The question “did China ever have philosophy?” already hides a mistake.
It assumes that philosophy is the starting point. But historically it rarely is. What we call philosophy is usually something that appears after life has already been lived and reflected upon.
In many traditions—Chinese, Japanese, Greek, or otherwise—the first layer was not abstract theory but practice, cultivation, and perception. Only later did someone step back and try to describe what was happening.
Confucianism, Daoism, and other Chinese traditions were not originally constructed as theoretical systems. They were ways of living, forms of ethical and social cultivation, practices embedded in ritual and everyday life. The word philosophy itself (哲学, zhexue) only appeared in China in the late nineteenth century, imported through Japan as a translation of a Western academic category.
So when twentieth-century scholars tried to “prove” that China had philosophy, they often translated these traditions into Western conceptual frameworks: Confucius became a humanist, Mozi a utilitarian, Daoism a metaphysics. But this move may say more about the categories of modern academia than about the traditions themselves.
The deeper question is not whether China had philosophy. The deeper question is why we assume philosophy must take a particular form—systematic theory, abstract metaphysics, analytical argument.
If thought begins in lived experience rather than in theory, then philosophy is not the origin of wisdom but a secondary crystallization of it.
In that sense, the real divide is not between “thought” and “philosophy,” but between living insight and the frameworks that later try to capture it.
Language always arrives late. Concepts are traces left behind by experience. And when we mistake those traces for the source, we start asking questions that already contain their own confusion.
Certainly the good life and being, certain strand of Platonism and Socratic philosophy can be harmonized with the Chinese approach. In many ways, Chinese philosophy was already existential.
I think it is significant that Japan in the 19th century took most of its western thought from Bismarckian Germany, not Britain or the US. All “Western” philosophy is not alike. This still affects policies and analyses in Japan and China, especially economic policy
Thanks for this. I love the comment; it would be an interesting topic to develop. Maybe we could say China is not following the Anglo-American liberal strand of Western economics, while it is simultaneously drawing on other Western (Germanic/continental and Marxist) traditions, for example, markets serve a political project rather than constrain it
I found peace in philosophy across all continents during lockdown and then I recently published my book on what I learned.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞?
Every human who has ever lived has asked that same question. From ancient forests to modern cities, billions of souls have searched for answers—desperately, defiantly, tenderly.
𝑷𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒊𝒇𝒆 is a journey across 3,500 years and every continent—gathering the thoughts of 200 of humanity’s greatest minds to explore this eternal question.
I have so much to comment upon in this wonderful article, maybe i should just leave it at the applause! I wrote about this imported term zhexue 哲学 coming from Japan in the introduction to my book. What you have done is unpack how the 'west' marginalised, misrepresented and mimimized the great traditions of China and the beginnings of how that is being reclaimed. I think I'll just clap again. 👏👏👏
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you. I learned a lot. I speak several languages and I understand well the problems translation mixed with cultural and political bias can bring, especially in poetry and thought. I do my best to read the Dao de Ching in various translations and languages, and look at the characters closely, and yet I know there is a lot that escapes me. Thank you again for this illuminating post. I will come back to it.
This is how I see it: the moment our culture and our roots tried to be branded under Western terms, we had already started losing them. The West has always loved progression in a way that colonizes language, land, and people. Even words like 'modern' or 'contemporary' are deeply colonized categories. The moment we rushed to prove we had 'philosophy' to match the West, we implicitly accepted their premise that their standard was the universal baseline of civilization.
I’ve always felt that anything with true weight and gravity doesn't need to be rebranded or reshaped to be known—that’s how I see my culture as a Chinese person. True wisdom was never meant to be a neat academic system; it was lived, practiced, and embodied.
That’s why any 'new' or 'neo' movement often feels like a deeply flawed human scramble to bend our roots to fit a foreign narrative. When you try to force the uncarved block into a Western box, you don't elevate it—you just miss the point entirely.
So much love for your writing and thought, thank you :)
You say so much that needs to be said in a short space. The history gives us the needed perspective for understanding where we are now.
Your argument can be extended to Indian thought. The Indian tradition combines theory and practice seamlessly, but theory's role is to shed light on what good practice is. When you think about it, isn't the Western approach to philosophy the outlier in the sense that it privileges theory?
Thanks for the insight. Framing the Western model as the 'outlier' is an interesting shift in perspective. As Buddhism is part of the core values for both Chinese and Indian culture, I think the similarity has a solid base.
