Contingency in the Humanities (Renwen 人文): A Transwar Japanese Reading of the Han Dynasty Historian Sima Qian

This essay explores the moral implications of knowledge production about the totality of the man-made world by considering the role that contingency plays in it. It builds its argument on an examination of the ancient Chinese history Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian through the lens of its reading by the Japanese writer Takeda Taijun straddling the end of WWII. Takeda's transwar reading at once upholds Sima Qian's humanistic undertaking of restoring intelligibility to the world to counter its ruthless contingencies but also rejects any normalization of that meaning-making endeavor. Takeda's engagement with Records suggests that humanism should affirm the irreducible plurality of its practices originating in the human condition, on which historical contingencies inflict diverse sufferings. It calls on humanistic inquiry to open itself toward, for example, engagement with renwen—the modern term for the "humanities" across East Asian languages with roots in antiquity and two-millennia-old transregional trajectories in the region. Renwen resists easy translation into the established discourses of modern humanism, prompting us to consider what it means to expand knowledge to the historical world as a whole.