ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I intend to introduce and examine one recent significant trend in modern Chinese philosophy that has become a collective movement with its distinct features especially since the beginning of the twenty-first century. One might call it the trend or movement of ‘constructive engagement of Chinese and Western philosophy toward world philosophy’ (‘the constructive-engagement movement’ for short).1 Before giving a preliminary characterization of the constructive-engagement movement, let me first clarify what ‘Chinese philosophy’ and ‘Western philosophy’ mean here, whose identities are especially relevant to the discussion in this chapter. Though the term ‘China’ largely means geographical China, what the phrase ‘Chinese philosophy’ expresses here is not a mere geographical concept; it refers to both a philosophical tradition and its related scholarship as a whole; it is limited neither to the relevant happenings within geographical China (so it does not merely mean philosophy done in geographic China) nor to what native Chinese philosophers have done. This is especially the case for modern Chinese philosophy, some of whose significant developments I discuss below. Geographical distance and location no longer constitute a serious hindrance, as many native Chinese scholars have studied abroad, and as more and more non-native Chinese scholars have become interested, and done serious
research, in Chinese philosophy. Although the major figures discussed in previous chapters have been native Chinese living in China, this is not always the case with more recent scholars who have made significant contributions to the development of Chinese philosophy.2 Whether they are thus entitled to be called (or intend to call themselves) ‘Chinese philosophers’, it is certain that the literature on the history and development of Chinese philosophy cannot ignore their contributions simply because they are not native Chinese in China; otherwise such an account is doomed to be incomplete. That is, whether one’s contribution to Chinese philosophy should be considered to be part of Chinese philosophy is related neither to one’s geographical location (say, whether one currently lives within the geographic territory of China), nor to one’s native Chinese-speaker identity (say, whether one’s mother tongue is one of the dialects of the Chinese language), nor to one’s nationality (say, whether one currently has the nationality of the People’s Republic of China), nor even to one’s Chinese cultural identity (say, whether one can understand and appreciate the sophistications and nuances involved in the four major Chinese literary works3). For the sake of the healthy development of Chinese philosophy as a significant contributor to world philosophy, the foregoing historical change in the identity of active practitioners of Chinese philosophy is a good sign and suggests its constructive prospect. Similarly with the case of the term ‘Chinese philosophy’, the term ‘Western philosophy’ here is not used to identify one single movement of thought but a collection, or a complex array, of different movements and approaches that are historically related to the West. Also, it is not the case that various methodological approaches, substantial points of view, and insights historically suggested in Western philosophy must be, intrinsically or conceptually, exclusively connected with Western philosophy, though their various manifestations might be somehow related to Western culture (for instance, the Western phonetic languages), and though some of them might be historically initiated and/or dominant in certain stages of the history of the Western tradition. The same conceptual point clearly also holds for what are called ‘(contemporary) Western analytic philosophy’ and ‘Western Continental philosophy’, two major movements in contemporary Western philosophy whose identities will be discussed below. The phrase ‘the movement of constructive engagement of Chinese and Western philosophy toward world philosophy’ or ‘the constructive-engagement movement in comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy’ here refers to a collective movement or trend as a whole that has emerged especially since the earlier years of the twenty-first century in some systematic way to be explained below. This movement aims to make a joint contribution to the common philosophical enterprise via comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy. It emphasizes critical engagement (via reflective criticism and self-criticism) and being sensitive to the contemporary development and resources of philosophy. In so specifying it, I do not mean that other comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy are not valid4 nor that there have been no previous efforts in that direction. I will now give a brief preliminary characterization of several prominent and significant features of the movement (see Section 4 below for a full characterization).
