Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation offers a historical narrative of the development of the Confucian concept of tianxia (“All-Under-Heaven”) as a resource for cross-cultural debates about global justice. Current studies of global justice generally follow the logic of western liberal thought, paying little attention to non-western intellectual and cultural traditions. By setting out a novel interpretation of tianxia theory and giving voice to Chinese tradition on this topic, the dissertation sets the stage for further cross-cultural exchange, makes a contribution to the field of comparative political theory, and contrasts with other recent accounts of tianxia theory. It studies the development of tianxia theory in three periods: (1) the Western Zhou Dynasty and Spring & Autumn/Warring States period, through the texts ascribed to Confucius and Mencius; (2) the Qin Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, as represented in works attributed to Dong Zhongshu; and (3) the late Qing Dynasty, as expressed in Kang Youwei’s The Book of Great Unity (Da Tongshu).The dissertation’s core argument is that tianxia, as both a normative ideal and a system of political rule, evolved through a dialectical interaction between theory and practice. This dynamic enabled a robust, stable, and adaptive relationship between core and periphery in a political order that covered a vast territory and encompassed diverse peoples. Tianxia theory originated in the political practice of the Western Zhou Dynasty; following the political collapse of the first tianxia system, Confucius and Mencius reconstructed its logic at the level of theory. The establishment of the Qin Dynasty marked the birth of the ancient Chinese empire, setting the scene for a new tianxia system with the central kingdom of China at its core. In the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu produced a new theoretical understanding of tianxia, providing an intellectual and ideological infrastructure that supported the exploration of the ancient Silk Road and the tributary system. In the late 19th century, when the Chinese empire was challenged by the imperial ambitions of Western states, the ancient tianxia system came to an end. However, Kang Youwei’s revival of the concept of great unity demonstrated the possibility of a modern tianxia theory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".