Sublime

In fact, as Zhao Suisheng argues, the idea of Han ethno-national identity, like that of the Chinese nation, dates only to the late nineteenth…

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the indeterminacy of it all appeals to me.

Modern efforts to locate universalisms in secular ethical tenets –such as Kantian moral universalism, communism or modernization theory – are in apparent retreat, precisely at a time when nationalism has succumbed to capitalist forms of universal commodification.

Needham points to the importance of ideas of wuwei and fengshui as constraining ideals, and cites the example of the Han dynasty hydraulic engineer Chia Jang (Jia Rang), who practiced ‘Taoist hydraulics’ and believed the river should be “given plenty of room to take whatever course it needed.”30