Sinology 1964/ 汉学1964

Joseph R. Levenson, “The Humanistic Disciplines: Will Sinology Do?” Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 23, Issue 4 (Aug., 1964), 507-512.

[Page 512]

…

Conclusion

The sum of the matter is this: the world is a world, not the sum of –ological areas. Sinology as a conception will not do, not because China ought to be bleached out of its individual significance, but because, as an individual, China belongs now in a universal world of discourse. The sinologist is entitled to be very reserved about easy universal analogies, but he should entertain comparisons, if only to give his particular field a universal context. Only then, when the creative life of China is studied in something more than the Sinological spirit, will Chinese civilization seem not just historically significant. A purely “Sinological” form of admiration of Chinese culture may amount to denigration. significant but historically

For when “Sinology” came to be the sum of Western interest in Chinese civilization, then its historical significance was “mere.” From Western sources, on the other hand, Chinese were indulging an interest in all the other-ologies, the sciences (in the broadest sense) that have no historical boundaries. The vital quest was for knowledge in the abstract, not knowledge of Western thought. In a world where a “Congress of Orientalists” would regularly convene, the idea of a “Congress of Occidentalists” had the force of whimsical paradox.

It was whimsy, but not a joke. It was no joke, first, because China indeed had once been able to conceive the idea of “barbarian experts,” much as the modern West conceives of its “China experts”; that was a time when China could still be thought of, at least at home, as the kind of world to which Europeans like the philosophes applied, not in the “Sinological” spirit, but in search of answers to universal questions. And it was not a joke, too, because it was anything but funny. Lu Hsün, for one (and he spoke for more than one) would not see himself as a happy antique. He could not bear to see China as a vast museum. History had to be made there again, and the museum consigned to the dead, as a place of liberation for the living, not a “Sinological” mausoleum for the modern dead-alive.

汉学之难

Elling O. Eide, “Methods in Sinology: Problems of Teaching and Learning” Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1 (Nov., 1971), 131-141.

[Page 134]

…

…Achilles Fang has said that competence in Chinese demands an effort roughly equivalent to that required for the mastery of Greek and Latin plus all the Romance Languages. That may be an extreme position, but there was, I think, some merit in the dragon speeches that used to greet the beginners in a Chinese program. Chinese is not, after all, just another language, and competence in Chinese does require much more than the mere learning of a foreign tongue. The student deceived on this point is almost sure to suffer, for not only is he likely to have come ill prepared for rigorous language training, but he will then even be denied a refuge for his wounded ego. It is one thing to be having difficulty with the most difficult language in the world, quite another to be going down for the count in your struggle with something promoted as “just another language.” Further, and worse, such a student is ill prepared for the other demands that will, or should, be placed upon him. We cannot expect students to learn everything at once, but it is important that they know from the beginning what our standards are. You cannot talk purposefully of methods, or even of Sinology, with a student who eyes you resentfully when you refer to works in French or German, and who has not yet dreamed of the things in Japanese. It is essential, therefore, that we not promote Chinese in such a way as to conceal the elements of training that are necessary for competence and expertise.

…

[Page 137]

…

… It is not surprising that administrators are ignorant of our special needs, but it is, certainly, our duty to explain. To remind them that the mere fact Chinese is a language does not mean we need, or even want, the same facilities as other language programs. An English professor does not, after all, have to worry in the slightest about the arrangements of the books on the shelf when he suggests that a student look something up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But what if that encyclopaedia, call it “The Primary Tortoise of Her Britannic Majesty,” were in a thousand volumes rather than twenty-five, written in unpunctuated Chaucerian English, and arranged not alphabetically, but by subject or by rhyme—the rhyme, let us note, of Caedmon’s day. Clearly, we can make a strong case that our problems really are peculiar, and for the sake of our students it is important that we do so at every opportunity.

…