Discernible in the very opening pages of Chinese Philosophy of History: From Ancient Confucianism to the End of the Eighteenth Century is the fact that, within a single work, Dawid Rogacz will be providing us with two services normally regarded as oppositional. On the one hand, clear from the very title is the discreteness of his undertaking. In other words, he will be straightforwardly addressing a subject that philosophers as well as historians of China frequently refer to but, (...) nonetheless, so very seldom subject to critical examination--namely, the uniquely Chinese, as distinguished from that which subsequently developed in the West, philosophy of history. Yet, on the other hand, even as he is intent on... (shrink)

An Outline History of Chinese Philosophy has been jointly written and compiled by over 20 specialists and scholars from nine renowned universities in China, including Wuhan University and Sun Yat-sen University. It provides a concise introduction to the origin and development of Chinese philosophy from antiquity to 1949, the year the People's Republic of China was founded, expounding its status and features at different historical stages. It gives a historical and logical delineation of the development of (...) class='Hi'>Chinese philosophy by highlighting its origin and development during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, the golden age of philosophical thought during the Warring States Period, and the strides made by the Chinese philosophical system from Qin-Han times to the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as new visions brought by social reforms since the mid-Ming Dynasty. This book presents readers with a detailed and accurate text, lucid discussions and simple explanations of complex ideas. It is not only a monograph with academic and textual value, but also a must-have for readers to better understand and study Chinese philosophy and culture. (shrink)

The History of Chinese Philosophy is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Chinese philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide seventeen accessible entries organised into five clear parts: Identity of Chinese Philosophy Classical Chinese Philosophy : Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Han Through Tang Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Song Through Early Qing Modern Chinese Philosophy: From (...) Late Qing Through 21st Century This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Chinese philosophy, and will be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Chinese Philosophy provides a clear, accessible conception of the Chinese philosophical sensibility and its evolution throughout history.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and History, Customs and EthicsHui-Chieh Loy (bio)Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom. By Tao Jiang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China is a serious tour de force of a study. In many ways, I am reminded of Angus Graham's Disputers of the Tao and Benjamin Schwartz' The World of Thought in (...) Ancient China—but updated. A signal difference is that it is more constrained in its coverage of figures, texts, and especially in having the topical focus upon moral-political philosophy. At the same time and within the chosen (narrower) confines, it often examines its subject in greater detail and draws on more recent discussions.One neat thing that Jiang does is to deliberately weave in explicit discussions of how each subsequent thinker or text incorporated or criticized ideas associated with earlier thinkers. (I formulated it this way since there isn't enough historical evidence about who-actually-read-what in the ancient world, citation practices being what they were.) In this regard, I am especially heartened to read, for example, the sections on "Traces of Mohist Elements in the Laozi" (3.3.2), and "Mohist Elements in Han Feizi's Thought" (7.3.3).By no means should the desultory remarks below be counted as a full review or assessment (impressionistically, this is the sort of book I will recommend that my grad students read—there, I've said it). Think of them as humble shards of pottery thrown in the hope for some jade in response. To make my task more focused, I will comment on the Sinology versus Philosophy distinction, and Jiang's treatment of the Mohists.I. Philosophy and History of PhilosophyAn important part of Jiang's Introduction is devoted to discussing the situation of Chinese Philosophy as a field in the Western Academy, caught between Sinology on the one hand and academic Philosophy on the other. Due to the different scholarly objectives and norms in the two disciplines, scholars working on Chinese Philosophy often find themselves caught [End Page 420] between two distinct audiences who demand different things. Jiang's aim is to propose an "interpretive model to distinguish two sets of scholarly objects operative in Sinology and philosophy. These objects are related and at times overlap, but they are also often irreducibly distinct, i.e., original text versus inherited text, historical author versus textual author, and authorial intent versus textual intent, with the former in the pairs belonging to Sinologists and the latter to philosophers" (p. 7). In general, I am highly sympathetic to the distinctions Jiang draws. But I do wonder if we need to step back and start from a wider context involving what is potentially a deeper divide.Now, it is entirely a caricature but the joke around the water cooler is that philosophers—especially those of a more "analytic" bent—often exude the attitude that they are not in the business of reading old books. Their project is one focused on issues and problems and puzzles that are ultimately about the natural and human world, rather than about texts and their interpretation, or even the historical thinkers themselves. To give some obvious examples, the intellectual questions they see themselves as answering are the likes of:• Can we know that God exists, if God exists at all?• What is the nature of moral claims? Do they admit of truth and falsity?• How is causation related to possibility?• Is a logic that dispenses with the law of non-contradiction viable?• What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge?• Is abortion morally justifiable?Sometimes the questions they ask even infringe on the results and insights from nearby fields, for instance linguistics and the natural and empirical sciences:• What is time?• Can a presentist conception of time be made consistent with contemporary physics?• What is the nature of consciousness? How is it related to physical neural states or informational computational processes?• Can computers be sentient?• How is morality related to the passions?• In what sense is a political order that does justice to diversity of moral beliefs... (shrink)

