December 5, 2006

Address of Yu Ying-shih on the Occasion of Receiving the John W. Kluge Prize at the Library of Congress

I feel enormously honored to be a co-recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize in 2006, for which I am grateful. After much reflection, however, I have come to the realization that the main justification for my presence here today is that both the Chinese cultural tradition and Chinese intellectual history as a discipline are being honored through me. The former has been the subject of my lifetime scholarly pursuit, and the latter my chosen field of specialization.

When I first became seriously interested in the study of Chinese history and culture in the 1940s, the Chinese historical mind happened to be cast in a positivistic and anti-traditionalistic mold. The whole Chinese past was viewed negatively, and whatever appeared to be uniquely Chinese was interpreted as a deviation from the universal norm of progress of civilization as exemplified in the historical development of the West. As a result, studies of aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition, from philosophy, law, religion to literature and art, often amounted to condemnation and indictment. Needless to say, I was at a complete loss as to the Chinese cultural identity and, for that matter, also my personal identity. It was my good fortune that I was able to finish my college education in Hong Kong and pursued my graduate studies in the United States, now my adopted country.

As my intellectual horizon gradually widened over the years, the truth was beginning to dawn on me that Chinese culture must be clearly recognized as an indigenous tradition with characteristics distinctly its own. The crystallization of Chinese culture into its definitive shape took place in the time of Confucius (551-479 B.C.E.), a crucial moment in the ancient world better known in the West as the Axial Age. During this period, it has been observed, a spiritual awakening or "breakthrough" occurred in several highly-developed cultures including China, India, Persia, Israel and Greece. It took the form of either philosophical reasoning or post-mythical religious imagination or, as in the case of China, a mixed type of moral-philosophic-religious consciousness. The awakening led directly to the emergence of the dichotomy between the actual world and the world beyond. The world beyond as a new vision provided the thinking individuals, be they philosophers, prophets or sages, with the necessary transcending point from which the actual world could be examined and questioned, critically as well as reflectively. This is generally known as the original transcendence of the Axial Age, of which the exact shape, empirical content and historical process varied from culture to culture. The transcendence is original in the sense that it would exert a long-lasting, shaping influence on the cultures involved.

As a result of the Chinese original transcendence in the time of Confucius, the all-important idea of Tao (Way) emerged as a symbol of the world beyond vis-a-vis the actual world of everyday life. But the Chinese transcendental world of Tao and the actual world of everyday life were conceived from the very beginning to be related to each other in a way different from other ancient cultures undergoing the Axial breakthrough. For example, there is nothing in the early Chinese philosophical visions that suggests Plato’s conception of an unseen eternal world of which the actual world is only a pale copy. In the religious tradition, the sharp dichotomy of a Christian type between the world of God and the world of humans is also absent. Nor do we find in classical Chinese thought in all its varieties anything that closely resembles the radical negativity of early Buddhism with its insistence on the unrealness and worthlessness of this world. By contrast, the world of Tao was not perceived as very far from the human world. As best expressed by Confucius, "The Tao is not far from man. When a man pursues the Tao and remains away from man, his course cannot be considered the Tao." I must hasten to add, however, that the notion of Tao was not the monopoly of Confucius and his followers but shared by all the major thinkers in the Chinese Axial Age, including Lao Tzu, Mo Tzu and Chuang Tzu. It was their common belief that Tao is hidden and yet functions everywhere in the human world; even men and women of simple intelligence can know and practice it in everyday life to a larger or lesser degree. Indeed, judging from the ever-growing and ever-deepening influences of the ideas originating in the Axial Age, especially Confucian and Taoist ideas, on all aspects of Chinese life down through the centuries, it may not be too much an exaggeration to suggest that Tao and history constitute the inside and the outside of Chinese civilization.

