A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today Robert J. Morris (bio) Thomas A. Metzger . A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. xxvii, 816 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 962-996-122-9. Professor Metzger's new book is massive in many ways, not the least of which are the breadth and depth of his comparative inquiries, and the powerful, daring, and often surprising insights he brings out of them. It reifies, updates, and integrates much of his earlier scholarship into a single volume that adds up to much more than a collection of its parts.1 Unlike many writers who are purportedly "doing" comparative work these days, Metzger is a true comparatist, meaning that he brings diverse materials into juxtaposition and then pushes them together in fresh and creative ways that truly cross borders, languages, and disciplines-and in the process he causes them to flash into stunning insights. He is not content simply to assemble blocks of information and lay them side by side hoping his readers will notice how they compare. It is arguable that only this approach to Greater China studies is adequate any more to a proper understanding of the forces at work there. Metzger frames his discussion in terms of what he calls the Great Modern Western Epistemological Revolution (GMWER) by comparing the Chinese position of "epistemological optimism" (the corrigible state that can be rectified and governed by moral elites headed by the "one and only man, the first man," 一人 the sage-king,2 with Western "epistemological pessimism" (the incorrigible state that requires rule of law and checks and balances). This framework explains why Chinese and Western cultures often view each other with suspicion as being irrational and immoral. He notes that the "Western discourse arose out of an epistemological revolution which modern Chinese intellectuals variously but unanimously rejected," and his purpose is "uncovering and reassessing their most familiar assumptions about the nature of morality, rationality, and politics" (p. xxiii). It is, in sum, to consider "normative ideas about how to improve a society and revise its culture" (p. 1). Metzger complicates and problematizes this project in multifarious ways by taking many already familiar ideas in new directions. The writers he considers include such a diverse group as F. A. Hayek, John Rawls, John Dunn, Karl Popper, Richard Rorty, Rousseau, Augustine, Hegel, Kant, Yang Kuoshu, Hsu Han, Li Qiang, Ambrose Y. C. King, T'ang Chün-i, Henry K. H. Woo, and Kao Li-k'o, Mao, Marx, Confucius, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, Robert Bellah, and a host of others.3 Hence, it is not fair, much less possible, to pick a single subject or idea which this book is "about." As a lawyer, I read it through the lens of the law, and it is rich in law. But it is not just a book "about" the law. Metzger's integration of People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan writers is particularly refreshing because all too often scholars tend to wall these areas off to follow the politics-du-jour. [End Page 221] He concludes that the most important political question today is, "What constitutes knowledge?" (p. 31). He sets this in an overall discussion of the "three marketplaces"-economic, intellectual, and political-and the "rules of successful thinking" (pp. 65-66). Chapter 1 outlines in great detail the differences between Discourse #1 (the Chinese paradigm or problematique) and Discourse #2 (the Western paradigm or problematique). In comparing the two, he refers to the ideas of "convergence" and "divergence" espoused by Alex Inkeles and others.4 Thus, the analyses do not fall simplistically along the lines of democracy versus dictatorship, or rule of law versus rule of men. One major point of difference between the two Discourses is the "Chinese fear that [Western] democracy and the [Chinese] harmonious integration of society are incompatible with each other" (p. 658). This reflects a "basic Chinese disinclination to embrace a disorderly diversity as the breeding ground of creativity and the essence of freedom" (p. 666). Metzger notes that...