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{{liuism}}
'''Liuism''' is a notoriously loosely defined but nevertheless influential Eastern political philosophy revolving around writings ascribed to the figure [[Liu Shuchuen]].
 
==Name and controversy==
'''Liuism''' (柳學, "Liu studies" or "Liu-ology", alternatively 柳渡思想 "Liu Du Thought"), known in eastern [[Ochran]] as '''naturalism''' (自然主義), is a {{wp|Nationalism|nationalist}} political and social {{wp|ideology}} advancing the {{wp|nation state}} as the primary if not the only constitution of all states, the {{wp|Anti-imperialism|unconditional dissolution of all empires}} and imperialistic entities, and the establishment of a virtuous society based upon the 'small community' which is built on various traditional local community organizations. The theoretical framework of Liuism is primarily attributed to late [[Jiang dynasty (Taizhou)|Jiang dynasty]] [[Taizhou|Zhou]] historian and philosopher [[Liu Du]], although several other figures such as [[Song Xiaojin]] and [[Weng Weizhi]] made important contributions to the ideology as well. Liuism, formed from the collision of the eastern and western worlds of the 19th century, had very diverse philosophical inspirations, ranging from classical {{wp|Confucianism}} to {{wp|Western philosophy|Belisarian}} thinking such as {{wp|traditionalist conservatism}} and {{wp|classical liberalism}}, though in Ochran it has usually been considered a {{wp|revolutionary}} ideology.
As Liu had a notoriously jestful, sometimes elusive writing style (and also due to the needs of evading {{wp|censorship}} and general {{wp|Persecution and the Art of Writing|persecution}}), using a large number of cultural and historical references seemingly unrelated with the subjects he discussed, often presenting contradictory views on the same subject, or avoiding presenting an outright subjective judgement, coherent attempts at interpreting a single 'Liuist' philosophy that can be easily utilized as an ideology should be considered foolhardy. The term, in less rigorous colloquial use, usually only refers to certain points or predictions Liu became popularly associated with or became symbolic of, mainly pending social catastrophe in large, deracinated, atomized societies and the praise of 'feudal order'. 'Exegesis' of Liu is a disputed subject among adherents of Liuism themselves, who emphasize Liu's views on different subjects depending on their own interests and the topic of the immediate debate. Liu himself frequently ridiculed attempts to profile his ostensibly expressed views into a single philosophy beyond what was seriously necessary and that which he considered important advice to his intended audience.
 
==Tenets==
==Theories==
===Worldview===
===Three worlds===
Descriptions of Liuism typically start with Liu's supposed theory of history, which was popularly attributed to {{wp|Oswald Spengler|unnamed person 1}}. However, other exegetes hold that Liu merely used unnamed person 1's terminology to convey some of his own ideas. In any case, Liu shared unnamed person 1's generally cyclical view of history, with great Cultures rising and inevitably falling, while every bit of their societies and cultural outputs reflected their development closely. Liu's own historiography and from whence political theory then uses a concept mostly (but perhaps inaccurately) translated as 'virtue', which is the ability to correctly judge the situation and use any means - even violence - to impose order, preserve one's own community and traditions, and uphold that which is good. This virtue underlies the vitality of cultures, and which has been accused of being, or variously internalized as, '{{wp|Virtù|Unnamed person 2ian}}'. The supposedly primitive but pure impulses of many cultures, in this system, are valued as sources of virtue, and are contrasted with the cynical judgement of rationalized intellectuals based on solely critique.
The Liuist worldview first divides the world of human civilization into three spheres:
*'''Virtuous society''', where the pure values of civilization (usually associated with those promoted by modern Belisarian philosophy) are upheld by principle by a network of actors and institutions that aim for and result in {{wp|common good}}, creating a moral order, and is the most ideal;
*'''Realist society''', where actors and institutions are not principally motivated by civilized values but still ensure a society operating on that basis through pragmatic maneuvering;
*'''Egoist society''', where civilized values are absent in favor of uninhibited self-interest. In this sphere benefit to one comes at expense of others, thus causing unjust dominance of materially stronger actors over weaker ones.
While virtuous society is seen as the most desirable, many forces can cause it to degenerate into realist and egoist structures. However, Liuism is also not pessimistic with regards to the so-called 'involution' of society, and rather considers movement of societies to be bidirectional, with equal possibility of less virtuous societies moving to more desirable states. Liuist historiography holds that humans have, through {{wp|Orthogenesis|progressive evolution}}, generally reached virtuous society starting from the egoist society of primitive hunting-gathering, but have also due to other factors either fell from this state or not reached ideality at all.
 
