New Book: Organizational Power and Ethical Subjectivity: In Light of Comparative Historical Semiotics By Youzheng Li

Book Information

My selection of papers, which had been published for the past 20 years, has been finally published by an independent publisher in England. As a life-long independent scholar I am still happy to see my writings organized along the independent line (an interdisciplinary/cross-cultural-theoretical line) could be edited and published outside the established publishing system. Anyhow the semiotic way of thinking, especially that cross-cultural-theoretical one, still belongs to the academic minority in the west. The papers originally appeared over the past 20 years but their content is based on the past 60 years’ independent studies through overcoming a lot of hardship in various particular circumstances. The content of this newly reorganized book also reflects an almost unclear important aspect of the current Chinese intellectual and scholarly history since the end of Cultural Revolution. So I hope the book would provide international colleagues with a useful theoretical “Other” as their scholarly comparative reference. No doubt, either semiotics or the human sciences, at present or in future, should and must include all historical/intellectual/scholarly experiences accumulated all over the world. Please open the attached detailed information.

Youzheng Li

The former Vice-President of IASS

2019-4-5

Organizational Power and Ethical Subjectivity:

In Light of Comparative Historical Semiotics

By Youzheng Li

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (10): 1-5275-3074-4

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3074-4

Table of Contents

Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………………. viii

Foreword…………………………………………………………………………………………………. xii

Part One: Historical Semiotics and the Theoretical Orientation

of the Humanities

Chapter One………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2

The Global-Institutionalized Mind: Crisis and Prospects of Human Sciences/Semiotics

Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………………………. 74

Power-organizing and Ethic-thinking as Two Paralleled Praxes

in the Historical Existence of Mankind: A Semiotic Analysis

of their Functional Segregation

Chapter Three……………………………………………………………………………………….. 116

Semiotics and Ancient History: Rethinking the Composition of Historical Discourse

Part Two: A Rethinking of General Theoretical Semiotics and Ethics

Chapter Four…………………………………………………………………………………………. 138

Cross-political Pan-commercialism in the Post-modern Age

and the Strategic Goal of the GS-Model for Reorganizing

Cross-cultural Humanities

Chapter Five………………………………………………………………………………………….. 188

“General Semiotics” (GS) as the All-round Interdisciplinary Organizer: GS vs. Philosophical Fundamentalism

Chapter Six……………………………………………………………………………………………. 212

Ren (仁)-Humanist Ethics and Semiotics in Future: On Four Types

of Rationality

Chapter Seven……………………………………………………………………………………….. 224

Semiotics as the Rational Organizer of Global Human Sciences—

Semiotic Theory: Western Philosophy-centralism vs. Global Interdisciplinary Theory

Chapter Eight………………………………………………………………………………………… 236

Chinese Semiotics and the Possible Change in Typology of Theoretical Semiotics during the Globalization Period

Chapter Nine…………………………………………………………………………………………. 244

On the Institutional Aspect of Institutionalized and Institutionalizing Semiotics

Chapter Ten…………………………………………………………………………………………… 273

The Epistemological Turn in Theoretical Semiotics: From Signs

in the Natural/Cultural World to the Semantic Institutions

of Academic Discourses

Chapter Eleven……………………………………………………………………………………… 297

Epistemological Implications of the Intercultural Semiotic Movement: Towards A New Enlightenment in the Theoretical Practice of Mankind

Chapter Twelve…………………………………………………………………………………….. 315

On the Institutional Restriction of Academic Disciplines

Part Three: Chinese Historical/Ideological Semiotics

Chapter Thirteen…………………………………………………………………………………… 334

Ru-political-religion and a Semiotic Re-description of Chinese

Academic Ideology

Chapter Fourteen…………………………………………………………………………………… 400

Non-western Semiotics and its Possible Impact on the Composition

of Semiotics Theory in Future

Chapter Fifteen……………………………………………………………………………………… 411

The Formation of Chinese Humanist Ethics: From a Hermeneutic-semiotic-historiographic Point of View

Chapter Sixteen…………………………………………………………………………………….. 427

Signification and Performance of Non-verbal Signs in the Confucianist Ritual System

Chapter Seventeen………………………………………………………………………………… 434

Distinguishing Reality from Discourse in Chinese Historiography:

From the Point of View of Historical Semiotics

Chapter Eighteen…………………………………………………………………………………… 444

Chinese Philosophy and Semiotics

Chapter Nineteen………………………………………………………………………………….. 474

Towards a Minimal Common Ground for Humanist Dialogue:

A Comparative Analysis of Confucian Ethics and American

Ethical Humanism

Chapter Twenty…………………………………………………………………………………….. 495

Significance and Perspective of the Chinese-Western Semiotic Dialogue

Chapter Twenty-One…………………………………………………………………………….. 503

Modern Theory and Traditional Chinese Historiography

Appendices

A Brief Intellectual Retrospective to the Career of the Author

and his Semiotic/Theoretical Humanities Practices………………………………. 534

Author’s Bibliography (1980-2018)……………………………………………………… 552

Preface

The saying that the basic origin of current global conflicts can be traced back to the divergence of a few major civilizations may be over-simplistic or even misleading, because all existent civilizations today have been in fact unified by a solely materialist, economic-developing priority. Our age is totally economic-production-directed in this fixed life-view, the goal and methods of which are embodied by ceaselessly advancing the level of physical comforts of human beings and the ever-increasing scientific/technical renovations. Accordingly, in terms of the same life-principle of these universally shared goals and methods, different social communities on the globe exist in sharp competition to gain interests in the world. Under the present-day politically/economically competitive ecology of permanent mutual struggles for advantages is hidden the deeper origin of the conflicts caused by the divergent traditional faiths and beliefs that have evolved in different long historical traditions. That means, the crucial and critical challenges facing the world, despite their various practical and technical features, have their deeper origins in the same historical-psychological plane of human nature, which should become one of the central objects of modern human sciences. Unfortunately, the latter has remained immature for meaningfully dealing with this historical-rooted challenge to the harmonious and peaceful way of life of mankind.

