Table Of Content

China Perspectives A HOPE FOR PHILOSOPHY I THE EUROPEAN PATH AND CHINESE OPPORTUNITY Ye Xiushan A Hope for Philosophy I As the final work by Ye Xiushan, one of the most famous philosophers and philosophy scholars in China, this two-volume title scrutinizes the historical development of both Chinese and Western philosophies, aiming to explore the convergence between the two philosophical traditions. Combining the historical examination and argumentation based on philosophical problematics, the two-volume set expounds the key figures and schools and critical thoughts in both Western and Chinese philosophical histories. In this first volume, the author investigates the intellectual heritage of ancient Greece and Thales of Miletus as the cradle of European philosophy, freedom in Greek philosophy, reason and negation in classical German philosophy, and the relationship between epistemology and ontology in the philosophical history, thereby illuminating the core spirit of Western philosophy and theoretical quandary facing the contemporary European philosophy. This title will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers interested in philosophical history, comparative philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and Western philosophy ranging over Greek philosophy, German classic philosophy, and contemporary continental philosophy. Ye Xiushan was a researcher in the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Director of the Western Philosophy Society, China. His academic expertise was Western philosophy, aesthetics, and Chinese and Western comparative philosophy. China Perspectives The China Perspectives series focuses on translating and publishing works by leading Chinese scholars, writing about both global topics and China-related themes. It covers Humanities & Social Sciences, Education, Media and Psychology, as well as many interdisciplinary themes. This is the first time any of these books have been published in English for international readers. The series aims to put forward a Chinese perspective, give insights into cutting-edge academic thinking in China, and inspire re- searchers globally. To submit proposals, please contact the Taylor & Francis Publisher for China Publishing Programme, Lian Sun ([email protected]) Titles in philosophy currently include: A New Exploration of Hegel’s Dialectics II Negation and Reflection Deng Xiaomang A New Exploration of Hegel’s Dialectics III The Three-Dimensional Structure Deng Xiaomang A Hope for Philosophy I The European Path and Chinese Opportunity Ye Xiushan A Hope for Philosophy II The European Path and Chinese Opportunity Ye Xiushan For more information, please visit https://www.routledge.com/China-Perspectives/ book-series/CPH A Hope for Philosophy I The European Path and Chinese Opportunity Ye Xiushan This book is published with financial support from Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences. First published in English 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Ye Xiushan Translated by ZHOU Xiaoyong, Petko T. Hinov The right of Ye Xiushan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. English Version by permission of Jiangsu People’s Publishing House. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ye, Xiushan, author. Title: A hope for philosophy : the European path and Chinese opportunity / Xiushan Ye. Other titles: Zhe xue de xi wang. English Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022. | Series: China perspectives | Includes index. | Contents: v. 1. A hope for philosophy i: the european pa ‐‐ v. 2. A hope for philosophy ii: the european p ‐‐ A hope for philosophy: the european path | Identifiers: LCCN 2021052194 (print) | LCCN 2021052195 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032248042 (v. 1 ; hbk) | ISBN 9781032248141 (v. 1 ; pbk) | ISBN 9781032248059 (v. 2 ; hbk) | ISBN 9781032248134 (v. 2 ; pbk) | ISBN 9781032248066 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032248165 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003280200 (v. 2 ; ebook) | ISBN 9781003280194 (v. 1 ; ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, European‐‐History. | Philosophy, Chinese‐‐History. Classification: LCC B99.C52 Y47213 2022 (print) | LCC B99.C52 (ebook) | DDC 190‐‐dc23/eng/20211122 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052194 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052195 ISBN: 978-1-032-24804-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-24814-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-28019-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003280194 Typeset in Times New Roman by MPS Limited, Dehradun Contents Introduction: The Path of European Philosophy and the Opportunity for Chinese Philosophy 1 1 European Philosophy: Believing the Being of Freedom, Pursuing the Freedom of Being 17 2 The Origin of European Philosophy: On the Path of Knowing Thyself 30 3 Classical German Philosophy: Fundamental Conceptions and Approaches 47 4 The Relationship between Epistemology and Ontology in European Philosophy 65 Index 129 Introduction The Path of European Philosophy and the Opportunity for Chinese Philosophy European philosophy was born in ancient Greece over 2000 years ago and has become an age-old, but ageless learning. Over its bi-millennial life, philosophy has had its times of glory and decline, its own destiny and, naturally, its own history. Philosophy is not unalterable in itself, and the historical forms of philosophy are constantly changing, sometimes at a faster and sometimes at a slower pace. There are even periods of relative deadlocks. Thus, we have ancient Greek philosophy, ancient Roman philosophy, mediaeval philosophy, early modern philosophy, and contemporary philosophy. Naturally, there is also Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, Arabic philosophy, etc. The study of the historical destiny of these forms of philosophy is the task of the history of philosophy. Compared to other sciences, philosophy makes no exception—its history comprises a large variety of appearances and forms, but its foundational issues remain relatively within the same dimensions. The problems it deals with are not devoid of communicable power either. What problems, then, is philosophy concerned with? If we are not afraid of giving simple answers, then we would naturally say that the key problem philosophy cogitates on is freedom. Moreover, if we are not afraid of ab- solute statements, we could even say that, in a certain sense, philosophy is not in the least concerned with necessity in the narrow sense, but pays ex- clusive attention to freedom. Such (formal) necessity, philosophy has re- legated to science (in the narrow sense), and its own contemplation has concentrated on freedom. Expressed philosophically, we could probably say that philosophy transcends necessity to enter into