Chinese Receptions of Western Philosophy

Abstract

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

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