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Articles

Western Philosophy on the Defensive

Thomas Metzger suggests that contemporary Chinese philosophy, despite its weaknesses, challenges the foundations of modern, Western analytical philosophy.

Looking at some historical and methodological issues regarding the extent to which modern Chinese and Western philosophy can or should form a kind of international seminar discussing a shared agenda, I am writing as a student of Chinese intellectual history rather than a professionally trained philosopher. Such an international seminar has obviously already been formed, as illustrated by the ongoing discussion about the grammatical, semantic, and ontological aspects of the Chinese language, but I believe that one way to develop this seminar is to bring up some so far neglected epistemological issues.

My argument is based on a number of my writings, including two unpublished ones, ‘T’ang Chün-i’s Rejection of Western Modernity’ and ‘Discourse #1 and Discourse #2: The Search for Political Rationality in China and the West Today and the Concept of Discourse.’ My starting point is a series of seemingly uncontroversial empirical or historical observations, combined with a bit of interpretation.

First, during the last four centuries, the advent of capitalism, modern science, industrialization, modernization, and democratization in the West has been accompanied by an epistemological revolution, the Great Modern Western Epistemological Revolution (GMWER), which did not occur in China during the last century when modernization and some democratization occurred there as well.

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