The 'civilized values' described in this worldview and acting as the metric for the classification of societies are {{wp|universal values}}, equatable to {{wp|Natural order (philosophy)|natural order}}, and reflect a sense of {{wp|providentialism}}. Although Liuists characterized it by the virtues described by Belisarian conservatism, they also hold its consistency with the original ideals of ancient eastern moralist philosophers, reflecting the 'natural' attribute of these values. Also influenced by [[hierosophy]] in Ochran, there were strong implications of the derivation of this ideality from the {{wp|Absolute (philosophy)|Absolute}} that the hierosophists called {{H:title|Gnon|Taiheng}}, and links were often made with {{wp|Christian ethics}}.


The egoist state of society, marked by its absence of high values, also was devoid of presence of the permanence that the natural order brought about. It is thus also chaotic and {{wp|Becoming (philosophy)|becoming}}, and identified with nothingness or void due to the absence of permanent institutions in these states. In contrast, virtuous society was identified with the permanence of being, and naturally associated with stability. Its 'present' nature was used to explain the cultural achievements supposedly only possible in the virtuous world.
As recognized by Liu through unnamed person 1 and other influences, the progress of cultures to civilizations involves rationalization, centralization, and other changes to society which come at the expense of its virtues, such as traditional social organizations or aristocracies being dissolved and weakened in favor of large bureaucratic empires. In agreement with unnamed person 1, Liu considered such changes often fateful, objective, and unable to be justifiably subject to value-judgements, but the preservation of society beyond the civilizational, imperial stage became a question, a particularly serious one in societies that have destroyed or were to destroy an inordinate proportion of virtuous institutions and local political agency. In this case his idea of virtue was relatively more malleable and subjectively manipulable than analogous concept of unnamed person 1 and similar historians, his writings on this matter generally regarded to amount to advising interested persons to activate and make use of virtue themselves, to create positive communities and institutions and to take the necessary action to preserve themselves in accordance with an implied value system. This is particularly relevant in the context of {{wp|China|unnamed country 1}}, the apparent social disintegration of which the vast majority of his writings tried to describe and warn against.
===Society===
Liu's study and translation of {{wp|England|Unnamed country 2}}'s history, particularly through {{wp|David Hume|Unnamed person 3}}, gave him a useful example for a virtuous society in his view. Through Unnamed person 3, Liu found the 'feudal' institutions of Unnamed country 2 a critical social glue and a source of its self-organization that allowed it to eventually create an unparalleled system of representative governance, which came to shape much of the world. Liu contrasted the institutions of Unnamed continent in general with that of (or the absence thereof in) Unnamed country 1, where any possible source of self-organization was destroyed by centralized, bureaucratic, imperial rule. Often agreeing with {{wp|Alexis de Tocqueville|Unnamed person 4}} and the general idea of conservatism, Liu thought that democracy and rule of law as vaunted by dissidents and intellectuals in Unnamed country 1 had distinct, inextricable cultural causes, and he advanced the analysis of such systems (and indeed of political matters in general) as being based on each society's own communities' dynamic interaction rather than focusing on the 'appearance' of democracy, which in echoing Unnamed person 1 and 4 he sometimes disapproved of in itself.


