Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 29 No. 1, 2014.
Original scientific paper
“When Spirit in Utter Dismemberment Finds Itself”. Reflections on New Confucian Philosophy and the Problem of Historical Discontinuity
Ady Van den Stock
; Ghent University, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Languages and Cultures of South and East Asia, Ghent, Belgium
Abstract
In this article I inquire into the question of cultural continuity against the background of the problem of modernity through the medium of the specific case of New Confucian philosophy. I reflect on the import of the concept of “culture” from a historical point of view and investigate how the Hegelian notion of “Spirit” was employed by modern Confucian philosophers such as Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi as a conceptual strategy in the face of the structural and semantic discontinuities resulting from modernization. I single out the symbolic May Fourth Movement in order to approach Mou’s and Tang’s attitude towards historical (dis)continuity and point towards the contemporary significance of their philosophical undertaking.
Keywords
New Confucianism; modern Chinese philosophy; May Fourth; Mou Zongsan; Tang Junyi; history; cultural self-descriptions; paradoxes in comparative philosophy
Hrčak ID:
138234
URI
Publication date:
26.11.2014.
Visits: 1.971 *