Xueshu bitan (Academic Discussions), no. 2, 2004.
Editor’s note:
The zi zhi (Nature? Qualifications? Substance?) of Chinese philosophy has once again become a topic of concern in philosophical circles in recent years. These written discussions are focused on the advances made by academic circles on research on “shi lun [?]” (ontology)—the nucleus of traditional Western philosophy. They point out that whether in terms of form or content, traditional Chinese philosophy does not possess any characteristics of “shi lun,” giving rise to anxieties about the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy. They also point out that the existence of Chinese philosophy is a fact, and doubts arise about its zi zhi only when Chinese philosophy is examined in light of the concepts and framework of Western philosophy. Participants in the discussions either use Hu Shi, Feng Youlan, and Jin Yuelin respectively as examples to show that they relied on Western philosophy with “shi lun” as its core to construct the history of Chinese philosophy, or took the existence of Chinese philosophy as a fact and proposed the line of thinking of conducting a new round of comparative studies of the forms of Chinese and Western philosophy.
Will Chinese Chinese scholars be able to break out of the bonds of the two millennium plus tradition of Western philosophy and assume the mission of constructing a view of philosophy with Chinese characteristics? We are hoping that this group of discussions will trigger new thoughts and new topics of discussion.
Yu Xuanmeng: “Guanyu zhong xi fang zhexue xingtai de xin yi lun bijiao yanjiu”; Xueshu bitan (Academic Discussions), no. 2, 2004; pp. 5-8.
Yu Xuanmeng is a researcher at the
Yu Xuangmeng
On the New Round of Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophical Forms
Comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy have been going on for a very long time, and we are now proposing to conduct a new round of comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy. We will draw the conclusion, through these studies, that Chinese philosophy must walk away from dependence on Western philosophy.
The main reason for our conducting comparative studies of philosophical forms is that the zi zhi of Chinese philosophy has never been determined. As Feng Youlan once said: What is called Chinese philosophy consists of the Chinese philosophy of the past and the Chinese philosophy that has appeared in the form of the history of Chinese philosophy after being sorted out by contemporary scholars. The Chinese philosophy of the past was not an independent branch of learning. Scholars in past years merely felt that classical learning (jing xue), the learning of the ancient sages (zhu zi xue), xuan learning, Buddhist learning (fo xue), and Principle-based learning (li xue) bore similarities with philosophy or contained elements of philosophy, but that these would not do [as philosophy] in their original state. So contemporary scholars sorted out and processed these into a history of Chinese philosophy, in the course of which they all used, to varying extents, the concepts and framework of Western philosophy as their criteria. As a consequence, it is clearly problematical whether the history of Chinese philosophy, sorted out and processed in this manner, bears the original appearance of Chinese philosophy. Also, scholars who have conducted in-depth studies of Western philosophy understand that “shi lun,” as the essence of Western philosophy, is decisive in what makes Western philosophy philosophy. But there is no such thing as “shi lun” in traditional Chinese philosophy, and so the perennial doubts and anxieties about whether Chinese had philosophy have recently been written up again in newspapers and publications.
The premise implied by dependence on Western philosophy is the conviction that Western philosophy is the only example of philosophy. Yet comparisons of the forms of Chinese and Western philosophy regard the existence of philosophy in
Breaking away from the framework of Western philosophy is no easy matter. The first difficulty is: since even the term “philosophy” did not exist in
Actually, the renovation of the concept of philosophy is not a new topic, and it presents huge difficulties. Starting with Plato and Aristotle, philosophy was defined as “the most universal knowledge” (the difference between philosophy and other disciplines being that the latter each concerns knowledge in a given domain). All other definitions of philosophy are no more than extensions of this definition. Examples are those that see philosophy as summations of the natural sciences or the social sciences, or those that believe philosophy is a world outlook, and so forth. “Universal” means the entirety, and “the most universal” carries the implication of “all-inclusive.” If we use this to measure Western philosophy itself, we find that it is not without imperfections, because by directing one’s attention to universal knowledge one is in fact placing oneself outside universal knowledge.
