Feng Youlan's "A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy": "The data is ancient, but the vision is modern"

A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy was published by Macmillan & Co. in 1948 when Mr. Feng Youlan was employed by the University of Pennsylvania in the United States from 1946 to 1947 to teach the history of Chinese philosophy.

Feng Youlan (1895-1990) was an internationally renowned contemporary Chinese thinker and historian of philosophy. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Peking University in 1918 and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1924. After returning to China, he successively served as a professor at Guangdong University and Yenching University, and dean of the School of Literature and Philosophy of Tsinghua University. During the Anti-Japanese War, he served as a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Dean of the School of Arts at Southwest Associated University. After 1952, he was a professor in the Department of Philosophy of Peking University and a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

He once summed up his writings as "Three Histories Explain the Ancient and Modern, and Six Books of the Zhenyuan". The "Six Books of Zhenyuan" include "New Theory", "New Theory", "New World Training", "New Original People", "New Original Dao" and "New Knowledge", which is the original philosophical system of "New Theory" constructed by Feng Youlan. The "Three Histories" refer to Feng's three histories of Chinese philosophy, which are written in chronological order: History of Chinese Philosophy (Volume II, 1931, 1934), A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy (1948), and A New History of Chinese Philosophy (7 volumes, 1982-1991).

According to Bude, the English translator of the two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy:

The book in the reader's hand is the first English-language book to provide a comprehensive introduction to Chinese philosophy, from ancient Confucius to the present day. The publication of such a book, which is recognized as one of the best scholars in Chinese intellectual circles, is of greater significance.

Bud also points out the book's relationship to the two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy:

Determined to take matters into his own hands, Dr. Feng had shortened his previous work, A History of Chinese Philosophy, into a one-volume edition in English, and asked me for help. The result is the book now.

The subject matter of this book is not different from the two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy in Chinese, with chapters 1 to 16 roughly equivalent to the first volume of the two-volume book, and chapters 17 to the end of the book equivalent to the second volume.

This book has a few other features compared to the usual abbreviated versions. First of all, the author wrote this book for Western readers, so its content and perspective are different from those of Chinese readers.

Some of the conclusive insights and highlights in this book are new to Dr. Fung's two-volume work since 1934.

A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy is a book written by Feng Youlan for English readers. In 2004, Mr. Zhao Fusan translated it into Chinese. According to the translator:

Attentive readers will feel as if this book is new.

When "A Brief History" came out, it was more than ten years after the publication of Mr. Feng's two-volume "History of Chinese Philosophy" and after the completion of the "Six Books of Zhenyuan"; The information is ancient, but the vision is modern; He is a historian when he uses historical materials, but he is a philosopher when he discusses problems.

Mr. Feng easily mastered the two histories of Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy to write this "Brief History", the ideological materials are Chinese, but the perspective of philosophical issues is global, which has not yet been done by a second person in the international academic community.

The book consists of 28 chapters. The first 15 chapters start with the spirit of Chinese philosophy, introduce the geographical and economic background of the emergence of Chinese philosophy, and explain the development of Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, Xunzi, Han Feizi and other pre-Qin princes, as well as Taoist, Confucianism, Buddhism and other philosophical schools. Chapters 16 to 26 deal with the development of philosophy from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Ming dynasty, and provide an overview of the development of Chinese philosophy from the Han and Tang dynasties, especially the core ideas of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties, and its influence on later Chinese philosophy and even Chinese thought and culture as a whole, and the relationship between Chinese philosophy and the world. The last two chapters deal with the introduction of Western philosophy and the development of contemporary (at the time of completion of this book) Chinese philosophy.

According to the author, he used the results of the Qing Dynasty Confucianism's collation and revision of ancient Chinese philosophical texts, and used analytical methods to clarify the thoughts of these ancient philosophers. Therefore, "A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy" is a reference book for a quick understanding of the ideas and doctrines of ancient Chinese thinkers.

Recognize philosophy

What is Philosophy? Mr. Fung said:

Philosophy is a systematic reflection on life. As long as a person is not dead, he is still in life, but not all people reflect on life, and even fewer reflect on it systematically. A philosopher always has to think philosophically, that is, he has to reflect on life and express his thoughts systematically.

What is the task of philosophy?

According to the tradition of Chinese philosophy, the function of philosophy is not to promote positive knowledge (by positive knowledge I mean information about objective things), but to improve people's minds, transcend the real world, and experience values higher than morality.

On this point, the Vienna School of contemporary Western philosophy has articulated:

If philosophy really seeks to provide positive knowledge, it will be mired in absurdity.

What role will philosophy play in the future society?

For every step forward in science, religion takes a step back; Its authority has been eroded in the course of scientific progress.

In the world of the future, philosophy will replace religion, which is in line with the Chinese philosophical tradition. Man does not need to be religious, but man must be philosophical. When a man is philosophized, he receives the highest blessings that religion has to offer.

