Humanities and Social Sciences: Paradigm Breakthroughs and Retheorizing（Symposium）

Yu Wen analyzes the “Great Divergence” scholarship within early modern globalization,which challenges Eurocentrism in modernity theory and explores Asia’s path to modernization.She insists,however,a deeper understanding of the logic and values behind different modernization processes requires shifting the focus from economic to intellectual history.Comparing the “New Classical Learning” during the Ming-Qing transition with the “New Natural Law” of the early Enlightenment,Yu examines ideas of historical self-government in China and the West,noting their impacts on these two regions to develop different nation-state models since the nineteenth century.Li Hansong warns of a crisis in North American scholarship on international relations and political philosophy due to excessive depoliticization.He calls for reengagement with the core political philosophical issues of building ethical relations among political communities and reevaluation of topics such as political regimes,culture,and conflicts as the critical basis for the modern diverse international order.Wang Jianbao,inspired by the connection between philosophy and history within the Neo-Confucian tradition,argues for reintegrating normative and empirical research.He contends that while the pursuit of transcendental value in philosophy shapes historical practice,philosophy must also draw on history to become tangible and substantiated to form concrete identities.Chu Jinyi examines Soviet writer Lidiya Ginzburg’s analysis of memoir writing to show how cultural memory theory can illuminate the role of non-fiction in crafting collective history and identities.Wang Haixiao,focusing on medieval Chinese history,highlights the shortcomings of existing quantitative research in this area due to its isolation from evolving statistical social science methods.These shortcomings have led to undervaluation of quantitative methods in the field,and Wang proposes better quantitative tools to elucidate broad historical transformations.