there is no need for zhongguo zhexue to be philosophy
TRANSCRIPT
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There is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexueto be PhilosophyMin OuYang
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To cite this article: Min OuYang (2012): There is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexue to be Philosophy,Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East, 22:3, 199-223
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Asian PhilosophyVol. 22, No. 3, August 2012, pp. 199–223
There is No Need for ZhongguoZhexue to be Philosophy
Min OuYang
In this paper, I shall argue that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice andcannot refer to traditional Chinese thinking unless in an analogical or metaphorical
sense. Likewise, the Chinese idiom ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ has evolved its independentcultural meaning and has no need to be considered as philosophy in the Westernacademic sense. For the purpose of elucidating the culturally autonomous status of
Zhongguo zhexue, as well as the possible counterparts of Western philosophy in othercultures, I contend that Davidsonian anomalous monism may provide a proper
explanatory framework for the intercultural relationships between different ‘sophias’from various traditions. As for the equivocal English term ‘Chinese philosophy’, I suggest
replacing it with a more precise new word: ‘sinosophy’.
Is it appropriate to retrospectively consider traditional Chinese thought as
philosophy? Whether there existed philosophy in Chinese culture or whether the
usage of ‘Chinese philosophy’ is legitimate has been an issue since the end of the
nineteenth century. Ever since the introduction of philosophy from Europe, Chinese
intellectuals have struggled to delineate the content of the Chinese counterpart of this
culturally embedded Western term. In the meantime, ‘Chinese philosophy’ has
gradually become an academically well-functioning discipline and its Chinese
expression, Zhongguo zhexue, has become substantially embedded in related
institutional structures, journals, conferences and research in most Chinese areas
including Taiwan, Hong-Kong, and Singapore. Additionally, the concept and its
usage, perhaps to a relatively limited extent, have penetrated into Western academia
despite its disputable identity (see Defoort, 2001, p. 410, n. 10).In this paper, I shall argue that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice
and cannot refer to traditional Chinese thinking unless in an analogical or
metaphorical sense. Likewise, the Chinese idiom ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ has evolved its
Correspondence to: Min OuYang, Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven, Mgr. Van Waeyenberghlaan
34/9, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 0955-2367 print/ISSN 1469-2961 online/12/030199–25 � 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2012.708982
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independent cultural meaning and has no need to be considered as philosophy in the
Western academic sense. For the purpose of elucidating the culturally autonomous
status of Zhongguo zhexue, as well as the possible counterparts of Western philosophy
in other cultures, I contend that Davidsonian anomalous monism may provide a
proper explanatory framework for the intercultural relationships between different
‘sophias’ from various traditions. As for the equivocal English term ‘Chinese
philosophy’, I suggest replacing it with a more precise new word: ‘sinosophy’.
1. The Evolution of the Term Zhongguo Zhexue
The Chinese translation of the word ‘philosophy’ is zhexue,1 which was initially
coined by Japanese scholar Nishi Amane (1829–1887) (Zhong, 1992, p. 164). During
the early twentieth century, abundant neologisms were created or imported from
Japan for absorbing the novel knowledge from the West. Among them was the usage
of Zhongguo zhexue, which combined the adjective ‘Zhongguo’ (Chinese) and the
neologism ‘zhexue’ (stipulated to mean ‘philosophy’), and henceforth became a
regular idiom for Chinese intellectuals.2
Preliminarily, I suggest approaching this Chinese term from two angles. In its first
meaning, it does not concern the Western origin of its component ‘zhexue’ to a
considerable extent, but refers to part of the corpus of the more than two millennia of
Chinese intellectual heritage that may conveniently be considered as the counterpart
of Western philosophy. As a result of language evolution, Zhongguo zhexue has
become a neutralized or localized modern expression roughly referring to traditional
Chinese jingxue and zixue or yili zhi xue and their modern and
contemporary continuing studies, and has been a term that is used not only by
academics but also by the general public in the Chinese-speaking areas.Another meaning of this term is more theory-laden in a cross-culturally
etymological sense, and is where the controversy comes from. This meaning
accompanied Chinese intellectuals’ sentiments incurred by the accumulation of
humiliations from the Western colonial invasions since the First Opium War (1840).
Largely in the interest of defending national pride, the practice of portraying
Zhongguo zhexue as the competing counterpart of Western philosophy increased.
Moreover, some scholars trained in Western philosophy then started to try to use
Western philosophical concepts to re-examine, re-interpret, re-explore, or even re-
discover ancient Chinese thought. Thus, the term Zhongguo zhexue in this sense is not
only intricately linked to the Western philosophical tradition, but is also seen as a
vehicle for the restoration of a self-confident nation.
As an imported concept, the term zhexue may hypothetically have two ways of
adoption: one is to adopt merely its name without its cultural connotation and then
fill it with the possible Chinese native content; the other is to adopt the name as well
as the whole package of its cultural presuppositions. Obviously, these are two
idealized extremes in that both may make the connotation of Zhongguo zhexue empty
because the former provides no guide for what zhexue is, and the latter is simply
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importing a whole novel thinking framework that had never existed in China.
Nonetheless, this distinction can still be a heuristic separation of two different kindsof attitudes for dealing with this new idiom: the former tends to find the proper
counterpart of Western philosophy in the Chinese tradition and may then prioritizethe traditional Chinese thinking framework over the Western tradition; the latter is
prone to rectify Chinese thought, thus prioritizing the Western philosophicalconceptual schemes.
Throughout the conceptual development of the term Zhongguo zhexue, we find
that Chinese scholars struggled between these two tendencies. To illustrate thecharacteristics of Zhongguo zhexue’s evolution, I shall single out three of the most
representative Chinese scholars who made contributions to the development of thisdiscipline and discuss their approaches to treating this new academic subject in the
Chinese world.In 1919, Hu Shi (1891–1962) published his Outline of the History of Chinese
Philosophy I ( ), which has become the pioneering work increating a paradigm for narrating a history of Zhongguo zhexue. Although Chineseintellectuals at that time acknowledged that there existed no works on the history of
‘Chinese philosophy’ in pre-modern China (Hu, 1919, p. 1), few seriously doubtedthe existence of ‘Chinese philosophy’. In the introduction of his book, Hu claimed
that Eastern and Western philosophy stand for two major philosophies in the worldand Chinese philosophy has become the representative of the Eastern branch (p. 5).
Clearly, the existence of Chinese philosophy has been unquestioningly presupposedby him.
