Creativity as Synthesis of Contrasting Wisdoms: An Interpretation of Chinese Philosophy in Taiwan Since 1949

Abstract

I. The Problematic of a Meeting of and Western Philosophies Ever since Matteo Ricci came to China in 1583, bringing with him Western science, philosophy, and Christianity to culture, scholars of philosophy have faced a totally new task: how to accommodate philosophy to Western ideas. This task began with the translation and publication of Western books into by Matteo Ricci, Hsu Kuang-chi, Li Chih-tsao, and others. Matteo Ricci's True Ideas of God introduced such Scholastic concepts as being, substance, essence, and existence and tried to synthesize the Scholastic philosophy of man with the Confucian theory of human nature. It interpreted the Confucian concept of Heaven with the help of the Scholastic concept of personal God, justifying this later by combining the Thomistic Quinque Viae with the Mencian theories of Liang Chi and Chin Hsin. This approach provided the philosophical foundation for integrating Confucian Jen with Christian Love. This was the first attempt to use Scholastic philosophy to reconcile and Western philosophical systems. We shall see that this tendency was to be continued by NeoScholastic philosophers in Taiwan. The second attempts were launched by the Ch'ing scholars Ku Yenwu and Yen Jo-chu, and by the subsequent Ch'ien Chia school of philological studies. These scholars adopted the logic and mathematical methods introduced into China by Matteo Ricci, Francisco Futardo, and others, applying methods of induction and classification to study the ancient phonological systems of by investigating ancient texts. Their key contribution was the setting of a precedent for positivist research, to be continued by later researchers in the natural and even the social sciences. (It was in reaction against this positivist tendency that contemporary Neo-Confucianism emerged in Taiwan.) Toward the end of the Ch'ing dynasty and the beginning of the Republican period, scholars like Yen Fu, Li Lih-ying, and Wang Kuo-wei continued without interruption the task of translating and introducing Western philosophy. This effort continued up until the year 1921, when Tsai Yuan-pei wrote a critical assessment titled Chinese Philosophy Over the Past Fifty Years, in which he expressed the judgment that philosophical activity in China during this period was limited to introducing Western philosophy on the one hand and continuing to expound on traditional philosophy on the other. No original school of philosophy had emerged.' Vincent Shen