ABSTRACT
Widespread teaching of “Chinese civilization” began with the introduction of Western Civilization courses at American colleges in the 1920s. In such courses, other “civilizations”, Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, served mainly as a foil for “the West.” Civilizational consciousness constantly changes in response to epistemic and sociopolitical changes. Calling pre-Qín civilizational consciousness “Chinese civilization” would potentially perpetuate the misleading and essentializing idea of a millennia-old “Chinese civilization.” The history-word-by-word approach to the study of epistemic changes in collective consciousness through lexical change provides a framework that allows to formulate specific hypotheses about the emergence of civilizational consciousness in early China. The history-word-by-word approach allows to bridge hermeneutical gaps between different languages and time periods. This imagined dialogue between the Warring States thinkers who composed the Analects and Adam Smith is not a frivolous exercise.