With the enlightenment and the stimulation of modern natural and social sciences, the modern humanities have accordingly already been more rationally reorganized over the last two hundred years, and they have even presented a perspective of turning into truly humanist sciences from the middle of the last century. However, unlike the clearly positive successes of the natural and social sciences, which are products of modernity, the rational modernization of the current human sciences has been faced with two serious obstacles for their scientific maturation. The one is related to the complicatedly paradoxical connections of their traditional/classical and modern/scientific parts, and the historically mixed coexistence of these two types of intellectual practices makes the identity and function of the current humanities or formative human sciences remain unclear and even indefinable. The other is related to the increasingly strengthened institutionalization of the disciplinary-compartmentalization of the age. The latter, following the models ofnatural and social sciences, is certainly favorable for the progress of the disciplinary-specification of the humanities, whereas it has also created an obstruction for smooth horizontally-directed communication among different branches of the humanities, which is necessarily required today for the genuine progress of the human sciences. Despite using the same term “science”, the configurations of natural/social sciences and the human sciences are essentially divergent, although they exist and function in the same institutionalized educational/academic/professional context. Therefore, compared with the other two categories of sciences, the development of the human sciences demands an elaborate strategy for strengthening interdisciplinary/cross-culturally-directed scholarship at present. More deeply speaking, we may state that, far from being a mere study of the concept of “sign”, the modern semiotic movement, originating around the turn of the last century, has indeed been proceeding fruitfully along the interdisciplinary orientation resulting in various scientific achievements. But, as one of the central locomotives for triggering the rational modernization of human sciences, the global semiotic movement has been confronted with the same bottleneck: the epistemologically confusing and opportunistically-motivated professional situations caused firstly by its mingled, historically-shaped constitution as well as by its professional immersion in the rigidified systems of disciplinary-compartmentalization that turns out to be an ever stronger hindrance for sufficiently interdisciplinary-directed scientific communications. When the current non-western humanities participate in the international activities of human-scientific studies, this multi-interdisciplinary strategic reorientation becomes even more necessary. In consideration of the rapidly changed conditions of the new century, we may further declare that one of the central theoretical goals of the desired new theoretical semiotic science should be redesigned by its critical analyses of the structure and function of the present-day disciplinary-compartmentalized framework as such.

In terms of the operative-causational mechanism, all challenging troubles occurring in social, legal, political, and economic domains still belong to the practical/technical levels, while their primary origins have still been deeply rooted in the above-mentioned historical-psychological level that cannot be essentially handled well either by natural or by social sciences. The correct understanding and feasible coordination of these nationalist-rooted faiths and beliefs of various traces as well as their different argumentative rhetoric, which are all historically accumulated, are above all structurally and uniquely linked to the advancement of rational intelligibility and the efficient applicability of modernized human-scientific knowledge. This theoretical and practical linkage further increases the current necessity for the scientific modernization of global human sciences. No doubt, the fruitful achievements of a number of modern great human-theoretical works produced in modern history must be the unavoidable sources for helping to develop our future undertaking, and those great original masterpieces certainly maintain their own highly enlightening values in intellectual history; nevertheless, in light of our semiotic-epistemological horizon, these works remain temporary and tentative results to be continuously elaborated rather than established logical foundations to be used for guiding the reconstruction of the new edifice of human sciences.

Furthermore, regarding this process of modernizing human sciences, an epistemological/axiological precondition should be formed through simultaneously formulating an empirical-rational-directed humanist ethics based on the entire historical experiences of this world. The more rationally reorganized humanist ethical attitude could perhaps truly activate the scientific motivation directed towards advancing more meaningful spiritual/intellectual life: namely, to passionately search for human-scientific creations in this world. Far from being mere happy physical survival, the meaning of human existence should be realized in constantly advancing the level of spiritual-intellectual explorations around the globe.

The discussions in this book are focused on critically exploring the above-mentioned problems at the interdisciplinary-epistemological/cross-cultural-comparative levels. As an independent theoretical scholar, this author, with his long Chinese-historical and western-theoretical experiences that have been specially formulated in his particular historical/personal conditions, presents his critical comments and constructive suggestions throughout the book. Most parts of this volume are composed on the basis of articles that were originally published in several academic journals and anthologies over the last 20 years. Many thanks are given to the journals and publishers which have offered their permissions to republish those articles. The related publishing details are given in each of the chapters printed herein. The articles republished in the book have been re-edited and readjusted to maintain stylistic coherence throughout the book. The author wants to express his sincere thanks to Mr. Alex Monaghan for his help in re-editing the manuscript of this book.

In view of the present-day difficulty of publishing books about the theoretical humanities, and especially those written along multi-interdisciplinary/cross-cultural lines like this one, the author also expresses his thanks to Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Its independent scientific policy for promoting the publishing of humanities books has provided this author with such a rare chance to make this book appear at last. Special gratitude is given to Mr. Adam Rummens, the Commissioning Editor, for his understanding encouragement and friendly help during the preparation of this book.

Youzheng Li

San Francisco Bay Area, on the eve of the New Year, 2019