중국 철학의 특질

Abstract

This paper aims to point out the limitations that Chinese philosophy researchers with superficial understanding about Western and Chinese philosophies are facing, and how this fact is affecting the properly recognition of the features of Chinese philosophy. Firstly, to understand the difference between Chinese and Western philosophy, the method of mechanical confrontation between both should be discarded, instead, it is essential to clarify the fact that there is an existing clear distinction between both of them. At the same time, it is also imperative to grasp the features of Chinese philosophy rightly, thereby prevent the simple westernization of Chinese philosophy. Furthermore, the researching trend to discuss about Chinese philosophy based on the critical thought, theoretical structure, categorization and conceptualization of Western philosophy should be rejected. Secondly, since Chinese ancient philosophy is fundamentally different from Western philosophy in its origin and the background of its foundation, the problems that people were facing, cultural traditions, language and the way of thinking; therefore, it is not appropriate to mechanically drive them and utilize them into Chinese philosophy. In contrast, it is essential to discover the unique form, critical thought, structure of the concept and method that Chinese philosophy has, so that can be contributed to the development of the global philosophy. Lastly, the factors determining features of traditional Chinese philosophy can be summarized into two: the specificity of its origin and the special attention to classic books. These two main factors defined the general tendency and characteristics of Chinese ancient philosophy as a kind of practical philosophy. Although, ‘practical philosophy’ can’t embrace every part of the Chinese traditional philosophy, but at least, it can be a significant path to understand the features of it.