Taking the Chinese cultural tradition to be essentially one of indigenous origin and independent growth, I have tried over the decades to study Chinese history along two main lines. First, Chinese culture must be understood in its own terms but at the time also in a comparative perspective. By "comparative perspective" I refer to both Indian Buddhism in the early imperial period and Western culture since the 16th century. Needless to say, China’s second encounter with the West in the 19th century was a historical event of world-shaking magnitude. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Chinese mind has been largely preoccupied with the problematique of China-versus-the-West. To interpret the Chinese past solely in its own terms without a comparative perspective would surely run the risk of falling into the age-old trap of simple-minded sinocentrism.

Second, in my study of Chinese intellectual, social and cultural history, from classical antiquity to the 20th century, my focus has always been placed on periods of change when one historical stage moved to the next. Compared to other civilizations, China’s is particularly marked by its long historical continuity before, during and since the Axial Age. But continuity and change went hand-in-hand in Chinese history. Therefore, the purpose I have set myself is twofold: firstly, to identify the major intellectual, social and culture changes in the Chinese past and, secondly, to discern if at all possible the unique pattern of Chinese historical changes. More often than not, such broad and profound changes in Chinese history transcended the rise and fall of dynasties. Thus the notion of "dynastic cycle," long held in traditional China but also briefly in vogue in the West, is highly misleading. In the early years of the 20th century, Chinese historians, following the example of their Japanese colleagues, began to reconstruct and re-interpret the Chinese past according to the historical model of the West. Since then it has been generally assumed that China must have undergone similar stages of historical development as shown in European history. In the first half of the 20th century, Chinese historians adopted the earlier European schemes of periodization by dividing Chinese history into ancient, medieval and modern periods, which has been replaced since 1949 by the Marxist-Stalinist five-stage formulation. The latter remains the orthodoxy in China up to this day, at least in theory if not always in actual practice. This Procrustean approach, whatever merits it may otherwise have, cannot possibly do full justice to Chinese culture as an indigenous tradition. Only by focusing on the unique course and shape of Chinese historical changes, I am convinced, can we hope to see more clearly how that great cultural tradition moved from stage to stage driven, mainly if not entirely, by its internal dynamics.

Now let me turn to the question of how, as two different systems of values, does Chinese culture stand vis-a-vis Western culture in historical perspective? My earliest exposure to this question occurred in the late 1940s when the problematique of China-versus-the-West, mentioned earlier, dominated the Chinese intellectual world. It has not been out of my consciousness ever since. Living in the United States for half a century, the question has acquired a truly existential meaning for my life as I move between the two cultures from moment to moment. With some initial psychological readjustments, I have long been able to enjoy the American way of life while still retaining my Chinese cultural identity. However, the best guide with regard to whether Chinese culture is compatible with the core values of the West can only be provided by Chinese history.

China first encountered the modern West at the end of the 16th century when the Jesuits came to East Asia to do their missionary work. The culturally sensitive Matteo Ricci, who arrived in China in 1583, was very quick to discover that the Chinese religious atmosphere at that time was highly tolerant; Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism were generally regarded as one and same thing. As a matter of fact, under the influence of Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529), late Ming Confucians firmly believed that each of the three religions in China captured a vision of the same Tao (Way). It was this spirit of religious tolerance that accounted for Ricci’s extraordinary success in his conversion of many leading members of the Confucian elite, notably Hsü Kuang-ch’i (1562-1633), Li Chih-tsao (1565-1630) and Yang T’ing-yün (1557-1627), the "three pillars of evangelization." The Confucian faith in the sameness of human mind and the universal accessibility of Tao to every human person anywhere led some Chinese converts to promote a synthesis of Christianity with Confucianism. The Chinese Tao was now further expanded to include Christianity. This early relationship between China and the West at the religious level can by no means be described as a conflictual one.