A broad-stroke historical reason for this kind of mentality may be that it has beenthe first time in the whole history of China that Chinese intellectuals were forced to
learn cultures from foreign countries, while, up until then, it was proudly the otherway around. However, Hu (1919) did not address the question of the justification ofthe neologism Zhongguo zhexue as referring to the corpus of traditional Chinese
thought as some sinologists might have expected (see Defoort, 2001, p. 397, 2006,pp. 634–636).3 Rather, he presupposed that part of the Chinese intellectual tradition
was essentially the same thing as Western philosophy, only with different origins.Nonetheless, Hu’s writing a history of ‘Chinese philosophy’ may be considered a
practical approach for actualizing the possible corpus of Zhongguo zhexue, and assignificant for entrenching a paradigmatic study in the practices of later Chinese
scholars. Regardless of whether or not, and to what extent, a Western philosophicalframe was used, the process of writing a history of ‘Chinese philosophy’ issubstantially a process of implementing the content of Zhongguo zhexue and of
localizing this discipline as well.Following Hu, Feng Youlan’s (1895–1990) works on the history of
Zhongguo zhexue more radically adopted Western philosophical jargon to categorizethe thoughts of ancient Chinese thinkers. Additionally, he imposed the historical
periods of Western philosophy upon the history of Chinese thought (Feng, 1994,p. 491ff.). His affirmative attitude for the existence of Chinese philosophy was
incorporated into his attempt to systemize ancient Chinese thought. He insisted that
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both Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy bore the same systematicity
despite the lack of appearance in the former, and one of the purposes of doing thehistory of Chinese philosophy was simply to educe these real systems from the
philosophies that seemed to have no formal system (Feng, 1993, p. 14).Mou Tsung-San (1909–1995), while also firmly insisting on the existence
of Chinese philosophy, took the approach of deepening Chinese philosophicalthinking by comparing it with the Western philosophical tradition from theperspective of his modern neo-Confucian interests. His influential contribution of
comparing and combining Kant’s philosophy with Confucian moral subjectivity mayhave initiated another paradigmatic approach to authenticating the existence of
‘Chinese philosophy’. He conceded that ‘philosophy’ is a term that has its origins inancient Greece and in this sense we might say that there is no philosophy in China at
all, but he contended that we are now using it as a general term ( ) (Mou, 1997,p. 1). He insisted that every cultural system has its philosophy, since otherwise it
cannot be a cultural system. Therefore, if you admit the cultural system of China, younaturally admit the existence of Chinese philosophy (p. 4). For Mou, ‘All that toucheson the activities of humanity, and that is pondered and explained by means of reason
and concepts, constitutes philosophy’ (p. 4).Mou’s argument from the viewpoint of the cultural system is a general belief of
Chinese intellectuals. In addition, his use of ‘philosophy’ as a general term andexplicit claim that ‘philosophy’ and ‘Western philosophy’ should not be identified
(Mou, 1997, p. 1), indicate that ‘philosophy’ possesses its own universality that isindependent of ‘Western philosophy’, which is why he thought that philosophy,
without any doubt, can be used to name Chinese thought. This has become aninfluential conviction in Chinese academia.
No matter how these predecessors identified Chinese thought as philosophy, all ofthem universalized philosophy in a certain way. The notion of philosophy being auniversal practice characterizing a certain general intellectual activity of humanity is
still ubiquitous in contemporary Chinese scholarship. Although these precursorsintended to justify the existence of philosophy in the Chinese tradition, what they
ultimately presented was a localized Zhongguo zhexue, of which Hu and Fengindividuated the ancient corpus while Mou developed and formulated the modern
and contemporary continuation.Nevertheless, an uneasiness about the combination of traditional Chinese thought
and philosophy still appeared in Chinese academia from time to time. For instance,Liang Chi-chao (1873–1929) used ‘The history of the art (method) of Dao
Zhongguo Daoshu shi’ in his The method of investigating Chinese history
( ) rather than ‘the history of Chinese philosophyZhongguo zhexue shi’ (Liang, 1998 [1030], p. 288). Fu Sinian (1896–1950)
called Chinese masters ‘Masters of the art of the way ’ instead of philosophers(Fu, 1980, p. 473), and expressed his antipathy to German philosophy by saying that
German philosophy is just the result of the bad habit of the German language (seeZheng, 2004, p. 4). Above all, Jin Yuelin’s (1895–1984) ‘Reviewing report
’ for Feng’s The history of Chinese philosophy I & II posed a polemic query
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concerning the issue of the legitimacy of ‘the history of Chinese philosophy’ (Jin,
1994).
Since Peking University founded its ‘Chinese philosophy section’ in 1914, the rise
of the discipline of ‘Chinese philosophy’ has substantially declared the end of the
jingxue era. The writing approach of Hu’s Outline of the history of Chinese philosophy
in 1919 essentially broke the two-thousand-year-old, dominant Confucian tradition
that stipulated Confucian classics as the only authentic academic readings, and,
furthermore, created a new landscape for modern Chinese academia (cf. Chen, 2005,
p. 13). A critical historical background that facilitated this transition was the
termination of the system of imperial examination ( ) with the overturn of
the Qing Empire. As an extremely practical nation, the motivation for most scholars
to study the Confucian classics was to pass state examinations, but with the abolition
of the said exams, the classics lost practical relevance for many. Hence, most scholars
would thereafter have no reason for studying only Confucian classics. This might be
what was happening during the beginning of the founding of the Republic of China
(1911) and might also provide an answer for some sinologists’ observation that
China’s autonomous philosophical tradition seemed to abruptly cease existence as a
living tradition at the end of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth
(Defoort, 2001, p. 395). Indeed, this is a delicate phenomenal observation but may be
too hasty a conclusion to draw because this tradition did not actually cease to exist,
but was only transformed from a Confucianism-centered monistic academic corpus
to a multi-perspectival pluralistic one.The nature of this transition from a monistic to a pluralistic academic milieu was
threefold: turmoil within––from the Confucianism-centered study to the study of all
pre-Qin masters; threat from without––defeated Chinese tradition versus imported
Western civilization; and urge to transform––finding a new way for the rebirth of
Chinese tradition. The transformation of Chinese tradition in this period was so fast
and so intricate that even Chinese scholars might not be able to recognize the new
face of it. In fact, this new discipline of Zhongguo zhexue was forming a new phase of
the Chinese academic tradition.After almost a century to digest, accommodate, and assimilate the term, the
content of Zhongguo zhexue has become part of the Chinese academic corpus.4
Unsurprisingly, with the economical as well as political rise of China in recent
decades, and the prosperity of the field of Zhongguo zhexue, the issue of the legitimacy
of ‘Chinese philosophy’ has acquired more attention. Challenging the legitimacy of
‘Chinese philosophy’ may, on the one hand, touch the nerve of the national pride of
Chinese intellectuals, and, on the other, jeopardize the academic dignity of scholars
working in this field. Moreover, the gradually escalating concern towards this issue in
the beginning of this century seemed to be accelerated by Derrida’s innocent remark
on Chinese philosophy during his visit to China in 2001. Derrida casually expressed
that China has no philosophy, immediately adding that he did not mean to imply any
value judgment, only stating that philosophy is the product of a specific time and
environment, with its origin in Greece (Du & Zhang, p. 139).
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Derrida’s remark was simply repeating Heidegger’s view on philosophy and his
attitude towards Asian thought (Ma, 2008, pp. 51–56). As Heidegger emphasized:
‘‘‘Western philosophy’’ is, in truth, a tautology’ (Heidegger, 1956, p. 29). However,
though Derrida seemed to have explained that his statement is completely
descriptive, the subsequent discussions about this event focused more on the
possible evaluative implications of his remark (Defoort, 2006, p. 645, n. 25). Defoort
summarizes what subsequently happened in Chinese academic circles:
Conferences are being dedicated to the question of the ‘legitimacy of ‘‘Chinesephilosophy’’’, newspapers report on it, and some journals devote whole forums toit. About one hundred articles or chapters related to the topic confirm itsproclaimed status as ‘one of the ten major questions in the field in the year 2003’.(Defoort, 2006, p. 626)
Compared to thousands of years of Chinese tradition, the 100-year-old Zhongguo
zhexue may just be seen as a controversial affair with Western philosophy. Defoort
tries to depict the mentality of Hu and Feng by saying that ‘Chinese philosophy
belonged to the background of their reflections rather than the foreground’ and ‘their
concern was with ‘‘Chinese’’ rather than with ‘‘philosophy’’’ (Defoort, 2006, p. 636).
While it seems to be ‘Chinese’ instead of ‘philosophy’ that dominates their research,
these depictions may reveal that they were doing ‘Chinese philosophy’ with more of a
Chinese mind than a Western philosophical mind. I hence insist that Zhongguo
zhexue should be understood as a continuation of the Chinese thinking tradition,
rather than an extension of philosophy of Greek origin. Moreover, Chinese thinking
is something that cannot be sufficiently characterized by the Western philosophical
conceptual scheme.
