I. Book Structure and Basic Introduction
The book is a revised edition of theEnd of Inertia: The Historical Value of Choices in Lu Xun’s Culture Choicepublished in 1999. The revised edition consists of twelve chapters and changes greatly with more than one-third of words added.
The book sets the historical context of Lu Xun’s cultural choice as the ideological background. It argues the composition of modern consciousness of Lu Xun’s enlightenment, religious view and scientific view, the logical form of the dialectical thinking, the artistic transformation of cultural choice, the dimension of human character and epochal character, the teleology and methodology of ‘Copinism’, and the ideological value of the translation activities during the Chinese modernization and related contemporary meaning. Meanwhile, the book also makes comments on the ‘Small Lu Xun’ and ‘Big Lu Xun’ stemming from Lu Xun researches and Lu Xun’s thoughts evaluation, as well as on the research transition from ‘Learning Lu Xun’ to ‘Lu Xun Research”.
II. Primary Innovation and Academic Significance
The books gives an in-depth and overall analysis of the ideological relation between the two elementary propositions of “Ren Geren” and “Zhang Lingming”: Uniting enlightenment with moral redemption to show the ultimate topic ‘To the Sum Total of Human Nature”. The book points out that the criticism of Lu Xun’s “Theory of Special National Condition” and the concept of “The World citizen” are the unity under the diversity of human culture. The book starts from the restudy of the “radically anti-tradition” and for the first time puts forward the concept of “methodology” and “ontology” of the criticism of Lu Xun culture and cultural construction. The book, against two extremities of the derogation of Lu Xun’s ideological value and the ‘safeguard’ of ideologicalization, objectively analyzes the complicated situation of Lu Xun’s judgement in the 20thcentury and proposes concepts of “Small Lu Xun” and “Big Lu Xun”.
Peer scholars have set a high value on the book and delivered book review in journals such asGuangming Daily, Modern Chinese Literature StudiesandLu Xun Research Monthly, etc. The book has been reviewed and cited for more than 20 times.Sun Yushi, renowned scholar from Peking University, reckons that “the original book has showed author’s powerful ability in theoretical critical thinking as well as creativeness in academic research.” The argument on the methodological value of Lu Xun’s “radically anti-tradition” during the culture transformation has appraised by another distinguished scholar Zhang Mengyang from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences “the argument is of most polemics and critical thinking”, he adds, “the book displays the effectiveness of integrative thinking. From this point of view, the chapter of the book offers the most complete argument that I have never read before.” The argument of “Copinism” in the book has also won the praise of the well-known scholar Wang Jipeng. “It is a great masterpiece that incorporates the most dialectical, deep-going and feelingly views of Lu Xun’s East-West cultural concept,” Wang said “We have proposed that we are entering the deepening stage of the comparative study between Lu Xun’s thoughts and foreign culture, and Zhang’s book is absolutely the primary landmark of the beginning of the stage.”