Introduction: five trends in confucian studies

 
 
Journal of East-West Thought 
GLOBALIZING CONFUCIANISM: THE 
RUDAO
(
儒道
) 
John H. Berthrong

I. Globalization 
Globalization is a complex concept.
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Moreover, it is a controversial idea, and like all 
contested and intricate concepts, simply trying to define the term is difficult. Along 
with the obvious spatial metaphor of encompassing the whole world, literally 
globalization, we also need to consider the temporal dimensions of the term. For 
instance, W. C. Smith (1981) begins his study of world/global theology by telling a 
fascinating story of globalization, a particular process that took more than two 
thousand years work its way around the world. There was certainly a great deal of 
interaction among cultures prior to the modern world, though admittedly the speed 
and intensity of the contact has increased dramatically. One of the interesting 
questions is: does the increase in the velocity and quantity of transmission of 
everything collated by the idea of globalization really mean a complete change from 
the past? Is globalization a completely new event in the history of the world? 
Smith (1981, 7-11) begins and ends his story in India. He starts with a story 
drawn from pre-Aryan India about a fascinating case of what we would now call 
globalization—perhaps. Smith commences with an account of the religious 
transformation of the like of Leo Tolstoi. As Tolstoi wrote in his 
Confessions
, he 
found one story, a Christian hagiography of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat that changed 
his life. It is a story of a young prince, Josaphat, who goes into the desert and is 
converted by a Sinai desert monk, Barlaam—a clear reference, as we will see of a 
Buddhist bodhisattva tale. The version that Tolstoi read probably came to Russia from 
Mt. Athos in a Greek recension attributed to John of Damascus or from a older 
Georgian Christian Georgian tradition. 
The story of spiritual discernment was just beginning its global journey. The 
Georgian version depended, in turn, on an Arabic version. The basic story stays the 
same: a young prince converted to a noble and more ascetic religion by a wandering 

Dr. JOHN H. BERTHRONG, Boston University School of Theology. Email: [e-mail]. 
1
Chapter 9 of Nayan Chanda, 
Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and 
Warriors Shaped Globalization
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) provides an 
excellent history of the use of the term globalization. The 'Introduction' of Jurgen Osterhammel 
and Niels P. Petersson’s short history of globalization (2003, 7-8) also provides a good 
overview of various uses of the term globalization as well. What is clear here is that 
globalization is now something confined to the last decade of the 20
th
Century and the 
beginning of the 21
st
Century. It is a process, an idea with a long history. I want to thank Dr. 
David Scott for his valuable bibliographical aid in identifying a range of discussions of and 
debates about the definition of globalization. 

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