This basic framework of world-analysis is very similar to traditionalists and conservatives of Belisaria; indeed, western, Christian philosophy of a more traditional variant was a significant influence on Liuism's foundations.
Continuing on from Unnamed person 1 Liu found that the decay of virtue produced large numbers of '{{wp|fellah}}een' people, who had lost any cultural vitality or virtue and thus capability of self-organization. The atomization of these people eventually cause the downfall of a civilization, sometimes catastrophically; if it did happen, or if circumstances deteroriated for any other reason, this crisis was the focus of Liu's prescriptive praxeology.
===Small community===
{{see also|wp:Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft}}
The '''small community''' is the basis of the virtuous society. It is principally {{wp|Tribalism|tribalist}} and {{wp|Organicism|organicist}}, comprising the collaboration of willing people of a close identity and relationship in creating common good and public benefit based on civilized virtues. These manifest by natural processes, as a result of the corresponding natural order, and the presence of civilized values. Thus, small communities take form as 'original' and 'natural' relationships found in society. These include the family, the employer and employee, or the mentor and apprentice, which in their sum work to sustain the virtuous society. The small community is identified in typical analytical terms as the organizations from which all of these natural relationships emerge in, and thus can be equated to the foundation of society.


Although taking many forms across the world, small communities are all marked by their roots as the products of common identification, and a character as a successful creator of common good when working in optimal state. It is most commonly identified with extended familial organizations from {{wp|Chinese kin|zongzu clans}} in the Sinhai sphere to the {{wp|gens}} of ancient [[Latium]]. Such organizations are also referred to as 'social corporations', and are evaluated as the most important link of society (rather than the individual). A significant actor of these social corporations are what are known as 'local gentry' in Liuist terminology, typically found as landed social elites; according to Liuists a sense of {{wp|noblesse oblige}}, another manifestation of natural order and also of a kinly love for fellow small-community members, drives such gentries into socially beneficial acts, which in turn have sustained social cohesion. The small community is the optimal mode and most natural of social organizations, inevitably superior to all parallels and competitors.
===Praxis===
===Large community and the 'empire'===
Most of Liu's later writings discussed his idea of history and society considerably less and began focusing on one's ideal course of action to survive the local end-of-civilization crisis. This is almost entirely because of the circumstances of Unnamed country 1, and likewise it is for this reason many of Liu's writings from this period appear unrelated, contradictory, or extremely different in tone to earlier ones. Liu's relationship with his audience is disputed but it is generally taken as a starting point he wished to admonish them into action for their own good. This praxis typically involves conscious judgement of one's social circumstances, improvements to one's own character and person, and most importantly the undertaking of the critical virtuous actions needed to ensure one and one's community's survival. In the very particular context of Unnamed country 1 Liu both proposed and predicted the dissolution of the state into new nations based on traditional local cultural boundaries. There is a thematic emphasis on organization of paramilitaries and taking up of arms, the will to fight and die in a brutal merciless struggle, and confrontation of the possibility of the futility of one's efforts in these works, all for obvious reasons.
In opposition to the small community is the '''large community''', which is a more expansive agglomeration of less naturally-connected people (if they share any identification at all). The large community is impersonal, and typically its subjects remain within it for reasons of interest, rather than the bonds seen in small communities. Likewise, it is mechanical as opposed to the organic properties of the small community, based on largely {{wp|Mechanism (philosophy)|artificial organizations with little to do with each other}}, and relatively impermanent products of situations as opposed to the natural order and stability of the small community. A large community manifests as {{wp|bureaucracy}}, use of brute force to ensure its dominance and existence, as well as egoist use of its structures by unconnected persons for personal greed. It is thus also associated with the egoist society described in the three-world thesis, while in a realist society it already begins to develop. Large communities inevitably tend towards {{wp|social alienation}} because of their inorganicity, in response they increase force they use to remain in power, causing human welfare inside these structures to worsen as {{wp|totalitarianism}} manifests.


Later, less hierosophy-influenced Liuist ideologues advanced the {{wp|social cycle theory}} that civilizations begin as small communities and then decay into oppressive, mechanical large communities, and thus 'older' civilizations were more likely to be mechanical societies, as well as tend towards their collapse and destruction. However, this is not universal of Liuists, and the consensus rather seems to be at least that the occasional, random, and sophisticated process of a large community emerging is existent, and it always involves the destruction of the small community in order to empower the large. This places the large community as the ultimate antithesis of the small community.
However it is also disputed if Liu really believed that the praxis he proposed could be effectively put into effect, especially as he himself thought poorly of altering history through propagation of thought alone.
 