2. Chinese Philosophy in the West
In fact, philosophy had been brought into China by Western missionaries long before
Chinese scholars started to use the term zhexue at the end of nineteenth century. In
the Ming Dynasty, books were published such as ( ) Xi Xue Fan (1623),
( ) Xiou Shen Xi Xue (1630), and ( ) Ming Li Tan (1631), in which
philosophia is transliterated as feilusuofeiya, feiluosuofeiya,
or feilufeiya, being a subject taught in Europe (Zhong, 1992, p. 162).As Defoort and Standaert indicate, in the seventeenth century, the missionaries
seemed to have no doubt that Confucius was a philosopher and considered the Yi
Jing as a philosophical book, while the definition of philosophy in modern
times has become narrower (Defoort, 2001, p. 401, 2006, p. 631; Standaert, 2000,
p. 315). However, the missionaries’ religious motives should not be neglected when
evaluating their ‘assessment’ of Confucius and others, but it is true that their
communications to European scholars convinced some of them (e.g. Leibniz) to have
no doubt that there is such a thing as Chinese philosophy (Perkins, 2004, p. 167).
Indeed, after the eighteenth century, various eminent European philosophers such
as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida expressed that they do not think that
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ancient Chinese thought could be considered as philosophy (Defoort, 2006, p. 626).
Apart from those frequently cited comments from Kant, Hegel and other Western
philosophers about explicitly rejecting Chinese thought as philosophy, what should
deserve more concern is the dominant and implicit rejection embedded in the
organization of academic conferences, journals, university curricula and bookstores
in the Western (especially European) world (Defoort, 2006, p. 626).
Compared to those intensive discussions on the issue of the legitimacy of ‘Chinese
philosophy’ during the last ten years in China, Defoort’s analysis on the same issue is
far more lucid and neutral, and may be a suitable basis for a further discussion.
Defoort seems to cross-classify this issue into two steps: the first step is to show the
prima facie phase of this problem; the second attempts to touch the deeper, more
emotional atmosphere surrounding this dispute. Hence, simply from an epistemic
viewpoint, this issue can have two positions:
Position 1. Chinese philosophy does not exist, since, historically, philosophy and
Chinese thought came from discrete origins and evolved in different contexts, and
theoretically, the corpus of Chinese thought does not fit into some basic
qualifications for being philosophy, such as systematicity, not being mixed with
other fields like science and religion, or having its subdisciplines like logic,
metaphysics and epistemology (Defoort, 2001, p. 396).5 This position is
primarily, though not exclusively, implicit and Western as Defoort points out
(2001, pp. 396–397). While Derrida’s casual talk in China in 2001 shows an explicit
Western expression of this stance, and an implication of the Jin Yuelin issue (see next
section), if properly analyzed, may arguably be based on this position.
Position 2. Chinese philosophy exists, because philosophy is not only a Western practice
embedded in a specific culture, but represents something universal, a rational pursuit
that every respectable culture must be able to discover within itself. This is precisely the
same point Mou Tsung-San argued for when he talked about cultural systems and
defined philosophy as a universal cultural activity. On the whole Hu Shi and Feng
Youlan championed the same stance as well. As Defoort emphasizes, this position ‘is
best and most explicitly represented in contemporary China’ (2001, p. 397).Besides these two apparent positions, Defoort then uses the distinction between
emotive and descriptive meanings of terms in moral philosophy to further analyze
this issue: the former indicates the attitude or evaluation a term expresses, while the
latter concerns the non-evaluative content of a term. It is interesting to note that
Defoort’s importing this distinction reveals that she believes that the issue about the
legitimacy of ‘Chinese philosophy’ is more than an epistemic dispute. Viewed
through this distinction, we may re-classify the same issue and have the following two
kinds of attitude:6
Emotive Attitude. The valuing of philosophy ranges from the extreme of highest
praise (emotive attitude P) to negative valuation (emotive attitude N). Defoort
herself has, perhaps unconsciously, expressed being a subscriber of the former
appraisal by starting her article by claiming that ‘‘‘philosophy’’ is the showpiece of
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our [Western] university’ and ending with the phrase ‘we are proud of it
[philosophy]’ (Defoort, 2001, pp. 393, 409). Emotive attitude P is reasonably a
general attitude for Westerners. What seems not so reasonable is that there has never
been a shortage of proponents of the extreme version of this type in Chinese areas
since the end of the nineteenth century. Liu Xiobo’s radical assertion, that the
only way to save China is at least three hundred years of Western colonization,
expresses an extreme variant of this mentality (Liu, 1988). However, the stance
Defoort intends to propose in this context is a milder one that is closer to the other
extreme (de-valuating philosophy), i.e., emotive attitude N, which claims that
‘philosophy is not universal, nor is it a trait of rationality, but is a typically Western
discourse, with its strengths as well as weaknesses’ (Defoort, 2001, p. 404). This stance
is relatively rare in Chinese areas as well as in the West, as Defoort (2001) alludes to.
Fu Sinian’s (1980) complaint about German philosophy may be considered as one of
this sort. Robert Solomon’s questioning ‘the transcendental pretense’––‘the self-
congratulatory pretense that we––the white middle classes of European descent––
were the representatives of all humanity, and as human nature is one, so its history
must be one as well’ (Solomon, 1980, p. xii)––and hence challenging the universality
of the European essence of all things human, may represent this stance in the
Western world.
Descriptive Attitude. When asking about the meaning of philosophy, we can have a
whole range of variant definitions, from extremely narrow ones (descriptive attitude
N) to extremely general ones (descriptive attitude P), and therefore either exclude or
include Chinese philosophy. Defoort adopts the latter type, descriptive attitude P, to
be the one she plans to explicate in this context, namely, to broaden the meaning of
philosophy in order to encompass Chinese masters into this philosophy family (Defoort,
2001, p. 403). It would seem that authentic execution of redefining philosophy may
only be conducted by Western academia instead of Chinese intellectuals, since this is
essentially a Western family, not a Chinese one. As Raud remarks: ‘in it the head of
the family, who makes the decisions as to who can be adopted and who cannot, is
always Western, and the acceptance criteria are not transparent or equal to all’ (Raud,
2006, p. 619). Nonetheless, Raud himself still endorses this stance by proposing a
broad definition of philosophy.
3. The Jin Yuelin Issue
These four positions and attitudes seem to present, directly or indirectly, all major
perspectives to consider. Now, based on them, I shall try to develop and argue for my
approach to dealing with Chinese thought in the milieu of Westernization and/or
globalization. I suggest an epistemological investigation to begin with; that is, to
analyze this issue by reformulating the possible implications of the Jin Yuelin issue,
which will mainly involve positions 1 and 2 mentioned above.
Although Jin Yuelin (1994 [1934]) basically agreed that philosophy as a universal
practice can also be found in the Chinese Tradition, his query reveals some
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implications that may be independent of his position. The kernel of the Jin Yuelin
issue asks: ‘Is the so-called history of Chinese philosophy the history of Chinese
philosophy? Or is it the history of philosophy in China?’ (Jin, 1994, p. 1201; emphasis
added). Drawing on Jin’s explication on this query as well as Mou Tsung-San’s (1997
[1974]) argument for the existence of Chinese philosophy, this issue may involve
three concepts: philosophy, Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy. What the
Jin Yuelin issue questions could be position 2, namely that (a) philosophy is
universal, and (b) philosophy is not equated to Western philosophy. Ideally, (a) plus
(b) (with some supplementary presuppositions) may possibly deduce (c) the
existence of Chinese philosophy. That is to say, there existed some ‘universal
philosophical activities’ in ancient China, since, borrowing Mou Tsung-San’s view,
Chinese culture is a no less respectable cultural system than the Western one, and if
Western culture is capable of engaging in philosophy, then so is Chinese culture. If
position 2 is correct, then the Jin Yuelin issue may not be such a serious issue because
the history of Chinese philosophy and the history of philosophy in China may, at
least, have the common referent of the ‘universal philosophical activities’ conducted
in China, though they may not have exactly the same extension since the latter could
include some non-Chinese philosophies conducted in China, such as Western or
Indian philosophy. This is the general framework in which Hu Shi, Feng Youlan, Jin
Yuelin, Mou Tsung-San, and countless other modern and contemporary Chinese
scholars and Western sinologists thought they were working.