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike (...) the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. (shrink)

The History of Chinese Philosophy is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Chinese philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide seventeen accessible entries organised into five clear parts: Identity of Chinese Philosophy Classical Chinese Philosophy : Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Han Through Tang Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Song Through Early Qing Modern Chinese Philosophy: From (...) Late Qing Through 21st Century This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Chinese philosophy, and will be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Philosophical ideas of different schools such as Confucian, Taoist, Legalist, Mohist, Nominalist, Military Strategist, Yin and Yang, and Agriculturist in periods prior to the Qin Dynasty (221-202 B.C) are expounded and analyzed against their times in the book. Advantages and disadvantages of different theoretical functions are also investigated from a critical perspective. In addition, the book presents the authors'personal views on the category of Chinese philosophy and the relations between traditional Chinese thoughts and modern sciences.

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy. In 1952 the book was published by Princeton University Press in an English translation by the distinguished scholar of Chinese history, Derk Bodde, "the dedicated translator of Fung Yu-lan's huge history of Chinese philosophy". Available for the first time in paperback, it remains the most complete (...) work on the subject in any language. Volume I covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 B.C., a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. Volume II discusses a period lesser known in the West--the period of classical learning, from the second century B.C. to the twentieth century. (shrink)

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.". (shrink)

This book is an abridged version of Feng Qi’s two major works on the history of philosophy, The Logical Development of Ancient Chinese Philosophy and The Revolutionary Course of Modern Chinese Philosophy. It is a comprehensive history of Chinese philosophy taking the reader from ancient times to the year 1949. It illuminates the characteristics of traditional Chinese philosophy from the broader vantage point of epistemology. The book revolves around important debates including those on “Heaven (...) and humankind” (tian ren天人), “names and actualities” (mingshi名實), “principle and vital force” (liqi理氣), “the Way and visible things” (daoqi道器), “mind and matter/things” (xinwu心物), and “knowledge and action” (zhixing知行). Through discussion of these debates, the course of Chinese philosophy unfolds. Modern Chinese philosophy has made landmark achievements in the development of historical and epistemological theory, namely the “dynamic and revolutionary theory of reflection”. However, modern Chinese philosophy is yet to construct a systematic overview of logic and methodology, as well as questions of human freedom and ideals. Amid this discussion, the question of how contemporary China is to “take the baton” from the thinkers of the modern philosophical revolution is addressed. (shrink)

As the final work by Ye Xiushan, one of the most famous philosophers and scholars of philosophy in China, this two-volume set scrutinizes the historical development of both Chinese and Western philosophy, aiming to explore the convergence between the two philosophical traditions. Combining historical examination and argumentation based on philosophical problematics, the author discusses the key figures and schools of thought from both traditions. Far from being a cursory comparison between different philosophical concepts and categories, the author discusses the (...) logical paths and conceptual approaches of the two traditions on the same philosophical issues, thus giving insights into conceptual categories commonly used in both Chinese and Western philosophies. The two volumes illuminate the different core spirits and dilemmas of Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy, encouraging a constructive dialogue between the two and a new transformation of Chinese philosophy in itself. The title will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers interested in philosophical history, comparative philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and Western philosophy ranging over Greek philosophy, German classic philosophy, and contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

I have been engaged in teaching and research on the history of Chinese philosophy for a total of not less than thirty years. During the War of Resistance against Japan, it was at the Southwest Associated University in Kunming that I first began lecturing and became engaged in specialized studies on the history of Chinese philosophy. However, I should note that I only began using the truly scientific method to study the history of Chinese (...) philosophy in 1949. Actually, the history of Chinese philosophy as a scientific discipline was only established gradually under the care and concern of the Communist Party after Liberation. During its development, this scientific discipline, while achieving important successes, also traveled a winding circuitous path. How to correctly evaluate the history and present condition of this scientific discipline, and how to promote its further development, is a problem that deeply concerns every comrade engaged in this field of scientific study. This article proposes to discuss a few of my own personal feelings on this subject. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is the history of cognition in its entirety; this was Lenin's definition. At the same time, Lenin also pointed out that, throughout 2,000 years of philosophical development, the struggle between idealism and materialism, between the trends or lines of Plato and Democritus, has never become outdated.

