Abstract
In this essay I will offer some reflections on the connections between scientific inquiry, scholarly reflexivity, and enlightenment. I must observe at the outset that I regard this special issue of Journal of Chinese Political Science—and the collaborative planning and global communication that made it possible—as a perfect venue for the discussion of these themes, but also as a wonderful enactment of the kind of the link between inquiry and an ethic of intellectual freedom about which I will comment.
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- 1.
Prepared for presentation at the International Conference on Dignity, Equality, and Justice, hosted by the China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics (CCCPE) and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, on December 16–19, 2010 in Beijing.
- 2.
See the essays collected in Yu Keping, Democracy Is a Good Thing(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), and especially Yu Keping, “Ideological Change and Incremental Democracy in Reform-Era China,” in Cheng Li, ed., China’s Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008).
- 3.
This discussion is drawn from my article “Social Science and Liberal Values in a Time of War.” Perspectives on Politics2:3 (September 2004), pp. 475–83.
- 4.
The term “republic of letters” is usually associated with the cosmopolitan literary culture of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment. Jurgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphereremains the seminal work on the Enlightenment as a transnational discourse centered on the circulation of the written word in its many formats.
- 5.
Yu Keping, “The Study of Political Science and Public Administration in China,” in Democracy Is a Good Thing, pp. 6–26. I have also found useful articles by Deng Zhenglai, He Li, Yang Zhong, Jon R. Taylor, Guangbin Yang and Miao Li in a special issue of Journal of Chinese Political Sciencedevoted to “The State of the Field: Political Science and Chinese Political Studies.”
- 6.
Ibid., p. 12.
- 7.
Ibid., pp. 13–14.
- 8.
Yu Keping, “The Study of Political Science,” op. cit., p. 20.
- 9.
Ibid., pp. 20–21.
- 10.
Yu Keping, “Culture and Modernity in Chinese Intellectual Discourse: A Historical Perspective,” in Democracy Is a Good Thing, pp. 93–112. Also useful is Wei Zhang, What Is Enlightenment: Can China Answer Kant’s Question?(SUNY Press, 2010).
- 11.
Yu Keping, “The Study of Political Science and Public Administration in China,” p. 10.
References
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Isaac, J.C. (2013). Reflections on Scientific Inquiry, Academic Freedom, and Enlightenment. In: Guo, S. (eds) Political Science and Chinese Political Studies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29590-4_11
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