We are pleased to provide two explorations on the topic of dialogue in Chinese philosophy. In this paper, we consider the educational and theoretical dialogues in China resulting from the encounter between Chinese and Western philosophy down to the present. We consider how this conversation began and how it has evolved into what has become a robust discipline of scholarship and teaching known as Comparative Philosophy in both China and the West. In the next paper, we will focus specifically on dialogues in the historical stream of Chinese philosophy as these occurred within education in China itself, including the nature of some of the most influential discussions and institutions in which these occurred.

The most familiar and widely used survey on the introduction of Western thought into China was written by Feng Youlan冯友兰 (1895-1990) and printed in his A Short History of Chinese Philosophy published in 1948 (326-31). Feng begins his account with the work of the brilliant translator Yan Fu嚴復 (1853-1921), but does not go back to the beginnings of China's encounter with Western thought. After the publication of Feng's account, there was little reflection on the Chinese reception of Western philosophy until 1999. In December of that year, the East Asian Department of the University of Gottingen sponsored an international conference on the theme "Translating Western Knowledge into Late Imperial China. " The gathering featured an international slate of scholars offering papers that interpreted the reception, appropriation, and criticism of Western thought largely through the lens of how important Western philosophical, scientific, and political terms were rendered in Chinese. 1 It is true that many Chinese thinkers have engaged Western philosophers both critically and adaptively, but actual reflection on these thinkers, even the most prominent of them, and the use they have made of Western philosophy prior to the twenty-first century has been modest. The 2002 publication of Contemporary Chinese Philosophy provided essays on sixteen recent Chinese thinkers, including many who consider the appropriation and dialogue between Chinese thought and that of the West (Cheng and Bunnin 2002). Then, in 2007, Zhou Xiaoliang 周晓亮wrote an essay entitled "The Studies of Western Philosophy in China: Historical Review, Present State and Prospects. " Zhou devotes the first section of this paper to an historical review of the introduction of Western philosophy into China and takes the position that Feng took before him: namely, that in the late nineteeth century, the invasions by Western powers and concomitant decline of Chinese national strength led to an increasing interest on the part of Chinese intellectuals not only in Western science and technology, but also in culture and ideas (47). In Mou Bo's 牟博collection of scholarly essays on the History of Chinese Philosophy (2009), several authors discuss important Chinese intellectuals' interpretations of Western philosophers. Mou himself is author of the chapter "Constructive Engagement of Chinese and Western Philosophy: A Contemporary Trend Toward World Philosophy" (571-608). In the following brief overview, I go back to the beginning of contact between Chinese and Western philosophers and offer a periodization which I hope will shed some light on the divergent ways in which Chinese philosophers have engaged Western philosophy over time. I pay particular attention to mainland Chinese philosophers, with exceptions such as Mou Zongsan牟宗三, who did a great deal

This article provides an overview of Confucianism’s interactions with Chinese religion along the continuum from official state contexts to local and popular practices and beliefs. The study is organized into two broad categories: gods, ghosts, and ancestors; and rituals and ritual specialists. The many ways in which Confucian literati and officials moved within the civil and village contexts demonstrates how rigid attempts to study Confucianism’s engagement in either civil religion or so-called popular religion in isolation can be potentially misleading. Points of contact between Chinese religion and Confucianism include the identification and veneration of Confucian and local worthies, literati and ritual specialist interactions, and the role of Confucian intellectuals in controversies and tensions between recognized traditions such as Buddhism and Daoism, as well as conflicts between regional practitioners. The strategies for relating to Chinese religious beliefs and practices constructed by key Confucian thinkers such as Xunzi, Han Yu, and Zhu Xi are highlighted.

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