Thorsten J. Pattberg

Thorsten J. Pattberg (June 20, 1977 – ) is a German writer, philosopher, and cultural critic from Peking University. He is a disciple of Ji Xianlin and Tu Weiming.

Quotes

The East-West Dichotomy (2009)

The Conceptual Contrast Between Eastern And Western Cultures ISBN 7-1190-8582-4

• The East is more inductive, while the West is more deductive.
• Asia is the unifying one, while the West is the destructive other.
• The smallest leaves and twigs will bend and break... If our criteria was 'longevity', however, we would be safest to bet on the two great branches of World History, the East and the West.
• Of all the cultures that have disappeared from the world, not a single farewell letter or suicide note has been unearthed.
• Hey, China, You look like one of us. Look what we've made you!
• The cognitive preeminence of East-Asians in several intellectual and artistic disciplines is fascinating and terrifying to look at.
• The cultural and economic penalty for not recognizing East-Asian talent is immense.
• Communism and capitalism were made for scale and the masses, and scale and the masses are now in Asia.
• As a rule, for any society that is single-mindedly interested in its own promotion and thus survival, it would have to have a h uge population and it would have to send its people out, not letting too many others in.
• Western nations act as if they 'own' the globe, history, and all material objects.

Shengren (2011)

Above Philosophy And Beyond Religion ISBN 0-9842-0911-5

• There is nothing paradox about Confucius. He is a shengren.
• Any sage can do philosophy, but not every philosopher is a sage.
• China is not only a sage culture, but a living sage culture.
• Calling Confucius a philosopher is the wrong classification. Like calling a whale a fish.
• Every culture is unique, none is universal.
• Not a single Buddha, bodhisattva, or shengren in Europe, but in Asia: all philosophers and saints? What is that probability?
• The shengren is above philosophy and beyond religion. He is decisively not European. This will be read in a thousand years.
• The shengren is the single most important concept in Chinese history.
• The vocabularies in the world add up, they do not overlap. Translation is something else.
• Where can I find a Holy Man?

Knowledge is a Polyglot (2019)

Ch: Duo Yu De Zhishi

• The time is ripe for Chinese thought as a global quest for cultural pluralism.
• Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages.
• The Chinese dragon 'long' is essentially a force of the good.
• Let us build the fairest construction the world has ever seen - the global language.
• Revive Asian words and promote important key concepts!
• Capitalism forces nations to compete for market shares, natural resources, and human capital. Less obvious so, they also compete for names, brands, and terminologies.
• Yes, I am vulgar and fearless, and loudly indifferent to convention and limitation.
• Chinese holiday names are not dead yet, although I would hardly call them alive either: they are truly undead vocabularies.
• The English language is often hailed as the "international language", but it is not the global language. In fact, the global language will have to adopt tens of thousands of non-European terminologies.
• We must begin to find the untranslatables in each culture and return them to world history.

Essays (2013-2019)

• Ape Caesar is a universal leader, regardless of origin; he is willing to lead his species and shape the world, and subjugate it, if need be. He points to the future. Sun Wukong guards his people and their traditions. He looks back at their glorious past. --Films vis-a-vis nations' global role (2014), China Daily, Hong Kong
• Honesty and facts are almost irrelevant. Getting attention is key, causing offence is desirable, and provoking a physical response is the jackpot.
• A Greek invention, democracy is highly overrated. For starters, it never worked in Greece. The first philosophers were fascists and, even today, 2,500 years later, the 'cradle of Western civilization' remains an incompetent state. Roman emperors and a vengeful, authoritarian God are the true European success stories.
• The US, Germany, France and Britain were never real democracies. Far from it, the US is a plutocracy with a post-monarchal king's court (the White House) and a holy scripture (the constitution). The three others are tedious class societies.
• Sadly, a biblical sense of mission perverts all Western societies. There isn't a town square in Europe without a church. Priests are trained in national universities. The ruling party of Germany is the Christian Democratic Union. America is God's favorite nation. And we all live in the year 2019 of our Lord, Jesus Christ. -- Chinese are not so foolish as to worship at the church of Western values (2015), South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
• Harvard has de facto become a Chinese outpost. -- Oh, boy, do the Chinese love Harvard! (2014), China Daily, Beijing
• Just like in Europe in the feudal days, the typical Chinese public servant today drags himself around with little or no money, and thus stays close to his master. In the past, that was the emperor, now it is the party. Can China's new government end corruption? (2013), The Japan Times, Tokyo
• Division turned out to be humanity's strength, togetherness its arms. -- Reassure HK, remind Britain SAR no longer a British 'colony' (2019), China Daily, Beijing
• The West is the ultimate status upgrade to them [the Chinese]. -- The perils of being associated with China (2014), The Korea Times, Seoul
• Star Wars is Chinese Taoism. -- Star Wars is Taoism in American garb (2015), China Daily, Beijing

External links

• Profile at Foreign Language Press, Beijing
• Personal Website