Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism by Bartsch, Shadi

Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780691229591)

Vendor: Shadi Bartsch
Product type: Books
Format: Hardcover
$33.00
$33.00
$33.00
Subtotal: $33.00
Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism by Bartsch, Shadi

Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism

$33.00
Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism by Bartsch, Shadi

Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism

$33.00
Format: Hardcover
Description
Description
x

The surprising story of how Greek classics are being pressed into use in contemporary China to support the regime's political agenda

As improbable as it may sound, an illuminating way to understand today's China and how it views the West is to look at the astonishing ways Chinese intellectuals are interpreting--or is it misinterpreting?--the Greek classics. In Plato Goes to China, Shadi Bartsch offers a provocative look at Chinese politics and ideology by exploring Chinese readings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and other ancient writers. She shows how Chinese thinkers have dramatically recast the Greek classics to support China's political agenda, diagnose the ills of the West, and assert the superiority of China's own Confucian classical tradition.

In a lively account that ranges from the Jesuits to Xi Jinping, Bartsch traces how the fortunes of the Greek classics have changed in China since the seventeenth century. Before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese typically read Greek philosophy and political theory in order to promote democratic reform or discover the secrets of the success of Western democracy and science. No longer. Today, many Chinese intellectuals use these texts to critique concepts such as democracy, citizenship, and rationality. Plato's "Noble Lie," in which citizens are kept in their castes through deception, is lauded; Aristotle's Politics is seen as civic brainwashing; and Thucydides's criticism of Athenian democracy is applied to modern America.

What do antiquity's "dead white men" have left to teach? By uncovering the unusual ways Chinese thinkers are answering that question, Plato Goes to China opens a surprising new window on China today.

Author: Shadi Bartsch
ISBN-10: 0691229597
ISBN-13: 9780691229591
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/10/2023
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.28lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.60w x 1.40d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2023
By Shadi Bartsch
By Shadi Bartsch
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Shadi Bartsch is an award-winning classicist and the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. She is the author and editor of numerous books and the translator of an acclaimed version of the Aeneid.

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