英文摘要 |
In reviewing the past, Mou Zongsan’s Self Presentation at the Age of Fifty (Wushi zishu), with the tone of affection, evokes and reconstructs his memory in terms of expressing the affections in a repetitious way. Grounded in articulating feelings, his work stimulates readers’ imagination through its disposition in rhetoric. One may take Self Presentation at the Age of Fifty as preachment, for it reveals a process of forming oneself in recollection and testifying oneself to achieve the authentic way of life. The friends, the teachers, and the enemies mentioned in the preachment constitute the elements of a community of memory. The analogy between the individual and the nation indicates a parallel to that of the community of memory. Besides the wisdom or intelligible destiny relevant to the community, there are affective connections evoked by the rhetoric of memory. Through the analysis of the biographical discourse, we find, in the case of Mou Zongsan, the overlap between Chinese modernity (culturally and nationally) and the individual history. Mou’s preaching strategy responds to the challenge of modernity in exposing some historical ruptures and personal experiences on the way to a self-diagnostic. Viewed by this perspective, the text of Mou provides an excellent material for considering the relation between philosophical style of writing and modernity. |