In the late 19th century, it was also the open-minded Confucians who enthusiastically embraced values and ideas dominant in the modern West such as democracy, liberty, equality, rule of law, autonomy of the individual person and, above all, human rights. When some of them visited Europe or America for the first time and stayed there long enough to make first-hand observations, they were all deeply impressed, first of all, by the ideals and institutions of Western constitutional democracy. Wang T’ao (1828-1897), who assisted James Legge in his English translation of Confucian classics, returned to Hong Kong from England in 1870 praising her political and legal systems to the sky. He was probably the first Confucian scholar to use the term "democracy" in Chinese (min-chu). Wang exerted a considerable influence on Confucian political thinking in the late Ch’ing. At the turn of the century, there were two rival Confucian schools in China known as the New Text and Old Text, respectively. Both advocated democracy, though each in its own way. The former was in favor of constitutional monarchy, while the latter pushed for republicanism. Perhaps inspired by Wang T’ao, who compared the British political and judicial systems favorably to China’s Golden Age as described in Confucian classics, both Confucian schools began a systematic search for the origins and evolution of democratic ideas in early Confucian texts. In so doing, it is clear that they took the compatibility between Chinese culture and Western culture as two systems of values for granted.

Last but not least, I wish to say a word about "human rights." Like "democracy," "human rights" as a term is linguistically specific to the West and nonexistent in traditional Confucian discourse. However, if we agree that the concept of "human rights" as defined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of 1948 is predicated on the double recognition of a common humanity and human dignity, then we are also justified to speak of a Confucian idea of "human rights" without the Western terminology. Recognition of a common humanity and respect for human dignity are both clearly articulated in the Analects, Mencius and other early texts. It is remarkable that by the first century C.E. at the latest, the Confucian notion of human dignity was openly referred to in imperial decrees as sufficient grounds for the prohibition of the sale or killing of slaves. Both imperial decrees, dated 9 and 35 C.E., respectively, cited the same famous Confucian dictum: "Of all living things produced by Heaven and Earth, the human person is the noblest." Slavery as an institution was never accepted by Confucianism as legitimate. It was this Confucian humanism that predisposed late Ch’ing Confucians to be so readily appreciative of the Western theory and practice of human rights.

If history is any guide, then there seems to be a great deal of overlapping consensus in basic values between Chinese culture and Western culture. After all, recognition of common humanity and human dignity is what the Chinese Tao has been about. I am more convinced than ever that once Chinese culture returns to the main flow of Tao, the problematique of China-versus-the-West will also come to an end.

Princeton University
December 1, 2006

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06-A07.html

能夠成為二○○六年「克魯吉獎」的共同得主，敝人深覺榮幸，也十分感激。然而在深思之後我才明白，今天我得獎的主要理由，是要透過我彰顯中國文化傳統和作為一門學科的中國知識史；前者係我終身學術追求的一個學科，後者係我選擇專精的領域。

　我開始對研究中國歷史和文化發生深厚興趣是在一九四○年代，當時中國史觀正處於一個反傳統的模式。中國整個過往被負面看待，即便中國獨特的發明，也在西方歷史發展的對照之下，被詮釋為偏離普遍文明進步的正軌。當時我對中國文化的認同以及對自己的認同感到完全迷惑，自然毋庸贅言。幸好我得以在香港完成大學教育，並前往我現已歸化的國家－美國繼續攻讀研究所。

　中國「道」概念反映現實世界

　這些年來隨著知識領域逐漸開闊，我才認清要清楚認識中國文化，必須知道它獨特的傳統。中國文化形成清楚的輪廓是在孔子時代（公元前五五一年至四七九年），這在古代世界是一個關鍵年代－西方稱之為「轉軸時代」。根據學者的觀察，好幾個高度發展的文化，包括中國、印度、波斯、以色列和希臘，在這段期間都發生了一種精神覺醒或「突破」，其產生形式不是哲學論辯，就是後神話宗教想像，或者如同在中國的情形，是一種道德、哲學和宗
教混合而成的共識。這種覺醒導致現實世界與超現實世界產生區隔。對超現實世界的新視野提供有思想的個人，不管他們是哲學家、先知或聖賢，必要的超越觀點，從而檢視並質疑現實世界。這就是一般所知的「轉軸時代的原創超越」，但其精確形式、經驗內容和歷史進程則每種文化各不相同。這種超越的原創性在於它對其所涉及的文化具有持久的塑造影響力。