Yet, the Jin Yuelin issue might also hypothetically doubt (a) and (b). An implicit
supposition of this issue could be position 1, namely, that (d) philosophy is equated
to Western philosophy. If (d) is true, then the history of ‘Chinese philosophy’ will
refer to nothing, and the history of philosophy in China may refer to the history of
those imported Western philosophical activities that have been conducted in China
since the end of the nineteenth century or even including the missionaries’
philosophical activities in the Ming Dynasty. If this is the case, then ‘the history of
Chinese philosophy’ is either an empty concept or a concept that does not refer to
what it is supposed to refer to.
Now, I wish to argue that the more destructive implication of this issue, namely,
that (d) philosophy is equated to Western philosophy, is justifiable. More than this, I
also favor that (e) philosophy is not universal. This is actually a full denial of (a) and
(b) of position 2. Thus, I am about to argue against position 2, that Chinese
philosophy exists, and take the position 1 and emotive attitude N, namely, Chinese
philosophy does not exist and philosophy is not universal. I will also argue that
descriptive attitude P is unnecessary and not a pursuable stance.
4. The Trend of Prioritizing the Philosophical Image Over theNon-Philosophical Counterpart Images
Before discussing the thesis that philosophy is not universal, I would like to point out
a prevailing phenomenon in modern and contemporary Chinese academia as well as
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in the West. Aside from the analysis in the last section, the following discussion will
be from a non-epistemological perspective. When Western philosophy met the
so-called traditional Chinese wisdom or Chinese cultivation in the very beginning,
theoretically there could have been two possible attitudes for inquiring into the
relationship between them:
Attitude P: Whether or not traditional Chinese thought fits into philosophy.Attitude S: Whether or not philosophy fits into traditional Chinese thought.
The main difference between Attitude P and Attitude S is that the former uses the
Western philosophical framework for assessing the relationship, while the latter
prioritizes the traditional Chinese scholarly framework in this assessment. It is
obvious that Attitude S has never existed in a serious sense. Although Feng Youlan
had mentioned the possibility of writing a Western yili zhi xue , he held that
this is in fact difficult because modern scholarship originated from the West and the
status of yili zhi xue in the modern world and its connection to other modern
leanings are still not easily grasped (Feng, 1993, pp. 7–8). The historical background
and the practical reason seemed to suffocate this attitude at its very birth.7 At any
rate, these two hindrances for realizing Attitude S are essentially non-epistemic.Actually there is no epistemic hurdle for Attitude S, just as there is no epistemic
reason to reject Attitude P. Even so, from a commonsense point of view, to ask
whether philosophy fits into traditional Chinese thought or not seems to be absurd in
a prima facie sense. A possible intuitive explanation for this prima facie absurdity
could be: philosophy is something that had never even appeared in ancient China, so
how could this question even be posed? However, most intellectuals in both Chinese
and Western academia never seem to doubt that whether ancient Chinese thought
does or does not fit into Western philosophy is a meaningful question to ask, even
though the former had never appeared in the Western world. This reasoning might
not be convincing since it is based on my hypothetical question and answer.
Nonetheless, it stands that there exists a serious imbalance between these two
attitudes. If the Chinese cultural system is really a no less respectable cultural system
than the Western one, as some Chinese or even Western scholars claim, then the
Attitude S should also be as justifiable as Attitude P, and treated with equal regard. I
believe that, in addition to historical and practical reasons, there are two other
implicit and unjustified causes for this uneven consequence: first, the universality of
philosophy has been presupposed in an epistemological sense, and second, there
exists an attitude of prioritizing the philosophical image over the images of non-
philosophical counterparts in other cultures or traditions.
In debating the legitimacy of ‘Chinese philosophy’, the presumption of philosophy
being a cross-culturally universal practice seems to be more of an imaginary conceit
of Chinese intellectuals than a received consensus in Western academia. Solomon’s
indication of the phenomenon of the ‘transcendental pretense’ of European culture
and his questioning this self-congratulatory universality frankly reveal two things:
one is that the idea of universalizing European humanity is indeed prevailing,
perhaps implicitly, in Western academia, while, ironically, Chinese academia seems
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to embrace this pretension more than Westerners themselves. The other is, as
Solomon says, that ‘we [Europeans] are but one peculiar culture among many’(Solomon, 1980, p. 360). Nevertheless, whether Western intellectuals consider
philosophy as a universal practice or not, it was widely accepted in the West beforethe 1980s that Western thought exhausted philosophy, which directly undermines the
assumption (b)––philosophy is not equated to Western philosophy––of position 2and therefore sabotages this ‘received’ position in Chinese academia.
In fact, before the 1980s, the issue about whether philosophy was cross-culturally
applicable was not of interest to Western academics. In European academia, thedominant philosophical issues were by and large deeply related to specific European
cultural traditions, so there was almost no soil for nurturing the idea of philosophy asa cross-cultural activity. The analytical tradition may have the resources for, not
recognizing, but mis-recognizing philosophy as a universal practice, since thistradition takes a science-based approach to dealing with philosophical issues, and
science has generally been considered as the typical model of a universal practice thatoriginated from the West. However, that philosophy purports to study or search forsomething that is supposed to be universal does not make the philosophical practice
itself universal; something that is assumed to be fundamental may not befundamental in another culture. Hence, philosophy being a cross-culturally universal
activity may only be a thesis that has not yet been persuasively justified. Westernphilosophers generally hold that philosophy is a universal intellectual activity, but
this universality is implicitly within the confines of the Westernized world, andperhaps they would be more circumspective if the discussions were crossing over the
cultural borderline.Since the 1980s, with the rise of the new approach of intercultural philosophy in
Western academia, the idea of philosophy being interculturally applicable has startedto be seriously addressed. Intercultural philosophers such as Robert Allinson (1998,p. 515), R. A. Mall (1998, p. 25) and F. M. Wimmer (1998, p. 2) all defend a certain
form of ‘intercultural philosophy’ and an impartial attitude to dealing with non-Western cultures, and hence to avoiding ethnocentrism. Contrary to these
intercultural philosophers, I contend that as long as we still keep using ‘philosophy’to name wisdom or thought from other non-Western cultures, the intercultural
communication might never even start. To maintain that philosophy is equal toOccidental philosophy is not ethnocentrism, while to maintain that non-Western
cultures do have philosophy is. Since philosophy is a historically and culturallyembedded entity, it is not possible to use this term in the sense of thoroughly cuttingits connections with the Western tradition. Even the term itself is, literally, full of
specific meaning in a specific cultural context: loving wisdom (philo-sophia) couldnot be, so coincidently, the common habit of all wise men in all respectable cultures.
Therefore, considering any non-Western thought as philosophy may unavoidablyimplement the practice of philosophizing it because it is almost impossible to use the
expression ‘philosophy’ without, in one way or another, directly or indirectlyinvolving its related concepts, divisions or ideas like epistemology, metaphysics,
ethics, logic, essence, existence . . . etc.
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Hall and Ames, for example, urge comparativists to ‘understand Chinese culture
on its own terms’ (Hall & Ames, 1995, p. xix). If using the native terms and avoidingphilosophical theorization is the right way to approach non-Western cultures, then
why not just use their native term to name their wisdom instead of using‘philosophy’? The former will come with the native conceptual framework and the
latter will smuggle in the Western conceptual scheme. Using the term ‘philosophy’ isat the same time using a Western conceptual scheme and without its Westernbackground philosophy may just be a meaningless noise or inscription. Using a
Western conceptual scheme to understand any non-Western tradition may onlygenerate more misunderstandings than understandings. I believe that universalizing
philosophy to be a cross-cultural practice is, intentionally or unintentionally, acontinuation of promoting the ‘transcendental pretense’. In this context, the attempt
of emancipation from Eurocentrism cannot be done within philosophy, but mightonly be done outside of philosophy.
