The advantages of Hu Shi's book are, but in fact, it also has its own problems. I estimate that from these perspectives, the first one is that this book is an expansion and modification of his doctoral thesis on the history of pre Qin Confucianism, so its content is only limited to pre Qin, and more importantly, it is not ancient history, but a history of pre Qin philosophy.
Secondly, he used logic to integrate traditional Chinese thought, believing that only theories that conform to logic are the objects of concern in the history of philosophy. This kind of logical centrism may ultimately lead to the result of "being too strong to be true". This kind of screening materials according to a standard may highlight many materials, but more materials may slip away. Therefore, the extreme tendency that this position may lead to is to deny the path of Chinese philosophy.
In terms of his purely logical thinking, many times in ancient China, he did not write books based on logical thinking. He simply had a demand, a proposition, and I needed to express it. I did not even intend to publish it in the form of philosophical discourse, such as the Analects. He was a disciple of Confucius and his successors, compiling his words into a book based on their conversations with him.
So he cannot filter according to this principle of logic, because he did not follow this principle of logic from beginning to end. Therefore, in this case, he may eventually move towards an extreme belief, such as the book Analects, which is not a philosophical book, and move towards a position of denying Chinese philosophy, believing that China only has ideas without philosophy. This position is actually another position in the discussion of the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy.
So, Liang Qichao once commented on Mr. Hu Shi's book, saying that it discusses Mozi and Xunzi the best, but Confucius and Zhuangzi the worst. In general, he said that in terms of epistemology, there are great theories that break through the earth everywhere, but in terms of cosmology and life philosophy, nine out of ten are shallow or erroneous.
We can see that integrating traditional Chinese thought according to such a logical perspective, although from the perspective of epistemology, it is easy to organize some systematic ideas and viewpoints about epistemology, especially the outlook on life and cosmology with Chinese philosophical characteristics, it is not logical from beginning to end. So in this sense, his conclusion is shallow and even erroneous.
However, there are still many issues with Mr. Hu Shi's book, and it is precisely because of these problems that we have seen more works on the history of Chinese philosophy emerge and constantly revise them. In fact, there was a period of interaction between Hu Shi and Feng Youlan. In 29 years, Mr. Feng was very young at the age of 34, so his works were written at a very young age. In the 29th year, it sent the lecture notes of the just written "The First Volume of the History of Chinese Philosophy" to poetry enthusiasts for feedback. One of them was given to Hu Shi because he gained fame as an expert in the history of Chinese philosophy when writing the outline of Chinese history. Therefore, he gave his own lecture notes to Hu Shi.
Later, Hu Shi wrote a long letter to Mr. Feng Youlan, discussing with him the issue of Laozi's era. Soon after, Mr. Feng met Hu Shi and debated with him. Hu Shi published an article titled "On Laozi's Issues with Feng Youlan". In April, Mr. Feng wrote another article to answer Hu Shi's question, titled "Several Issues in the History of Chinese Historiography, Answering the Appropriate Mr.", which sparked a major debate about Laozi's era.
Mr. Feng recalled this debate in his later years. He said that there was a major debate in the history of Chinese philosophy in the 1920s about the chronology of Confucius, which caused a great uproar in the academic field. One faction believed that Laozi was before Confucius, which was the view of Mr. Hu Shi, while the other faction believed that Confucius was before Laozi, which was the view of Mr. Liang Rengong and Mr. Liang Qichao. Both factions hold their own views.
It can be seen that although Mr. Hu Shi and Mr. Feng Youlan have had interactions, they did not argue about how to write the history of Chinese philosophy. Instead, they debated specific issues, such as the order of Confucius and Laozi, who are representative figures of Confucianism and Taoism respectively. The debate over the order of Confucius and Laozi may seem like a historical debate, but what is behind it?
Our Chinese philosophy has a logic that seems to be older and more authoritative. Therefore, if Laozi precedes Confucius and Confucius once asked Laozi for advice, this historical fact may be verifiable. If Confucius precedes Laozi and Confucius once asked Laozi for advice on this issue, such statements and records between the two schools become pseudo questions, that is, pseudo propositions.
