Carine Defoort

Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name? A Response to Rein Raud

In the preface to his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi wrote: ‘‘Today, the two main branches of philosophy meet and influence each other. Whether or not in fifty years or one hundred a sort of world philosophy will finally arise cannot yet be ascertained.’’1 Although uncertain, Hu was still hopeful, since he believed that the two major traditions of modern world philosophy, founded in Europe and China, had finally met. That was in 1919. Now, almost a century later, we can respond to Hu’s speculation with relative certainty: a world philosophy has not arisen and is not on the rise. In fact, the situation is much worse: Chinese ancient thought is not even considered ‘‘philosophy’’ by most Western specialists in the field. For Feng Youlan, Hu’s contemporary, this lack of recognition had become a major frustration by the end of his life. Feng earnestly felt that ‘‘parts of classical Chinese philosophy have a contribution to make to the elevating of man’s spiritual sphere and in solving universal problems in human life.’’2 But on the last page of the last volume of his New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, completed a few weeks before his death in November 1990, Feng concluded that Western philosophers had not even begun to consider ancient Chinese thought to be worthy of their attention: ‘‘Chinese traditional philosophy has always been regarded as a part of sinological studies and is considered as having no relation to philosophy.’’3 Feng’s sentiment is still widely shared today; for instance, in the Yearbook of Chinese Philosophy for 2001, Zheng Jiadong remarks that ‘‘in the West, especially in Europe, the legitimacy of ‘Chinese philosophy’ has always been questioned; ‘Chinese philoso-

The Rhetorical Power of Naming: The Case of Regicide

Abstract The traditional reading of ancient Chinese texts focuses on their content rather than their modes of expression: truth is considered a given, of which language is merely the expression. This approach misses out on a predominant way of arguing in Chinese texts, namely to evaluate the situation by (re) naming it. A discussion of four textual fragments (up to the 2nd century BC) concerning the topic of regicide illustrates different degrees of this type of argumentation. Among philosophers discussion occurs in a subtle play of specifying terms such as ‘regicide’ or ‘reign’, rather than in an explicit defence of regicide by appeal to higher principles.

Ren Jiyu: The Marxist View of Chinese Philosophy and Religion

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 (1916-2009) 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.

CAN WORDS PRODUCE ORDER? Regicide in the Confucian Tradition

This article presents and evaluates a dominant traditional Chinese trust in language as an efficient tool to promote social and political order. It focuses on the term shi(regicide or parricide) in the Annals (Chunqiu).This is not only the oldest text (from 722–481 BCE) regularly using this term, but its choice of words has also been considered the oldest and most exemplary instance of the normative power of language. A close study of its uses of ‘ regicide’ leads to a position between the traditional ‘praise and blame’ theory and its extreme negation. Later commentaries on the Annals and reflection on regicide in other texts, in different ways, attest to a growing reliance or belief in the power of words in the political realm.

Chinese Scholars on Chinese Philosophy

Today is probably the first time that so many people with such a wide variety of backgrounds are together at the Higher Institute of Philosphy of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven to hear Chinese scholars talk about their own intellectual tradition. And for the Chinese scholars from Beijing University, it is probably the first time that they speak before such a large audience of non-Chinese people and even non-China scholars. This is a challenge for both sides, but we do not come unprepared.

Laozi Studies in the Twenty-First Century

The Laozi or Daodejing has been for at least two thousand years an object of keen interest in China. This interest has been stirred by some recent discoveries. Two silk manuscripts from an Early Han tomb were excavated in the 1970s, and three pre-Han portions of the text on bamboo slips were found in the 1990s. The resulting academic discussions have been comprehensively discussed in various English studies. A new stir followed after 2009, when Peking University acquired yet another set of manuscripts from a Han tomb. They were written on bamboo slips and divided into two parts titled jing (Classic). Few scholars have doubted their authenticity. This Peking University Laozi has hitherto been discussed in mostly Chinese articles. This issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought provides a glimpse of this research. It contains four articles: by Wang Bo (Peking University), Chen Jing (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Liao Mingchun and Li Cheng (Tsinghua University), and Ding Sixin (Tsinghua University). The approach that these four contributions share can be roughly identified as intellectual history. They show how the recent discoveries are incorporated into age-long debates, not only concerning this particular text, but entailing reflections on such issues as the stability of texts, different editions, textual variants, the relation between text and commentary, the nature of titles, types of authorship, and the historical context of textual meanings. Before summarizing the articles separately, we briefly present their background setting.

