East Wind: the Historical Position of the Civilisational Project

Abstract

It is an indication of the transformation of our world that a Congress¹ concerned with the Orient, or with the prospective of the Orient in the coming historical period, should be held in Mexico City. For this city, one of the major capitals of the Western hemisphere, is itself immersed in the depth of its own historical field. Equally significant is the main concern of the Congress — the human sciences in Asia and North Africa. That is why it is this transformation itself that cannot but govern the overall direction of the thirtieth Congress.

I have known some who have been rationally educated, as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness; but when they looked at great things, all became a blank and they saw nothing — and denied (very illogically) that anything could be seen; and uniformly put the negation of a power for the possession of power — and called the want of imagination Judgement, and the never being moved to rapture Philosophy!

S. T. Coleridge to T. Poole, October 1797

East wind prevails over West Wind.

Mao Tse-Tung