Recent anglophone scholarship on Chinese philosophy provides students and scholars with a great variety of introductory materials, especially when it comes to encyclopedias and manuals on the history of Chinese philosophical traditions. It is therefore increasingly difficult for scholars to produce innovative studies on the subject that can provide a significant and original contribution to the field, especially when addressing both specialists and enthusiasts. In this context, The History of Chinese Philosophy Through its Key Terms (...) by Nanjing University’s Wang Yueqing 王月清, Bao Qinggang 暴庆刚, and Guan Guoxing 管国兴 certainly represents a valuable and innovative contribution. Instead of presenting the history of... (shrink)

The articles in this collection were all selected from the first five volumes of the Journal of Dialectics of Nature published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences between 1979 and 1985. The Journal was established in 1979 as a comprehensive theoretical publication concerning the history, philosophy and sociology of the natural sciences. It began publication as a response to China's reform, particularly the policy of opening to the outside world. Chinese scholars began to undertake distinctive, original research (...) in these fields. This collection provides a cross-section of their efforts during the initial phase. To enable western scholars to understand the historical process of this change in Chinese academics, Yu Guangyuan's `On the Emancipation of the Mind' and Xu Liangying's `Essay on the Role of Science and Democracy in Society' have been included in this collection. Three of the papers included on the philosophy of science are discussions of philosophical issues in cosmology and biology by scientists themselves. The remaining four are written by philosophers of science and discuss information and cognition, homeostasis and Chinese traditional medicine, the I Ching (Yi Jing) and mathematics, etc. Papers have been selected on the history of both classical and modern science and technology, the most distinctive of which are macro-comparisons of the development of science in China and the west. Some papers discuss the issue of the demarcation of periods in the history of science, the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, machinery, medicine, etc. Others discuss the history of modern physics and biology, the history of historiography of science in China and the history of regional development of Chinese science and technology. Also included are biographies of three post-eighteenth-century Chinese scholars, Li Shanlan (1811-1882), Hua Hengfang (1833–1902), and Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), who contributed greatly to the introduction of western science and scholarship to China. In addition, three short papers have been included introducing the interactions between Chinese scholars and three great western scientists, Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and Robert A. Millikan. (shrink)

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy.

Environmental ethics is a major topic of discussion and enactment in China. The government is committed to work toward an “ecological civilization,” a society in which concerns for a healthy natural environment are interwoven with concerns for a healthy human society and healthy human relations with nature. Whereas in the United States concern for the environment is rarely consciously philosophical, Chinese history has made people aware that philosophy underlies and shapes public policy. Whitehead’s thought has been welcomed as (...) a way of clarifying and supporting the commitment to ecological civilization, which has been strongly reemphasized by President Xi. It also helps in reviving and incorporating classical Chinese thought without threatening the great advances China has made in science. This organic thinking has expressed itself in government policy in shifting from the industrialization of agriculture to support for eco-villages and in dethroning GDP as the measure of progress. The interest in Whitehead is expressed by thirty-six universities setting up Centers for Process Studies, extensive discussion of a process book—Organic Marxism—and numerous other publications. (shrink)

In this volume, distinguished philosopher Antonio S. Cua offers a collection of original studies on Xunzi, a leading classical Confucian thinker, and on other ...

Originally published in Peking in 1958, this work covers four thousand years of Chinese philosophy, into the Marxist philosophy of Mao, which it calls the culmination of the wisdom of the Chinese people.

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy. In 1952 the book was published by Princeton University Press in an English translation by the distinguished scholar of Chinese history, Derk Bodde, "the dedicated translator of Fung Yu-lan's huge history of Chinese philosophy". Available for the first time in paperback, it remains the most complete (...) work on the subject in any language. Volume I covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 B.C., a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. Volume II discusses a period lesser known in the West--the period of classical learning, from the second century B.C. to the twentieth century. (shrink)

An in-depth account of how critique and subversion have been integral parts of the history and development of Chinese philosophy from the classical period to the present.

