Feng Youlan , auteur d’une célèbre Histoire de la philosophie chinoise , a voulu refonder le néoconfucianisme de Zhu Xi en l’accordant à la philosophie analytique. Son Traité de l’Homme est une phénoménologie de la conscience individuelle, décrite dans chacune des quatre étapes de son ascension vers la sainteté : la conscience naturelle, forme originelle de l’être-au-monde, immédiatement présent au réel sans conscience de soi ; la conscience intéressée, qui se distancie du réel par un calcul de conduite en vue (...) d’un bonheur égoïste ; la conscience morale, naissant d’une prise de conscience de soi comme être-avec-autrui, qui cultive l’altruisme ; la conscience cosmique, celle du Saint qui a compris les raisons de toute chose et communie à la Voie du Ciel . L’un des penseurs chinois les plus subtils du siècle dernier, Feng Youlan a été décrédibilisé par sa tonitruante conversion au maoïsme en 1949.Feng Youlan is the author of a famous History of Chinese Philosophy translated by Derk Bodde in 1937 and 1953 . He attempted to breathe new life into the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi by bringing it into harmony with analytic philosophy. His Essay on Man is a phenomenology of individual consciousness as it rises to saintliness through four stages : natural consciousness, the primary form of existence in which the mind is immediately aware of the objective world, but without self-consciousness ; selfish consciousness, rising above the objective world by calculation, following the quest of self-happiness ; moral consciousness, born from the consciousness of oneself as a social being and developing altruism ; cosmic consciousness, reaching saintliness through the understanding of the truth of everything and uniting oneself with the Way of Heaven . Feng Youlan was one of the most outstanding Chinese philosophers of the last century who, however, lost credibility after his well-publicized conversion to Maoism in 1949. (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.

The first essay, "Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy," by Derk Bodde, treats the subjects of the cosmic pattern, the pattern of history, good and evil, the harmonization of social classes, peace and war, the harmonizing of opposites, and the sage. To those who want a bird's eye view of Chinese philosophy on these questions, the article is highly recommended. It is also an excellent summary of Fung Yu-lan's History of Chinese Philosophy, which Bodde has (...) translated into English, with respect to these concepts. With certain exceptions all materials are drawn from Fung and summary references to Fung's book are frankly given at the end of many paragraphs. Most works available in English translation are also cited according to quotations made from them in Fung. (shrink)

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi —a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the (...) curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of _Learning to Be a Sage_ examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the _Conversations of Master Chu_. (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. 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)

Epistemic warrant for Husserl is closely tied to his phenomenological method and his main philosophical theme: intentionality. By investigating the lived experience of intentional givenness he elaborates what being a justificatory reason amounts to and thereby develops his specific conception of epistemic justification: intuitive fulfillment of a signitive intention which achieves evidence as the experienced, subjectively accessible presence of the “thing itself.” Terminologically, Husserl calls this Ausweisung. The intuitively fulfilled givenness of the intended, its self-givenness, is the ultimate reason for (...) its epistemic justification. For Husserl a “space of reasons” is thus is tied to and made possible only by means of the fundamental accomplishment of intentionality: the conscious presence of the world itself which surpasses the classical epistemological division between inner and outer realm, mind and world. By following Husserl’s development from the Logical Investigations up to his phenomenological version of transcendental idealism, the role of epistemic justification qua demonstration of intuitive fulfillment will be spelled out according to the theses above. In the last part of the paper I will examine Husserl’s position with respect to discussions on justification in the Philosophy of Mind and analytic epistemology. (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. 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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Whitehead, Neville, and Chu HsiDavid L. HallJohn Berthrong. Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Whitehead, Neville, and Chu Hsi. SUNY Series in Religious Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 254. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $24.50.Given the irenic and deferential tone of John Berthrong's prose in his Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Whitehead, Neville, and Chu Hsi, his readers might (...) not readily suspect that an intellectual drama of real significance is being played out in its pages. In this brief review I will attempt to provide the outlines of that drama, and to assess Berthrong's directing skills.We begin with the rather startling fact that before the "Dictionary Supplement" to the 1971 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published, one would have searched that work in vain for the principal word in the title of Berthrong's book. The OED entry on "creativity" contains three illustrations of its use-one from a literary critic (1875) and the other two from A. N. Whitehead's Religion in the Making (1926).Berthrong is to be congratulated for recognizing, as most process thinkers have not, that Whitehead introduced not only a new word into our philosophical vocabulary but also a radically novel means of interpreting the world and our experience of it-one that answers to feelings and forms of understanding that have been seriously marginalized in the West. What this means, of course, is that Whitehead's understanding of "creativity" in terms of the spontaneous emergence of novelty requires a radical transvaluation and reconstruction of the nature and import of ontological speculations within the Western tradition. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Western philosophy simply lacks interpretative insights permitting a responsible elaboration of Whitehead's understanding of creativity. Berthrong must look beyond Western culture to find resources with which to defend [End Page 571] Whitehead's novel understanding of creativity properly against the criticisms of mainstream ontologists such as Robert Neville.It is Whitehead's placement of ontological issues within his speculative scheme against which Neville's criticisms are directed. And, as we shall see, it is this same issue that leads Berthrong to appeal to the Chinese Neo-Confucian Chu Hsi to defend Whitehead against Neville.It is important to recognize that by the time that Berthrong was awakened from the contented slumber of a Whiteheadian scholastic by Neville's Calvinesque critique, he was already expert in the mainstream thought of an alternative cultural milieu. While other champions of Whitehead's novel speculations have been forced to work within the Western philosophical tradition, Berthrong is able to access a tradition in which discussions of creativity as the spontaneous emergence of novelty employ terms such as ch'i ("matter-energy," "energizing field"), tzu-jan ("self-soing"), i ("change," "becoming"), and ch'eng ("self-actualization," "creativity") that did not come late to Chinese dictionaries. Neville is certainly familiar with Chinese philosophical thought, but he approached the Asian traditions in a serious manner only after his principal intuitions had been systematically articulated. Thus, while Berthrong looks to the Chinese Neo-Confucians for assistance in formulating Whitehead's defense, Neville expects these same thinkers to offer exemplifications of his own solidly wrought reflections. The consequence of this state of affairs is that, in his debate with Neville, Berthrong has the advantage of a somewhat greater flexibility.Berthrong's flexibility is demonstrated by his method of engaging his principal interlocutors. He employ's Wayne Booth's "coductive" method, which avoids dialectical sublation or analytic reduction in favor of the analogical correlations of concepts and doctrines. Coduction is essentially an ethos-based method expressed through conversations or debates that aim not at refutation or the establishment of a final view but at an enlargement of understanding leading to what Whitehead termed "wide intellectual tolerance."In his triangulation of Whitehead, Neville, and Chu Hsi, Berthrong provides accurate and balanced presentations of the pertinent ideas of each of the principals. He succinctly articulates Whitehead's understanding of the world as comprised by "actual entities," whose coming into being and passing away express the creative process that is the general... (shrink)

