Books by Benjamin I. Schwartz

The center of this prodigious work of scholarship is a fresh examination of the range of Chinese thought during the formative period of Chinese culture. Schwartz looks at the surviving texts of this period with a particular focus on the range of diversity to be found in them, but also considers views which stress the unity of Chinese culture.

Yen Fu spent years translating and commenting on the work of Western thinkers like Spencer, Huxley, Adam Smith, Mill, and Montesquieu. Schwartz examines the modifications and consequent revaluation of these familiar works as they were presented to their new audience and analyzes the impact of this Western thought on the Chinese culture of the time.

These writings, representing over a generation of work by one of our most acute commentators on Chinese history, are collected here for the first time and introduced with a masterly prologue. Benjamin Schwartz brings all of the complexity surrounding modernity to his analysis of the millennial political, social, and cultural history of China.