The Clash Between Moral Utopia and Historical Reality

Meribah

In "The Spirit of the Chinese People," Ku Hung-ming presents an idealistic cultural landscape where Chinese civilization, centered on the "religion of good citizenship," achieves social harmony through moral self-discipline, contrasting it with European civilization's reliance on coercive apparatus. This dichotomy, while critiquing Western modernity, also reveals Orientalist self-imagination. Scrutinizing this framework within broader historical contexts reveals several contestable aspects.

I. The Social Basis of Moral Self-discipline

During Europe's Thirty Years' War, the clash between Protestant ethics and Catholic order didn't produce moral self-discipline but ongoing political violence. This confirms Max Weber's insight that religious beliefs must combine with specific social organizations to be effective. In late imperial China, rural societies maintained low-cost governance not just through Confucian ethics but also through clan systems, local regulations, and the civil service examination system, forming a social network. As Fei Xiaotong notes in "乡土中国" (Rural China), this "ritual governance order" is a product of small, familiar communities.

In Japan's Edo period, the samurai class's "叶隐" (Yōi) spirit and the merchant class's "石田梅岩心学" (Shitada Baisō's philosophy) developed alongside each other, showing the close link between moral norms and class structures. After the Meiji Restoration broke feudal hierarchies, traditional moral systems quickly collapsed, proving that moral self-discipline can't exist without specific social and material foundations. This historical experience indicates that viewing morality as a transcendent, independent variable is essentially a cultural determinism illusion.

II. The Modern Transformation of the Coercive Apparatus

The formation of European absolutist states saw standing armies established alongside tax states, a symbiotic relationship. Charles Tilly's "war-making state" theory reveals that the enhan