孔飞力

孔飞力，原名菲利普·阿尔登·孔恩（英语：Philip Alden Kuhn，1933年9月9日—2016年2月11日），中文名孔复礼（来自自论语：“克己复礼”），又名孔飞力（访问中国大陆时，为了避免文革遗风“批孔”的不当联想，在中国大陆采用直译），美国汉学专家，生于英格兰伦敦，是哈佛大学希根森（Francis Lee Higginson）历史讲座教授、东亚文明与语言系主任。

生平

孔飞力1933年9月9日出生于英国伦敦。

1950年，孔飞力毕业于美国华府的威尔逊高级中学，并考入哈佛大学，师从人类学家克莱德·克拉克洪教授学习人类学，并受到社会学家诺曼·包拔、政治学家山缪·比尔的影响，使用社会学研究历史。

1954年，孔飞力在英国伦敦大学东方与非洲学院学习日语与日本史。1955年到1958年，孔飞力毕业后到美国服兵役，在此期间，他在加利福尼亚州的美军语言学校学习中文与汉字。

1958年，孔飞力在乔治城大学攻读研究所，获硕士学位。1959年，孔飞力入哈佛大学，师从费正清和史华慈学习中国历史，并且在1964年获得哈佛大学历史与远东语言的博士学位。

评价

哈佛大学教授孔飞力、加州大学伯克利分校教授魏斐德和耶鲁大学教授史景迁一般被称为北美汉学三杰，属于北美汉学谱系中继第一代费正清和第二代列文森、史华慈、芮玛丽之后的第三代。史景迁以叙事和文笔见长，孔飞力以方法和视角见长，而魏斐德以选题和史料见长。

著作

《中华帝国晚期的叛乱及其敌人：1796-1864年的军事化与社会结构》(1970)

《叫魂：1768年中国妖术大恐慌》(1990)

《华人在他乡：中华近现代海外移民史》（2009）

《中国现代国家的起源》（2013）

Philip A. Kuhn (September 9, 1933 – February 11, 2016) was an American historian of China and the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

Kuhn was praised by his colleagues. Frederic Wakeman described Kuhn as "one of the West's premier China historians." Stanford University historian Harold L. Kahn added that “Every twenty years, like clockwork, Philip Kuhn produces a book that we are required to read. What he says sticks to the ribs and gives much pleasure,” and Yale University historian Peter Perdue wrote that Kuhn "shaped the field of Qing history more profoundly than any other scholar of his generation."

Personal life

Kuhn was born on September 9, 1933, in London. He was the elder son of Ferdinand and Delia Kuhn, to whom he dedicated his first book. His father had been bureau chief of the London Office of the New York Times and later served at the Washington Post. His mother was a writer who served as information director of the Office of Community War Services during World War II.

Kuhn attended Woodrow Wilson High School and then received his A.B. from Harvard College.

In 1954, Kuhn studied Japanese and Japanese history at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He enlisted in the United States Army, serving from 1955 to 1958. During this period, he studied Chinese and Chinese characters at the Defense Language Institute in California.

1958, Kuhn received his M.A. from Georgetown University, and 1959, Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University, where his dissertation advisor was John K. Fairbank. He married Sally Cheng (程吾) in the 1960s and had one son, Anthony Kuhn, a journalist.

That marriage dissolved in 1980. He also had a daughter, Deborah W. Kuhn, with his second wife Mary L. Smith.

Academic career

Kuhn taught at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1978 where he attained the rank of Associate Professor in the Department of History. While at Chicago, Kuhn published in 1970 Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796-1864 as part of the Harvard East Asian monograph series, which led to his being granted tenure and a full professorship.

In 1978 Kuhn returned to Harvard, where he succeeded his mentor John King Fairbank. From 1980 to 1986, Kuhn served as director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Impact and evaluations

A pioneer of social history in Chinese history, Kuhn helped re-evaluate the "impact-response" school of Western scholarship on China associated with his mentor, John Fairbank. Gong Yongmei, a researcher at the Center for China Studies Abroad at East China Normal University, observed that in his early work, Kuhn followed in the steps of his mentors, Fairbank and Benjamin I. Schwartz, but where they saw the modern history of China as a story of decline and stagnation, he stressed the new social and political forms that were created internally, not imported from the west, and that progressed toward modernization. That is, he did not favor either the traditional Chinese framework of the dynastic cycle or the Cold War American framework of Western impact and China's response. Kuhn's dissertation research started with local militarization that put power in the hands of local gentry at the expense of the central government.