AEI - BART deel 2

How European/Western is Philosophy?

• Rationality develops when thinkers realize they may be wrong and need arguments.

• Similar epistemological humility appears in:

  • Socrates: knowing that one does not know.

  • Laozi: knowing not-knowing is best.

  • Zhuangzi: stopping where knowledge stops.

• Early Greek philosophy was not purely abstract:

  • Plato and Aristotle also cared about practical human/social life.

• Greece developed philosophy partly because political debate allowed contestation.

• Warring States China had a comparable situation:

  • Rival rulers invited thinkers.

  • Confucians, Daoists, Legalists, Mohists, and others debated governance.

• Therefore early China did have philosophy in a meaningful sense.

• The Qin/Han unification changed this:

  • Confucianism became orthodoxy.

  • Philosophical pluralism declined.

    • No multiple feudal states

  • Scholarship became bureaucratized.

Ban Gu’s Hanshu nine schools

• Confucians

• Daoists

• Naturalists/Yin-Yang

• Legalists

• Dialecticians/School of Names

• Mohists

• Diplomats

• Eclectics

• Agriculturalists

Thus appears to be Han china inventions, categorizing wisdom.

But was a mix match of philosophies crisscrossing eachother.

• Mozi was a confusian disciple

• Some confucians were legalists

Result of categorization

Chinese learning became text-transmission:

• Reciting of texts

• Follow teacher’s interpretation.

• Accept lineage interpretation.

You had to be a member to gain this knowledge.

They made books specifically for this school their convictions.

Religious regulation

• this developed a tripartite religious market, we can apply this to imperial china

  • Red market:

    • Official recognized religions: Confucianism

  • Black market:

    • Forbidden religions

  • Grey market:

    • Not forbidden but also not orthodox

      • Orthodox: accepted worldview

      • Like Daoism and Buddhism

The fact that grey market religions/cults were not forbidden made way for them to become favourable within politics

宗教 zongjiao

• The term zongjiao 宗教 / religion entered China via Japan.

• Christianity became the model for “real religion.”

• Traditional Chinese spiritual life was reclassified:

  • Religion vs superstition.

  • Confucianism lost its old civil-religious certainty.

• Some intellectuals wanted to abandon Confucianism entirely.

• Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek were Christian converts.

• Sun argued Christianity helped make America strong and civilized.

BUT: Kang Youwei tried making confucianism the state’s religion

Kang youwei

Kang Youwei tried the opposite move:

• Redefine Confucianism as Kongjiao 孔教 / Confucian religion.

• Make it China’s national religion instead of throwing it away. 国教

Wang Guowei

• 1903

• Philosophical Clarifications

• “A profound comprehension of Western philosophy, with the aim to reorganize our Chinese philosophy”

Liang Qichao

Liang Qichao called Kant “almost Buddhist” and suggested Buddhism was the Oriental tradition closest to philosophy.

Feng Youlan

• wrote a full History of Chinese Philosophy.

• Feng argued:

  • China had ancient and medieval philosophy.

  • China lacked a truly modern philosophy.

  • Chinese philosophy lacked formal system but had real/systemic content.

• Modern Chinese philosophy became both:

  • Deconstructive: questioning tradition.

  • Constructive: rebuilding tradition.

• This is framed as a Chinese Renaissance: not pure rejection, but renewal.

Radical Confucianism

• 國學

• Moral teaching used to criticize injustice

  • Critised State Confucianism

• Zhou dynasty is the golden age

  • Free philosophical debate

  • knowledge among literati

  • less centralized oppression

• The Qin fucked it all

  • Dark age:

    • Centralization

    • Authoritarian rule

    • Foreign domination later on

• Need to return to essence of Chinese culture before Qin

Jingxue 经学

• early influence of radical confucianism

  • during early Qing, these groups influence later scholars

  • They kick away song-ming neoconfucianistic mumbo jumbo that tries answering metaphysical shit. aka daoism and buddhist influences

• Study of the classics

  • Ming fall blamed on excessive buddhist and daoist influence

  • return to original texts of confucianism

• Followed by the Hanxue 汉学

漢學

• Hanxue 漢學 / Han Learning followed, emphasizing philology and ancient textual study.

• Key figures in the Yan Li school:

  • Yan Yuan 1635-1704

  • Li Gong 1659-1733

  • Hui Dong

  • Dai Zhen

• Dai Zhen emphasized etymology and philology while still engaging philosophical questions.

  • “Hanxue” also became the Chinese term for Western “Sinology.”

New Text Confucianism 今文家

• New Text Confucianism focused especially on:

  • Chunqiu 春秋

  • Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳

• New Text texts were written in Han script.

• Old Text texts claimed to be older Zhou-script versions, but modern scholarship often sees them as later.

• Key Qing New Text figures:

  • Zhuang Cunyu

  • Liu Fenglu

    • Promoted Confucius as a teacher that could help China respond to the West

  • Reformist New Text figures:

    • Kang Youwei

      • States that Wang Mang falsified old chinese texts from the Old Text School. blames Wang Mang for decline

      • Wanted to adjust Chinese philosophy to the new global political and economic situation

    • Liang Qichao

    • Tan Sitong

100 days reforms

• The Hundred Days Reform was supported by the Guangxu emperor but crushed by Empress Dowager Cixi.

• Kang fled to Japan.

• After the Republic failed to transform China deeply, Kang opposed it and supported Qing restoration.

• Liang Qichao moved toward constitutional monarchy and away from Confucianism.

Tan Sitong

• Tan Sitong’s Renxue 仁學 reinterpreted Confucian humaneness end of 1890’s using:

  • Mahayana Buddhism.

  • Christianity.

  • Neoconfucianism.

• Tan’s work becomes important for later New Confucianism.

Zhong ti xi yong 中體西用 — China as Essence, West as Function

• Late imperial/Republican period = first stage of modern Chinese philosophy.

• All intellectuals had to answer Western influence.

• Three major positions:

  • Conservatives: revive/refound Confucianism.

  • Radicals: reject Chinese tradition.

  • Middle path: Chinese essence, Western function.

• Zhong ti xi yong means:

  • Keep Chinese cultural/spiritual essence.

  • Adopt Western technology, science, or institutions as tools.

Hu Shi summarized three responses:

• Resistance.

• Wholesale Westernization.

• Selective adoption.

Wei Yuan

China only needed Western military technology and weapons. No other western things needed to be learned

Wang Tao

• Western superiority came from deeper cultural roots, not just weapons.

• China should study European culture.

• He imagined future datong 大同 / Great Unity, where Confucian culture absorbs Western technology.

Jana Rošker identifies two major philosophical tendencies in the transition to republic

• Belief in progress, reason, science, pragmatism, neorealism.

• Revival of Confucian/Neoconfucian ideas using Western philosophy, especially German Idealism.

• The syllabus adds a third major influence:

  • Social Darwinism.