The '{{wp|Imperialism|empire}}' in Liuist discourse is the 'peak stage of the large community' where a 'chaotic machine' expands across numerous lands and peoples, destroys their small communities, and appropriates their resources to sustain itself. This marks the point where the main actors in the large community have lost control of it. Empires are destined to collapse as they are founded upon a malignancy of an already heavily flawed form of community, but also are the most destructive of possible social organizations, inflicting upon its subjects the greatest possible oppression from all aspects. Its operation is sustained by a parasitic class of rulers who are the most temporarily powerful of this egoist society. Despite any attempts to uphold the contrary, in an empire all morality breaks down in favor of an impermanent order created by fear (from an unsustainable concentration of brute force), as that is the only way it continues to exist, and in turn the subjects of such empires become uncivilized as the environment of their society forces them into egoism.
==Tenets==
===Nationalism and regionalism===
Liuism believes in the natural division of peoples into {{wp|nation}}s based on cultural closeness and intimacy, fundamentally the same elements behind small communities. A nation is thus an assembly of small communities connected further by their culture and history, by nature still a small community (at least in the ideal state). {{wp|Nationalism}} is thus simply the natural result of being inside such a community because it is the innate force in the individual propelling them to treat the small community cordially. It is thus optimal and natural to divide the world based on nations, and make the {{wp|nation state}} the only constitution of any state. Nations should thus obtain a sovereign political presence with exercise of {{wp|self determination}}, and any nation under the imperialist domination of other entities should break free unconditionally.


Accordingly, {{wp|regionalism}} and {{wp|localism}} also needs to be emphasized in the nation, as it is not to devolve into a large community through using national identity as a force of unification. The interests of regions and local communities must be considered and advanced to ensure the functionality of small communities and thus social cohesion. The Liuist vision of nation lies between {{wp|integral nationalism}} and {{wp|civic nationalism}}, believing in a cultural identity, but also self-declaredly inclusive and welcoming of aspiring nationals-to-be, though this is more in the context of such ideas being proposed in the [[Taizhou]] empire where meaningful local national identity was mostly destroyed according to Liuists.
===Historiography===
===Total anti-imperialism===
Another key idea of Liu is the importance of history, and even the writing of history itself, which he dedicated one major work and many essays and commentaries on. To Liu historiography was absolutely important to society as a whole: he believed historiographies must be first predicated on correct values, such that it can instruct later people in correct, virtuous, and necessary action, to which evidential accuracy was secondary. For Liu, well-researched and apparently well-supported arguments for what is clearly against virtue remains inferior to a less accurate but regardless well-intentioned account of the same events.
Liuism prescribes a 'total, unconditional {{wp|anti-imperialism}}', aiming to destroy completely any and all forms of imperialism and any and all instances of empire. Revolutionary Weng Weizhi listed out the 'three pillars of anti-imperialism' in 1858, which was intended to be adopted by all Liuists uncompromisingly as both doctrine and strategy:
*'''Secession and political dissolution''': Oppressed nations should rise up and overthrow imperial rule in nationalist revolutions, establishing nation-states built upon self-determination and the small community. Any and all nations are to be emancipated into free, independent states without condition, and it is necessary for these entire peoples to achieve national awakening politically and culturally, to cohesively organize together in their struggles for freedom. The process of secessionist insurrection is strictly against any and all compromise. Not only should this be achieved, but insurrectionary efforts should crush the empire entirely, dissolving it, and measures are to be taken by the newborn community of freed nations to ensure that its re-emergence is not possible. Remaining institutions of the Empire should be without exception liquidated, and replaced by those that respect nations, small communities, and local interests. The elite classes of the large-community should also be removed of their prestige and privilege to be assimilated into an equal national community, or also face 'liquidation', which during the Zhou nationalist revolutions took place in the form of mass executions of officials, aristocrats, and pro-imperial intelligentsia.
*'''Confrontation''': It is not enough for nations to simply free themselves, and assistance of other national struggles is important. Liuists espoused a geopolitical strategy similar to {{wp|Prometheism}}, where successfully established nation-states support nationalist movements in other empires, to bring about the gradual global collapse of all empires and imperialism. In the meantime, Liuist states would combat these empires and para-imperial entities wherever encountered, through open warfare if possible, but more realistically through more protracted and subtle confrontation in areas such as commerce. {{wp|Total war}} was to be expected as necessary in such cases. Ties with empires in any form were to be rejected and severed. Beginning in the 1890s Liuist thought incorporated ideas from {{wp|revolutionary socialism}} and entertained the notion of a {{wp|world revolution}}, hoping to spark a nationalist {{wp|revolutionary wave}} across the world. However, the aggressive and uncomprising foreign policy this pillar entailed was heavily toned down for realistic reasons after the [[Blossom of Nations]] as the new states of Sinhaysia found it necessary to establish partnerships with nominal and functional empires to secure their status. In some aspects however, the policy constantly remained strong with regular opposition to the Taizhou rump state.
*'''Cultural dissolution''': Cultural traces of the Empire, like its political traces, were to be eliminated. These included the forced erasure and suppression of imperial or large-community identity, {{wp|historical revisionism}} to develop a pro-national and anti-imperial narrative, and the revitalization of traditional, local identity of the newly liberated nation. Liuism enthusiastically championed an iconoclastic approach to removing imperialist culture, destroying artifacts, banning customs, replacing vocabularies and writing systems, censoring topics, and even exterminating entire groups of people (typically intelligentsia). These coalesced in practice into phenomena such as {{wp|De-Sinicization|desinhayization}} and [[debayarization]], which resulted in the extreme enforced removal of numerous cultural customs and practices from the Sinhaysian states. The process of national culture revitalization also meant that many customs, not all of which were identified with 'pre-Zhou' local practices, were enforced into daily life. Iconoclastic cultural dissolution was seen as important, in the words of Weng Weizhi it 'prevented the formation of even soil for empire to be seeded in', and as Liu Du said 'an empty mind is better than a mind even only slightly tainted with evil'.
===Construction of a small-community-centred society===
The restitution of virtuous society required a shift back to the small community as the fundament of society, which in turn needed particular administrative structures and forms of government. Liuism championed a {{wp|republic}} with representation of interests from across society, but the Liuist idea of republicanism became greatly different from Belisarian conceptions of it. For Liuists the best way to make sure that the small community remained important was to make it formally the unit of society, thus the Liuist state respects clans and other organizations of organic relationships. It is also with this that Liuism is {{wp|Anti-individualism|anti-individualist}}, believing in the need of attachment of the individual to the small community and the path into large communities that individualism leads to due to its atomizing properties. Small communities, once formally respected, are recognized of their jurisdictions, and may exercise rule in these bounds however they wish to.


