Zhiyuan Cui
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Zhiyuan Cui is Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management and one of the founding faculty members of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Tsinghua University. His research has focused on the contemporary political economy of China’s reform and opening up to the world since 1978 as well as the relevance of the China’s development to the theory of modernity in general. He is currently serving as an Academic Committee member for the Holberg Prize and the Falling Wall Prize.
In November 2023, he joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
Political Economy of the contingent origins of institutions (such as why Adam Smith was against Limited Liability Corporations), philosophy of modernity.
Interrogating Modernity: Hans Blumenberg and Roberto Unger Compared
Habermas says in his new book “Also a History of Philosophy, Volume 1: The Project of a Genealogy of Post-metaphysical Thinking” (the English version to be published in November 2023) that Blumenberg and himself are only two the 20th century philosophers who justified the value of modernity. In his “The Legitimacy of the Modern Age” (first published in Germany in 1966), Blumenberg defines the modernity as “the second overcoming of Gnosticism”. The deep implications of this intriguing conception of modern age have only recently been appreciated in the English language academic world. For example, the new development of ChatGPT-4 made some scholars realizing that Blumenberg can be viewed as a pioneer of the second wave of AI Critique. In my introduction to Unger’s “Politics: The Central Texts” (Verso, 1997, edited by me), I already explored the relevance of Blumenberg’s theory of modern age as “possible progress” (not “necessary progress”) for understanding Unger’s theory of politics as “society-making”. However, there are other areas of similarity as well as difference between Blumenberg and Unger’s respective theories of modernity. Based on my recent Chinese writings on both authors, I intend to write a systematic essay during my stay in the IEA comparing two theories and their implications for the transformation of the current institutions in the world.
Key Publications
Zhiyuan Cui (with Adam Przeworski, et al), “Sustainable Democracy”, Cambridge University Press, 1995
Zhiyuan Cui, “Institutional Innovations and the Second Thought Liberation”, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1997
Zhiyuan Cui, “The Dilemma of the Invisible Hand Paradigm”, Economic Science Publisher, 1999 (in Chinese)
Zhiyuan Cui, “Petty Bourgeois Socialism Manifesto: A Collections of Essay 2004-2022”, forthcoming both in Beijing and Hong Kong (in Chinese)
 Seventh session of the "Paris IAS Ideas" talk series, with the participation of Zhiyuan Cui, Tsinghua University, Beijing |
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