It’s funny, all this transformation through translation due to wanting approval from others. How against the very idea of the system he/they were working with. 😂
I ask myself if John Dewey and was not indeed a departure from modern philosophy, so maybe Hu Shi and Feng were not completly misleed... Since Hegel Western philosophy is also interested in the develop of life process not solely in ideals but in living... I wonder if was not Mou Zongsan who could have introduced the more confusing interpretations as long as he really relies, as far as i know, in Kant trascendental cognitive arquitecture to draw his comparisons. When reading, for example, Dewey's Art and Experience i think it maybe resembles some kind of chinese conception of art as a means of promoting living instead of some western scheme about the concretion of ideas, he even uses the word "energy" in a way that make me think in the chinese Qi... maybe he was also influenced by conversitions with his chinese students...
Fascinating. This is also true of other ancient civilizations and cultures trying to position themselves in relation to 19th and 20th century Western systems of thought and classification. "Hinduism" as we know it today was in effect created by the encounter with missionaries and the British Empire. Otherwise, it was simply how a wide and varied mosaic of communities lived in an all-encompassing culture which defined status, professions, life aspirations, marriage and social partners, and offered a variety of beliefs, doctrines, sects, and practices. The basic unit of society was (and still mostly is) the "jati" or endogamous community in a society divided both vertically and horizontally into some 40,000 such communities. The word "Hindu" originally only stood (in Persian) for the river "Sindhu" (in Sanskrit, known in English as the Indus) and so for someone who lived along it in what was called "Hindush" as a province of the Achaemenid Empire of Darius I, the Great. That's the same way the Chinese were known as the "Seres" (the people who produced silk) by the Romans.
Reformers of Hindu practices in the 19th century founded movements absorbing ideas from the West, such as regarding the status of women to end inhuman customs such as widow burning and permit remarriage, while declaring child marriage illegal (with reform only in the early 20th century in the latter case). They recast Hinduism in ways understandable in the West - as doctrinal in the tradition of the Upanishads and originally monotheistic (according to some) and abstract in its philosophy, "pure" with corruptions accruing over time to be now removed - justifying reforms. Others like Vivekananda combined nationalism with a muscular affirmation of "manly" Hinduism, which in some ways was the ancestor of the modern BJP's ideology of Hindutva or India redefined by religious nationalism. Mahatma Gandhi was influenced by the New Testament and British social reformers as well as by Tolstoy in his doctrine of non-violent resistance and elimination of untouchability. A great Muslim thinker, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, one of the intellectual founders of Pakistan, was schooled in Kantian philosophy in Germany and interpreted Islam in that light.
Wow, what a great piece! I've been studying Mandarin for 15 years but only recently developed an interest in ancient Chinese thought, specifically Confucianism. One thing that has struck me is how current it feels, even though it was written thousands of years ago under very different circumstances. Evidently, at its core are the roots of China's culture, but I think it is also a testament to the universal aspects of human beings across time. For example, I've been thinking a lot about that phrase: 学而不思则惘，思而不学则殆. I feel I see examples of that all around me in the political discussions that shape the current climate in my part of the world... it would be kind of long to explain. I also recently bought a commented copy of the 论语 and will try to read it slowly in my spare time. I'm excited. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for putting this content out there. I feel that I've learned a lot just by reading this one article, and I've also been reading some of your other content. Subscribed! Greetings from Mexico!
Thanks, interesting to read. It makes sense. I have been trying to write about Western philosophy in Chinese (being my second language), and have struggled to find suitable Chinese words for the equivalent of “reason”, “rational”, “agency”, “liberty vs libertarian”, “freedom”. So my project is the reverse. How to explain Western philosophy in Chinese? It’s quite hard!
Thank you for introducing me to this interesting problem of Chinese-West correlative terminology for modalities of thought. I wonder if is possible- not in some “turnabout is fair play” paradigm- but as a thought exercise, if it’s possible to lens Western categories of thought in Chinese terms. For example, what is the 知 of epistemology? The tailoring of these western thought systems to fit Chinese patterns might make for some fresh styles of clothing.
Yes. As there’s actually no exact equation between Chinese words to Latin-based words. Even if they are 90% resemble in its core meaning, the peripheral meaning attach to the Chinese words may taint some other color to the sentences.
In modern Chinese, there’s exact translation for western term, epistemology = 认识论. However, when talk about episteme, which translate as 知. The semantic field of 知 is vastly richer and more integrated. 知 means to know, to understand, to perceive, to be aware. It is both the activity of knowing (知 as a verb) and its result (知 as a noun). It is inseparable from the Confucian ideal of 知行合一 , the unity of knowledge and action.
The question “did China ever have philosophy?” already hides a mistake.