　在孔夫子時代，中國的原創超越係以「道」這個最重要的概念出現，道是相對於現實世界的超現實世界的象徵。但這個中國超現實世界的「道」在初萌生時就與現實世界的日常生活息息相關，這點與轉軸時代的其他古文化迥然不同。例如柏拉圖認為有個看不到的永恆世界，現實世界只是這個永恆世界的拷貝，但早期中國哲學絕未提到這種概念。基督教文化把神的世界和人的世界一分為二，但中國宗教傳統也沒有這種清楚的劃分。早期佛教文化極端否
定現實世界，將其視為虛無，中國的諸子百家找不到任何類似的觀點。

　認識中國文化須靠比較觀點

　相對之下，「道」的世界在中國的認知中一直與人的世界不遠。但「道」的觀念也是由轉軸時代中國所有大思想家，包括老子、墨子和莊子所共享。他們一致認為，「道」隱而不現，但在人的世界中無所不在的運行，就連凡夫俗子多多少少也知道「道」，並於日常生活中實踐「道」。轉軸時代創生的概念影響力日漸深遠，特別是孔子思想和「道」的觀念，幾世紀來對中國人的影響無遠弗屆，從這點看來，要說「道」與歷史組成中國文民的內在與外在也不為過。

　在把中國文化傳統視為本土起源且獨立發展的產物的前提下，過去數十年我嘗試沿著兩大軸線研究中國歷史。第一個軸線是認識中國文化必須在其自身的環境之下，但有時也要靠「比較觀點」。我所謂的「比較觀點」係指印度早期帝國時代的佛學，以及十六世紀之後的西方文化。二十世紀之初以來，中國思想界一直不能擺脫中國對上西方的諸多問題；如果缺乏比較觀點，只在中國的環境下詮釋中國歷史，很可能墮入中國中心主義的古老窠臼。

　中國改朝換代與歷史延續性

　我對中國知識史、社會史和文化史的研究涵蓋古代乃至二十世紀，而我的第二個軸線始終把重點放在改朝換代之際。和其他文明比較起來，中國的特點在於其漫長的歷史延續性，延續性與改朝換代在中國歷史上一直攜手並進。因此我為自己設定兩個研究目標，其一是辨識中國歷史上知識、社會和文化的變遷，其二是儘可能辨識中國歷史的改朝換代是否有其獨一無二的模式。

　中國歷史上的深遠變遷往往超越了朝代的興亡；「朝代循環」在中國自古有之，在西方也曾短暫流行，但這個名詞具有高度的誤導性。二十世紀初年，中國歷史學家開始以西方的歷史模式重新建構及重新詮釋中國歷史。從此一般都認為，中國一定也曾經歷過和歐洲類似的歷史發展階段。在二十世紀前半，中國歷史學者採用早期歐洲的斷代方式，把中國歷史分為古代史、中古史和近代史，一九四九年之後，這個斷代方式被馬克斯－史達林主義者鼓吹的
五階段演化史取代，後者在今日的中國仍被奉為正統，至少在理論上是如此。這種粗糙套用的模式，不管它有什麼優點，都不可能充分闡述具有地域性傳統的中國文化。敝人深信，只有著重於中國文化變遷的獨特進程和形式，才有可能看清這個偉大的文化傳統是如何被其內在的動力鞭策，從一個階段進展到另一個階段
。

　四○年代開始思索中西的對抗

　接下來容我轉到另一個問題：作為兩個不同的價值系統，中國與西方如何在歷史的脈絡下對抗？正如前述，我最早接觸到這個問題是在一九四○年代晚期，當時中國對抗西方這個大問題籠罩了整個中國知識界，從此時時縈繞在我心頭。因為在美國生活了半個世紀，且不時出入於中、西兩個文化之間，這個問題對我已經具有真實的存在意義。經過初期的心理調適，我早已對美國生活方式樂在其中，但同時仍保留我的中國文化認同。然而關於中國文化如何與西方核心價值相容，最好途徑還是要從中國歷史中去尋找。

