"The Chinese think, act, and feel almost exactly like us; and we soon find that we are perfectly like them...

"The Chinese think, act, and feel almost exactly like us; and we soon find that we are perfectly like them, except that all they do is more clear, pure, and decorous, than with us."

"With them all is orderly, citizen-like, without great passion or poetic flight"

"They likewise differ from us in that with them external nature is always associated with the human figures. You always hear the goldfish splashing in the pond, the birds are always singing on the bough; the day is always serene and sunny, the night is always clear. There is much talk about the moon; but it does not alter the landscape, its light is conceived to be as bright as day itself; and the interior of the houses is as neat and elegant as their pictures."

"Then there is an infinite number of legends which are constantly introduced into the narrative and are applied almost like proverbs ... There are innumerable other legends, all turning upon what is moral and proper. It is by this severe moderation in everything that the Chinese Empire has sustained itself for thousands of years, and will endure hereafter."


Is he recht?

Since China is currently ruled by a Communist bureaucracy and spent part of the 20th century enthusiastically burning their own culture heritage I'm going to say no.

...

Heaven smiles upon the Communist Party. They are enjoying its mandate.

>"Philosophy itself is criticism and critical science—and nothing whatever besides!" This evaluation of philosophy may enjoy the applause of every positivist in France and Germany (and it might possibly have flattered the heart and taste of Kant: one should recall the titles of his principal works): our new philosophers will still say: critics are the philosophers' instruments and for that reason very far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great Chinaman of Königsberg was only a great critic. —

>It's a Nietzsche calls Kant a chink episode

why did he love this insult so much?

just for the bantz

>"the Chinese is a more successful type [of human animal], namely more durable, than the European." — Nietzsche

China as an empire was literally founded on burning its cultural heritage. It's more like a cycle of rising from the ashes.

Mao did nothing wrong.

>Mao did nothing wrong

I agree with you, obviously nothing good comes from democracy and liberalism. Just look at an India today vs China.

However I was mainly responding to:
>the Chinese Empire has sustained itself for thousands of years, and will endure hereafter."

It seems ridiculous to call the current Communist state a continuation of the Qing Empire.

>cultural heritage is necessarily worth preserving
It's not and never has been. Even if it was it's impossible to do so. Let me clue you in on something: if the "traditional" society was so great (what the Qing and the Nationalists thought it was anyway) the Chinese themselves (Han and otherwise) wouldn't have "enthusiastically burn[ed] their own cultural heritage". The fact is it was the sterile bureaucratic shit you lambast and communism was the necessary good that revitalized the nation (the peoples) toward action. It always amuses me that the Misty Poets wanted the pity parade to make us think it was so bad to make an honest day's living shoveling shit in the communes when their poetry is the literary equivalent of shoveling shit, except that it produced nothing of value.

What's funny is that Chinese philosophy itself demands that this is true.

here, just note it seems I misread your tone in the original post based on

Maoists never cease to amuse.

>our new philosophers will still say: critics are the philosophers' instruments and for that reason very far from being philosophers themselves!

Accurate. Critics are merely tools, who dissect or vivisect with the thought of others.

A philosopher not only destroys, but creates. Nietzsche very strongly emphasized the latter.

I do find it amusing that Nietzsche never created anything, whereas Maoists created something gargantuan of great importance. Arguably Freddy didn't even destroy anything, and if he did it was only an abstract thing.

It's not surprising that Europeans were obsessed with the idea of a Roman Empire that didn't collapse. The only problem is that the notion of an eternal Chinese state is nonsense. Even by China's own biased reckoning, the period from AD 220 to 590 was marked by total disunion. After that comes a shaky attempt to stitch the Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing into a continuous succession, with minor wars of succession in between. In reality, most of these dynasties retained actual suzerainty over China for significantly shorter lengths, and centuries of civil war and disunion accumulated during periods of nominal imperial rule.
China's cultural hegemony is easily attested, but do not mistake that for stability and harmony at the political or level.

Also, since I'm here: acupuncture and cupping are a load of obvious quackery that were consistently banned in imperial China and only gained currency when Mao decided to promote them as cheap alternatives to real medicine.

>I do find it amusing that Nietzsche never created anything

Only a philosophy that has yet to be surpassed, much as 20th century post-modernists/structuralists have tried.