Therefore, Chinese philosophy will play a greater role in the future society:

The saints that the Chinese call both live in the world and do not belong to the world; Chinese philosophy is both present and beyond. With the progress of science in the future, I believe that religious dogmas and superstitions will give way to science, and man's quest for the other world will be satisfied in the philosophy of the future. This philosophy of the future is both earthly and beyond. In this regard, Chinese philosophy may have a contribution.

However, the author seems to be a little overly optimistic, and in the nearly three decades since the author's death, the power of religion both internationally and domestically seems to have become stronger. Science is advancing, but so is the power of religion to intervene in reality.

The author's ambition and self-promise

At the beginning of the final chapter, "Chinese Philosophy in the Modern World", the author asks:

After introducing the evolution and development of Chinese philosophy, the reader may ask: What is the current Chinese philosophy, especially since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression? What contribution can Chinese philosophy make to the philosophy of the future world?

The author's answer begins with an introduction to the difference between a historian of philosophy and a philosopher:

The role of the history of philosophy is to tell us what philosophers of the past said, what they meant when they said them, not what we thought they should mean.

The role of the philosopher, on the other hand, is:

From the point of view of a pure philosopher, to clarify the ideas of the philosophers of the past and to extend them to their logical conclusions, to show whether they are true or false...... Doing so involves a process of intellectual development "from the old to the new", from tradition to modernity. This development is another stage in the spirit of the times. To do so is beyond the scope of a historian's academic work and into the sphere of a philosopher's work.

The author confesses: "I am not satisfied with being a mere historian of philosophy. After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, during the relocation of Peking University to Hengshan, Hunan, he wrote "New Science" (1937). During his time at the Southwest Associated University, he wrote "New Things" (1940, also known as "China's Road to Freedom"), "New World Training" (1940), "Xinyuan Ren" (New Theory of Human Nature) (1942), "New Yuandao" (1945, also known as "The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy"), and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he wrote "New Knowledge" (1946). This is what he later called the "Six Books of Zhenyuan".

In the last chapter, when answering the question of what is the development of contemporary Chinese philosophy, the author uses his own philosophy as an example to introduce the new development of Chinese philosophy.

The New Theory introduces the full range of metaphysical concepts of Chinese philosophy. "Something exists" is the premise of Chinese philosophy, and both the Cheng-Zhu school and even the Taoists have deduced all their metaphysical ideas and concepts from this sentence. It is not difficult to deduce the concept of "reason" and "qi" from "something exists"; Other ideas can be interpreted in the same way. In The New Theory, the author deduces all the metaphysical concepts of Chinese philosophy and combines them into a clear system of thought. Feng Youlan proudly introduced:

The book was well received, arguing that it expounded the structure of Chinese philosophy more clearly than any previous book; It also represents the revival of Chinese philosophy, which is a symbol of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

The "Theory of New Things" points out that the concretization of reason requires a material foundation. The various types of society are the embodiment of the various rationalities contained in the social structure. The realization of every principle requires a certain material foundation, and this material foundation is the economic foundation of any kind of society. The author believes that human history is to be explained in terms of economics. In The Theory of New Things, the author uses this principle to explain Chinese civilization and Chinese history.

In "The New Primitive", the author points out that man is different from other animals in that when he does something, he knows what he is doing, and he realizes that he is doing it. It is this understanding and self-awareness that makes the person feel the meaning of what he is doing. People's various actions bring about various meanings of life, and the totality of these meanings constitutes the fourfold "state of life".

"The natural realm": a person can live according to his instincts or social customs. Such people are like children or people in primitive societies who do all kinds of things and are not aware of what they are doing, or do not really realize the meaning of it. Therefore, what he did did did not mean anything to himself, and this kind of life was a life in the "natural realm".

"Utilitarian realm": a kind of person who is selfish, always aware of himself, and everything he does is for himself. Everything he did, for himself, was "useful". His realm of life can be called the "utilitarian realm".

"Moral realm": Some people understand that there is not only themselves in the world, but also a society, which is a whole, and they are an integral part of society. He does everything for the good of society as a whole; Or, in Confucian parlance, he acts for righteousness, not for profit ("righteousness without seeking profit"), he is a truly moral person, and everything he does is moral and has moral significance.

"Heaven and Earth Realm": Some people know that above the whole society, there is also a whole whole, that is, the universe. He is not only a member of society, but also a member of the universe. In everything he did, he realized that it was for the good of the universe. This understanding and self-consciousness put him in a higher state of life, that is, the "realm of heaven and earth" that spiritually transcends the human world.

"New Knowledge" explores philosophical methodology. The author points out that there are two approaches to philosophy, the positive approach and the negative approach. The essence of the positive method is to discuss the object of metaphysics, which becomes the subject of philosophical research. The essence of the negative method is not to directly discuss the metaphysical object to be discussed, but only to say that it is not, and in doing so, the negative method is able to reveal certain nature of "something" that cannot be described and analyzed in a positive way.

A complete metaphysical system should start with a positive approach and end with a negative one. It is impossible to reach the heights of philosophy unless it ends in a negative way. But in the history of Chinese philosophy, the right method has never been fully developed, or should it be overly neglected.