　中國與近代西方初遇是在十六世紀末期，當時耶穌會教士來到東亞傳教，其中對文化敏感的利瑪竇很快就發現，中國的宗教氣氛是非常容忍的，儒、佛、道基本上被視為一體的，就是在這種宗教容忍的精神下，利瑪竇才得以使當時許多儒家菁英分子皈依基督教。儒家認為人心同一及人人皆可得「道」，這樣的信念促使某些中國基督教徒宣揚一種基督教與儒家的合成體，等於讓中國的道把基督教也包容進去。

　十九世紀晚期，一些心胸同樣開明的儒家熱心接受在西方當道的價值和理念，諸如民主、自由、平等、法治、個人自主、以及最重要的人權。當他們之中有人前往歐洲與美國，並停留足夠時間去做第一手觀察時，一致深感佩服，而最讓他們印象深刻的就是西方憲政民主的理想與制度。

　儒家思想尊重人類尊嚴

　到了本世紀初，中國出現兩個對立的儒學派，一是現代儒學（或稱新儒學、當代新儒學），一是傳統儒學，兩個學派都鼓吹民主，並對早期儒家經典中民主思想的起源和演化展開有系統的研究。在這個過程中，他們顯然把中國文化和西方文化這兩個價值系統的相容性視為理所當然。

　最後我對「人權」要說幾句話。「人權」和「民主」一樣，都是西方特有的名詞，原本不存在於傳統的中國儒家論述。然而如果我們同意，「人權」這個觀念正如一九四八年聯合國《世界人權宣言》所下的定義，是對人類共通的價值和人類尊嚴的雙重承認，那我們也大可宣稱，雖無西方的術語，儒家思想已有「人權」的概念。在《論語》、《孟子》和其他儒家經典中，都載明了承認普遍人道和尊重人類尊嚴。更了不起的是，早在第一世紀，帝王諭旨
中就已引述儒家對人類尊嚴的觀念作為禁止買賣或殺戮奴隸的理由。在這兩份年代分別為公元九年和三十五年的帝王諭旨中，都引述了孔子所說的，「天地之性人為貴」。儒家從未接受奴隸是合法制度，也就是拜儒家的人道主義之賜，晚清的儒學者才會欣然領會西方有關人權的理論和做法。

　如果歷史可為指引，則中國文化與西方文化之間對基本價值似乎存在很多重疊的共識，畢竟中國的「道」講的就是承認人類共通的價值和人類尊嚴。如今我更堅信，一旦中國文化回歸到主流之「道」，中國對抗西方的大問題也將終結。

　（編按：本文係翻譯自余英時親自刪定的受獎演說全文，國際新聞中心尹德瀚譯，標題為編者所擬）

http://www.batol.net/mailpost/mailpost.asp

以下是纽约时报的详细新闻。

Two History Scholars Are to Split Million Award

By DINITIA SMITH
Published: November 15, 2006
Two historians, John Hope Franklin and Yu Ying-shih, will share this year’s million John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity.

It’s the prize that Alfred Nobel forgot. In 2000 Mr. Kluge, the billionaire, gave million to the Library of Congress for a scholarly center and other projects, which now include the million-dollar prize. The award was specifically intended for areas that the Nobel Prizes do not cover, like history, political science, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, religion, linguistics and criticism.

The prize is to be announced today in Washington.

Mr. Franklin, 91, is by far the better known, widely regarded as among the first scholars to explore fully the role of African-Americans in the nation’s history. The library’s announcement said that Mr. Franklin, emeritus professor of history at Duke University, demonstrated that “blacks were active agents in shaping their own and the nation’s history.” Until 1943, when Mr. Franklin published his first book, “The Free Negro in North Carolina,” historians had paid little attention to what was called “Negro history.” His 1947 book, “From Slavery to Freedom,” remains a landmark survey of the subject. Most recently, he has published a memoir, “Mirror to America.”

