The European Reception of Chinese Philosophy

[@Rossion64]

Since reading your book of readings of later Chinese philosophy, Chinese philosophy is all I've been reading. I've enjoyed reading Tu Weiming, Mou Zongsan and Yang Guorong

[@gunterappoldt3037]

Nice introduction, indeed. Thank You very much! Intercultural philosophy still seems to be rather "fringe", but I personally regard its "cause" as a challenge and obligation. Rolf Elberfeld wrote in one of his books, several years ago, that much depends on how people, communities, and institutions define, what "philosophy" meant to be. If we define "philosophy" (or "deep thinking", or "wisdom-learning", and so forth) in a broader sense, there should be, in principle, no problem to include Non-Western variants. Bertrand Russell held that the basic matrix of "philosophy" encompasses logic, epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Well, according to this broad definition, many Sinitic "symbolic systems" since the axial-age can, technically, be classified and/or "decoded" as right-away or at least potentially (e.g., Izutsu Toshihiko remarked once, paraphrased: "Zen is not philosophy, but it has much philosophical potential.") philosophical. What regards the "house of Sinitic philosophy" (according to the above mentioned broader definition): "It is large, indeed, and houses many different creatures". What brings me to I. Kant: His typology of "national and ethic characters" obviously mirrors the "Zeitgeist" and can and should be criticized, as far as possible (A. Schütz held that the "meaningful constitution of society" is strongly connected with typifications, so most probably we can´t totally do without them, but at least we can "critically reflect", resp. try to methodologically control them). And, as I understand the contextual framework of the Königsbergian microcosm, his empirical data-base, i.e., informations on Sinitic culture, was rather scant. Maybe it would be wise, to go back to G.F.W. Leibniz, whose "windowless monad" reminds one of the "holistic world-view of Sinitic Mahayana" (C.C. Chang), as starting-point, and from this more open attitude (which I suppose he had), move forward to develop broader, less ethnocentrical approaches. What regards the challenge of "mutual translation", one of the bigger problems seems to be the typical Sinitic encyclopedistic style and the permant fusing of "genres", -- as stounch analytic philosophers might argue, -- that is, namely, of what we use to call "philosophy" and "religion". Well, as the saying goes: "The aim is high, the way is long."