History of Chinese Philosophy by Fung Yu-Lan

History of Chinese Philosophy by Fung Yu-Lan
>Chinese philosophy, then, as far as regards methodology in the western sense, holds a humble position when compared with the philosophy of the West or of India
>Chinese philosophers for the most part have not regarded knowledge as something valuable in itself, and so have not sought knowledge for the sake of knowledge
>most schools of Chinese philosophy have not striven greatly to establish arguments to support their doctrines
A History of Indian Philosophy by Surendranath Dasgupta
>In my interpretations I have always tried to follow the original sources as accurately as I could. This has sometimes led to old and unfamiliar modes of expression, but this course seemed to me to be preferable to the adoption of European modes of thought for the expression of Indian ideas. But even in spite of this striking similarities to many of the modern philosophical doctrines and ideas will doubtless be noticed. This only proves that the human mind follows more or less the same modes of rational thought.
Why were the Chinese so incompetent at philosophy?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. It becomes useless once you actually reach wisdom.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because China had a centuries long incredibly bloody warring states period where most leisurely things were almost eradicated, followed by tyrannical centralized government. So they destroyed any pursuit of philosophy through centuries of war and then the imperial government finished the job. Can't have the peasants, or well anyone, thinking anything else than obeying the son of heaven.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      India had lots of competing princedoms too anon

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        But no mandate of heaven.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Yes they did, see the concept of cakravartin

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >"Respect your elders"
    >Refuses to elaborate

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    What about the whole concept of 格物致知?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      What about it?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Isn't it a counterexample to 'not regarding knowledge as something valuable'?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          well no since "the investigation of principles" in the system of the realist neoconfucians is carried out for the sake of self knowledge coz the principles carried in things are seen as reflections of the principles also contained within our own nature, thus eventually leading you into sudden enlightenment

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      use pinyin or something so we can read your runes

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        If someone doesn't know what 格物致知 means, I'm not sure why I should expect them to know what géwùzhìzhī means.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          that makes it easier to look and read about though

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          True、kakubutsuchichi sounds better

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Not gaakmatzizi?

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >Why were the Chinese so incompetent at philosophy?
    The world is divided into spiky people and smoothie people. Spiky people are good at building bridges and killing. Smoothie people are good at philosophy and making food. Spiky people include North Europeans, Russians and Chinese. Indians and Southern Europeans are smoothie people.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    can you name even one indian philosopher? everyone knows confucius, mencius, lao tzu, han fei zi
    maybe indians should learn how to use the toilet before pondering philosophy

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Vyasa, agastya, Shankaracharya

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Nobodies in the west.

        buttblasted chink

        >can you name even one indian philosopher? everyone knows confucius, mencius, lao tzu, han fei zi
        >maybe indians should learn how to use the toilet before pondering philosophy

        Get new material homosexuals.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >popular=good
          i kneer befole olientar wisdom

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        buttblasted chink

        >can you name even one indian philosopher? everyone knows confucius, mencius, lao tzu, han fei zi
        >maybe indians should learn how to use the toilet before pondering philosophy

        TIL these are all jeets now, very funny.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        buttblasted chink

        >can you name even one indian philosopher? everyone knows confucius, mencius, lao tzu, han fei zi
        >maybe indians should learn how to use the toilet before pondering philosophy

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          [...]
          [...]
          TIL these are all jeets now, very funny.

          Nobodies in the west.
          [...]
          [...]
          Get new material homosexuals.

          same homosexual seething so hard LMAOOOOOOOO

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Pajee t.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Stick to your bugmen philosophy and let the real men discuss real things

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Oh yeah like who?
            Ashurbashit or Rajapoo whom nobody has ever heard of until this thread?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Shankaracharya

            Once glance at this name and at the Wikipedia page proves why Indian philosophy will always be a meme

            >Brahmasutrabhasya
            >Upadesasahasri
            >Vivekachudamani

            How am I supposed to read this shit

            >so pathetically low IQ, that he gets scared of too many letters and syllables in a single word or name

            I thought bugmen were high IQ wtf?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            t. Brahmadiarrheachudahadatemarga

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Shankaracharya

        Once glance at this name and at the Wikipedia page proves why Indian philosophy will always be a meme

        >Brahmasutrabhasya
        >Upadesasahasri
        >Vivekachudamani

        How am I supposed to read this shit

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >chudamani

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >Once glance at this name and at the Wikipedia page proves why Indian philosophy will always be a meme
          the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on shankara is far better than the wikipedia one

          https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shankara/

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      buttblasted chink

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >can you name even one indian philosopher? everyone knows confucius, mencius, lao tzu, han fei zi
      >maybe indians should learn how to use the toilet before pondering philosophy

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >confucius, mencius, lao tzu, han fei zi
      Lol the only ones people know in the west is Confucius and Sun Tsu (not a philosopher).