The consequences of an inappropriate name were addressed by Confucius. Hisassertion about rectifying names may reinforce my position here. He said, ‘If namesbe not correct, language is not in accordance with the right things. If language be not
in accordance with the right things, affairs cannot be carried on to success’ (Analects:Zi Lu ( ) [ ]). Thus, if ‘philosophy’ cannot be alive without Western culture
as I have argued, then it is definitely a wrong name for non-Western wisdoms.Consequently, the language of philosophy will not be in accordance with the non-
Western referents. Drawing on Davidson’s theory of communication,8 misconceivinga wisdom network from a non-Western culture as philosophy may happen in the
prior theory, while after further mutual attunement (van Brakel, 2006, pp. 275–276),Westerners might be able to comprehend or even use some expressions from non-
Western cultures to further approach these non-Western wisdoms.Therefore, I think that the descriptive attitude P, namely using a flexible definition
of philosophy for fitting both European and Chinese thought (cf. Raud, 2006), may
still lead to a certain form of subscribing to the ‘transcendental pretense’ and henceintroduce Eurocentrism with the tendency of prioritizing the philosophical image.
This position only intends to extend the territory of philosophy based on its originalconceptual scheme, rather than cast off its original framework so as to understand its
cultural others.However, one might argue that to prove the assumption of philosophy’s
universality to be wrong does not imply the non-existence of ‘Chinese philosophy’,since if we can find that in Chinese tradition there are some strands of thought thatare similar to what is discussed in Western philosophy, we can already claim that
there is Chinese philosophy without asserting that philosophy is universal. I think theproblem of this line of reasoning is that any possible similarity still needs to be
claimed from a certain stance, and so it is difficult, without the possibility of a God’s-eye-point-of-view, to tell whether the similarity judged from a certain framework is a
genuine sameness or is just an artificial assimilation. I therefore insist that there is noneed to claim that traditional Chinese thought is philosophy, even if some similarity
is found between these two thinking traditions. These similarities may well be
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present, but only given a (Western) philosophical framework. Likewise, we will not,
because of the same reason, claim that there exists sinosophy9 in Western philosophy
or even that Western philosophy is sinosophy. The dominant intuition for claiming
the former is mostly due to the prevalent ideology of prioritizing the philosophical
image.In the next section, I shall try to use the anomalous monist framework to provide a
possible explanatory relationship between the Chinese thinking tradition and the
Western philosophical tradition, and thereby advance my thesis: there is no need for
Zhongguo zhexue to be philosophy.
5. The Anomalous Monist Framework and ‘History’
Anomalous monism was proposed by Davidson (1980, 1993, 2005b), which holds
that ‘mental entities (particular time- and space-bound objects and events) are
physical entities, but that mental concepts are not reducible by definition or natural
law to physical concepts’ (Davidson, 1993, p. 3). It combines epistemologized
ontological pluralism and event monism (cf. Davidson, 2005c, p. 75) in the sense of
transcendentally assuming that the world consists of events (van Brakel, 1999, p. 14).
Practically speaking, the same event may have a mental description as well as a
physical description, but the mental and physical descriptions as types cannot be
reduced to each other. I contend that not only is anomalous monism a tenable
doctrine, its duality of pluralism and monism also allows it to be a fruitful
metaphysical or explanatory model for a variety of heterogeneous interdiscourse
relationships (OuYang, 2012, pp. 71–113).
In saying that the world consists of events, the concept of ‘the world’ in this
interpretation of the anomalous monist model plays the role of working hypothesis.
Goodman has alluded that there is no world without descriptions (Goodman, 1978,
p. 3). Van Fraassen also argues that there is no reason to think that there is such a
thing as the (real, actual) world (van Fraassen, 1995, p. 139). They are both right
regarding the non-actuality of ‘the world’, while the crucial reason to have this
transcendental assumption and consequently advance event monism is that human
cognition might not be able to exhaust everything about ourselves and the
surroundings. In intercultural relationships, what plays the same role as ‘world’ is
‘history’. There might exist the history of human civilization in which Western
civilization, Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, etc. could respectively occupy a
chapter, or we can also have the history of Western civilization, Chinese civilization,
Indian civilization, etc. individually. At any rate, the history or these histories are as
inaccessible as ‘the world’, ‘the physical world’, ‘the chemical world’, ‘the biological
world’ or ‘events’, for all of them are idealized posits with respect to which we are
metaphysically speaking agnostic. Although the histories of civilizations were created
by us, writing them down will be a different thing altogether. We may try to know the
history as truthfully as we can, but there is no ultimate true version to let us check
whether or not we are correct. There is no God’s-eye-point-of-view-metadescription
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that gives us the only true identification of histories. We actually make up,
unintentionally as well as intentionally, what the history of our civilizations was likeas much as we make up what the world is like, no matter whether our concerns are
epistemic, ethical, political or whatever (cf. Goodman, 1978, p. 1ff.).This anomalous monist model shows us a monistic as well as pluralistic worldview.
Using this model to explain intercultural relationships, we firstly obtain a landscapeof a multi-cultural scene in a monistic historical world. While there exist thetraditions of Western philosophy, sinosophy, indosophy or any other quasi-
counterparts of Occident philosophy in other cultural systems,10 these quasi-counterparts may be characterized by borrowing Western philosophical concepts but
they cannot be reduced to or identified with Western philosophy. Each and everyphilosophical concept in the Western tradition, sinosophical concept in the Chinese
tradition, or indosophical concept in the Indian tradition, makes its contributions tothe explanations of the discrete ethos in their distinctive traditions, and, at the same
time, is embedded in the historical contexts to which it belongs. They are allhistorical entities evolving in their own cultural contexts and are the material forweaving the conceptual schemes or frameworks of their own cultural systems.
Both philosophy as well as sinosophy are historical entities embedded in their owncultural milieux. Without the particular history that allowed for the concept of
philosophy or sinosophy to emerge and be developed, one cannot understand themeaning of that concept. This is why considering any non-European wisdom as
philosophy is either reducing it to philosophy or simply a mistake. Although themodern world is by and large constituted by Western civilization and philosophy
does provide a sophisticated and relatively more inclusive framework to conceive thisworld, this does not imply that philosophy completely exhausts sinosophy and other
wisdoms all over the world. Similar to the mental not being reducible to the physical,sinosophy cannot be reduced to philosophy.
Philosophy and sinosophy as historical entities consist of their unique
conglomerate of conceptual systems. Specifically, philosophical concepts such as‘essence’, ‘Dasein’ or ‘Ding an Sich’ and sinosophical concepts like ‘ren ’, ‘dao ’
or ‘fa ’, are all used in explanations of certain regional wisdom networks withdistinctive conceptual schemes that are gradually woven out of these ingredients of
thought into their own respective historical and cultural contexts. These concepts arenot abstract ‘eternal’ ideas; their instantiations are evolving events in history. Each
concept originated from a specific historical and cultural context and without thesecontexts, they are not identifiable. Accordingly, they are spatio-temporal eventslocated in their own cultural systems. Therefore, when we talk about Western
philosophy and Chinese thought, we are substantially talking about two distinctiveconglomerates of conceptual schemes. So, there is no way Chinese thought can be
reduced to Western philosophy or the other way around, though philosophy as anexplanatory system is apparently more inclusive than sinosophy in the modern
world. In other words, as historical entities or events, philosophical and sinosophicalconcepts may be describable in terms of any cultural vision to varying degrees or
solely through philosophical vocabularies, but as functioning explanatory ingredients
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of a certain specific cultural system, they may not keep their meanings without their
original cultural context. When using Western philosophical concepts to ‘rectify’certain traditional Chinese notions or ideas and then concluding a result from this
process, a sort of reducibility assumption between sinosophy and philosophy wouldhave been presupposed. This is what is denied by this anomalous monist model.
We are all living in the same world, no matter which culture we are from. Thecommonsensically manifest world shared by humans constitutes the platform forcommunication. This is why monism can be claimed in this intercultural context.
