Eurocentrism as disease: a pathology between King and Qing

Reviving Confucianism with evolutionary and medical conceptual tools in the British Straits Settlements before the Pacific War, the Straits Chinese philosopher, physician, reformer, and revolutionary Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957) pathologized Eurocentrism as a disease under his innovative but also troubling system of medical Confucianism. According to Lim, Eurocentrism was caused by certain (Christian) metaphysical pathogens – speciesism and dualism in human nature – and its pathogenesis involves insensitivity and maladaptation to one’s environment at individual, national, and even ‘racial’ levels. For Lim, the signs and symptoms of individuals, nations, or ‘races’ suffering from Eurocentrism manifest as immoralities and injustices (commonly understood by contemporaneous theorists of evolution as atavism) – such as unjust wars – and degeneration in traits, physical or otherwise – such as indolence. In his attempt to overcome Eurocentrism in fin-de-siècle philosophical theories and practices, Lim’s medical Confucianism presents to us one of the earliest, systematic examples of a comprehensive Anglo-Chinese hybrid philosophy, attempting to tread a thin line between Eurocentrism and Sinocentrism by creating a new centre at imperial peripheries. However, Lim’s problematic, inherited conceptions of race and eugenics also present a cautionary tale of a doctor relying too much on his master’s tools in diagnostics and treatment.