>whereas Maoists created something gargantuan of great importance

Their gargantuan death toll?

He forgot to mention that part where they constantly spit on the ground.

And the endless revolts, and famines, and fundamental inability to culturally synthesize in the Hegelian context

>inability to culturally synthesize in the Hegelian context
a.k.a. not retarded

The Middle Kingdom is no more, Chang

Westerners are exploiting you for your labor and you love it

say what you will about china but at least we're not getting BLACKED :)

>Only a philosophy that has yet to be surpassed
Absolutely kek'd

>Their gargantuan death toll?
And their far more gargantuan birth toll and utilization of an actually life-affirming philosophy that created a materially existing and persisting superpower. Whereas Nietzy gets to die a syphilitic death having accomplished a cacophony of cobbled words that sit on the shelves of neutered academics whose great claim to their lives is talking about how Nietzsche said this or that. Even if you want to pretend to be asspained about le Monster Mao meme and cry crocodile tears about lots of people dying (I'll take Chinese History for $100) at least the Chinese of the Revolutionary period had the balls to live dangerously.

I'm interested in this part specifically:

>"Then there is an infinite number of legends which are constantly introduced into the narrative and are applied almost like proverbs ... There are innumerable other legends, all turning upon what is moral and proper. It is by this severe moderation in everything that the Chinese Empire has sustained itself for thousands of years, and will endure hereafter."

How much veracity is in this statement?

The Chinese don't have a Bible or a Koran to get their sociocultural framework from. Instead, they have stuff like "Sage Lao was once walking in a forest when he saw a grasshopper. The grasshopper was soon eaten by a mantis, which was in turn eaten by a spider, which was in turn eaten by a bird. When Sage Lao visited a monastery that evening, the monks offered him their most choice meats, but he refused each one for a bowl of rice."

Chinks are fucking soulless, have you ever gazed into the eye of a random prole chink? They don't give a fuck about life, they only care about themselves and surviving the harsh communist climate.

There are lots of good chinks, especially in America, but China has seriously fallen from grace ever since shitty communism. I fucking hate communism.

I would say that of the japanese, but i'm not sure about the chinese

>Their gargantuan death toll?

Muh Gorillions maymay

>Estimates of the death toll, including both civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly according to different sources.[146] These ranged upwards to several millions, but an estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum figure.[147] In Mao's Last Revolution (2006), Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals assert that in rural China alone some 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly the same number permanently injured.[148] In Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that as many as 3 million people died in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.[149] The true figure of those who were persecuted or died during the Cultural Revolution however may never be known, since many deaths went unreported or were actively covered up by the police or local authorities. The state of Chinese demographics record at the time was also very poor, and the PRC has been hesitant to allow formal research into the period.[150]

>Country is so shit you can't even keep track of who lives or dies

Christ, glad I'm not Chinese

That's because whereas most Europeans were modernized over a few centuries, most of the Chinese were modernized over a few decades. The proles are medieval men walking like zombies around their pseudocommunist state.

Somehow Japan didn't face a similar fate. Possibly because Japan kept its culture and China burned its.

Only the works produced during the dynasties are worth reading, like the 4 classics. "Communism"/state capitalism ruined China.

>have you ever gazed into the eye of a random prole chink? They don't give a fuck about life, they only care about themselves and surviving the harsh communist climate.
have you ever been to china? i doubt it. i was there for 3 months as a clueless laowai and people went out of their way to help me all the time.

The huge number of proverbs bit was (and still is) right. Not sure how he goes from that to 'severe moderation'.
>the Chinese Empire has sustained itself for thousands of years
was entirely wrong- there were multiple different empires periodically collapsing with great violence, which would tend to cast doubt on the whole 'moderation' thing.

But then he was writing at a time when China was largely a blank canvas for European intellectuals to project their ideals on, so how 'accurate' his ideas were is kind of besides the point.

>Nietzsche very strongly emphasized the latter.
>muh create your own values

yeah no

>at least the Chinese of the Revolutionary period had the balls to live dangerously.

Unlike you.

And of course, the Chinese you're referring to are invariably those who sucked the most revolutionary cock. Your average Jiao was either starved to death or shot.

>Your average Jiao