There is No Need forZhongguo Zhexueto be Philosophy

Eastern Philosophies

“…Carine Defoort, herself a specialist in Chinese thought, has offered support for such a "family" view of philosophy, [139] while Rein Raud has presented an argument [140] against it and offered a more flexible definition of philosophy that would include both Western and Asian thought on equal terms. In response, Ouyang Min argues that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice and essentially different from zhexue, which is what the Chinese have, [141] even though zhexue (originally tetsugaku) is actually a neologism coined in 1873 by Nishi Amane for describing Western philosophy as opposed to traditional Asian thought. [142] According to the British philosopher Victoria S. Harrison, the category of "Eastern philosophy", and similarly "Asian philosophy" and "Oriental philosophy" is a product of 19th-century Western scholarship and did not exist in East Asia or India.…”

The Minorities of Chinese Philosophy: Ideology and Identity in the Academic Discipline of “Ethnic Minority Philosophy”

“…5 In the present context, the “proximate other” or “internal other” (as opposed to the “wholly other” or the “Other” in general) refers to the non-Han peoples of China: “familiar strangers” (Lipman, 1997) such as the Hui, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, Tujia, Miao, and Manchus. Hence, even in the work of thinkers who strive to emancipate Chinese thought from the hegemonic cultural influence of the West, an attempt which has occasionally expressed itself in a rejection of the very label of “philosophy” (see, for example, Ouyang, 2012), the reconversion from the Western “Other” to the Chinese “Self” has largely ignored the latter’s internal multiplicity and hybridity.…”