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Overview

What’s New in… Chinese Philosophy

Anja Steinbauer on modern developments in an ancient philosophical tradition.

Many thinkers of our time believe that ‘globalisation’, “the process whereby the population of the world is increasingly bonded into a single society”, has become a defining aspect of today’s world, and that it is therefore necessary to take account of this fact in our philosophising.

Frogs in Wells

Having to face new, foreign, or simply different ways of thought is not an exclusively 20th Century experience: “You cannot put charcoal and ice in the same container,” once declared an 12th Century Chinese scholar, passionately arguing that two contending traditions of thought – in this case Buddhism and Confucianism – could by no means exist side by side. Political considerations aside, such a vehement display of intolerance seems an unfortunate response to a widened philosophical playing field.

Another extreme reaction, this time by a contemporary academic, is Samuel Huntington’s idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’. Claiming that “conflict between civilisations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world”, he predicts that in this new situation “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural”.

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