Liuism strongly advocates {{wp|limited government}}, suggesting non-intervention in the matters of local communities whenever possible. However, the republic still served a purpose, owing to its nature as an agreement of similarly minded and conscious small communities. First, it guaranteed security, especially from the threat of imperialism and other large communities, because it was recognized that, one-for-one, large communities could rally more forces than small communities and triumph. Here the republic functioned as a mutual {{wp|defense pact}}. Secondly, the republic also formed a reliable framework for disputes to be resolved between small communities. Thirdly, it also allowed for resource allocation to communities in need, and more generally collaboration.
===Miscellanea===
Liu's personal opinions on a variety of subjects appear frequently in his writings as ''obiter dicta''. This greatly confuses most people's attempt to understand him and it is debated if these opinions reflect a general attitude or philosophy needed to understand his main ideas as a whole.
==External history==
===Classification===
Liu was generally described as a conservative in the western mould, or even a reactionary for his Unnamed person 1 influences and the apparent dismissal of democracy and liberalism themselves in his earlier works, but this label merely studies what one would identify as Liu's 'political views' in turn gleaned from his writings at face value. Although it may be safe to say that Liu supports such ideals more or less, they can and do not define the totality of his main thought. More heterodox approaches include identifying Liu's proposed praxis as a sort of Unnamed country 1-specific existentialism.
===Reception and criticism===
Liu was criticized early on by other ostensible Eastern reformists for his 'extreme' attribution of the popularly pursued goods of western society to culture; these critics dispute the roots of western community and society in its feudal institutions, as the modern, centralized state had too an important part in promulgating the rule of law and eventually the extension of representative governance. Later on critics denounced the violent and callous implications of Liu's praxis, and speculation remains abound of Liu's ideas and himself being 'Unnamed person 2ian' especially due to his self-confessed background in the Unnamed country 1 state apparatus.


