The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy

Abstract

In the spectrum of Chinese intellectual tradition, philosophy has been integrated as a unity among cosmology, epistemology, and value orientation. Such unity, termed as “the integration between heaven and human” (tianren heyi) of Chinese genre, reveals the feature of evolution in its cosmology as opposed to creation in the west, the intuitional feature combining objective knowledge and subjective experience in its epistemology instead of stark objective knowledge of the west, and universal incarnation for each individual as sage in its value orientation other than exclusive holy reincarnated Being in Christian tradition. The methodology in Chinese universal incarnation as individual secular sage is to initiate self-cultivation through “picking up one’s cosmic dynamics” or “cultivating one’s cosmic air” (yang haoranzhiqi) from within each individual self instead of waiting passively for the external holy salvation at doomsday. Therefore, the spirit of Chinese philosophy is concisely expressed in the harmonious relations among man and nature, person and person, and soul and body.