute spirit. This argument is persuasive because it makes capital the subject of history. The twentieth century then has distinct phases: liberal capitalism, Fordist capitalism, and neoliberal capitalism. In this account, the entire twentieth-century world becomes capitalist. Actually existing socialism and so on are all different forms of capitalism.
An internationally renowned Marxist historian, social theorist, and political thinker, Postone was Professor of Modern History at the University of Chicago, codirector of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and a member of the committee of the Center for Jewish Studies. He worked extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century European intellectual history and critical theory, focusing on critiques of capitalism and modern antisemitism, and on memory and identity in postwar Germany. His landmark Time, Labor, and Social Domination represents a creative engagement with classical Marxist theory on the contemporary Western left. His other books include Marx Reloaded: Rethinking the Critical Theory of Capitalism and History and Heteronomy: Critical Essays.
When I became interested in these theories, I reread Hegel to understand them—to work out what absolute spirit was. Without reading Hegel carefully, one tends to think absolute spirit is this capital-S Spirit that eliminates difference. That is indeed how Postone understands it: it eliminates difference, or at least shapes difference within itself, but this is not genuine difference either.
Rereading the Phenomenology of Spirit, I found that Hegel was continually interested in difference, and particularly interested in the state. But the state here does not itself eliminate difference; it recognizes difference. How should we bring these things together? I think that to understand Hegel, we have to return to his fundamental work, the Science of Logic. Many people read the Phenomenology, but it is actually preparatory. He calls it only a “ladder”: after reading it, you can go on to the Logic, which is his real philosophy. There we can understand the relationship between Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophies.
First we need to understand what Hegel’s philosophy is. Many people say that Hegel and Marx both use dialectics, but one is an idealist and the other a materialist. These concepts are too simple to help us understand what Hegel means by idealism. In the Logic, he discusses Idealismus, idealism. He does not mean that thought belongs on one side and matter on the other. What he calls idealism actually means seeing things as a whole, as a process, rather than merely reifying them. He does not use “reification”; he speaks of individuation. Looking back now, we could say that the Marxist concept of reification is already present here. If idealism means regarding things or individuals as moments within the process of a whole, then Marx could also be called an idealist. So I do not think the idealism–materialism distinction is especially important.
Hegel’s basic philosophy differs somewhat from Marx’s, but I think they complement each other. His Logic seeks to derive our basic categories. These are not merely historical categories, however, but the basic categories of all things. It is therefore an ontology. There are different interpretations here. Some call it an ontology; that is the interpretation I emphasize and agree with. Another is Kantian: logic can be understood as the conditions of anything whatsoever, effectively the conditions of thinking or thought. I think that at the beginning of the Logic, there is no distinction between thought and things, since that distinction would itself be a presupposition. The conditions of thinking, or of thought, are therefore identical with the conditions of being.
These basic logical categories are prior to practice; practice appears after the philosophy of nature. They are therefore not historical ideas. Purpose, for example, first appears in the Logic, but purpose is also connected to life. Every living being has a purpose: to exist, to form itself anew, and so on. Human purposes differ from those of living beings in general. They are relatively free—that is, human beings are self-conscious. Purpose here connects to Hegel’s philosophy of history and philosophy of right, because the conditions under which people can realize their purposes involve social conditions and social structures. That is the problem his philosophy of right seeks to address.
Jensen Suther, Stanford University Press, 2025.
This is where Marx comes in. He thinks that people cannot realize their purposes in capitalist society, so they need to “change the world.” From this perspective, I think the two complement each other. Without Hegel, it is difficult to find Marx’s philosophical foundations. The early Marx speaks of species-being, Gattungswesen, which is a very Hegelian concept. The species itself is purposive, and capitalism conflicts with it. I have learned a great deal from recent Hegel scholars. Jensen Suther recently published True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom. I think it is very good on life and species-being. I also intend to write an essay about the book, but have not yet had time.
Fu: I have asked you many questions about Marx, Takeuchi, East Asian studies, and your own intellectual development. Finally, given your participation in so many events in China recently, I would like to know whether you have any questions about Chinese-language scholars and academia. Could you ask us a question?
Murthy: First, I am very happy that you are interested in these theories, as well as in Japanese and Chinese studies and Takeuchi. Of course, there are many questions. To begin with, what influence do you yourself think studying these theories—Harootunian, for example—might have on contemporary Chinese academia? Or what would you hope to see come of it?
Fu: Well … first of all, I am absolutely pessimistic about the work of theory. Especially after the “age of theory,” theory has of course become a technique internal to academia. You certainly understand the talk of the “death of theory” better than I do, particularly how theory proclaims itself in what remains of its own death. In my view, this self-promotion and self-reflection are ultimately also forms of theory. So my pessimism will not change. The same goes for Harootunian. I really do not see any possibilities here. That may include this interview too.