What Chinese philosophy needs is to get rid of childishness and replace it with clear thinking. Having clear thinking is not the end of philosophy, it is just the training of thinking that any philosopher should have; Chinese philosophers certainly need such training in their thinking.

In the Western academic circles, Mr. Feng Youlan is considered to be "the first scholar with the qualification of a historian of philosophy" in the history of modern philosophy, and is the only way for Westerners to understand Chinese philosophy. For many Westerners, Feng Youlan is Chinese philosophy, and Chinese philosophy is Feng Youlan.

To study Chinese philosophy, it is natural to read Feng Youlan.

About the age of "Lao Tzu".

The question of the age of Lao Tzu and the book "Lao Tzu" is a major public case in the history of modern and modern scholarship. Liang Qichao was the first to question the wind, and Feng Youlan questioned the age of "Lao Tzu" from the handed down text. A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy says about the development of Taoism:

There are three phases of pre-Qin Taoist thought. Represented by Yang Zhu is the first stage. Most of the books in Lao Tzu represent the second stage. Most of the Zhuangzi is the third and final stage.

Regarding Lao Tzu and "Lao Tzu", Feng Youlan believes:

When I wrote the History of Chinese Philosophy (two volumes), I suggested that Lao Tzu was written probably before Hui Shi and Gongsun Long, and now I think that Lao Tzu was written later than I had previously thought, after Hui Shi and Gongsun Long. This is because there is a lot of discussion about "namelessness" in the book "Lao Tzu", which can only be after people's concept of "name" has developed.

This view does not require me to assume that Lao Tzu and his people have nothing to do with Lao Tzu and his books. There may also be a number of passages in the Lao Tzu book that are from Lao Tzu. My view is that the ideological system of Lao Tzu could not have been produced before or at the same time as Confucius.

In the first edition of the New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, which was revised and rewritten in 1964 and revised and rewritten in 1982, the author still insisted that "from the perspective of the ideological struggle in the early Warring States period, the emergence of Taoist thought always came after Mo Zhai", and Yang Zhu was regarded as the forerunner of Taoist thought. He said:

These "Yimin" and "hermits" are the precursors of Taoism. …… The first person to create a doctrine and a school for them was Yang Zhu.

This book argues that the Zhuang Zhou school is the development of Lao Dan's ideology to idealism.

Although Lao Tzu is very short, with a total of only about 5,000 words, like most pre-Qin works, it is a general collection, not a personal monograph given by a certain person to a certain period. So there are many inconsistencies and even contradictions.

It was not originally written by a single person at a particular time, but rather a collection, a compilation of philosophical aphorisms.

When Mr. Feng Youlan rebuilt the "New History of Philosophy", the Mawangdui silk book Laozi had been unearthed (1973), but it was the material of the early Western Han Dynasty, which was not enough to explain the age of Laozi. In 1993, a batch of bamboo slips were unearthed from the No. 1 Chu Tomb of Guodian in Jingmen City, Hubei Province, including three versions of the fragment of "Lao Tzu" (A, B, and C). The tomb is much older, dating from the mid-4th century BC to the early 3rd century BC, and it was an instant sensation around the world.

The scholar Mr. Chen Guying pointed out in the preface to the 1973 edition of Lao Tzu's Commentary and Translation:

Lao Tzu is Lao Dan, and the book "Lao Tzu" was written by Lao Dan, and the book was written no later than the beginning of the Warring States Period.

The book Lao Tzu is a monograph rather than a compilation.

The publication of Guo Dian's essay Lao Tzu further supported Chen Guying's view, and in the preface to the three revised editions in 1999, he excitedly pointed out:

From the overall observation, we believe that the meaning of Group A is close to the ancestral book of "Lao Tzu", and its copying date may be only more than 100 years before Lao Dan's death.

The advent of Guo Dian's brief essay "Lao Tzu" not only broke the fallacy of "Lao Tzu" being late, but also greatly expanded the broad ethical space of Lao Tzu.

Mr. Guo Yongbing <老子>pointed out in the book "General Knowledge" that the two groups of the Mawangdui Han Tomb Silk Book "Lao Tzu" and the Guodian Chu Tomb Bamboo Book "Lao Tzu" are of great help to us to understand the writing and compilation process of "Lao Tzu". He concluded:

As a result, scholars often conclude that Guo Dianjian's Laozi is a purposeful excerpt rather than a combination of "units" of Laozi's aphorisms and quotations in the process of formation, that is, by the 4th century BC at the latest, a book that is quite close to the 5,000 words of Laozi already existed. This time is not very far from the time of Lao Tzu, and it is inferred from the formation law of the classical books that Lao Tzu is most likely compiled by Lao Tzu's disciples and re-disciples according to Lao Tzu's remarks and the words left behind, which is not only a compilation of Lao Tzu's quotations (there may be an increase in later learning), but also should be regarded as an organic and unified overall work.

Regarding the completion of the book "Lao Tzu", I think it is more reliable to take the conclusions of Chen Guying and others, who are based on Guodian Chujian, as the standard.