Contemporary Chinese Philosophy

The present study tries to understand the worldview associated with Confucianism and examines the concept of “order” in relation to its three timeless truths – the concept of time, the relativistic worldview, and the clan.

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance (...) of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an important question: how are individuality and freedom understood in Li’s philosophical system? In this paper, I want to examine what resources Li offers to help us conceptualize their place in a modernity with Chinese characteristics. Confucian culture is often regarded as authoritarian and hierarchical, less interested than more liberal traditions in an ideal such as freedom. So how does freedom relate to the Confucian root of Chinese culture, as construed by Li? In this paper I explore how Li Zehou’s study of Confucian aesthetics can deliver a novel conception of freedom, one grounded in Confucian thinking about personal cultivation, and aimed at the free creation of delight (樂). (shrink)

An examination of Hall and Ames’s claim that the classical Confucian tradition be understood as constituting an aesthetic order. Some have argued that this claim is simply false. However, this claim should be understood not in terms of its literal truth or falsity, but in terms of its usefulness and suggestiveness. It is a general description that can guide inquiry into early Chinese thought. In what follows, I locate Hall and Ames’s “aesthetic order” within a broader interpretive lineage that understands (...) the Chinese tradition as an aesthetic tradition. I show how conceptions of “aesthetic” evolve within that lineage, how Hall and Ames built upon earlier New Confucians, and how their work might be extended further. (shrink)

It is initially odd to ask whether Confucianism is compatible with systems of law. Confucian thought has co-existed with Chinese legal systems throughout the various dynasties of China’s long history. Nevertheless, despite the extensive laws that China has boasted, traditional Chinese legal thought is not typically recognized as a genuine rule-of-law system, given its focus on moral development and the “rule of man.” In this essay, we argue that Confucianism, specifically Pre-Qin Confucianism, is compatible with the rule-of-law. We examine the (...) different models of compatibility, including “soft compatibilism” in which we examine whether abstract concepts between Confucianism and legal systems are compatible, as well as co-existing and integrating compatibilism. Co-existing compatibilism sees Confucianism and the law occupying different spheres within the same legal system while integrating compatibilism sees Confucianism and the law coming together into a new system. In this way, Confucianism offers China an alternative to liberal democratic and Marxist theories of law. (shrink)

In recent years, Philosophy Departments at universities in China and worldwide have experienced a renaissance in discussion on Confucian thought. As the country draws from indigenous traditions, rather than leaning completely on the importation of Western liberalism and Marxism, Confucianism has critical implications for politics, ethics, and law in modern China. At the same time, democracy never left the conversation. Democratic concepts cannot be ignored and must be disposed of, acknowledged, or incorporated. The relationship between Confucianism and democracy has been (...) described by various authors as one of conflict, critique, compatibility, and hybridity. In this article, we examine a compatibility model, in which compatibility between Confucianism and democracy can be divided into four types: soft, hard, coexistence, and integration. We examine compatibility by examining “what is compatible” and “how compatibility can be achieved” so as to design speculative models for what a contemporary Confucian government would look like. Our focus is mainly political philosophy in order to explain the effect of cross-pollination of Confucian and democratic thought on political society. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo revisa críticamente una muy reciente incorporación a la “filosofía humanística de la tecnología”: la defendida por el filósofo Yuk Hui alrededor de su “tecnodiversidad”. Se describe cuál es el ambiente actual en el que se discuten asuntos relacionados con la tecnología y con la inquietud que suscita la inteligencia artificial. Esta desazón desemboca, al menos, en dos tendencias. Una, la representada por un anhelo de “nueva ilustración” europea. La otra, propone una filosofía de la tecnología no-europea y (...) no-moderna, por la que aboga Hui. Seguidamente, se discute el abordaje de este autor. Sostiene que, si se consiguieran articular las múltiples historias técnico-culturales, se des-montaría el monismo tecnológico eurocéntrico y se validaría el pluralismo –las diversas “cosmotécnicas”– superándose así la que a sus ojos es la indeseable sincronización tecnológica mundial. Se enuncian los problemas filosóficos e histórico-intelectuales del asunto de fondoque mueve a Hui: la necesidad de una filosofía de la tecnología china por motivos históricos y razones políticas para superar la Modernidad. El estudio concluye evaluando esta filosofía sino-humanística de la tecnología. (shrink)

This paper explores the encounter between traditional Confucian thought and contemporary Anglophone philosophy. It explores the evolution in philosophical methods and heuristics employed by "Western" thinkers in the past fifty or so years, often with the aim of extracting Confucian thought from its specific social and historical roots. Unlike the disciplines of intellectual or literary history, these philosophers have a distinctive variety of aims. These include: articulate dimensions of Confucian philosophy not explicit in traditional texts, develop critiques of Western modernity, (...) derive solutions to problems in Western philosophy, and attempt to reimagine Confucian thought for an East Asian modernity. Analyzing how contemporary philosophers have engaged the Chinese tradition makes clearer the meaning of the much-debated term “Chinese philosophy,” without becoming mired in definitional disputes, while also justifying the enterprise of engaging philosophically with the Chinese tradition. (shrink)

