Abstract

In his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," Hegel once commented that the characteristic of Eastern philosophy lies in that it only recognizes as real the singular ding-an-sich . If an individuality, or a singular entity, stands in opposition to the ontological entity that exists in itself and spontaneously acts in itself , then it cannot have any value in itself, and cannot attain any value at all. However, at the same time that the individual entity unites with the ding-an-sich, this individual entity ceases to be an entity, as a subject, and disappears into nonconsciousness. This viewpoint appears to be an understanding of the Chinese cultural traditional mode of thought that was almost universally held by all Western thinkers of the time. A similar point of view seems to be held by the British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge in an essay that he wrote on the linguistic styles of various genre of literature. In Coleridge's case, however, he was attempting to make a comparison of Eastern and Western political systems. He believed that the characteristic of Eastern polity was that it embodied a tendency toward autocracy, or, in other words, toward unity, whereas the characteristic of Western polity, coming from the source of the Greek political system, conversely embodied a tendency toward diversity and plurality. It is not my belief that all the ways in which Western scholars understood Chinese culture, since the period of the Enlightenment, were accurate and valid. Indeed, many such Western thinkers, owing either to a paucity of information on their part or to their ignorance, or partial ignorance, of the sources of Chinese civilization, have made many incorrect evaluations and judgments about Chinese culture. However, I do believe that this particular view held by Western scholars, that Eastern philosophy emphasized identity and unity while deemphasizing or even ignoring diversity and plurality, is a viewpoint that deserves some attention. This, in my opinion, is indeed a characteristic of China's cultural tradition. The problem that it raises is essentially the question of the relationship between the group and the individual, between commonality and individuality, and, one may even go so far as to say, the relationship between "public" and "private."