The study of phenomenological Marxism in China can be divided into three stages up to the present. The first stage spanned from the 1980s to the second half of the 1990s. During this period Luo Keting consciously set up the project of combining phenomenology with Marxism, and the boom in Sartre studies brought about the wide spread of existential Marxism. The second stage spanned from the second half of the 1990s to the 2010s, when Marxist researchers and Western philosophical researchers (...) in China energetically attempted the combination of phenomenology and Marxism. The third stage has run from 2010s to the present, in which specialized teams of researchers have researched phenomenological Marxism, and Chinese researchers have gradually showed their own awareness of problems facing Chinese society. However, how a phenomenological Marxism based on subjectivity can construct a holistic view of history is a problem that still needs to be deeply explored. (shrink)

Sri Lanka completed eloquent pull Dage described the love of wisdom is a holistic, practical way of life, which of course requires an abstract, theoretical science of meditation, more importantly, it also contains many religious practices is legal, such as flexible do not rot the soul, bitter conduct regular ring legal, social and political reform program, sustained ethics reflection, body control, dietary rules and taboos. However, this Pythagorean philosophy as a better life to all the light and fade away In (...) order to view at any time. The original philosophy of travel to another utterly abnormal interest in the pilgrimage of the way, that is abstract, a clear knowledge and commitment of this knowledge by the certainty of pursuit. "Knowledge" and "real management" into the vocabulary of philosophy In order systems, "smart" In order to become a college corridor in the West has been seriously neglected under the words. With the flow of time driving on the theory and psychiatric abstract admiration, which means practical wisdom, rhetoric and aesthetics into a whole都In order to two yuan regardless. Philosophy - the "love of wisdom" - in all intent and purposes都becomes In order to philo-episteme-"love of knowledge certainty." Started with the ancient Chinese culture, hope臘different. It is rooted in Confucianism, "the next school on up," the admonition of Chinese philosophy from the initial thinking on the road from the daily behavior persist in the pursuit of wisdom, relationships conducted by the "self" as the meaning of things by the event source. Everyone from family, community, political relations, to obtain a unique perspective, they participate in the growth of sperm heart and minds of thinking, their family and community relationships to adjust to a clearer, more meaningful position. Personal self-cultivation increased by the universe meaning, and meaning of the universe has increased over the coming anti-In order for individuals to provide a self fertile soil. For the eloquent Pythagoras, the holistic way of life he described as philosophia-"the love of wisdom"-while entailing the contemplation of abstract, theoretical science, involved much more importantly religious practices based upon the immortality of the soul, ascetic observances, a program of social and political reform, ethical reflection, a physical regimen, and even dietary prescriptions and prohibitions. But this conception of philosophy as a holistic vision of the good life faded in time, and gave way to the search for apodictic knowledge and its promise of certainty. "Knowledge" and "truth" became the vocabulary of systematic philosophy, and "wisdom" was banished from conversation in the corridors of the Western academy. The worship of the theoretically and spiritually abstract meant that in the fullness of time practical wisdom , rhetoric, and the aesthetic were relegated to the down side of a prevailing dualism. The Chinese cultural narrative unfolded differently. Grounded in the Confucian exhortation-"Study what is near at hand and aspire to what is lofty the next school on the up"-the Chinese philosophical narrative has from earliest times sustained a commitment to the pursuit of wisdom by understanding personal cultivation as the ultimate source of an emergent cosmic meaning. It is the revolution currently taking place within the Western philosophical community as an attempt to reinstate wisdom that provides an opening and an invitation to take Chinese philosophy and culture more seriously. An internal critique continues to be waged within professional Western