It assumes that philosophy is the starting point. But historically it rarely is. What we call philosophy is usually something that appears after life has already been lived and reflected upon.
In many traditions—Chinese, Japanese, Greek, or otherwise—the first layer was not abstract theory but practice, cultivation, and perception. Only later did someone step back and try to describe what was happening.
Confucianism, Daoism, and other Chinese traditions were not originally constructed as theoretical systems. They were ways of living, forms of ethical and social cultivation, practices embedded in ritual and everyday life. The word philosophy itself (哲学, zhexue) only appeared in China in the late nineteenth century, imported through Japan as a translation of a Western academic category.
So when twentieth-century scholars tried to “prove” that China had philosophy, they often translated these traditions into Western conceptual frameworks: Confucius became a humanist, Mozi a utilitarian, Daoism a metaphysics. But this move may say more about the categories of modern academia than about the traditions themselves.
The deeper question is not whether China had philosophy. The deeper question is why we assume philosophy must take a particular form—systematic theory, abstract metaphysics, analytical argument.
If thought begins in lived experience rather than in theory, then philosophy is not the origin of wisdom but a secondary crystallization of it.
In that sense, the real divide is not between “thought” and “philosophy,” but between living insight and the frameworks that later try to capture it.
Language always arrives late. Concepts are traces left behind by experience. And when we mistake those traces for the source, we start asking questions that already contain their own confusion.
Certainly the good life and being, certain strand of Platonism and Socratic philosophy can be harmonized with the Chinese approach. In many ways, Chinese philosophy was already existential.
I think it is significant that Japan in the 19th century took most of its western thought from Bismarckian Germany, not Britain or the US. All “Western” philosophy is not alike. This still affects policies and analyses in Japan and China, especially economic policy
Thanks for this. I love the comment; it would be an interesting topic to develop. Maybe we could say China is not following the Anglo-American liberal strand of Western economics, while it is simultaneously drawing on other Western (Germanic/continental and Marxist) traditions, for example, markets serve a political project rather than constrain it
Hi JingYu
I found peace in philosophy across all continents during lockdown and then I recently published my book on what I learned.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞?
Every human who has ever lived has asked that same question. From ancient forests to modern cities, billions of souls have searched for answers—desperately, defiantly, tenderly.
𝑷𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒊𝒇𝒆 is a journey across 3,500 years and every continent—gathering the thoughts of 200 of humanity’s greatest minds to explore this eternal question.
Here’s my book:
https://tinyurl.com/ycy4uat7
👏👏👏👏👏
I have so much to comment upon in this wonderful article, maybe i should just leave it at the applause! I wrote about this imported term zhexue 哲学 coming from Japan in the introduction to my book. What you have done is unpack how the 'west' marginalised, misrepresented and mimimized the great traditions of China and the beginnings of how that is being reclaimed. I think I'll just clap again. 👏👏👏
That’s really interesting. I realize I’ve never thought of these Chinese systems of thought as philosophy.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you. I learned a lot. I speak several languages and I understand well the problems translation mixed with cultural and political bias can bring, especially in poetry and thought. I do my best to read the Dao de Ching in various translations and languages, and look at the characters closely, and yet I know there is a lot that escapes me. Thank you again for this illuminating post. I will come back to it.
This is how I see it: the moment our culture and our roots tried to be branded under Western terms, we had already started losing them. The West has always loved progression in a way that colonizes language, land, and people. Even words like 'modern' or 'contemporary' are deeply colonized categories. The moment we rushed to prove we had 'philosophy' to match the West, we implicitly accepted their premise that their standard was the universal baseline of civilization.
I’ve always felt that anything with true weight and gravity doesn't need to be rebranded or reshaped to be known—that’s how I see my culture as a Chinese person. True wisdom was never meant to be a neat academic system; it was lived, practiced, and embodied.
That’s why any 'new' or 'neo' movement often feels like a deeply flawed human scramble to bend our roots to fit a foreign narrative. When you try to force the uncarved block into a Western box, you don't elevate it—you just miss the point entirely.
So much love for your writing and thought, thank you :)
You say so much that needs to be said in a short space. The history gives us the needed perspective for understanding where we are now.
Your argument can be extended to Indian thought. The Indian tradition combines theory and practice seamlessly, but theory's role is to shed light on what good practice is. When you think about it, isn't the Western approach to philosophy the outlier in the sense that it privileges theory?
Thanks for the insight. Framing the Western model as the 'outlier' is an interesting shift in perspective. As Buddhism is part of the core values for both Chinese and Indian culture, I think the similarity has a solid base.
