Only by re-situating classical texts within the specific social conditions in which they emerged can scholars truly take the pulse of civilization and draw on its enduring spiritual resources. Photo: IC PHOTO

Classical studies have drawn growing scholarly attention in recent years, yielding substantial progress in the collation of classical texts and the elucidation of their meanings and underlying principles. Yet these achievements should not obscure a fundamental point: The ancients did not leave behind a storehouse of ready-made, directly applicable answers, but a rich intellectual treasury whose insights remain inexhaustible. Only by re-situating classical texts within the specific social conditions in which they emerged can scholars truly take the pulse of civilization and draw on its enduring spiritual resources.

Every classical text is a product of particular social conditions. Classical studies cannot be conducted in a historical vacuum, nor can scholars engage in abstract speculation detached from “social formations.” A core concept of historical materialism, social formations offer a general account of the ways societies exist and develop. In this framework, human society advances from lower to higher stages through five successive formations, each representing the unity of an economic base—corresponding to a given level of productive forces—with its superstructure.

The “Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought” in China’s pre-Qin period (prior to 221 BCE) emerged amid a profound transition from kinship-based clan society to territorially organized society. Ancient Greek philosophy, by contrast, took shape within the commercial and artisanal spheres of the city-state. Both traditions were deeply rooted in the productive forces, relations of production, and sociopolitical structures of their respective historical contexts. Social formations fundamentally shape ideas and beliefs, just as the economic base profoundly influences the contours of the superstructure. To wrench classical texts from their social soil and treat them as absolute truths beyond all constraints of time and place is to risk obscuring the realities of history and misreading the wisdom of the ancients, leaving classical studies rootless and without foundation.

Carrying forward a civilization’s legacy therefore requires a scientific mode of thought and conscious vigilance against two extreme tendencies. The first is a nihilistic form of historical relativism. Different peoples and nations begin from different conditions, and their historical transformations do not follow identical paths. This does not mean, however, that civilizational development has no objective patterns, or that history is merely a meaningless accumulation of accidents. Denying the broad tendency of social formations to evolve from lower to higher stages would deprive historical judgment of an axiological criterion and civilizational inheritance of a secure foundation.

The uninterrupted continuity of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years itself refutes such relativism. A sound understanding of the dialectical relationships between productive forces and relations of production, and between the economic base and the superstructure, is essential to grasping the essence of the materialist conception of history and avoiding disorientation amid the complexity of historical phenomena.

The second extreme tendency is vulgar economic determinism. The economic base plays a fundamental role in shaping the superstructure, but this does not justify reducing the complexity of history to a single linear logic. Political organization, family structure, kinship relations, religious belief, and other forces also exert important influence on social development. Explaining every phenomenon of classical civilization solely in economic terms, while disregarding the relative independence and agency of politics, culture, and spiritual life, inevitably produces a narrow and mechanistic understanding of history.

The ultimate purpose of classical studies is the illumination of both the present and the future. Only by deeply understanding the laws governing the evolution of social formations and firmly grounding classical wisdom in material conditions and social relations can the past be brought to bear on the present and valuable elements of foreign culture be incorporated into the Chinese context.

Yang Bo is a research fellow from the Institute of Ancient History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.