Historicizing tianxia: political primacy and teleology in the theory of All- Under-Heaven

Recent scholarly attempts to instill contemporary relevance in the ancient concept of tianxia (All Under Heaven) have reinvigorated interest in its rich meaning, multifaceted nature, and historical transformations. Yet the teleological reinvention of tianxia as a Chinese theory of world politics risks taking the words of the ancients out of context without a sound historical approach and interpretive sensitivity. This paper aims to historicize this intellectual project by first providing a coherent narrative of the historical transformations of tianxia during the classical and imperial periodsone that demonstrates the primacy of its political nature. It traces how the political-spatial configuration of tianxia evolved along the line of the yi-xia distinction, and how political unity and universalism gradually became entrenched as its core underpinnings. Having established the historical transformations of tianxia, the paper then critically examines the extrapolation and generalization of the concept into a contemporary theory of world order, exposing the teleology, anachronism, and essentialism embedded in this process. It concludes by considering how to reconcile the need for a philosophical foundation for theory with a historically grounded approach that avoids flattening or distorting the meaning tianxia in its original context.