A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today

　　Professor Metzger’s third seminal book, A Cloud Across the Pacific uncovers the basic contradictions between contemporary China’s complex ideological marketplace and Western liberalism. It describes and puts into critical context three versions of Western liberalism (those of F.A. Hayek, John Rawls, and John Dunn), three versions of Chinese liberalism (those of Yang Kuo-shu, Li Qiang, and Ambrose Y.C. King), two versions of modern Confucian humanism (those of T’ang Chun-i, and Henry K.H. Woo), and various versions of Chinese Marxism, including Kao Li-k’o’s in the early 1990s and some of the recent New Left writings. It shows that all these Chinese political theories, not only Chinese Marxism, depend on a number of premises at odds with Western liberalism, especially epistemological optimism and an extravagantly optimistic concept of political practicability. It also argues that not only these Chinese theories but also Western liberalism have failed to offer adequate normative guidelines for the improvement of political life. His study uniquely combines a deep understanding of the history of Chinese thought with a strong grasp of modern philosophical trends and an innovative methodology for the description and criticism of political theories. It will be useful to students of modern Chinese intellectual history, of political philosophy, of political culture, of the comparative study of cultures, and of U.S.-Chinese relations

作者簡介

　　Thomas A. Metzger is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego and has held visiting professorships at National Taiwan Normal University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, East China Normal University, Wuhan University, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Social Science. In 1994 he gave the annual Ch’ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture at New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; in 2001 he was appointed advisor to the Department of History, Tsinghua University; and in 2003 he gave the inaugural lecture in a series of annual lectures honoring T’ang Chun-i and instituted by The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was born in Berlin, Germany in 1933 and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1967.