philosophy under the many banners of process philosophy, hermeneutics, post-modernism, neo-pragmatism, neo-Marxism, deconstructionism, feminist philosophy , and so on, that takes as a shared target what Robert Solomon has called "the transcendental pretense"-idealism, objectivism, logocentrism, essentialism, the master narrative, "the myth of the given"-the familiar reductionistic "isms" that have emerged as putatively novel choices as philosophers switch horses on the merry-go-round of systematic philosophy. In place of a Cartesian philosophical language that privileges the function of clear and distinct ideas in our quest for an objective certainty, vocabularies of process, change, and indeed productive vagueness have increasingly come into vogue. These recent developments in Anglo-European philosophy itself have begun to foreground interpretative vocabularies more relevant to the articulation of Chinese culture. In this essay, I will argue that the pragmatic theory of truth as expounded by William James and particularly John Dewey is an attempt to reauthorize "wisdom" as a philosophical goal in the Western philosophical narrative. This development opens a space for a conversation between Deweyan pragmatism and Confucianism on how best to achieve it. (shrink)

Even though since 1965 the Great Cultural Revolution was basically an internal struggle in Mainland China, it coincided with a high tide of criticism toward Russian revisionism and therefore constituted a struggle for defining the ideological line of the Chinese Communist Party. As an internal struggle, the Great Cultural Revolution subjected all phases of cultural activity and personnel to a severe political grinding down so that a more uniform political consciousness of Maoism was generated as the guiding principle (...) of the nation; as an attempt to repudiate Russian revisionism and to assert the ideological identity of Maoism, the Great Cultural Revolution has helped in practice to provide a model of continuing revolution for a genuinely pursued Marxist society. In his long article, Chou Yang, who himself later became a target and victim of the Great Cultural Revolution, spelled out the latter message and hinted at the former possibility. What is even more significant is that he stressed repeatedly the importance of the role philosophy workers and social science workers must play in waging an ideological struggle against both Marxist revisionism and capitalism, on the one hand, and the importance of political leadership in the studies and works of philosophy and the social sciences, on the other. (shrink)

Chu Hsi (1130-1200) exerted a lasting influence on the thought and life of the Chinese in subsequent cent. The core of his synthesis was moral and social philosophy, but it also included knowledge about the natural world. His doctrine of ke-wu (invest. of things) made him mindful of the specialized knowledged in such "scientific" traditions as astronomy, harmonics, med., etc. This study of Chu Hsi's thought gives a systematic account of the basic concepts of his natural philosophy. Also discusses (...) Chu Hsi's actual knowledge about the natural world. And examines the relation between Chu Hsi and Chinese "scientific" traditions and compares his natural knowledge with that of the Western scientific tradition. (shrink)

This extensive and generally useful anthology contains extracts from the writings of forty-seven Chinese philosophers, ranging from Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mo Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, and Hsun Tzu in ancient times to Sun Yat-sen, Hu Shih, Mao Tse-tung, and Fung Yu-lan in the twentieth century. Also included are passages from five books of the sayings of Buddha, on the ground, as stated by the editor, that Buddha "was the historic founder of a religion which profoundly influenced Chinese (...) thinkers." The editor’s introductions to the selections are clear and informative. Unfortunately, the proofreading and editing of the book seem to have been done less carefully than is desirable. For example, a reader sometimes cannot tell whether a particular footnote was written by the original author, by the translator, by the editor of the earlier collection from which the selection was culled for this collection, or by the editor of this collection. Dagobert Runes, not known to be a Chinese linguist, is listed as the translator of portions of the Tao Teh Ching included in the volume. Despite various flaws, however, the book is valuable for the breadth of its coverage.—W. G. (shrink)