VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 12
Against Five Hundred Years, the Difference in Range of Sight
The first three Parts finished enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority. This Part answers a fair question: where do the claims of this book stand in the history of human political thought, and are they new or old? This chapter enters through the difference in range of sight. Three sections. The first sets out the abundance of five hundred years of political thought, a deep company of thinkers, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx, Weber, all given honorifics and credit, while noting objectively that across five hundred years their central predictions have mostly not come fully to pass, and the structural limits behind that. The second is about the most fundamental difference, the range of sight: the range of the great thinkers was mainly five hundred years plus a European and American center, while the range this book attempts is four thousand years rooted in China's twenty-two-hundred-year tradition, and once the range widens, the picture changes. The third lays the book's first three core claims, enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority, one by one against that company, to show one thing: this book does not overturn those who came before, it enters from a different angle, through the root structure of politics. This chapter shows one thing: this is not a contest with the great thinkers, it is an honest placing of this book inside the coordinate frame of five hundred years, letting the reader judge for themselves whether it is worth handing down.
Chapter contents
Section One. The abundance and the limits of five hundred years of political thought
Section Two. Four thousand years against five hundred, widen the range and the picture changes
Section Three. Seven core claims, part one, enfeoffment, the examination, centralized authority
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.