This paper aims to shed new light on Hegel’s rather problematic statements about Asian thinking and Chinese philosophy by disclosing the Orientalist antecedents found in Kant’s anthropological works. First, the notion of Orientalism will be defined with reference to Orientalism and “Orientalism Reconsidered” by Edward Said. Second, an exploration of Kant’s anthropological research will show that this constituted the turning point in the Western Orientalist perception of China which had a strong influence on Hegel Finally, it will be claimed (...) that Hegel’s Orientalist perception of China rests on a definition of culture as the expression of the “spirit of a people” that has recently been revised by contemporary post-colonial anthropologists. (shrink)

This book starts with the classification of the main views of different thinkers after the study of the original materials, which covers all the thinkers’ thoughts and conceptions. A major objective of this book is to reveal the ideas of the philosophers. Key ideological opinions are stated with the former discussion of exact questions and further clarification of their philosophical meaning, which enables the readers to better understand the meaning and value of the philosophical thoughts. Since the logic and (...) class='Hi'>history are in accordance with each other, a frame of conception is formed then. Then, the author clearly explains the logical relationship in the frame mentioned before, as well as the formation of the key concepts and their relationship. (shrink)

The development of modern Chinese thought involves an ongoing interaction between internal processes and impacts of foreign ideas. Several intellectual controversies are interwoven into its history and among these one of the more philosophical ones began some 90 years ago, in 1923. In this controversy, supporters of science or scientism and supporters of metaphysics or Confucian tradition debated issues of what both sides referred to as "the view of life." The study of the view of life controversy by (...) Gad C. Isay discusses the positions of the view of life supporters who upheld metaphysics against scientism. It focuses on both the philosophical merit of their views and the relevance of these views to the question of culture in modern China. Considering the sources of the view of life problem in traditional Chinese thought and the discussions that followed after the controversy, it is argued that the view of life question was a central theme in Chinese thought from its beginning. In this respect, modern discussions of this problem indicate continuity with the past. However, these discussions demonstrate too, the dynamics of changing conceptions regarding the context of human relationships that are related directly to the meeting with the West. Isay's study traces the development of these discussions from their beginning up to our days giving a comprehensive survey of the philosophy of the view of life in modern Chinese thought. (shrink)

History of ideas "duality" is Mr. Li Jinquan the focus of attention problems. Articles by examining his case studies the history of thought, school of analysis, the overall concept through the three levels of detailed analysis, to explore his object throughout the study in the "philosophy of integrating" approach orientation and the "heritage and innovation" cultural standpoint, and shows that he contemplation of the modern practice of traditional character, the close integration of academic learning and social spirit of (...) the people. Mr. Jin-quan Li pay close attention to a focal question which is "dual nature" of history of thinking. The article will review the detailed analyse about three arrangments of ideals which consists of individual research, analyse on school of thought and the whole history of thought. And will search for the method of the fusion of philosoghy and history, the successive arid innovative cultural stand which ran through his research. And will delineate his practical character of using tradition take care of modernization and the scholcal spirit of combining study with life and society. (shrink)

Thought of the people in modern China has experienced three different stages of historical evolution: the Opium War to Sino ideology before people began to shake the stage; Hundred-dimensional people thought of the decay phase of the new era; people during the 1911 Revolution and the demise of political ideology end of life stage. There are three characteristics of its evolution: First, the thought of the people has always been the evolution of the principal contradiction in Chinese society with (...) modern developments and changes linked; Second, the democratic ideas of development in modern China, and indeed the people of the gradual collapse of the disintegration of the ideological and theoretical system, functional the process of shrinking role; Third, the evolution is always thought of the people and the ruling class and the advanced Chinese people's ideals and beliefs, linked to theory and practice. The waning stage, which lasted from the Opium Wars until the time before the Sino-Japanese war . The declining stage, during the year of the Reform Movement of 1898. The decaying stage, during the year of The Revolution of 1911. There are three features of their decay: They were interwoven with the escalation of the principal social problem of modern China. The development of democracy in modern China contributed to the gradual collapse of these ideologies. The decline of these ideologies was interwoven with the ideals, beliefs, theories, and practices of the ruling class and progressive Chinese people. (shrink)