The quest for “universal knowledge” is bound to result in an inordinate partiality for “absolute universality.” Since “universality” is the objective of such as quest, it becomes a sort of value, or in other words, the more universal the better, and philosophy should become the most universal knowledge. However, the most universal knowledge has nothing to do with knowledge in all the specific domains, with the result that it becomes a philosophy of purely conceptual reasoning that is divorced from the domain of experience. The “shi lun” of Western philosophy’s metaphysics is the inevitable outcome of deliberately pursuing universal knowledge. Once the core of traditional Western philosophy, it has been constantly subjected to queries and doubts by scholars in recent times. It is also the form of philosophy that Marx opposed. Analytical philosophy and phenomenology—the two major trends in philosophy in the contemporary West—are outcomes of the reflections and critiques of traditional Western philosophy. Of those two, analytical philosophy has extracted “shi lun” from the logical methods its uses and developed a philosophy of pure signs (chuncui fuhao), while phenomenology, by means of analyses of mankind’s yishi xianxiang kaiduan [?] (and especially by analyzing people’s state of awareness when using logical categories), has developed into a philosophy that possesses more of a human spirit [?]. These two forms of philosophy are already quite different from traditional Western philosophy. Analytical philosophy tends more toward becoming a sort of method of thinking and discards issues of world outlook as empty and impractical metaphysics. On the other hand, the existentialist philosophy that has been developed out of phenomenology has brought in methods capable of genuinely experiencing people’s moods and sentiments [?]. Yet these two major schools continue to make extensive use of the philosophical terminology that has been passed down in history. For example, Heidegger’s “existence and time” is in fact about the philosophy of man, but it is expressed, in terms of form, as philosophy about issues of the meaning of “shi.” [?] But since both of them continue to talk about the topic of traditional Western philosophy, no one queries whether or not they constitute philosophy. This shows that the objectives and ways of expressions, even of Western philosophy itself, have undergone changes. Hence, there is nothing strange in the fact that Heidegger writes articles anew to discuss the question “what is philosophy,” even in the West where philosophy has a history of more than two thousand years as a discipline.
If we should be so bold as to give up our prejudices, we might obtain new realizations with regard to Chinese philosophy. This does not mean that we should throw out all of the work done by our predecessors with regard to sorting out traditional Chinese philosophy. They have already sorted out all the personages and writings concerned and laid for us a foundation for further discussion. Only, we should not be in a hurry to incorporate these materials in Western philosophy’s concepts and framework, but should ponder them as far as possible in light of their original aspect. With regard to viewing the history of Chinese philosophy from this perspective, I offer two opinions:
1.To begin with, virtually all the persons listed today as ancient Chinese philosophers were known as sages and wise men (sheng xian) in their days. This tells us at least one thing—that the greatest scholarly endeavor in Chinese history consisted in seeking to become a sage. Feng Youlan explained this matter quite explicitly in his book A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy that he wrote to provide people abroad with information about Chinese philosophy. And when these sages were described anew in research on the history of philosophy, they were presented to the world chiefly as doctrines and teachings. People today have very little regard for “sage” and other such titles, and even treat them with disdain. This is probably not only because the feudal ethical standards pursued by the sages have become obsolete; more importantly, the sages were always elevated to heights that distanced them from real life. They apparently showed little interest in mundane affairs and, especially after the emperor conferred a title of nobility on them, obtained certain rights and powers that led people to feel these sages were inaccessible and therefore maintained a respectful distance from them. Actually, the sages were no more than persons who upheld justice in life, who acquired keen insights in mundane matters, and who took a sort of conscious attitude toward life. Today, along with the advances in history, people’s way of life has changed considerably, and the profession and position as well as the circumstances and destiny of each person may be different, but all face the question of how to conduct themselves. This is the biggest issue in life, so why should it not be a philosophic issue? To my knowledge, pre-Socratic philosophers in the early period of ancient
2. If one is to admit that seeking a conscious understanding of life (qiu de rensheng de zijue) was the objective of engaging in philosophy in ancient China, one would not, where academic reasoning is concerned, ignore or cast aside the expositions concerned simply because they do not fit into Western philosophy’s list of categories. For example, a core content of Chinese philosophy are matters related to self-cultivation in life (ren shen xiuyang de wenti), and ever since ancient China’s Confucius proposed making ren (benevolence) the objective of human conduct, philosophy began to develop in this direction. Ren was not defined by means of conceptual methods, but consisted of appropriate standards that had to be experienced in the course of interpersonal contacts. However, why was it that ren should serve as the standard of conduct? What basis was there for advocating that every person should take ren as his or her standard? Is this consistent with human nature? And so, some people argued that all people were good by nature at the outset (but were unable to negate the allegation that people were evil by nature). Other people defined people’s innate nature as neither good nor bad, and then progressed to the ponderings of Chinese philosophers about the li (principles) of all things in the universe and discussed the reasons for each person adopting his or her attitude toward life. What is called world outlook here, also contains outlook on life, the crux of which is deriving worldly and other-worldly consciousness [?] from true experience in terms of one’s own life and tian di wan wu tong yuan [?]. The philosophers of ancient
According to classification by Western philosophy, however, the afore-mentioned content has absolutely no place in philosophy. After deconstructing it, scholars assign it respectively to “ontology,” epistemology, and ethics, or call it ethics-based philosophy, and the practice of cultivating experience in one’s own roots of life [?] is denounced as mysticism and excluded from philosophy. The nucleus of Western philosophy’s classification is “shi lun.” Ethics is regarded as the philosophy of practice and is lower that metaphysics. Hence, Chinese scholars have no alternative but to try proving the metaphysical basis of Chinese ethics to defend its quasi-philosophical status or to give it a higher philosophical ranking. In fact, however, the more one defends it, the less clear the issue becomes, because when arguing that the so-called ethics-based Chinese philosophy possesses the nature of metaphysics, one must prove that it is of a transcendental nature, whereas what Westerners call “transcendental” means that metaphysics possesses the property transcending experience. For lack of anything better, the defenders again propose that the metaphysical nature of Chinese philosophy is both transcendental and innate. But in the West, “both transcendental and innate” means that God lives in a Heavenly kingdom apart from the world but that his effects reach into all corners of the human world. Hence the arguments about the metaphysical nature of Chinese philosophy come under criticism from Sinologists in the West. The conflict of viewpoints between the two side is not only due to the lack of a common discourse for dialogue. More importantly, the crux of the matter is that Chinese philosophy is, int eh first place, a philosophy of a different form from that of Western philosophy.
