[QUOTE=tomndebb]
No condescension intended. You did not appear to get my point–which could have been a result of your reading or my writing. I tried (unsuccessfully, I guess) to use a neutral syntax.
I suspect that you are still not understanding the point (regardless whose “fault” that might be).
Secularism arose in Christian Europe on its own. It was not imported from any other part fo the world.
In China, (and the numerous regions of the world operating under Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Animist, and (in a few locations) Christian oriented governments), the idea of a secular state only arrived after European settlers or colonists began introducing that concept as it took hold and began to flourish in the late 18th century.
This is not a claim that no one else was “smart” enough to do it. This is not a claim of any sort of European superiority of thought. It is entirely possible that given some number of years undisrupted by foreign invasion, every religious-dominated society might have arrived at the concept of secular government, eventually.
The reality is that they did not. The Chinese bureacracy that controlled China (both with and in spite of the emperor/emperess), as their world collapsed around them through the 19th century, were thoroughly Confucian, as were other nativist movements that led to uprisings such as that of the Boxer Rebellion.
You seem to be saying, at one point, that I was making a claim that the Chinese had no hand in the process of reorganizing the country. I am not sure where you got that notion. Secular governments were implemented in China, (and India and the lands to the southeast of China and–to a more limited extend–the Middle East), by the people who lived there. No other suggestion has been made. However, the ideas on which they acted, especially the idea that a nation could be governed without the direct involvement of its religious institution, were borrowed from European principles where that particular notion had first arisen.
It is analogous to written language. A great many societies developed their own written languages in their own ways as soon as they were introduced to the concept of writing “words” down in some form. Very few societies, however, actually invented the idea of writing. It is my contention that secularism appears to have only been invented once. (And, again, this makes no comment on the quality of other societies. The fact that European society was developing secularism at exactly the same time that it was imposing its rule, (by conquest, colonization, or settlement), across the rest of the world meant that no other society happened to have had the opportunity, not that no other society was sufficiently “bright” to give it a try.)
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. That’s a much more refined concept than I got from your earlier statements, but that’s the peril of message board discussion – lack of context and visual or audible cues. My apologies for the snippy responses. Guess I was reading implications that weren’t there. I’ll have to do a little more pondering and probably refresh some long-neglected reading to see if I really agree with you, but at first blush the idea seems to have merit.
Off on a vaguely related tangent, what’s your opinion on the importance of the individual in history? Do you think individuals have substantial influence, or are you of the opinion that societal forces would tend to create someone to fill even a very distinctive role if a particular individual were not available to do so? The way you’ve sketched out the ideas above seems to indicate the latter, but I don’t want to presume at this point (given my track record in the thread so far).
