Being and Nothingness in Greek and Ancient Chinese Philosophy

Abstract

Greek philosophers were greatly concerned with metaphysics. The preSocratics pursued the subject almost to the exclusion of the other branches of philosophy. Aristotle made metaphysics the cornerstone of his philosophical work-and quite rightly, I believe, since the problem of the nature of man and his relation to the total universe is the problem out of which all other philosophical problems grow. Writers on Chinese philosophy in the past have tended to concentrate on Chinese ethics and political theory. An adequate introduction to Chinese metaphysics has not yet appeared in English. In this paper, therefore, I shall try to introduce the reader to Chinese metaphysics by comparing it to, and contrasting it with, its Greek counterpart. I shall show that Chinese Taoist philosophers and certain Greek philosophers agreed with respect to the following: (I) Metaphysics is the study of Substance or Being; (II) Substance or Being is prior to individual or particular existence; (III) Substance or Being is ultimately transcended in the concept of nothingness. By this comparison I hope to clarify a subject which is now unfamiliar to most Western minds and thus to narrow the gap between Chinese and Western metaphysics.