Chen Shaoming on the Methodology of Chinese Philosophy: Experience, Imagination, Reflection

More than a decade ago, three consecutive issues of Contemporary Chinese Thought presented the papers of twenty-one Chinese scholars on the then hot topic of the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy,” discussing whether or not Chinese masters were philosophers and, hence, ought to be taught at philosophy departments. Since the very lack of consensus on the definition of “philosophy” leads to fruitful debate in the field, the contributions to these three issues were themselves instances of philosophical reflection. Most inspiring were those that did not reduce the matter to merely proving (or disproving) that the label “philosophy” fits the early masters. There was a sense among most authors, including the co-editors, that this very question was doomed to lose its urgency—like medieval castles falling into ruins due to a lack of attention—as soon as more crucial issues would come to the foreground. One of these issues concerned the methodology for studying pre-modern Chinese texts: Which approach would do justice to the early Chinese masters and convince contemporary scholars of their relevance? One author who tackled this question was Chen Shaoming 陈少明. Born in 1958 in Guangdong, he spent two years of his youth (1975–1977) working in the countryside. This experience made him somewhat suspicious of grand theories, but all the more sensitive toward the vagaries of daily life. As soon as China opened up, he took the college entrance exams and, mistakenly, ended up at the history department of South China Normal University (Huanan shifan xueyuan) in the city of Guangzhou (1978–1983). This mistake turned out to be fortunate, since it sharpened his interest in concrete situations and shielded him from the ideological simplicities that dominated at philosophy departments. Shaped by countryside experiences and historical narratives, Chen then turned to the Philosophy department of Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, also in Guangzhou, to complete a master’s degree (1983–1986). He has stayed there ever since, notwithstanding some temporary visiting and teaching appointments at other places (Harvard University, Fudan University, Taiwan National University, Chinese University of Hong Kong). After several stays at Harvard and his work under the supervision of Tu Weiming in the first decade of this century, the tone in Chen’s work became more existential and was no longer dictated by Hegel and Kant. In 2004 he started the project Classics and Interpretation (Jingdian yu jieshi), which expanded his scope of interest and increased collaboration with colleagues in the field. His teaching and research have been on a wide variety of topics concerning early Chinese texts, especially Zhuangzi, the Lunyu, the Four Books, and the scholarship of late Qing and Republican scholars. In 2009 Guangdong province recognized him as a Pearl River Scholar (Zhujiang xuezhe). And in 2015 he received from the Ministry of Education the national honor of Yangtze Scholar (Changjiang xuezhe). none defined

Chinese Academic Views on Shang Yang Since the Open-up-and-Reform Era

ABSTRACT The Book of Lord Shang attributed to Shang Yang (d. 338 BCE) is one of the most controversial products of ideological debates in pre-imperial China (pre-221 BCE). Forty years ago, Li Yu-ning summarized previous rounds of debates that peaked with the Shang Yang fervor of the early 1970s. The present article takes over where she ended, further exploring trends in studies of the Book of Lord Shang since the Open-up-and-Reform Era (1978–). The paper shows that despite a clear tendency of depoliticization of these studies, scholars are still deeply influenced by the tradition of using the figure of Shang Yang as a foil in contemporary political debates. In their evaluation of Shang Yang’s legacy, many contemporary Chinese scholars continue to use traditional views, but also modern ideas such as the “rule of law,” “progress,” “evolution,” “dialectic,” or the Marxist theory of distinct social stages. They all contribute to the ongoing relevance of Lord Shang to current China.

Pheasant Cap Master

This presentation first gives an overview of scholarship speculating on Heguanzi as a person and as a book. Then it turns to its textual complexities and its generally considered Daoist content. Finally it moves towards what I would identify as the specific nexus of ideas that characterize the Pheasant Cap Master’s thought: the vicissitudes of political ambition and frustration, the veneration of the One and its relation to multiplicity, and the nature of Heaven’s order and transcendence.