In an interview from Durham, N.C., Mr. Franklin said he was still somewhat “speechless” after learning of the award. At least some of the prize money, he said, would go to a fellowship at Fisk University in Nashville, which he endowed in memory of his wife, Aurelia, a librarian. The couple met at Fisk when she was 16 and he 17.

The library’s announcement calls the second winner, Mr. Yu, 76, “the most influential Chinese intellectual working in both the Chinese and American worlds.” Mr. Yu, emeritus professor of history and Chinese studies at Princeton, is an intellectual historian with a wide reach that spans Confucianism and the modern world.

He has been particularly interested in the way Chinese intellectuals have combined the religious and the secular, he said in an interview from his home in Princeton. “They have a moral, political, social purpose,” he said, “as compared to the West.” His most recent book is on the 12th-century Confucian scholar Zhu Xi, who has been compared to Thomas Aquinas. Zhu helped codify the Confucian canon and wrote extensive commentaries.

Mr. Yu has also been an outspoken supporter of the democracy movement in China. But despite this, his work, much of which is in Chinese, is widely read on the mainland.

Mr. Yu said he did not yet know what he would do with his prize money, though “part of it will go to taxes.”

The library solicited nominations for the Kluge Prize from more than 2,000 people. The nominations were then winnowed and reviewed by a panel of scholars. The ultimate decision was made by the librarian of Congress, James H. Billington.

The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony on Dec. 5 at the library. Mr. Franklin and Mr. Yu are to give symposiums on their work at the library next year.