In fact, the issue of the order of Confucius and Laozi has become a precursor or some historical research work to the question of which is more authoritative between Confucianism and Taoism, whether there have been academic discussions and inquiries between Confucius and Laozi, and so on. Therefore, on the surface, it may seem like a simple debate of the times, but behind it lies a more important debate between the two schools of thought. But Hu Shi and Mr. Feng Youlan only debated on such a specific historical issue, and did not argue about the history of philosophy itself. However, in fact, if we look at Mr. Feng Youlan's later writings on the history of Chinese philosophy, whether it is a brief history or a new edition, more of them are actually dialogues or improvements on Hu Shi's history of Chinese philosophy through such works.
Let's take a look at some basic viewpoints of Mr. Feng Youlan's writing on the history of Chinese philosophy.
There are three perspectives here for everyone to refer to. The first is to reintroduce two important principles for writing the history of Chinese philosophy. The second is his reflection on a method for studying the history of Chinese philosophy. Due to the complexity of the content, we have placed this question in the third lecture, combined with how to study philosophy in detail. The third perspective is about structural construction, so today we will mainly introduce his relationship with the history of Chinese philosophy from two principles and structural construction perspectives. However, please do not let his thinking on methodological issues run through his writing on the history of Chinese philosophy.
We will select some materials from these three books, but there is an evolution and difference among them, which we will introduce below. Let's talk about it from here. Mr. Feng extracted several important principles for writing the history of Chinese philosophy, among which the most important are two. The first principle is called the philosophical principle.
He said that I am not a historian, so I am writing a history of philosophy, so it is natural for me to focus more on philosophy.
There are many different types of history that can be seen on the market, such as Chinese history that people have studied in high school, and for example, the intellectual history of Ge Zhaoguang. What are the differences between intellectual history, philosophical history, history, and so on?
Mr. Feng used very clever words to directly say that it is natural for me to write a history of philosophy, and I need to focus more on philosophy itself. Therefore, he has a principle of "avoiding being too entangled in the authenticity of historical materials and losing direction in the process of textual research and distinguishing between the past and the false". This is actually a response to Hu Shi's outline of the history of Chinese philosophy.
Hu Shi proposed at that time that it was necessary to distinguish the authenticity of the material itself and conduct a personal analysis of the material itself. However, Mr. Feng said that he did not do such work because he focused more on the content and ideas of the material itself. Therefore, his history of Chinese philosophy states that Chinese philosophy "refers to a certain discipline or part of a certain discipline in China that can be called Western philosophy
This sentence may sound a bit awkward, but what does it actually mean?
What he chose was not to verify the authenticity of this material, but to examine whether it can be called a kind of learning according to the standards of Western philosophy, and whether it can be considered as a philosophical problem according to the standards of Western philosophy.
So when he was screening all the materials in China, such as when we went to see Mr. Feng's history of Chinese philosophy, such as Wang Anshi, he was not mentioned. It's not that Wang Anshi is not an important figure, he is very important. However, according to Mr. Feng's standards of Western philosophy, he believed that Wang Anshi did not have typicality in philosophy, whether in terms of scholarship or a certain part. Therefore, when reading his books, there was no such part, or only a part of it was mentioned, but it was not particularly extensive and did not have a dedicated chapter to explain it.
So this is a history of Chinese philosophy that combines interpretation and interpretation. "Interpretation" interprets and explains traditional ancient texts, while "interpretation" conforms to the standards of Western philosophy and explains them in a philosophical way. So this principle is very important and also an important reason for Mr. Feng's fame, because it is purely a history of philosophy.
The second is the principle of national identity.
This national principle returns to the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy, which is the question of whether there is philosophy in China, and what is the relationship between Chinese philosophy and other philosophies?
So, Mr. Feng said, 'Each philosophical system has its own unique spirit and face, and each era and nation has its own philosophy.'.
In this sense, he did not explicitly state it, but he responded to these two questions. What does he think?
China definitely has philosophy, so he acknowledges the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy. Furthermore, there is no distinction of superiority or inferiority between Chinese philosophy and other philosophies. It is not said that Greek philosophy is superior to Chinese philosophy, nor is Chinese philosophy superior to Western philosophy, Indian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and so on. He does not have such standards, but rather that each philosophy has its own characteristics and national character.