The question of possible moral conflict between commitment to family and to impartiality is particularly relevant to traditional Confucian thought, given the importance of familial bonds in that tradition. Classical Confucian ethics also appears to lack any developed theoretical commitment to impartiality as a regulative ideal and a standpoint for ethical judgment, or to universal equality. The Confucian prioritizing of family has prompted criticism of Confucian ethics, and doubts about its continuing relevance in China and beyond. This chapter assesses how (...) those sympathetic to the Confucian vision of the good life might respond. It first explores Confucian conceptions of love and the importance of familial love. Next, problems arising from this commitment to partiality are discussed, and how a modern Confucian ethics might respond. I explore what notions of impartiality—understood largely pragmatically, as a value that functions in everyday social life rather than as an explicit moral principle that guides deliberation or judgment—can be derived from an ethics that focuses on family commitments. (shrink)

The political philosophies of Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi can fruitfully be understood as focusing substantially on politically relevant merit – and as having conceptions of politically relevant merit intertwined with their conceptions of morality and virtue. In short, on their account, politically relevant merit finds its necessary foundation in morally relevant merit. In critiquing this position, Han Fei questions four positions that must be true in order for the early Confucian position to succeed: 1) Politically relevant merit is necessarily tied (...) to moral merit; 2) Virtuous individuals who possess the relevant moral merits can reliably be identified even by those who are not themselves virtuous; 3) Moral cultivation is actually possible; and 4) Those qualities that make someone virtuous can reliably be ascertained. This paper examines the worries that Han Fei has with these positions and offers up an account of Han Fei’s own account of politically relevant merit – a non-moral alternative tied to task specific competencies. (shrink)

本文旨在釐清牟宗三與海德格對康德「有限性」概念之詮釋，借此建立三者的溝通基礎。牟跟海一樣，認為康德對存有論的論述並不完備，需要補充；海德格認為康德哲學應下開「基礎存有論」，發展「此在形上學」。牟宗三則 認為，應該發展「道德的形上學」；牟重視現象與物自身的區分，因其關乎認知與道德、感性與超感性領域之分際，並認為道德之超越性是人「可無限」的關鍵；海德格則意圖改變感性、知性的優次地位，強調感性、處境和時間 性，否定人之無限性。基於以上異同，本文進一步申述兩者對康德哲學的改造與後續發展，設想他們之間的批評和回應，並評論兩者在何種意義下，更能承先啟後。 This paper aims at laying the foundation of a discourse between Mou and Heidegger’s philosophy through their interpretations of Kant’s concept of finitude. Mou tried wholeheartedly to internalize Kantian philosophy in the interest of establishing the new Chinese Philosophy which takes the moral subject as the foundation of the system. The key to success lies in the interpretative works of arguing the transcendental characters of man with the following premise: man is finite but can be infinite; Heidegger, as a (...) phenomenologist, claims that the concept of finitude is the fundamental spirit and implicit premise of the whole Kantian philosophy. He upholds the priority of sensibility and concludes that the human finitude has to be delimited by the situation in terms of time, by which he rejects the infinitude of human existence. By the juxtaposition of their interpretations, we can see how they interpret the concept of finitude, and how they try to internalize and to go beyond Kantian philosophy. (shrink)

El conocimiento de la filosofía feminista del este asiático, en general, y de China en particular, se ha difundido habitualmente como apéndice dentro de las grandes historias de las ideas y del feminismo europeo como teoría y filosofía política. En el mejor de los casos, como puras notas al margen. En la actualidad, ya estamos en disposición de descentralizar las ideas y dar espacio a la historia, la diversidad de voces y textos de pensadoras no-europeas. Por lo tanto, el primer (...) objetivo de esta propuesta es contribuir a la presentación y descubrimiento, para el lector en castellano, de algunas perspectivas feministas chinas que no sólo ayudarán a conocer una desconocida pluralidad filosófica, sino, a la vez, quizás de modo más importante, a pensar “con” y “contra”, críticamente, las tesis de las pensadoras. Para sumar esfuerzos a las muchas voces filosóficas feministas que conceptúo como “in-disciplinadas”, pues se sitúan fuera de la disciplina y del canon filosófico hegemónico, la propuesta de capítulo presentará y disertará en torno a la figura de He-Yin Zhen (1880-1920?). Intelectualmente presentada como representativa del anarco-feminismo chino, sus escritos de vindicación, como “Sobre la venganza de las mujeres”, “Sobre la cuestión del trabajo de las mujeres” o “El Manifiesto Feminista”, datados en 1907 y que forman el corpus de artículos publicados por la autora durante su estancia como exiliada en Japón, se erigen en una defensa de las mujeres, desde una mirada internacionalista, y, a la vez, en un paso de restitución de lo que pertenece, por derecho, a las mujeres, conjugando las dos acepciones de la acción vindicatoria. El estudio que se propone partirá de la estructuración dialógica y reflexionada con los textos de la pensadora, poniendo la mirada frente a los mismos, en su textualidad y contexto, para explorar sus argumentos. Asimismo, se enfrentarán sus tesis a aquellas quizás más difundidas, como las surgidas de los ilustrados reformistas, como las expresadas por Liang Qichao (1873-1929) en su “Sobre la educación de las mujeres” (1897), explorando, entre otras cosas, hasta qué punto la autora responde y erosiona una trampa del reformismo ilustrado al defender derechos básicos, como la educación, como elemento subordinado al fortalecimiento -económico, social- de la China atravesada también por el mal del siglo XIX, por el espíritu finisecular. (shrink)