Upon all these benefits a republic provides, Liuists regard such a republic's functions as optimally 'instantial', that is, they come into existence only when the need arises, and correspondingly fade once the need disappears.
After a series of events in Unnamed country 1 Liu's ideas seemed to be vindicated in many ways and his following ballooned, and many former critics actually began to admit the foresight and insight Liu had on many matters.
==History==
==Criticism==
==See also==


[[Category:Ajax]][[Category:Ochran]][[Category:Ideologies]]
[[Category:Liuism]]
[[Category:Ideologies]]
[[Category:Cultural ideologies]]

Latest revision as of 13:39, 3 February 2021

Liuism is a notoriously loosely defined but nevertheless influential Eastern political philosophy revolving around writings ascribed to the figure Liu Shuchuen.

Name and controversy

As Liu had a notoriously jestful, sometimes elusive writing style (and also due to the needs of evading censorship and general persecution), using a large number of cultural and historical references seemingly unrelated with the subjects he discussed, often presenting contradictory views on the same subject, or avoiding presenting an outright subjective judgement, coherent attempts at interpreting a single 'Liuist' philosophy that can be easily utilized as an ideology should be considered foolhardy. The term, in less rigorous colloquial use, usually only refers to certain points or predictions Liu became popularly associated with or became symbolic of, mainly pending social catastrophe in large, deracinated, atomized societies and the praise of 'feudal order'. 'Exegesis' of Liu is a disputed subject among adherents of Liuism themselves, who emphasize Liu's views on different subjects depending on their own interests and the topic of the immediate debate. Liu himself frequently ridiculed attempts to profile his ostensibly expressed views into a single philosophy beyond what was seriously necessary and that which he considered important advice to his intended audience.

Tenets

Worldview

Descriptions of Liuism typically start with Liu's supposed theory of history, which was popularly attributed to unnamed person 1. However, other exegetes hold that Liu merely used unnamed person 1's terminology to convey some of his own ideas. In any case, Liu shared unnamed person 1's generally cyclical view of history, with great Cultures rising and inevitably falling, while every bit of their societies and cultural outputs reflected their development closely. Liu's own historiography and from whence political theory then uses a concept mostly (but perhaps inaccurately) translated as 'virtue', which is the ability to correctly judge the situation and use any means - even violence - to impose order, preserve one's own community and traditions, and uphold that which is good. This virtue underlies the vitality of cultures, and which has been accused of being, or variously internalized as, 'Unnamed person 2ian'. The supposedly primitive but pure impulses of many cultures, in this system, are valued as sources of virtue, and are contrasted with the cynical judgement of rationalized intellectuals based on solely critique.

As recognized by Liu through unnamed person 1 and other influences, the progress of cultures to civilizations involves rationalization, centralization, and other changes to society which come at the expense of its virtues, such as traditional social organizations or aristocracies being dissolved and weakened in favor of large bureaucratic empires. In agreement with unnamed person 1, Liu considered such changes often fateful, objective, and unable to be justifiably subject to value-judgements, but the preservation of society beyond the civilizational, imperial stage became a question, a particularly serious one in societies that have destroyed or were to destroy an inordinate proportion of virtuous institutions and local political agency. In this case his idea of virtue was relatively more malleable and subjectively manipulable than analogous concept of unnamed person 1 and similar historians, his writings on this matter generally regarded to amount to advising interested persons to activate and make use of virtue themselves, to create positive communities and institutions and to take the necessary action to preserve themselves in accordance with an implied value system. This is particularly relevant in the context of unnamed country 1, the apparent social disintegration of which the vast majority of his writings tried to describe and warn against.

