Prof. Ge Zhaoguang
 

The present time, according to some, is one in which information overstrips knowledge and the traditional study of arts or humanities has fallen on hard times. It is a time, according to some others, in which whatever is trendy and fashionable becomes far more attractive than contemplation and cultivation of the mind, and specialized academic pursuit can win little if any public acclaim. And yet, it is at such a time that we have decided to launch National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University, and that should be seen as a testimony to our confidence in the future of humanistic studies.

We have confidence because an increasing amount of new materials and data in the field of humanistic studies has emerged in recent years and has posed ever new questions about how to understand China; and the new ideas and theories we have swallowed like hardtack over the past 20 years have now reached the stage of gradual digestion. Once new materials and new theories merge, a new paradigmatic change will take place in humanistic studies. Indeed, in the last hundred years or so in China, the history of scholarship has witnessed wavelike changes where an initial innovation is followed by numerous others one after another. Moreover, we have confidence in the future of humanistic studies because we have always maintained that the study of our own cultural heritage, including studies of literature, history, philosophy, art, religion, etc., is in some sense not simply an accumulation of knowledge, but also, and more importantly, the search for self-knowledge. The point of acquiring self-knowledge is to achieve adequate understanding of our tradition and to reconstruct our historical and cultural identity based on such knowledge. We believe that it is now time for China to reconstruct such self-knowledge.

Looking back in history, we can see that China has, roughly speaking, passed through three stages of self-understanding. First is the stage of traditional China, a time of self-centered imagination of the world as all under heaven. Second is China in more recent times, when the West offered the only mirror for self-reflection. And finally is the present time, probably a time for renewed efforts at self-knowledge from the reflections in many mirrors. At this third stage, not only a Western mirror is needed, but also many other mirrors in the surrounding regions and areas for China to acquire self-knowledge, for self-reflection from different angles and in different directions. For this reason, National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University will promote investigations into the various longtime reflections of China in the surrounding regions and areas, from which we may come back to a new understanding of our own culture. Perhaps the new materials hitherto underutilized and the new perspective not fully adopted may enable us to understand more comprehensively and more adequately what Chinese culture really is.

While at National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies we put our emphasis in research on "Chinese culture," even "traditional Chinese culture," we definitely do not want to restrict ourselves. We encourage investigations into the interactions among different civilized regions in terms of literary, religious, scholarly, artistic and other exchanges, and how these regions have evolved from the traditional to the modern in different ways and by different routes. As a well-known saying goes, he who knows one knows none. Although in this academic institution, we have China as our focus and tradition as our field of study, we are equally concerned with the crisscross of various cultures and the modern transformation of different civilizations. But we hope that those cultural encounters, crisscross, and influence are not turned into simplistic and trendy comparisons, and that those complex transformations are not reduced to a mere dichotomy between "tradition" and "modernity." Rather we hope to see—through a study of the history of concrete cultural encounters in literature, religion, scholarship, art, and language, and the process of their evolutionary transformation—how the chain of culture and history is formed link by link.

A hundred years have passed since the abolition of the age-old civil examination system towards the end of the Qing Dynasty, which altered the traditional structure of knowledge; the modern and Western institution of disciplined learning and the modern and Western research methodologies have introduced a new way to classify, interpret, and evaluate the Chinese tradition and culture, and that has made us see China quite clearly from a certain angle. At the same time, however, the compartmentalization of learning into disciplines has also further divided the study of literature, history, art, religion, and philosophy into ever smaller fields and turfs, as though they were completely separate and had no relation whatever with one other. Even scholars engaging in research seem to have set up walls and barriers along the divide line between China and the rest of the world, each side going its own way with self-contentment and its own set of rules and protocols. However, what we call tradition is a very complicated object of study, and the different aspects of the humanities are connected with one another and all encompassing, so much so that the world without China is not a complete world, and China without the world is not real China. We are alarmed that humanist scholars, who should be full of imagination and concerns about fellow human beings, may sometimes become narrow specialists and technical professionals. This is what National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan will try to change and rectify. Hence our pledge and our ideal goal: "As a platform for research in Chinese literature, history and philosophy, the Institute will make every endeavor to promote the exchange and fusion of different disciplines in arts and letters, history, and philosophy, to help advance the study of Chinese culture in the world, and to facilitate the collection, compilation and emendation of all kinds of newly-discovered texts and new data in order to establish itself as an open and international institution for the humanistic study of Chinese arts and culture."

Being committed to such an ideal does not mean that we think too highly of our intellectual prowess. What we do hope is that a modest little Institute like ours will enter the massive flow of the modern history of Chinese learning.

Finally, I want to thank all of you and welcome you to join in the building of National institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University. Let us wish that everything will work out well in future for the Institute!