以下是国会图书馆发布的正式颁奖说明：

In October 2006 the Librarian of Congress convened a panel of distinguished scholars to review a select group of nine finalists. Their discussion and recommendations provided critical advice to the Librarian as he personally made the final selection.
Franklin and Yu will officially receive the John W. Kluge Prize on Dec. 5, 2006, at the Library of Congress. Each will return to the Library next year to present a scholarly discussion of his body of work.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN
John Hope Franklin’s career is one of exemplary productivity and far-reaching influence. His contributions range across the genres of non-fiction writing, from scholarly monographs to works of history intended for a non-academic public, to a textbook, a biography, and an autobiography. Long before the “agency” of ordinary Americans became a touchstone of historical writing, Franklin demonstrated that blacks were active agents in shaping their own and the nation’s history. His studies unearthed numerous long-neglected yet indisputably essential parts of the American past. Taken together, they make the point that no account of American history can be complete that does not afford a key place to the conditions and struggles of black Americans for full participation. More than simply redressing the balance or making up for past neglect, his books have challenged historians to rethink how they conceptualize American history as a whole.
Franklin is an Emeritus Professor of History at Duke University. During his 70-year academic career, Franklin taught at a wide range of universities and also played an influential role with such organizations as the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships (when he rallied high-ranking Fulbright alumni abroad to help maintain the program in the face of major cuts), the National Council of the Humanities, and the U.S. Delegation to UNESCO. In 2000, Duke University, with which he has been affiliated since 1982, established The John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies in his honor.
Franklin pioneered the study of the African-American experience. Franklin’s first book, “The Free Negro in North Carolina,” appeared in 1943; but it remains the standard work on its subject and a key reference point for those investigating the status of free African-Americans before the Civil War. At the time he wrote this work, historians were devoting little or no attention to what was then called “Negro history.” Almost no scholarly work existed on antebellum free blacks. Franklin used a wide range of primary materials to present an account of the challenges under which this group lived, but also showed the changes in its status over time.
Franklin next published in 1947 his landmark survey of black history, “From Slavery to Freedom,” which has gone through numerous editions and has introduced hundreds of thousands of students and countless readers outside academia to the African-American past. It ranges widely, from Africa to modern America, and covers politics, culture, economics, and social life. Franklin described the injustices and disabilities under which black Americans suffered. But, as the title itself suggests, the book is a story of progress against heavy odds, not simply a condemnation of American racism. Although numerous surveys of black history have since been published, “From Slavery to Freedom” (revised many times to take account of new scholarship) remains the best single introduction to the subject.
His third book, “The Militant South” (1956), is not a history of African-Americans, but a searching investigation of white Southern culture before the Civil War. In it, Franklin studied the roots of Southern radicalism, and the ways a martial spirit came to pervade Southern society and helped explain the coming of the Civil War.
Franklin’s next two books addressed key moments in American history that profoundly affected the lives of black and white Americans alike. “Reconstruction After the Civil War” (1961) was a central text in the overthrow of the long-dominant Dunning School interpretation that saw the Reconstruction era after the Civil War as one of rampant misgovernment and the granting of democratic rights to the former slaves as a disastrous mistake. Franklin advanced novel interpretations of the period and the actors involved that opened up new lines of inquiry for scholarly understanding.
Two years later, Franklin published “The Emancipation Proclamation” (1965) for the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the document. He carefully examined the path to emancipation and offered a nuanced discussion of Lincoln’s racial views. The hallmark of Lincoln’s presidency, Franklin argued, was his capacity for growth, and the Proclamation – previously belittled by many historians – was the turning point not only in the Civil War but in Lincoln’s own maturation as a statesman.
In the years after “The Emancipation Proclamation,” Franklin contributed to scholarship in new ways, publishing a biography of the pioneering African-American historian George Washington Williams, and collections of his own essays and those of others on the African-American past. In particular, “Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century” (1982), a highly influential collection of essays on modern black leaders edited by Franklin and August Meier, is still widely used in college classrooms. Into his eighties, Franklin continued to publish new and important scholarship. “Runaway Slaves” (1999, with Loren Schweninger) is, remarkably, the first full-scale study of this important piece of antebellum history, which sheds important new light on the Underground Railroad and the motivations and methods of those who sought to escape from slavery. Franklin and Schweninger this year published “In Search of the Promised Land,” a study of a slave family in the Old South.
Professor Franklin’s most significant recent publication is his autobiography, “Mirror to America” (2005). More than just an account of his life’s trajectory, the book is a chronicle of American race relations during the 20th century. He assesses how much has changed and how far the country still must go to achieve racial equality. He also describes how the historical profession itself has changed. His own path-breaking career and scholarship have served as a model for many young historians and have opened up questions still being discussed today.
Franklin has been active in civil rights. In 1949 he served as an expert witness on behalf of the NAACP in Lyman Johnson v. The University of Kentucky, which successfully challenged that state’s “separate but equal” policy in graduate education. In 1953 he was a member of team of scholars and attorneys assembled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to research the history of the 14th Amendment in preparation for the argument of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1965 he traveled with 30 other historians to Alabama to join Martin Luther King Jr. in the march from Selma to Montgomery. In 1997 President Bill Clinton appointed Franklin as Chairman of the Advisory Board of “One America in the 21st Century,” a national discourse on issues of race.

YU YING-SHIH
Yu Ying-shih has been described by his peers as “the greatest Chinese intellectual historian of our generation” and “the most widely read contemporary historian writing in Chinese.” He has written more than 30 books, which span more than 2,000 years of history.

Working deeply with original texts, he has rescued the Confucian heritage from caricature and neglect and has stimulated younger scholars to rediscover the richness and variety of Chinese culture after the ravages of Mao’s “cultural revolution.”

