ABSTRACT
Kant thinks philosophy should always bear the mark of “situatedness”; rather than being just an intellectual game, it should be directed at the world that confronts humanity. After discussing Kant’s distinctions between mathematics (which constructs its objects) and philosophy (which deals with objects that are given) and between philosophy in a scholastic sense (which emphasizes sheer, scholarly mastery of philosophical doctrines) and philosophy in a cosmic sense (which entails the free and active use of reason in solving the “worldly” issues that haunt humanity), I present etymological evidence that this Kantian legacy is quite unexpectedly prefigured in Chinese antiquity: the Chinese character “zhe” (meaning “wisdom”) dates back at least to the Chinese classics and was used subsequently to translate the term “philosophy”. The term is closely related to several archaic Chinese script tokens, whose components refer to “discerning” (or “discriminating”), observation, deliberation, and the living ethos or “situation” where the need for discernment arises. These components are universal traits that pertain to Kant’s “philosophy in a cosmic sense”. I conclude with observations on several Kantian claims that are entailed both in Kant’s general notion of philosophy and in moral practices as described in the Chinese classics.