Perhaps this could be called “despair”—though perhaps not, since we can still talk about something. But at least in this respect, it is a feeling Lu Xun and Takeuchi consistently held on to: in “The Passerby,” for example. So I suppose it should be revenge. I do think that counts as one of theory’s tasks—an Aufgabe. Readers will probably have other thoughts.
Murthy: Very interesting.
Zhang Jinniu: By a fortunate coincidence, I had the opportunity to sit in on Fu Shi’s interview with Professor Murthy. I can understand Fu’s despair and pessimism to some extent. His depth of thought and store of knowledge are extraordinary for someone his age. They may, to a degree, convey the concerns and intellectual reach of the most incisive young scholars of our time, something already evident in the interview above. Fu asked me to offer a few reflections by way of conclusion. I can only venture some brief comments on the parts I feel able to understand. For that reason, this account is bound to leave much out.
Ultimately, Professor Murthy’s affinity with Chinese academia is not accidental. It may have something to do with his Indian heritage: India and China are both developing countries, providing a basis for a shared sense of the problems at stake. As he says, many Western scholars pay little attention to these problems. He also points out that for Third World countries suffering imperialist oppression, the nation-state and even nationalism cannot simply be rejected or discarded. Left-wing revolutionaries in these countries must therefore carry these questions with them as they think about how a Marxist future might be possible. This is not merely a matter of the particularity of Third World countries. Whether in sheer numerical terms or on a global scale, unevenness will determine, in the most historical and practical ways, whether a universalist project against oppression is genuinely possible. A strategy of resistance to capitalism organized around a “multitude,” dispensing with the nation-state and taking an anarchist form, is therefore bound to remain unworkable. This seems especially self-evident at the present moment of geopolitical crisis.
Murthy’s appeal to a Hegelian subject is closely connected to this. Postmodern approaches to deconstruction keep their distance from particular subjects because they regard all such subjects—even resistant ones—as potentially becoming new oppressors in a new cycle. But this amounts to foreclosing the possibility of offering a realistic response to the existing unequal and uneven international order. Some left-wing scholars try to imagine a decentralized structure of resistance. Yet this clearly fails to consider how such a structure could be possible or helpful in Third World countries, much as Lenin long ago identified the problem of “‘left-wing’ infantilism.” In fact, even within developed Western countries, decentralized movements of this kind do not help advance a genuinely transformative left-wing agenda. Conversely, their caution is not entirely unfounded. Some postcolonial scholars reject universality on the basis of an emphasis on particularity, in a manner approaching the Japanese right’s historical fate of “trying to overcome modernity only to be overcome by it.” In doing so, they show that the earlier concern is not groundless.
Perhaps Fu’s pessimism can be understood from this perspective. It is also my concern. If, as theory works through its implications, history can only repeat the script in which the dragon-slayer becomes the dragon—at whatever scale—then we cannot escape a sense of despair, like facing a hopeless black wall, as Lu Xun once did. It is in this sense that the significance of Murthy’s attempts and explorations becomes perceptible and worthy of attention. He seeks to assert Hegelian and Marxist universality while also attending to the particularity within it. His hoped-for result is that asserting universality will not lead us to evade organized revolutionary practice in the real world, often organized through nation-states; and that attending to particularity will not lead to depoliticized, alienated agents of oppression, such as fascism in Japanese history.
I am clearly not qualified to say where a possible solution lies. That is precisely the problem Murthy is trying to address. I can therefore offer only a few generalities based on my reading. As Kōhei Saitō observes, in Capital, Marx both engages in apparently pure theoretical reasoning and inserts the more historically situated chapters “The Working Day” and “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry.” This suggests that a way out of the problem must be sought by returning to practice. Taken together with the question of the nation-state discussed above, it means that perhaps we can find solutions and answers only in the historical and present-day practices of socialist states. What does the nation-state mean for the left? This question cannot be evaded or dismissed; it must be addressed directly and constructively. Only then can we build on that basis an alternative international order aimed at interrupting the cycle of oppression. After all, Marxism points not only toward programs of resistance whenever the capitalist system enters a cyclical crisis. It points also toward alternative, constructive choices beyond capitalism’s institutional order.
・The source text was prepared from a recording.
・Our thanks to Professor Murthy for his authorization and final revisions.
・Images sourced from the internet.
About the Contributors
Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on modern Chinese and Japanese intellectual history, transnational Asian history, and the relationship between capitalism and knowledge production. His books include Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution and The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness.
Undergraduate student majoring in Japanese at Nankai University. His research interests are modern Japanese intellectual history and postcolonial theory.
Further Reading
Takeuchi Yoshimi (Japan); Chinese translation by Li Dongmu, Zhao Jinghua, and Sun Ge.
Sun Ge.
Sun Ge.
Kurokawa Midori and Yamada Satoshi.
Marukawa Tetsushi.
Wang Hui.
Naoki Sakai and Nishitani Osamu.