It’s funny, all this transformation through translation due to wanting approval from others. How against the very idea of the system he/they were working with. 😂
This text is all AI generated
I ask myself if John Dewey and was not indeed a departure from modern philosophy, so maybe Hu Shi and Feng were not completly misleed... Since Hegel Western philosophy is also interested in the develop of life process not solely in ideals but in living... I wonder if was not Mou Zongsan who could have introduced the more confusing interpretations as long as he really relies, as far as i know, in Kant trascendental cognitive arquitecture to draw his comparisons. When reading, for example, Dewey's Art and Experience i think it maybe resembles some kind of chinese conception of art as a means of promoting living instead of some western scheme about the concretion of ideas, he even uses the word "energy" in a way that make me think in the chinese Qi... maybe he was also influenced by conversitions with his chinese students...
Fascinating. This is also true of other ancient civilizations and cultures trying to position themselves in relation to 19th and 20th century Western systems of thought and classification. "Hinduism" as we know it today was in effect created by the encounter with missionaries and the British Empire. Otherwise, it was simply how a wide and varied mosaic of communities lived in an all-encompassing culture which defined status, professions, life aspirations, marriage and social partners, and offered a variety of beliefs, doctrines, sects, and practices. The basic unit of society was (and still mostly is) the "jati" or endogamous community in a society divided both vertically and horizontally into some 40,000 such communities. The word "Hindu" originally only stood (in Persian) for the river "Sindhu" (in Sanskrit, known in English as the Indus) and so for someone who lived along it in what was called "Hindush" as a province of the Achaemenid Empire of Darius I, the Great. That's the same way the Chinese were known as the "Seres" (the people who produced silk) by the Romans.
Reformers of Hindu practices in the 19th century founded movements absorbing ideas from the West, such as regarding the status of women to end inhuman customs such as widow burning and permit remarriage, while declaring child marriage illegal (with reform only in the early 20th century in the latter case). They recast Hinduism in ways understandable in the West - as doctrinal in the tradition of the Upanishads and originally monotheistic (according to some) and abstract in its philosophy, "pure" with corruptions accruing over time to be now removed - justifying reforms. Others like Vivekananda combined nationalism with a muscular affirmation of "manly" Hinduism, which in some ways was the ancestor of the modern BJP's ideology of Hindutva or India redefined by religious nationalism. Mahatma Gandhi was influenced by the New Testament and British social reformers as well as by Tolstoy in his doctrine of non-violent resistance and elimination of untouchability. A great Muslim thinker, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, one of the intellectual founders of Pakistan, was schooled in Kantian philosophy in Germany and interpreted Islam in that light.
Wow, what a great piece! I've been studying Mandarin for 15 years but only recently developed an interest in ancient Chinese thought, specifically Confucianism. One thing that has struck me is how current it feels, even though it was written thousands of years ago under very different circumstances. Evidently, at its core are the roots of China's culture, but I think it is also a testament to the universal aspects of human beings across time. For example, I've been thinking a lot about that phrase: 学而不思则惘，思而不学则殆. I feel I see examples of that all around me in the political discussions that shape the current climate in my part of the world... it would be kind of long to explain. I also recently bought a commented copy of the 论语 and will try to read it slowly in my spare time. I'm excited. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for putting this content out there. I feel that I've learned a lot just by reading this one article, and I've also been reading some of your other content. Subscribed! Greetings from Mexico!
Thanks, interesting to read. It makes sense. I have been trying to write about Western philosophy in Chinese (being my second language), and have struggled to find suitable Chinese words for the equivalent of “reason”, “rational”, “agency”, “liberty vs libertarian”, “freedom”. So my project is the reverse. How to explain Western philosophy in Chinese? It’s quite hard!
Thank you for introducing me to this interesting problem of Chinese-West correlative terminology for modalities of thought. I wonder if is possible- not in some “turnabout is fair play” paradigm- but as a thought exercise, if it’s possible to lens Western categories of thought in Chinese terms. For example, what is the 知 of epistemology? The tailoring of these western thought systems to fit Chinese patterns might make for some fresh styles of clothing.
Yes. As there’s actually no exact equation between Chinese words to Latin-based words. Even if they are 90% resemble in its core meaning, the peripheral meaning attach to the Chinese words may taint some other color to the sentences.
In modern Chinese, there’s exact translation for western term, epistemology = 认识论. However, when talk about episteme, which translate as 知. The semantic field of 知 is vastly richer and more integrated. 知 means to know, to understand, to perceive, to be aware. It is both the activity of knowing (知 as a verb) and its result (知 as a noun). It is inseparable from the Confucian ideal of 知行合一 , the unity of knowledge and action.