Yu is an Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. During his academic career, which began in 1962, Yu taught at three Ivy League universities (Princeton, Harvard, and Yale) and the University of Michigan. He also served concurrently as president of New Asia College, Hong Kong, and vice chancellor of Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1973 to 1975. He spent the bulk of his academic career at Princeton, where he taught from 1987 to 2001. In his early 40s, Yu was elected to be a lifetime member in Academia Sinica, the most distinguished academic institution in Taiwan. He was recently elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Yu’s knowledge encompasses nearly the entire span of Chinese history, from early times to the present. His rich, scholarly production can be loosely clustered under three fields, each having a different specialized audience: early and medieval Chinese history; intellectual and cultural history of the later imperial period (the Song, 960-1279; Ming, 1368-1644; and Qing, 1644-1911 dynasties); and studies of intellectuals and intellectual problems in the modern period.

Yu began his scholarly career in the United States concentrating on early and medieval Chinese history. His doctoral dissertation addressed the significant transformation of the ideal of longevity into the idea of immortality, of not dying, a subject of sustained interest in Chinese culture. This study was published as a long article that remains a classic account of a critical shift in religious thinking. In his first book in English, he turned his attention to the Chinese hierarchical view of the world that framed martial and commercial expansion during the Han dynasty (203 B.C. to 220 A.D.)

From the start Yu was recognized as a leading specialist in Han and medieval history, and this recognition has continued throughout his career. Among other works, he was invited to write the Han chapter on the history of food in China; a chapter for the first volume of the prestigious, on-going series “Cambridge History of China”; a chapter on the development of a strong concept of individualism in the Wei-Jin period (220-420 A.D.) for a symposium volume on the notion of individualism in China; and a chapter focusing on the Han period for the one-volume “Cambridge History of Inner Asia.” In 1978 Yu was selected to be a member of the first delegation of American specialists on Chinese studies sent by the National Academy of Sciences as part of an exchange program with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The delegation comprised experts on early China, particularly the Han period, and Yu was the principal author of the delegation’s report on the state of Han studies in China, published in 1981.

Yu also established himself in a second major area of Chinese studies, 17th- and 18th-century intellectual history. In 1970 he published an interpretive article in Chinese, “A Consideration of the History of the Qing Thought from the Perspective of the Development of Song-Ming Confucianism.” This required command of the full span of Confucian thought, from the classical period prior to 231 B.C. up through the 19th century. He showed how the dominant Qing concern for what Yu began to call “intellectualism” evolved out of an anti-intellectualism or anti-rationalism that had prevailed in the 16th century and earlier. In 1972 he published ground-breaking research on the major thinker Fang Yizhi (1611-1671). Asked in the 1990s to write a short historical introduction to the collected works of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), the most influential Confucian after Confucius himself, Yu read so deeply in the source material that he ended by writing a 600-page book that fundamentally reinterpreted this towering figure.

The third academic field in which Yu has made impressive contributions is modern Chinese intellectual history. One of Yu’s themes has been the relationships between intellectuals and the cultural heritage that has been attacked from many quarters at least since the beginning of the May 4th Movement in 1919, when Chinese intellectuals, motivated by resistance to the terms of the Versailles Treaty, ignited a political protest movement that launched the cultural transformation in China.

Three intellectuals born in the 1890s received special attention in books by Yu. In 1984 Yu wrote a reappraisal of Hu Shi (1891-1961), who started his career as a leader in pre-1919 cultural reform but later was strongly criticized, in part, for his scholarship and conservative views. Yu provided a compelling account of Hu’s leading role as an intellectual in turbulent times. In 1991 Yu published a retrospective assessment of Qian Mu (1895-1990), one of the leading historians of the previous generation. The third, Chen Yinke (1890- 1969), was an eminent 20th-century historian of the Tang period (617-906) and the religions of China.

Yu is known not only for his scholarship but also for his sympathy for the democracy movement in mainland China and his support for young refugees who left after the suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square. Despite Yu’s outspoken criticism of Chinese Communist policy, most of his scholarly works have now been published inside Communist China, including a recent 10-volume collection of his Chinese-language works (volumes 1-4 published in 2004 and volumes 5-10 published in 2006 by Guangxi Normal University.) His work is widely read and discussed throughout the Chinese-speaking world, as much on the mainland as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other nations of East Asia.