Can tell you that Mao created a Criticize lin, criticize Confucius campaign. Westerners take this as destroying eastern religions, but on the contrary it was designed to center Marxist aspects of specific religions in discussions and teachings. Essentially it was an extension of liberation theology
idk if there are many english speaking texts relating to this. here is course material on this subject from beijing university. you could run it through a translator
no prob, strongly recommend using baidu and translators for research. there are a lot of lies that the west tells that are very easily verifiable just with a quick search on baidu (recently there was a campaign about how china bans winnie the pooh. you can search it on baidu and find millions of examples of winnie the pooh in china. the only ‘banning’ of winnie the pooh was a racist caricature and it was on only one social media site where it was a problem). there are also lots of lies about china banning certain video games and movies, when you can easily search and find it false.
im of the opinion that liberation theology is just interpreting any religion through a marxist lens, not just the natopedia definition that purely is about christianity. its a thing that happens a lot and to constrain the definition to christianity is weird
But liberation theology was the actual name of a Christian movement that sought to do that. When other religions do the same thing I think it should have its own name because it’s weird to just give them all the Christian name for it. It’s like saying you’ve been going to a Hindu church
I am pretty sure the name for the combination of Confucianism and Marxism is Confucian Marxism for example
sure, but to me i think there is value in having a general term for an interpretation of religion through marxism. there isnt anything inherently christian about the name ‘liberation theology’.
Honestly, I’ve just been reading the classic Tao texts. It’s been a personal project and I don’t think there’s much of an academic interest. At least until I saw this.
Best way would be to just read the Dao De Jing (essentially a short collection of poetic philosophical points), which is the core text, and then the Zhuangzi (a larger text created over centuries, expanding on the topic with various characters - quite humorous). With the latter, being the product of dozens of authors, in a few chapters you can feel the philosophy being bent towards “actually, political hierarchies and wealth disparity are natural law and therefore cool”, but they rather stand out.
Ursula Le Guin’s translation is my favorite, but the differences between translations are interesting - both texts have a lot of fun with the ambiguity of language.
Anything you recommend reading if I want to explore the intersection of Taoism and Marxism?
Can tell you that Mao created a Criticize lin, criticize Confucius campaign. Westerners take this as destroying eastern religions, but on the contrary it was designed to center Marxist aspects of specific religions in discussions and teachings. Essentially it was an extension of liberation theology
That sounds like a worthwhile read, is there a good starting point for that specific part of the topic?
idk if there are many english speaking texts relating to this. here is course material on this subject from beijing university. you could run it through a translator
http://www.shehui.pku.edu.cn/upload/editor/file/20220118/20220118160716_5274.pdf
here is a website that has the pdf if you wanna just use a browser’s translate option
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4Mjg3MTYyMA==&mid=409949253&idx=1&sn=22f3ed891c8c6e04825a56881644d130
Thanks for the link, it’s a good starting point.
no prob, strongly recommend using baidu and translators for research. there are a lot of lies that the west tells that are very easily verifiable just with a quick search on baidu (recently there was a campaign about how china bans winnie the pooh. you can search it on baidu and find millions of examples of winnie the pooh in china. the only ‘banning’ of winnie the pooh was a racist caricature and it was on only one social media site where it was a problem). there are also lots of lies about china banning certain video games and movies, when you can easily search and find it false.
that sounds like a really clunky metaphor that’s trying too hard to Christianise Chinese religion. They’re entirely different
im of the opinion that liberation theology is just interpreting any religion through a marxist lens, not just the natopedia definition that purely is about christianity. its a thing that happens a lot and to constrain the definition to christianity is weird
But liberation theology was the actual name of a Christian movement that sought to do that. When other religions do the same thing I think it should have its own name because it’s weird to just give them all the Christian name for it. It’s like saying you’ve been going to a Hindu church
I am pretty sure the name for the combination of Confucianism and Marxism is Confucian Marxism for example
that’s what this paper from a Chinese university’s school of Marxism studies called it anyway
sure, but to me i think there is value in having a general term for an interpretation of religion through marxism. there isnt anything inherently christian about the name ‘liberation theology’.
Honestly, I’ve just been reading the classic Tao texts. It’s been a personal project and I don’t think there’s much of an academic interest. At least until I saw this.
there is academic interest in china at least. in the west, its only used as a vector of attack on china in most books
Best way would be to just read the Dao De Jing (essentially a short collection of poetic philosophical points), which is the core text, and then the Zhuangzi (a larger text created over centuries, expanding on the topic with various characters - quite humorous). With the latter, being the product of dozens of authors, in a few chapters you can feel the philosophy being bent towards “actually, political hierarchies and wealth disparity are natural law and therefore cool”, but they rather stand out.
Ursula Le Guin’s translation is my favorite, but the differences between translations are interesting - both texts have a lot of fun with the ambiguity of language.