Proceeding from the actual circumstances of Chinese philosophy, we find that it presents a different kind of transcendence, i.e. man’s transcendence of himself. Excluding the distractions of everyday matters in order to scrutinize one’s own life principles is a sort of transcendence, and understanding one’s own life principles and consciously choosing, in light of possibilities, a direction and a way of becoming involved in worldly affairs is also transcendence. In other words, all activities conducted by man, from making a living, raising progeny, acquiring an education, and taking up commerce or politics, to practicing religion, engaging in literature and the arts, and studying philosophy—all are extensions (zhan kai) of life and therefore exhibit transcendence of life. Life is of a temporal nature, which is why there is birth and death; the extension of life in time is transcendence. We find that when Chinese philosophy devotes attention to the roots of one’s own life and adjusts one’s state of living in the course of self-cultivation (xiu yang) so as to deal with an infinite variety of worldly matters, this constitutes devoting conscious attention to man’s way of transcending himself. Activities that devote attention to man’s way of transcending himself constitute philosophy.
May the above-described initial explanation of philosophy, derived from the realities of Chinese philosophy, be used also to explain Western philosophy? It would appear that Western philosophy concerns itself mainly with the objective truths of the word, and what is meant by objective truth is universally inevitable truth that does not change with each person. However, recent studies in phenomenology have shown that the emergence of any subject of awareness [consciousness?] (yishi duixiang) is invariably accompanied by a corresponding state of awareness. It is as though a person reflects on his state when doing mathematical calculations and inevitably finds that he has put aside all sentiments, good or bad, and has allowed the regularities of calculation to take over. The same situation applies when one thinks in terms of Western philosophical categories. For this reason Hegel once said that philosophy is the activity of concepts per se [?] . Hu sai er referred to people in such a state as “xianyan ziwo [transcendental selfs?]” and frankly admitted that “when I myself do this, I am no longer ren de ziwo [?]” [1] Hence, if one is to conduct philosophical thinking in the way Hegel does, one must first adjust oneself into a special state. Hegel called this “conducting prior mental training.” This is also man’s transcendence of himself. In the past, Western philosophy devoted its attention mainly to the subjects and too little attention to man’s corresponding state before these subjects. A fundamental change in this situation occurred only through Hu sai er and up to Heidegger.
Since both deal with “transcendence,” why is it that this “transcendence” is manifested so differently in Chinese and Western philosophy? To answer this question, we need to conduct an in-depth exploration of the diverse ways of transcending and of the basis that makes the many different ways of transcendence possible, or in other words, the structure on which transcendence occurs. The structure may be presented (biao shu) in two aspects—man and the world. Man is always the active aspect of transcendence, and there may be many different ways of transcendence, which are manifested as the different ways in which man becomes involved with and deals with the world. Depending on the different ways man deals with the world, the world presents itself in a variety of aspects, each of which always corresponds to one of man’s various states of existence. There may be many different ways of reflecting on transcendence; some of the conceptual type, and some of the self-cultivation type. The way of reflecting is directly connected with the way of transcendence. Every one of these statements requires exhaustive argumentation, but once the issues are explained, the roots of the difference in Chinese and Western philosophical forms are revealed. This is a starting point and outline of the comparative study of Chinese and Western philosophical forms we are now contemplating.