Although I do not have any final thoughts about the present topic, it might still be valuable to identify what questions are bothering many Chinese scholars. During an academic meeting last month Professor Yu Dunkang summarized the embarrassing situation confronting the study of Chinese philosophy today, as follows: "The object remains unclear, and the value is misplaced." The phrase "the object remains unclear" means that scholars are not sure what questions need to be studied in relation to what is called (...) "Chinese philosophy," while the phrase "the value is misplaced" means that scholars misunderstand the value and the meaning of their own work. To a large extent, this summary is correct; but the question is how this particular situation came into being. (shrink)

The world of Chinese philosophy witnessed an ideological storm that raged for almost four decades in the second half of the twentieth century, and Ren Jiyu was a leading figure in it. The Marxist interpretation of traditional Chinese thought in terms of five scientifically determined historical stages, an economic substructure with its ideological superstructure, and a continuous struggle between materialism and idealism, was like a whirlwind that came and went in Chinese academia. This interpretive framework for the study of Chinese (...) philosophy dominated the field between the 1950s and the 1980s, when it was rapidly marginalized. Now that the winds have subsided and the Marxist straitjacket has become much looser, scholars of Chinese thought and historians interested in the twentieth century have something to reflect upon: the nature, the impact, and the value of Marxist intellectuals. How were differences of opinion expressed and treated within the boundaries of what was ideologically acceptable? How did views emerge, evolve, and loosen within this period? This selection of six influential articles written by Ren Jiyu give an insight into these questions coming from one particular voice. (shrink)

The old, controversial question of whether Confucianism is a religion or not has reemerged as a central issue in contemporary China's "Cultural Renaissance Movement." The papers in this issue offer a glimpse of some notable scholarly views in recent discussions on the religious properties of Confucianism and the possibility of the religious transformation of Confucianism. The major topics include the competition between Confucianism and Christianity, the necessity to establish Confucianism as a state religion, the conception of fashioning Confucianism as a (...) civil religion, the potential for Confucianism to provide the basis for a new Chinese cultural nationalism, and the role of Confucianism in the Chinese people's spirituality and daily lives. (shrink)

La irrupció de la filosofia en els segles XIX i XX. Pensament japonès contemporani. Pensament xinès contemporani.

Taiwan and Kurdistan appear to have little in common, but the progressive values of these two societies embedded within hostile regions make them both natural allies and important strategic assets in the U.S.’s and international community’s long-term fight against authoritarianism and radical religious theocracies. Instead, they have been ignored and/or exploited in the pursuit of short-term geopolitical and economic interests in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, which comes at great cost to American and international values as well as long-term (...) strategic interests, so both citizens and policymakers must consider new approaches. (shrink)

The presence and absence of autonomy in Joseph Chan’s democratic Confucianism loom large, but not always in the ways that he maintains. Although Chan claims that his reconstruction of Confucianism for modern democracy can accept some forms of moral autonomy, what he presents does not constitute genuine moral autonomy, and the absence of that autonomy sits in tension with some other aspects of his model. When it comes to personal autonomy, it is the opposite: Chan says that the exercise of (...) personal autonomy can be part of a life well-lived but is not strictly necessary and can be outweighed by perfectionist considerations of well-being and ethics; however, his model incorporates and relies on the exercise of personal autonomy and leaves room for its intrinsic value. (shrink)

In China during the 1930s and 1940s, Xiong Shili was active in the field of philosophy. His "New Theory on Singular Intuition" won him a reputation that brought widespread attention from academic circles. While Xiong's system of philosophy came into being and matured, studies of and commentaries about his ideas continued. In the 1950s, however, the study of modern Chinese philosophy was almost nonexistent, and so it was for Xiong's philosophy. Although Xiong wrote more than a million characters in several (...) works published over fifteen years after Liberation, he was completely ignored. Basically no one studied his work. Not only was his philosophy shunned, his name was never even mentioned. To compound this, he retired from the university, lived like a hermit, and no longer had contact with academic circles, until finally no one knew of his existence. Recently, with the deepening and expansion of study in the field of modern Chinese philosophy and a strengthening of exchanges with foreign cultures, scholars in China have begun paying attention to Xiong Shili's philosophy. The study of Xiong's philosophy has progressed from obscurity to active interest, and there are now brighter prospects than ever before. (shrink)