Society

Liu's study and translation of Unnamed country 2's history, particularly through Unnamed person 3, gave him a useful example for a virtuous society in his view. Through Unnamed person 3, Liu found the 'feudal' institutions of Unnamed country 2 a critical social glue and a source of its self-organization that allowed it to eventually create an unparalleled system of representative governance, which came to shape much of the world. Liu contrasted the institutions of Unnamed continent in general with that of (or the absence thereof in) Unnamed country 1, where any possible source of self-organization was destroyed by centralized, bureaucratic, imperial rule. Often agreeing with Unnamed person 4 and the general idea of conservatism, Liu thought that democracy and rule of law as vaunted by dissidents and intellectuals in Unnamed country 1 had distinct, inextricable cultural causes, and he advanced the analysis of such systems (and indeed of political matters in general) as being based on each society's own communities' dynamic interaction rather than focusing on the 'appearance' of democracy, which in echoing Unnamed person 1 and 4 he sometimes disapproved of in itself.

Continuing on from Unnamed person 1 Liu found that the decay of virtue produced large numbers of 'fellaheen' people, who had lost any cultural vitality or virtue and thus capability of self-organization. The atomization of these people eventually cause the downfall of a civilization, sometimes catastrophically; if it did happen, or if circumstances deteroriated for any other reason, this crisis was the focus of Liu's prescriptive praxeology.

Praxis

Most of Liu's later writings discussed his idea of history and society considerably less and began focusing on one's ideal course of action to survive the local end-of-civilization crisis. This is almost entirely because of the circumstances of Unnamed country 1, and likewise it is for this reason many of Liu's writings from this period appear unrelated, contradictory, or extremely different in tone to earlier ones. Liu's relationship with his audience is disputed but it is generally taken as a starting point he wished to admonish them into action for their own good. This praxis typically involves conscious judgement of one's social circumstances, improvements to one's own character and person, and most importantly the undertaking of the critical virtuous actions needed to ensure one and one's community's survival. In the very particular context of Unnamed country 1 Liu both proposed and predicted the dissolution of the state into new nations based on traditional local cultural boundaries. There is a thematic emphasis on organization of paramilitaries and taking up of arms, the will to fight and die in a brutal merciless struggle, and confrontation of the possibility of the futility of one's efforts in these works, all for obvious reasons.

However it is also disputed if Liu really believed that the praxis he proposed could be effectively put into effect, especially as he himself thought poorly of altering history through propagation of thought alone.

Historiography

Another key idea of Liu is the importance of history, and even the writing of history itself, which he dedicated one major work and many essays and commentaries on. To Liu historiography was absolutely important to society as a whole: he believed historiographies must be first predicated on correct values, such that it can instruct later people in correct, virtuous, and necessary action, to which evidential accuracy was secondary. For Liu, well-researched and apparently well-supported arguments for what is clearly against virtue remains inferior to a less accurate but regardless well-intentioned account of the same events.

Miscellanea

Liu's personal opinions on a variety of subjects appear frequently in his writings as obiter dicta. This greatly confuses most people's attempt to understand him and it is debated if these opinions reflect a general attitude or philosophy needed to understand his main ideas as a whole.

External history

Classification

Liu was generally described as a conservative in the western mould, or even a reactionary for his Unnamed person 1 influences and the apparent dismissal of democracy and liberalism themselves in his earlier works, but this label merely studies what one would identify as Liu's 'political views' in turn gleaned from his writings at face value. Although it may be safe to say that Liu supports such ideals more or less, they can and do not define the totality of his main thought. More heterodox approaches include identifying Liu's proposed praxis as a sort of Unnamed country 1-specific existentialism.

Reception and criticism

Liu was criticized early on by other ostensible Eastern reformists for his 'extreme' attribution of the popularly pursued goods of western society to culture; these critics dispute the roots of western community and society in its feudal institutions, as the modern, centralized state had too an important part in promulgating the rule of law and eventually the extension of representative governance. Later on critics denounced the violent and callous implications of Liu's praxis, and speculation remains abound of Liu's ideas and himself being 'Unnamed person 2ian' especially due to his self-confessed background in the Unnamed country 1 state apparatus.

After a series of events in Unnamed country 1 Liu's ideas seemed to be vindicated in many ways and his following ballooned, and many former critics actually began to admit the foresight and insight Liu had on many matters.

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