Following the pluralistic sense of this model, individual philosophical andsinosophical concepts are not commensurable because they are embedded in
distinctive conceptual frameworks, but philosophy and sinosophy respectively ascollective entities of two different cultural wisdoms could be commensurable in the
sense of both existing in ‘the same history’ of ‘the same world’. Namely, these twoconceptual schemes could be comparable in the sense that we are all human beings
living and struggling to survive in the same history, the sameness of which providesthe possibility of communication. The commonsensically manifest world offers notonly the platform for communication, but also the basis on which variant traditions
build up their own unique cultural systems.Once communication is possible, we shall be able to acknowledge the
differentiation of discrete conceptual schemes, which means comparing two disparateconceptual schemes on the basis of communicability. Other than Davidson, I hold
that recognizing the difference between schemes is crucial for a possiblecommunication (cf. Davidson, 1984, p. 198),11 since it is obvious that no two
communicators will have exactly the same scheme, even if they live in the sameculture and use the same language. Even so, in accordance with holism, we can still
say that people are using the same conceptual scheme in the sense that they are in thesame holistic discourse, paradigm, language zone, culture or tradition.Communication is the way to learn the conceptual schemes of others. So long as a
philosopher perfectly learns the conceptual scheme of sinosophy or the other wayaround, he/she may possibly use any conceptual scheme he/she is familiar with to
provide a proper comment on sinosophy or philosophy. While he/she should, at thesame time, be clearly aware that any non-commonsensical part of sinosophy or
philosophy should not be imprudently disconnected from the context it belongs to.12
Therefore, a fair comparison between two disparate paradigms or conceptual
schemes, namely, a comparison that is fair for both sides, is not available, which, Ithink, is also a crucial implication of the idea of incommensurability. We are eitherphilosophizing sinosophical thinking or sinosophizing philosophical thinking.
In addition, communicability and commensurability should be considered asdifferent concepts, for the former does not imply the latter, and the latter entails
using one conceptual scheme only while the former does not. Theoretically as well aspractically, a traditional European philosopher and a traditional sinosopher might
still communicate more or less during the first encounter if a proper time scale forinteractions was provided. Davidson’s prior theories and passing theories have
provided a proper description of this possibility. However, this communicability does
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not imply commensurability between philosophical and sinosophical concepts.
Communication is always full of misunderstandings and misinterpretations even in
conversations with your closest family members or friends; yet these misunderstand-
ings and misinterpretations never sabotage any communication, for mutual
attunement is always functioning in the process for improving understanding.
There is no perfect communication, and we do not actually need perfect
communication either, for a perfect communication is pernicious in the sense of
prohibiting all sorts of variation.
6. Sinosophy and Philosophy
Given that philosophy is an historical entity, there is no way traditional Chinese
thought could be considered philosophy. Naming traditional Chinese thinkers as
philosophers and some Chinese classics as philosophical books were truly mistakes
on both the Western and Chinese sides. What we truly need is to upgrade this
Chinese-Western communication from a prior theory level to a passing theory level.Despite these historical mistakes, the factual referents of Zhongguo zhexue––all
ancient Chinese Jingxue and Zixue, and all modern and contemporary interpreta-
tions, elaborations, refinements and further developments of them with and without
a Western philosophical contamination after the end of the nineteenth century, have
been substantial enough to make it a category or discipline. This by no means allows
for a definition of Zhongguo zhexue, but this descriptive content is univocal enough
to suggest that Zhongguo zhexue deserves to be a discipline and, moreover, its
independent evolution in Chinese areas has made this Chinese term a different entity
from its English translation. Hence, the term ‘Chinese philosophy’ may have the
legitimacy problem, but not Zhongguo zhexue. The contemporary new identity of
Zhongguo zhexue is not lingering at the front door of Western civilization as it was in
the past, but has been neutralized through the process of absorbing elements of
Western philosophy, identifying itself through the writings of the history of
Zhongguo zhexue, and, most importantly, accepting its own cultural identification.
Therefore, it is not problematic to use it to retrospectively refer to the corpus of
ancient Chinese thought. What is left nowadays in the category of Zhongguo zhexue
that is Western may be the localized or Sinified Western interpretations, elaborations,
refinements and further developments of ancient Chinese thought instead of a
complete transplantation of the whole Western philosophical conceptual scheme.
Besides, the term Zhongguo zhexue does not literally contain the most important
feature of the word ‘philosophy (philo-sophia)’––love (philo). The attitude of loving
and therefore enjoying the wonder of wisdom is probably the most important reason
why philosophy can be so productive in the West. In Chinese culture, loving or
enjoying wisdom or virtues was indeed mentioned by Confucius,13 but it has never
been a celebrated tradition or an end of intellectual activities. It may only be a tool
for serving the highest end in Confucianism––to achieve virtues ( ; ;
. . .). As Zhang Dainian says, ‘the original purport of Western philosophy is
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loving wisdom . . . while it is not fallacious but still not sufficiently appropriate
to suppose that Chinese philosophy also purports to love wisdom’ (Zhang, 2005[1937], p. 9).
Even though the Chinese phrase ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ is a literal translation of‘Chinese philosophy’, there are no essences that necessitate a translative equivalence
between them. It usually happens that the same word or phrase could be translatedinto another language with variant terms depending on their contexts. In the case inquestion, the term zhexue, when used independently, may still refer to philosophy,
but when an adjective is added before it such as Rujia zhexue(Confucianism), Xienchin zhexue (Pre-Qin thoughts),
Zhongguo zhexue, or Xiyan zhexue (Western philosophy), the contextwill provide the clear clue that the latter terms are referring to a non-Western
regional wisdom network or philosophy.Instead of using the controversial and equivocal English term ‘Chinese
philosophy’, I suggest using ‘sinosophy’ to be the English translation of Zhongguozhexue, since this new word substitutes ‘sino (Chinese)’ for the attitude ‘philo (love)’that might not exist in a practical sense or at least not be seriously treasured in the
practical ways traditional Chinese intellectuals dealt with thought, and it keeps theimportant counterpart in the Chinese tradition – sophia (wisdom). The advantage of
using ‘sinosophy’ to replace ‘Chinese philosophy’ is not only that it avoids thelegitimacy problem, but that it also distinguishes the entity of sinosophy from that of
philosophy. Above all, philosophy and sinosophy were set for different purposes;14
the former roughly prioritizes all sorts of human knowledge and enjoys the wonder
with it, while the main concern of the latter is human life itself, and how to achievepeacefulness, harmony and stability of body and mind ( ), wisdom of virtues
( ; ; . . .).15 Based on their distinctive purposes, the primary conceptualframeworks or wisdom networks evolved in philosophy and sinosophy arefundamentally different, and both are limited, to a certain extent, in their ability
to approach each other, which is why Westerners may comment that the Chinesemind is a ‘Chinese puzzle’ or ‘impenetrable’ (Allinson, 1998, p. 513) and why Chinese
may have to temporarily cast away their traditional thinking style to understand theWest. Nonetheless, with this new word, we at least have a basis for their disparity
from which we may have a more proper standpoint to examine both as differententities (either looking from one side or from the other), rather than being prone to
assimilate one to the other in an artificial way.The reason why the translation of philosophy invites far more serious issues than
plenty of other neologisms may be that the importation of philosophy might involve
the importation of the whole Western conceptual framework, for any singlephilosophical concept may not retain its meaning when it is disconnected from its
context. While sinosophy has found its place in Chinese tradition through its onehundred year evolutionary history, so have abundant other localized neologisms
from outside this tradition. The course of the evolution of sinosophy could be, to acertain extent, seen as a struggling history of giving up or not giving up the
traditional intellectual heritage. Examined from this angle, the crisis of the legitimacy
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of ‘Chinese philosophy’ may be more a crisis of cultural framework identification
than that of the existence of this discipline. The apparent issue is merely a disguise ofthe former.
