ABSTRACT
Reflecting on the horrors of world history and especially the catastrophes of the twentieth century, Reemtsma takes issue with Hegel's philosophy of history: the second half of the twentieth century has bankrupted Hegel's hope for History. Among the century's terrible events, the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in China must take its place. It is both an example of the many Chinese troubles of the period and their climax. The reach of the Cultural Revolution, impacting on almost all social classes throughout the country, was vast, its course prolonged and bewildering. This chapter begins surveying the meanings of the word "contingency" and traces how it has been defined in Western theories. It explores the concept of fate in Chinese philosophy and its affinity to the contingency idea. The conceptions of fate show that Chinese philosophy, despite the absence of the concept of contingency, has its own ways of dealing with the fact of contingency or unpredictable reversals.