freedom; philosophy deals with the necessity of freedom and the freedom of necessity. European philosophy has followed the way of such transcendence for several thousand years, and it has been a path of frustrations and dashed hopes, full of edifying experiences, but at the same time leading to a real, gradual deepening of its questions. And today, unless we undertake a specialized study, it would not be easy to grasp the sequence of ideas in philosophy’s gradual development. Philosophy itself has become an intensely specialized field of knowledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003280194-1 2 Introduction 1 The Free Knowledge of Ancient Greece The reason why ancient Greece became the cradle of European philosophy lies in the fact that Greece carried out a sui generis theoretical exploration, which at the time possessed no practical value. Its theoretical attitude was temporarily divorced from any practical purport, and this divorce was its freedom. In the beginning, however, it was freedom only in a negative sense. In a broader sense, this negative freedom is comparable to the liberation from the status of slavery, the ‘human-slave’ therewith becoming unfettered from the shackles of necessity. Thus, the ‘human-slave’ becomes liberated. As such, the freedom of this ‘negative-unfetteredness’ is pregnant with a positive result: man becomes the owner of a separate world, and in this world he is not merely a link in the great chain of necessity. This liberation grants man the opportunity to assume an objective view towards events and objects in his observation and exploration, thereby ac- quiring objective knowledge—knowledge that is no longer merely practical, but scientific and theoretical. ‘Scientific-objective-theoretical’ knowledge is a kind of free knowledge, exempt of the practical restrictions of pure knowledge. The emergence of such free knowledge opened a new cosmos to mankind’s spiritual enlight- enment, and it was on this scientific, theoretical, and objective free soil that philosophy sprouted and grew, becoming an inestimable contribution from the ancient Greeks to mankind. However, even in classical Greece, philosophy was not merely some scientific free knowledge. In its primary form, ancient Greek philosophy pos- sesses the momentous opportunity of becoming something more in its development: philosophy was bound to transcend the necessity of scientific form, firmly holding onto freedom. In ancient Greek philosophy, freedom developed from a negative to a positive meaning, freedom being not only exemption but also a foundation—freedom begetting itself for itself and proceeding from itself. Freedom lets man become exempt from nature. It allows him to possess a separate world, and also have an object. Moreover, ‘liberated-extricated’ from being an object, man becomes a subject. Freedom as such implies: an object produces itself, and a subject also produces itself, so both object and subject are free. ‘Knowledge-consciousness’ is the bridge connecting these two domains of freedom. Ancient Greek philosophy experiences the trans- mutation from knowing the object to knowing the self. Knowing the object proceeds from the matter in principio: ‘water-air-fire’ etc. Knowing oneself includes not only ideas and being, but also morality. Philosophy moves from theory toward practice. Plato’s theory of forms and Aristotle’s ontology not only propose to know the object, but also the subject: the ideas and ‘being qua being’, with the purpose of knowing the object and outlining the structure of the subject. This structure is the reason why the object becomes the essence of the object. Introduction 3 The free essence of the object depends on the freedom of the subject. It causes the subject to disentangle itself from the object without opposition to the latter. If we speak in terms of the object, then the situation is precisely the opposite: objects constantly make attempts to enclose subjects into themselves. The reality of objects requires subjects to be restored to their own objective selves, and man inescapably tries to return to nature. In this sense, the task philosophy is concentrated with is to know thyself, grasp yourself, hold yourself, whereby philosophy becomes not returning to nature but protecting yourself from returning to nature, or in other words, safe- guarding your freedom and returning to your own self, which is tantamount to enclosing the ‘world-the object’ into one’s subjective self. This path of returning, which was discovered by the ancient Greeks, laid the foundations of philosophical epistemology, wherein knowledge is the object enclosed in ‘man-the-subject’. Naturally, on the way to this knowledge one could proceed in diverse fashions. There is the discriminative system of knowledge, formed by proceeding from the impressions of the senses, entering the mind and spirit, and processed by thought; that is the method of empirical science. Considering its extrication from immediate usefulness, this already is freedom achieved, but still limited by sense data. In this sense, a subject’s freedom remains under relative restriction. If, however, we abandon this empirical science, then we lose the justification of objectivity. In its regard to the problem of freedom, ancient Greek philosophy puts all its efforts into this same framework, which makes it the philosophical work of science and theory of knowledge. Its most eminent representatives are the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle—despite their numerous breakthroughs, both abide inside this same framework. Plato’s theory of forms insists that the real world imitates the world of ideas, and its later exponents went even deeper into developing these tenets. His initial concept, however, was still probably inside the model of this engineering structure. What he means by ideas are principally projects inside the human mind. Furthermore, both ideas and reality are incapable of leaving the correlation between concept and ‘source-matter’. To Plato, sensory experience is a degree lower, but has an important function. Traces of this are even more perceptible in Aristotle’s ontology. Aristotle raised objections against Plato’s imparting autonomy to ideas, thus taking leave of reality, whereas his objective existence remains reality, not as a source for the senses, but as formative essence, thereby engendering the ‘being qua being’, or existence as being. It was precisely Aristotle who divulged and emphasized the abstract side of this theory of knowledge. This implies that the subject, proceeding from freedom, revealed its exact opposite: necessity. What was considered by primitive religious imagination as the fate of the world was now introduced by subjective freedom into logical necessity. Logical syllogism becomes the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and science becomes settled forever on the