Feng Youlan's "History of Chinese Philosophy" is at present still the most well-known introduction to Chinese philosophy in any Western language. During the 1980s Feng Youlan published a seven-volume new version of his "History" in which he further developed his view on history so that the work itself can be considered part of the history of Chinese philosophy in this century. This paper presents a preliminary analysis and comparison of the different versions of the "History.".

The unification under the Qin and Han dynasties was one of the great events in the history of the development of China. Not only did it establish an authoritarian centralized polity over all China; it also combined what had originally been different peoples and tribes of seven states into one unified people, known as the Han people. In response to the political unification and the merger of these peoples under the Han dynasty, Dong Zhong-shu [c.179-c.104 B.C.] constructed a comprehensive philosophical (...) system, based on the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, that included a wide range of natural, social, and individual aspects of human life and was used as the theoretical basis of the current unification. At the same time it was an intellectual, philosophical reflection of this unification. (shrink)

The class origins of my neo-rationalism were very clear to others. But for myself, it was only after going through the examination and analysis mentioned above that it became clear to me. But even though I do now have a sense that this is true, my understanding is certainly still quite lacking. I can at least say that I do feel that the criticism in recent years of various comrades concerning this aspect of my philosophical thought has been basically correct. (...) I understand that fully now. (shrink)

After Liberation I did not undertake a really serious criticism of my past philosophical thought. It basically remained in my mind unchanged. I thought that if I simply did not concern myself with it any longer, it would be fine. In fact, that did not work. Even when you don't want to be concerned with something like that, it will concern itself with you. This was my thought system, and by my not thoroughly criticizing it, it remained my world view. (...) When someone has a particular world view, he inevitably looks at the world through that world view, as if he were wearing a pair of colored glasses. Everything he sees is inevitably distorted accordingly. I thought that in my further studies of the history of Chinese philosophy I could simply ignore my own philosophical thought. But wearing that pair of glasses, it was impossible to look at the history of Chinese philosophy without distortion. (shrink)

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. During these forty years, our nation has undergone enormous changes, has taken amazing strides forward. The seeds of antifeudalism and antiimperialism, of democracy and science, sown by the May Fourth Movement, have not only blossomed and borne fruit; these fruits in turn have brought forth the even newer flowers and fruits of the establishment of socialism and the transition toward communism.

In the early and middle Tang dynasty, a reform movement took place within Buddhism that resulted in the formation of a new sect, the Chan school. It was not a sect that paralleled the other schools, as did the Weishi School and the Huayan School. It claimed to be a "door of acceptance" and called other sects "doors of teaching." The two terms are opposed to and juxtaposed against each other. After the Chan sect became popular, the influence of other (...) sects gradually declined or even faded entirely, and eventually "Chan" became a synonym for the religion and study of Buddhism. (shrink)

Song and Ming dynasty neo-Confucianism was an important aspect of the superstructure of China's feudal society, was an important tool by which the landlord class controlled the people intellectually. The development of Song dynasty neo-Confucianism reached its peak with Zhu Xi [1130-1200] and Lu Jiu-yuan [Lu Xiangshan, 1139-1193], with whom both objective idealism and subjective idealism became well established as systems of thought. The objective idealism of Zhu Xi later became the orthodox philosophical system of the feudal ruling class, and (...) throughout the Yuan, Mind, and Qing dynasties Zhu Xi was regarded as the official spokesman for the ideology of the landlord class. (shrink)

After my History of Chinese Philosophy was published, the worldwide struggle between Marxism and fascism became more and more sharp and intense. In China, the anticolonialist struggle against Japanese imperialist aggression and the struggle for the liberation of the nation, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, had already turned from political struggle to armed struggle. In these struggles, the thought struggle occupied an important position.

My formal study of philosophy began in 1915 when I entered the Philosophy Department of Beijing University. Not only was the content of what we studied at the time composed entirely of Chinese feudal philosophy; it was furthermore still presented in the form of the various traditional topics such as, "study of the Classics," "Song dynasty studies," etc. The professor who lectured on the history of Chinese philosophy began with the legendary Three Emperors and Five Kings, and in one year (...) of lecturing reached only as far as the Duke of Zhou [founder of the Zhou dynasty, some 500 years before Confucius]. We asked him: if your lecture method continues like this, when will you finish? He replied that there was no such thing as finishing or not finishing, that if he wanted to finish the course he could do so in a single sentence, and that if he did not want to finish it he could go on lecturing forever. (shrink)

The history of Chinese philosophy concerns the history of "China's" or "Chinese" philosophy, not the history of "philosophy in China." If we were to write a book on "The History of Chinese Mathematics," such a work would really be a history of "mathematics in China," or of "the development of mathematics in China" because "mathematics is mathematics" and there is no such thing as "Chinese" mathematics. But philosophy, like literature, is different. There really is a "Chinese" philosophy and a "Chinese" (...) literature, or in general a "Chinese" culture. (shrink)

In 1923, there was a debate in Chinese philosophical circles on the view of life [also known as the science versus metaphysics controversy]. In the introduction to A View of Life, I described the situation at the time.

In 1925, I went to Yanjing University to teach courses in the history of Chinese philosophy. It was from this period on that I began to seriously study the history of Chinese philosophy. At the time, this was not what I really wanted to do. I had originally wanted to work with bourgeois philosophy in preparation for founding a system of my own. To work in the history of Chinese philosophy was at the time, I felt, a kind of academic (...) duty, a kind of burden. But after working with it for awhile, I felt that there was also much that could be done in this field of the history of Chinese philosophy. That is to say, while lecturing on the history of philosophy, I also found it possible to develop my own idealist philosophical thought. (shrink)

Feng Youlan's (1895-1990) "History of Chinese Philosophy" is at present still the most well-known introduction to Chinese philosophy in any Western language. During the 1980s Feng Youlan published a seven-volume new version of his "History" in which he further developed his view on history so that the work itself can be considered part of the history of Chinese philosophy in this century. This paper presents a preliminary analysis and comparison of the different versions of the "History.".