Chung-yi Cheng

This paper examines the problem of human coexistence through a complementary Confucian and Daoist lens. It explores how this combined perspective addresses three major challenges to coexistence. First is the risk of inherent abuse in the necessary institutionalization of coexistence as a vertical hierarchy. Second is the tension between partiality and equality. Third is the challenge that difference poses to unity. The paper argues that Xunzi’s analysis of sustaining a healthy hierarchical order offers an important response to the first challenge, that Mencius’s implicit insight into developing a notion of “ethical partiality” addresses the second, and that Zhuangzi’s philosophy of difference helps resolve the third.

In May 2009, a 4-day international conference was held on the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its Department of Philosophy and New Asia College, and to commemorate the centenary of Professor Tang Chun-I, founding chairman of the Department of Philosophy, Co-organized by the Department of Philosophy, New Asia College (both at CUHK), the Alumni Association of the Department of Philosophy of CUHK, and the Dharmasthiti Group, the conference chose “New Directions in Chinese Philosophy” as the theme. It attracted over 70 scholars from China, Taiwan, Singapore, U.S.A., Canada, and Hong Kong to present their papers and share their fruits of research. The Chinese and English papers, after positively reviewed, are now published in two separate volumes as No. 20 and No. 21 of New Asia Academic Bulletin. The issue of the Bulletin is a collection of 10 English papers presented at the conference. The 3 English keynote speeches form Part 1 of the Bulletin, Henry Rosemont, Jr. in his speech shows his ciritical analysis on contemporary individualism, and demonstrates the possible contribution of Confucian role ethics to the 21st centry. Roger Ames further elaborates on Confucian role ethics, particularly on how personal identify in Confucian role ethics can be achieved. Donald Munro draws information from evolutionary psychology and cognitive neurosciences that are relevant to ethics, to support his notion of “foreknowledge” as an ethical value that may bring about a “marriage between economics and ethics.” Part 2 contains 7 papers, each with its own focus of concern and approach, such as: Pre-Qin Confucianism as seen from the point of view of cognitive science and virtue ethics; the relationship between “hearing” (wen) and “harmony” (he) in Confucian self-cultivation; how Tang Chun-I’s philosophy of culture serves as a succession of the transformative dimension of Confucianism; interpretation of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream from symbolism and Jungian psychology; Wang Bi’s notions of principle (li), centrality (zhong), and substance/function (tiyong); Tang Chun-I’s comparative philosophy; and Tang’s interpretation of Liu Zongzhou’s thought. This two-volume set shows our participants’ and bold attempts to explore new directions in Chinese philosophical studies which, to various extents, make a meaningful response to Tang Chun-I’s thought on “a new orietnation for the study of Chinese philosophy.”

How to read the Confucian Classics today? Scholars with philosophical training usually emphasize that the philosophical approach, in comparison with the classicist and historical ones, is the best way to read the Confucian Classics, for it can dig out as much intellectual resources as possible from the classical texts in order to show their modern relevance. Briefly, the philosophical approach runs as follows: first, to discover or identify the philosophical question inhered in the text; then to reconstruct the line of thinking, reasoning, and argumentation revealed in the text, which will lead to the answer of the question; and finally evaluate the effectiveness of the answer by any possible criticism. In spite of the fact that the philosophical approach does help showing the Confucian classics are of great significance to modern people, some scholars seriously caution that this theorization would alienate Confucianism from its very practical concern about self-cultivation. Accordingly, traditional Confucian scholars adopted an existential approach to reading, that is using their personal experience to read, question, understand, and comprehend the meanings of the text, making their comprehension as something they find in themselves and thus will be at ease in it. So there seems to be a dichotomy between the modern philosophical approach and the traditional existential approach to reading of the Confucian Classics. In this paper, I shall argue that the dichotomy has never existed. In fact, traditional Confucian scholars read the Confucian canon in both the philosophical and existential ways. Song Confucian Zhu Xi’s ‘Method of Reading’ is a case in point. I shall then argue that these two approaches should be irreducible and inseparable so as to form a proper way of reading as well as teaching the Confucian Classics today.