We need to analyze several issues here. The first question is "Chinese Philosophy" and "Philosophy in China".
When Jin Yuelin was reviewing Mr. Feng's "History of Chinese Philosophy Volume 2", he once made a review report. In fact, there have been two review reports in the history of Chinese philosophy from the afterlife. These two review reports are as famous as Mr. Feng's works because he invited Mr. Chen Yingxu and Mr. Jin Yuelin, one called Review Report 1 and the other called Review Report 2.
At the time of publication, two people were required to review and confirm that the book indeed had certain value for review and publication, and then publish it. These two review reports were also recorded. In the second review report, Mr. Jin Yuelin mentioned the issues of Chinese philosophy and philosophy in China.
He said, 'When writing the history of Chinese philosophy, there is a fundamental attitude issue. There are two fundamental attitudes: one is to regard Chinese philosophy as a special discipline in Chinese traditional culture, which does not need to differ from general philosophy to a certain extent. That is to say, to regard Chinese philosophy as Chinese traditional culture. This is also a practice that many people are doing. For example, in Buddhist schools, the philosophy part is introduced in the entire curriculum of Chinese traditional culture. The second attitude is to regard Chinese philosophy as a philosophy discovered in China.'.
Which of these two categories is larger?
The extension behind it is even greater, because philosophy in China, such as pragmatism during the May Fourth Movement, can also be called Chinese philosophy in this sense. Consider the preceding as narrow Chinese philosophy and the following as broad Chinese philosophy.
When we are writing about the history of Chinese philosophy, if you choose to write, you should choose that I am writing about narrow Chinese philosophy, and Mr. Feng's final writing is using the previous narrow philosophy, rather than philosophy in China.
Chinese philosophy is not a form commonly found in ancient Chinese academic studies. He does not believe that Chinese philosophy can be regarded as a special discipline in the context of China's national conditions. It should be the result of selecting, sifting, interpreting, and reconstructing traditional resources according to the concepts of general philosophy, that is, Western philosophy.
As Mr. Jin Yuelin said, it is a philosophical history discovered in China, not a history of Chinese philosophy.
Do you see this statement? Actually, we just spoke in a narrow and broad sense. What does it actually mean?
He said that I am in the history of Chinese philosophy, which is actually interpreted from another perspective. In philosophy in China, he said that philosophy is a developing and static concept. If this is traditional Chinese philosophy, it is modern and developing Chinese philosophy.
So, how can we distinguish between the concepts of philosophy in China and Chinese philosophy?
We have two perspectives, one is the regional perspective, regarding philosophy as a discipline discovered in China. The second is that according to this static and dynamic perspective, it can be regarded as traditional classical Chinese philosophy, while we consider the latter as a developed modern Chinese philosophy.
So Mr. Feng wrote Chinese Philosophy according to the first criterion, and Philosophy in China according to the second criterion. speak
It can be understood in two ways. The first way is to view the former as a narrow definition of Chinese philosophy, or as encompassing all the philosophies discovered in China, including, for example, pragmatism and other such philosophies in China. According to this standard, the history of Chinese philosophy written by Mr. Feng is a narrow definition of Chinese philosophy, also known as Chinese Philosophy.
According to the second interpretation, the former is regarded as either static or dynamic in a solid state. The former is Chinese philosophy, which is equivalent to classical Chinese philosophy, while the latter is the constantly evolving Chinese philosophy. According to this definition, Mr. Feng's writing is Philosophy in China.
These two different meanings. In fact, according to these two definitions, it actually realizes the national significance, which is the second meaning under the premise of universality, expressed indirectly through the author's viewpoint and position. Mr. Feng Youlan expresses the development of philosophy in China by developing China's inherent classical philosophy.
The third one is structural construction.
Structural construction at least lays the foundation for what kind of structure we should follow and how we should write the history of Chinese philosophy.
The first one is an analysis of the history of Chinese philosophy, which should be particularly characteristic of the Feng family. Others do not have such an analysis. His analysis divides the entire history of Chinese studies into two major eras, namely the Zixue era (pre Qin) and the Jingxue era (Han Dynasty and beyond).
