YU Pei

On 17 May 2021, at the invitation of Professor Hou Jianxin, Researcher Yu Pei from CASS lectured in Institute of European Civilization with the title “Writing Tomorrow: Modern Orientation of Historical Interpretation”. Researcher Yu believed that historical research is both related with the past and the future, and interpreted the main topic from four aspects.

Firstly, how does a subjective person describe objective history? Historiography is not only to piling up the materials, but also contains the understanding and interpretations of the historian.

Secondly, to construct a Chinese form of Marxist theory of history. This means to integrate the historical materialism with traditional Chinese historiography, which would give birth to a new prospect of Chinese historiography.

Thirdly, history is “the history of interpretation”. Researcher Yu explained how to make use of hermeneutics to reconcile the tension between subjective authorship and objective history.

Fourthly, Researcher Yu looked forward to the future of Chinese historiography through a "big historical perspective". His "big history view"based on the materialistic view of history,stood on a new historical starting point, and explored the rules of history from a dialectical combination of historical, practical and theoretical.