It is obvious that the conceptual framework contemporary sinosophers are using isnot the same as that from before the end of the nineteenth century. Although the
conceptual framework is evolving all the time, the change from the nineteenthcentury to the twentieth was dramatic. There have always existed proponents of aradical Westernization, yet it is theoretically and practically not possible to replace a
conceptual scheme with a new one without having an original one to base it uponand without allowing a proper process of digestion and assimilation as well. What
was happening in China, especially from the 1950s to the 1970s, was a living case.They substituted the traditional Chinese cultural framework with a radical,
awkwardly interpreted Marxism by political force. The result was immediatepractical disasters and an aftermath in which conceptual schemes were confusedly
identified as the old framework was deconstructed and the new one was onlybeginning to be digested.
In Taiwan and Hong Kong, the changing conceptual scheme of sinosophers may
be relatively healthy, but some crisis still exists. That is, there might exist a tendencyof evolving towards a fully Westernized scheme. This tendency may, to some extent,
have been implicitly facilitated by the spreading of the European ‘transcendentalpretense’ indicated by Solomon (1980). In other words, together with all sorts of
knowledge Chinese intellectuals learned from the West, the pretension of ‘Europeanhumanity being universal’ has infiltrated Chinese academia. Nonetheless, although
the conceptual scheme of contemporary sinosophers has been seriously affected byWestern culture and even been reconfigured in this Westernized atmosphere, all
changes are still based upon Chinese tradition. I hereby propose a hypothetical testfor checking this Chinese cultural identification: as long as, from a sinosophicalperspective, the research sinosophers conduct is distinguishable from that of
sinologists (in the sense I defined earlier), then we may still claim that the conceptualscheme of sinosophers is not identical with the Western one.
I am not at this point asserting a form of radical cultural relativism. What I believeis that a Chinese mind and a European mind will not have the same interpretations
for the same subjects if they view things respectively from their own traditionalwisdom networks. I never doubt that, from a philosophical viewpoint, a European
mind might understand Chinese thought deeper than sinosophers in an epistemicsense; but, from a sinosophical vision, a purely epistemic concern could simply beinsignificant, trivial or even irrelevant to the Chinese tradition. Philosophy and
sinosophy are using different ways to view this world and have different purposes.For instance, Chad Hansen (1985), in his frequently cited article ‘Chinese language,
Chinese philosophy, and ‘‘Truth’’’, cautiously argues that Chinese philosophy has noconcept of truth. This seems to be a meaningful and interesting topic to discuss for
sinologists with a Western philosophical background; but what is the value of thistype of issue for sinosophers with a traditional background? Can the literal answers to
this kind of issue comfort their virtuous life? Or can the epistemological concept of
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semantic truth help them achieve virtues in the context of traditional Chinese
culture? I do not, at this point, fully deny the possible contribution of this type ofdiscussion to Chinese culture. What I wish to point out here is that the question
Chad Hansen investigated is a philosophical question, but an authentic philosophicalquestion may not be an intelligible and/or relevant sinosophical question. When the
conceptual scheme shifts from a philosophical one to a sinosophical one, the issue inthe former could be completely irrelevant in the latter. I do not intend to hedgesinosophy in this globalizational world; I am trying to keep this world pluralistic and
not univocalized by the philosophical tradition. If globalization is moving towardWesternization, then that will be what I am trying to argue against. What I am trying
to emphasize here is that using a philosophical conceptual scheme to investigatesinosophy is to philosophize it, and when sinosophy is philosophized, it may lose its
valuable idiosyncratic characteristics.While Hall and Ames have warned their Western colleagues to heed the influence
of the ‘transcendental pretense’––Anglo-European heirs possess the universal normfor assessing the value of cultural activity everywhere on the planet––whenapproaching Chinese thought (Hall & Ames, 1995, p. xiv), I believe that the very
ones who need to be reminded about this Eurocentrism are not Westerners, butrather non-Westerners. In the 100-year long debate on the legitimacy of ‘Chinese
philosophy’, many Chinese intellectuals seem to be more Eurocentrist thanEuropeans themselves. In the light of Hall and Ames’ admonition that ‘some
Western historians have insisted upon exporting to China irrelevant historiographicalmodels that make the Chinese appear to be naıve and irresponsible caretakers of their
own past’ (1995, p. xiv), I think that the ones who really need to keep this type ofadmonition in mind are those caretakers of the Chinese tradition who may be trying
to philosophize their traditional thought without realizing it.Since the crucial basis for distinguishing between philosophy and sinosophy is the
disparate framework in which they are embedded, it is not essentialism but holism
that is backing this separation. An essentialist view may support the assertion ofcounting different historical entities as being the same kind. Although one might
argue that the difference between various philosophies in the Western traditionmight not be any less than that between philosophy and sinosophy, which could
make my approach meaningless, I, in response, hold that the more relevant concernhere is not how different sinosophy and philosophy are, but how cohesively
conglomerated as separate individuals they have been. Ever since the Jingxue eraended in the beginning of the twentieth century, sinosophy has been substantiallyreconfigured by Western philosophical thinking. This modern reconfiguration of
sinosophy did not make it into philosophy. My assertion that sinosophy is notphilosophy is simply based on the manifest observation that sinosophy and
philosophy are distinctive cultural paradigms. I seriously doubt that it is possibleto philosophize sinosophy and still keep all its idiosyncratic characteristics. Hence, to
count sinosophy as being philosophy or not could become a question of whether wewant a future world philosophy with a unified kind of thought by taking the risk of
suppressing or even losing some regional wisdom networks, or a world with
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diversified sophias. In this era of globalization, as human beings we do face some
common challenges and it should be fruitful if we can freely draw on intellectual
resources from different traditions to find out the solutions for our variant contexts.
But it seems to be as important to keep the world as diversified as possible so as to
have a pluralistic world to use.
7. Sinosophy and Meta-Sinosophy
Realistically speaking, there exists a serious imbalance between the Chinese and the
West. Generally, the Chinese nowadays are better at managing Western conceptual
schemes than the Westerners are at grasping the Chinese cultural framework.
However, I think there is a need for making a distinction between the research of
philosophizing sinosophy and the research of sinosophy proper. We need to
distinguish two types of sinosophy-related research: sinosophy and meta-sinosophy.
The subject of the former is the content of sinosophy and might not be properly
conducted without using the Chinese language or a language that has sufficiently
abundant ‘borrowings’ from Chinese; while the subject of the latter is sinosophy itself
(or sinosophy as an object for investigation) and it can be conducted without
language limitation. In other words, sinosophy is a study mainly conducted by using
a Chinese conceptual framework to discuss the content of sinosophy, while meta-
sinosophy is about the research focusing on sinosophy itself using any possible
conceptual framework. For instance, what I am doing now is meta-sinosophy but not
sinosophy, and philosophizing sinosophy is also part of meta-sinosophy. In light of
this distinction, most sinologists may actually be doing, and are also good at doing,
meta-sinosophy. The work of Chad Hansen (1985) referred to above is an obvious
case of meta-sinosophy. A crucial reason for sinosophy still being able to keep its
native identification may be that sinosophers keep using their native language.
Though it is an evolved one, it still cohesively adheres to this sinosophical network.
Language is part of a culture and the place where its culture’s conceptual scheme is
located.The main reason for me to make this sinosophy and meta-sinosophy distinction is
to prevent the ongoing phenomena of philosophizing sinosophy, which may end in a
univocally philosophized world. Surely this distinction can never be strict and clear
cut, since in this globalized world, scholars are always trained with multiple
conceptual frames and each ‘conceptual scheme’ is dynamic and is not something
that can be essentialized. At any rate, the intention behind this separation is more
serious and important: to maintain a genuine pluralistic world by treasuring the
idiosyncratic characteristics of sinosophy and preventing the universalization of the
European ‘transcendental pretense’.
