Hmm. I’m not sure how to decide “greatness” objectively, except through an appeal to expert opinion of some sort. I mean, if we’re not going to accept Goethe and Shakespeare, then all bets are off. I admit that I’m not too happy with this approach, since few people can really be an “expert” about another language / culture group. (Pity the poor Nobel Prize literature judges who have to–in theory, anyway–evaluate everything in every language.)
In the case of philosophy, I look at what seems to have made an impression on philosophers today. What are they reading over there in the university departments? Aristotle for sure (his virtue-based ethics have actually had quite a revival lately), but as far as Chinese philosophy goes, most of it seems to be studied as a sort of armchair field anthropology (“China and Africa have philosophers too”) rather than as living influences. China’s tradition of logic was more of a rumor than anything (some fragment about a white horse not being a horse, sounds like something a logician would come up with!) and the rest looks like a succession of grand metaphysical systems without much in the way of criticism. This isn’t just ethnocentricism–Buddhism gets a VERY good hearing in the West, but mostly not in its Chinese form.
I assume that a short-list of Chinese “greats” would include a volume of Tang poetry. Hmmm, it’s interesting that so many of China’s cultural highlights would be the result of contact with non-Chinese cultures. (Buddhism too.) I don’t think we could say the same of Indian culture, they didn’t need a kick-start.
Opera. God. I personally hate Chinese vocal music. But obviously we can’t evaluate it according to this. What to do? Hmmm, if we are going to allow folksy art into the “great” category, then what about Western comic books? On one hand we don’t want to be too close-minded, on the other hand we don’t want to say that eight-year-old illiterates can be intellectuals.
I guess what we’d need to do is match cultural equivalents according to merit or “weight”. For example, the Iliad and Odyssey are more or less the same level as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and the Bible is like Confucian or Buddhist scriptures. That sort of thing. My impression is that this would leave Chinese culture competing with national linguistic cultures like Hebrew or Spanish, rather than continental ones like Europe or India.
I actually liked Faust I. It’s got the devil in it, after all! Only a Jungian could love Faust II, though, it’s so confused and bizarre. Young Werther made quite an impression in its day, but modern readers are more likely to laugh at the poor sap and the hack of a writer who created him.
With Shakespeare, you’re dealing with two audiences. One audience has to decide whether to go to the Globe or to the bear-baiting session. So Shakespeare has to make it a close call. That’s why so many plays read like a “Three’s Company” plot. (Mistaken assumption leads to parade of double-entendres, etc.) But he also has an intellectual audience, which is where all that Hermetic philosophy comes in handy. And everything in that kick-ass iambic pentameter! Which is the sort of thing that I’d miss if I were reading Chinese.
) it’s time may yet come. In the future Screaming Jesus’s may wonder how we could have been so blind to the treasures all around us.