The era of Zixue refers to the pre Qin period introduced by Hu Shi earlier. He believed that this period was characterized by the coexistence and rise of various scholars, hence it is called the era of Zixue. From then on, it is also known as the era of Confucianism, which spans from the Han Dynasty and beyond. Since then, the entire Confucian school has established a dominant position, hence he even referred to this period as the era of Confucianism in China.
So according to this standard, there has been an uneven ratio of light in the front and heavy in the back throughout history. The history in the front is obviously very thin, both in terms of era and content, while in the later period, due to the era of Confucian studies, there were people specializing in projects such as the history of Chinese Confucian studies.
From the era of Confucian classics, the development of Confucian classics in China was not simply summarized by the internal disputes of Confucian classics. There were periods of prosperity, decline, and decline in Confucian classics. While such an analysis can clearly distinguish between Confucian classics and Confucian classics, the consequences it brought led to a lack of detailed analysis in the later era of Confucian classics.
When writing the history of philosophy, Mr. Feng chose a combination of narrative and selection methods. Through this method, he sorted out the main development of Chinese philosophy, as well as the main philosophers and their ideas.
What is narrative style and what is selective style?
Narrative style is a way for philosophical historians to narrate the history of philosophy as much as possible, including when, in what order, and which philosopher appeared. The selection method is not based on the chronological order of historical development. I may follow different schools of thought, such as the Confucian school or the Taoist school. This selection method may select key figures, including representative works.
When Mr. Feng was writing the history of philosophy, he found that the narrative style could be very detailed, but the key points were not highlighted. The selection style emphasized the key points, but could not balance comprehensiveness. Therefore, it finally adopted a combination of narrative and selection.
If we look at Mr. Feng's selection style on our own, we find that sometimes he expresses and discusses the views of this period or school systematically through a very detailed and systematic narrative, and other times through the delineation of some key figures. Therefore, these two methods of grouping periods are controversial. However, the later method of combining selection and narration has been widely studied and has become a common writing method for writing the history of Chinese philosophy.
Then, regarding some basic viewpoints on the history of Chinese philosophy, the structure we just introduced includes the era, writing methods, and the structural construction of some basic viewpoints.
For example, he said that at the beginning of the Western doctrine, the Chinese, like Kang Youwei's disciples, still attached themselves to the Confucian classics and still wanted to use the old bottle to pack this new wine. The expansion of the scope of the old bottle has reached its limit, and the new wine is at most new, so it has finally been broken.
We have a saying that one is called old bottled new wine, and the other is called new bottled old wine.
No matter what it is, just like Kang Youwei's disciples who embraced Western advanced or Western academic concepts with traditional Chinese culture, when they encountered a failure, he raised the issue and said that the main task of discussing Chinese history is what?
It is a process of selecting and narrating various disciplines in Chinese history that can be referred to as Western philosophy. It is done by using Western philosophical standards to select and narrate, so in fact, modern learning originated in the West, and science is particularly prominent among them. However, if it is a part of various disciplines in Chinese and Western history, it is the study of one principle, and its position in modern learning is related to its relationship with various modern disciplines.
So he said that although the formal system of philosophy of Chinese philosophers may not be like that of Western philosophers, the substantive system also exists. One of the key points of discussing the history of philosophy is to identify the essential system in philosophy that is formally unsystematic.
There are several philosophical viewpoints here that we must remind everyone to pay attention to.
The first one is Mr. Feng's belief that China has philosophy, which is beyond doubt.
The second one he said is that Chinese philosophy is not formless, but has content. Compared to the systematic construction of Western philosophy, Chinese philosophers may not necessarily have such a form, but in fact they also discuss the same philosophical issues and have the same creation.
So in this sense, what is the job he said I need to do?
The first is to screen materials according to the standards of Western philosophy, while the second is to construct a formal and content based philosophy for Chinese philosophers who have content but lack form.
What is the difference between the second and third points?
There is a difference between form and intangibility. Mr. Feng said that when I was creating philosophy myself, we could actually see that besides the job of screening, what is important is form. What methods did he find to construct a form for Chinese philosophy?