While following this distinction, might some early sinosophers like Hu Shi, Feng
Youlan or Mou Tsung-San also be said to be doing meta-sinosophy rather than
sinosophy? I think they were not. Most of those precursors of sinosophy were actually
outstanding scholars of traditional Chinese thought at the same time. In fact, they
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were doing studies with more of a Chinese mind than most contemporary
sinosophers. According to Chen’s (2005) analysis, the scholarly development fromthe Jingxue scholars, Hu Shi, Feng Youlan to Zhang Dainian is an evolution of the
research attitude of sinosophers from ‘believing in classics ’, ‘doubting classics’, ‘interpreting classics ’ to ‘cultural innovation ’. Apart from the
Jingxue scholars, all others adopted Western philosophical notions or ideas toimplement their achievements, but a common and primacy concern for all of them isthe self-imposed responsibility for preserving, restoring or renewing the
classics, Chinese culture or the Chinese intellectual tradition. This strong sense ofresponsibility for this tradition can be found, implicitly or explicitly, in
almost all works of significant ancient, modern and contemporary sinosophers,but does not exist in the scheme of the scholars who study sinosophy with a
philosophical interest.This point does not, in any sense, provide a possible definition for what a
sinosophical conceptual scheme is, but merely indicates that there exists a holisticnetwork that makes some scholars sinosophers and some others meta-sinosophers.To disconnect sinosophy from philosophy does not result in losing the ability to
appreciate the contributions of those modern and contemporary sinosophers whosesystems of ideas may come from an outcome of an interaction between sinosophy
and philosophy, because what makes a scholar a sinosopher is not the tool he/sheborrows but the conceptual scheme he/she possesses. Moreover, what I am trying to
argue for is not that it is wrong to study sinosophy from a non-sinosophicalconceptual scheme, but that it is not sinosophy if it is a study from a non-
sinosophical perspective. The distinctions of sinosophy/philosophy and sinosophy/meta-sinosophy are not fixed stipulations but supposed to be a beginning of a better
communication between the Chinese and the West.Thus, the main criterion for a study being considered as doing sinosophy is that it
prioritizes Chinese conceptual schemes rather than any other one. Still, the
subsequent question will be: who owns the Chinese mind? This is actually aquestion that is difficult to provide an intensional answer to, while an extensional
answer could have been useful enough though not strictly inclusive: those who have anative Chinese cultural background. Hence, there are quite a few sinologists who may
intend to do sinosophy but their strong Western background may limit their resultsand make the study into a form of philosophizing, if they happen to have a
philosophy background. However, the ones who are more relevant to this distinctionare those who have a native Chinese mind and are also well trained withphilosophical conceptual schemes at the same time. If these scholars who intend to
do sinosophy deliberately use the frame that prioritizes the Western conceptualframework, then I think they may be accused of being irresponsible caretakers of
their own tradition. Therefore, the true bulldogs of Eurocentrism might be thoseChinese scholars who are deliberately doing philosophy in the name of sinosophy, if
there is any. In a nutshell, doing philosophy and doing sinosophy are not the samething; meta-sinosophy usually is philosophy, but could also be sinosophy if a
sinosophical framework is adopted.
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8. Conclusion
It is worthwhile to note that Defoort (2001) uses Wittgenstein’s idea of family
resemblance to suggest a possible descriptive analysis of this, as she claims, unsolvable‘Chinese philosophy’ debate (Defoort, 2006, p. 652, n. 91)––to count ‘Chinese
philosophy’ as an adopted child of the family of philosophy, for ‘the members of afamily may not all share a common essence, but there is something else that binds
them: a family name’ (Defoort, 2001, p. 408). This is a completely comprehensiblesuggestion from a European mind, but I believe that this is an unnecessary suggestion
and an inappropriate description as well. Sinosophy does have its own more than2500-year-old family, with its family members like pre-Qin masters, Confucianism,Wei-Jin strange metaphysicians, Sinified Buddhism, Song-Ming neo-Confucianism,
contemporary neo-Confucianism, etc. Sinosophers might have more internal affairsconcerning differences between these family members to worry about rather than
thinking about being adopted by the family of a new mistress. As I have argued,sinosophy does not deserve the name of philosophy in any sense. It never has been
philosophy and may never be, I hope. The idea of family resemblance may be moreproperly used in the relationship between contemporary sinosophy and its ancient
family members than with the family whose names it does not even know how topronounce. Sinosophy restructures its ancestors’ conceptual scheme by learningWestern philosophy and by retrospectively providing a whole new vision to re-
examine its ancestors’ intellectual heritage. No matter how its descendants willcomment on this dramatic transition, the sinosopher at least created a new possible
way for letting this ancient tradition be able to adapt to the modern environment andbe in a better position to have a further dialogue with Western civilization.
There is nothing to be ashamed of if sinosophy is not philosophy, but there is alsonothing to be proud of if sinosophy is philosophy. There is no need to
unconditionally prioritize that which has been set up in the Western culturalframework. For, as the anomalous monist model shows, sinosophy, just like
philosophy, is one of the autonomous cultural systems of the world, nothing moreand nothing less.
Notes
[1] The dictionary meaning of zhe is wise or wise man. However, the word ‘zhe’ does notseem to represent the ultimate pursuit of Chinese wisdom, for Shang Shu: Zhou Shu, GreatPlan ( ) [ ] said, ‘The clearness becomes manifest in wisdom; the distinctness,in deliberation; and the perspicaciousness, in sageness [ , , ].’ Sheng
(sageness) in this context, as well as in the orthodox Chinese tradition, seems to be ahigher pursuit than zhe.
[2] Although ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ and ‘Chinese philosophy’ are inter-translated terms for differentlanguages, I will count them as semantically distinct terms and argue that they have differentreferents.
[3] I tend to define sinologists as scholars who study Chinese culture without a native Chinesecultural background.
[4] Including Chinese scholars from overseas and their studies.
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[5] However, these criteria may still be controversial in how Western academia views
philosophy.[6] I choose to use ‘attitude’ here because, according to Putnam (1981, p. 127ff), fact and value
are interpenetrated, and hence both descriptive and prescriptive positions are, per se, some
sorts of attitude.[7] Historically the West defeated China during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and
practically Western civilization has indeed been the most successful and dominant culture in
the world after the nineteenth century. Hence, for Chinese intellectuals, there seemed no
good reason to develop Attitude S as Chinese culture did before in its confrontation with
Buddhism.[8] Davidson (2005a) used the ideas of prior theories and passing theories to provide a
proper model for the processes of communications. He said, ‘For the hearer, the prior
theory expresses how he is prepared in advance to interpret an utterance of the
speaker, while the passing theory is how he does interpret the utterance. For the
speaker, the prior theory is what he believes the interpreter’s prior theory to be, while
his passing theory is the theory he intends the interpreter to use’ (2005a, p. 101).
Communication starts from the prior theories of the speaker and interpreter, which
may be full of misconceivings and misunderstandings, while a further adjustment based
on more interactions may lead to a successful communication (in varying degrees)
arriving at a shared passing theory.[9] Sinosophy is a term coined to name Chinese wisdom as well as to replace the disputable
translation ‘Chinese philosophy’. A further explication for the coinage of this term will be
provided in Section 6.[10] Indosophy is a term coined to name Indian wisdom.[11] Although Davidson tried to argue against the idea of incommensurability and a conceptual
scheme, it is arguable that the idea of a conceptual scheme is compatible with the anomalous
monist model. Elsewhere I have argued that Davidson did not undermine the idea of
incommensurable conceptual scheme (OuYang, 2012, pp. 111–113).[12] To be able to understand two different cultures perfectly at the same time does not make
commensurability between them possible. To be able to understand Newton’s physics and
Einstein’s theory of relativism perfectly at the same time does not resolve the
incommensurability issue between them.[13] Such as ‘they who love it [wisdom or virtue] are not equal to those who delight in it
’ (Analects: Yong Ye ( ) [ ]); or ‘but not so fond of learning as
I [Confucius] do ’ (Analects: Gong Ye Chang ( ) [ ]).[14] Zhang Dainian repeatedly stated that the fundamental attitude of Chinese thought is
different from the Western one (Zhang, 2005, pp. 4, 7, 10).[15] Of course this is a (disputable) meta-philosophical comment embedded in a Western
conceptual framework. Besides, the description of sinosophy has been limited by the
language I am using.
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