Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

THE OTHER SIDE OF FREEDOM: CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY IN CHINESE ORTHODOX PHILOSOPHY FROM 1980 TO 2002

Pappel, Urmas (2011)
Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University
Abstract
Chinese orthodox philosophy is often described as communitarian and characterised by the concept of positive freedom, which, defined by Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty, deems it necessity to curb individual freedom for the good of a community. Still, some orthodox Chinese writers also use aspects of negative freedom, insisting on a sphere of individual freedom that no authority can curb, and thereby seem to defy the categorisation as wholly communitarian. Edmund S. K. Fung theorises that Chinese intellectuals are best not described along the lines of Berlin's theory, but can be shown to use both negative and positive freedom simultaneously without giving precedence to either. By analysing articles from the journal Social Sciences... (More)
Chinese orthodox philosophy is often described as communitarian and characterised by the concept of positive freedom, which, defined by Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty, deems it necessity to curb individual freedom for the good of a community. Still, some orthodox Chinese writers also use aspects of negative freedom, insisting on a sphere of individual freedom that no authority can curb, and thereby seem to defy the categorisation as wholly communitarian. Edmund S. K. Fung theorises that Chinese intellectuals are best not described along the lines of Berlin's theory, but can be shown to use both negative and positive freedom simultaneously without giving precedence to either. By analysing articles from the journal Social Sciences in China this thesis gives an overview of the temporal changes in the Chinese orthodox perception of freedom from 1980 to 2002; and, by demonstrating that every treatise on freedom gives ineluctable precedence to only one of the two concepts of liberty, shows that Berlin's theory is apt to describe the orthodox Chinese intellectual discourse on freedom. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Pappel, Urmas
supervisor
organization
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
China, orthodoxy, intellectuals, freedom, negative liberty and positive liberty
language
English
id
2204858
date added to LUP
2011-11-16 17:05:43
date last changed
2011-11-16 17:05:43
@misc{2204858,
  abstract     = {{Chinese orthodox philosophy is often described as communitarian and characterised by the concept of positive freedom, which, defined by Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty, deems it necessity to curb individual freedom for the good of a community. Still, some orthodox Chinese writers also use aspects of negative freedom, insisting on a sphere of individual freedom that no authority can curb, and thereby seem to defy the categorisation as wholly communitarian. Edmund S. K. Fung theorises that Chinese intellectuals are best not described along the lines of Berlin's theory, but can be shown to use both negative and positive freedom simultaneously without giving precedence to either. By analysing articles from the journal Social Sciences in China this thesis gives an overview of the temporal changes in the Chinese orthodox perception of freedom from 1980 to 2002; and, by demonstrating that every treatise on freedom gives ineluctable precedence to only one of the two concepts of liberty, shows that Berlin's theory is apt to describe the orthodox Chinese intellectual discourse on freedom.}},
  author       = {{Pappel, Urmas}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{THE OTHER SIDE OF FREEDOM: CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY IN CHINESE ORTHODOX PHILOSOPHY FROM 1980 TO 2002}},
  year         = {{2011}},
}