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I feel like people have at least heard of Lao Tzu.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >everyone knows confucius
      Yeah fair enough
      >and ping pong, tzu tzu Wang dong etc
      No, nobody outside of China does
      >Indian philosophes
      Not Indian but Who doesn’t know Buddha?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Shankara mogs them.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The Dao is good philosophy. So is Confucianism.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >The Dao
      yeah i love drinking mercury
      >Confucianism
      agreed but you have to annex your own deductions

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        What do you mean, annex your own deductions?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          There are no arguments in the Analects, none in the Great Learning or Doctrine of the Mean - their teachings are sensible but as with all anecdotes you will have to find out the reasoning behind them yourself
          The situation is better in Mencius and Xunzi, and slightly better in Zhu Xi or Wang Yangming, but even these people have their fair share of cryptical one liners which appear undeduced
          The greater part of Chinese reasoning appears with the Buddhists who come, of course, from India

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous
  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    please redeem the india philosophies sir!
    read
    >pajeet patel
    >mike from microsoft
    >chandrapajeeta papoointheloo

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    chinks get btfo'd super early in the thread and keep making posts hours later because they can't end on an L

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Confucianism is based though. If the whites stole it and took it for our own think of the things we could achieve. Keep women in line, respect the ancestors and live to honour them and yourself. As it should be

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      It literally influenced the enlightenement you stupid frick

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I actually have a friend who's unironically a Western convert to Confucianism, albeit not a fully traditional one.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >convert to confucianism
        So what does he do, does he perform rituals or something? Sounds ultra moronic to worship foreign gods for social stability

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Mostly so far he's just studying Confucian texts and trying to apply their principles, though he's working on studying the rituals to apply those.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You don’t “convert” to Confucianism in the religious sense any more than you “convert” to a new diet plan moron, it’s just a social ideology, not a faith.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Maybe 'convert' is the wrong word, but my point is he appreciates the value of Confucius' teachings and has been trying to apply them in his life. He considers himself a Confucian. (And I think depending on the context it kinda is, though it's not clear to what extent religious Confucianism and philosophical Confucianism are really the same thing and to what extent the former is distinct from Chinese folk religion.)

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            It’s not that weird for westerners to like Confucius if that’s any comfort. Thomas Paine was a big fan.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I actually have a friend who's unironically a Western convert to Confucianism, albeit not a fully traditional one.

            Unironically based. American society is much too polarized and fractured nowadays. Confucianism’s main ideological benefit is that it provides an immense amount of collectivist social cohesion for a population. Just what the doctor ordered to treat the ABSOLUTE STATE of America right about now

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I think that what we call philosophy isn't what the Chinese do.

    In my understanding Chinese philosophers were men who codified ethics for citizens, rollers and states and helped perpetuate them throughout china's warring states. It is heavy on obedience to the state because the Riley's only helped those who supported them.

    In this way they instituted a common dialogue between states and social classes, which ultimately helped harmonize relations and unify china.

    In that respect they are more soon to a priesthood, like the medieval Catholic church, or, more likely, the druids; an independent body of men who she with each other on some evident truths (not necessarily scientifically discovered) and help disorder them in the population and the timing classes through teaching and writing.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You are correct as to the social functions of the Chinese philosophers but given that they did give opinions about topics like metaphysics, cosmogony, philosophy of mind they are in the unfortunate position of having to be compared to other philosophical traditions

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Not individualist enough. Bugs can’t defy the hivemind.

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Fung Yu-Lan sounds like he doesn't understand how Chinese philosophy fits into the wider culture. Chinese teaching is pretty much all "proof left as exercise for reader." That's why texts never really bother to go into detail on arguments. Students were expected to be able to re-derive everything on their own and come up with their own arguments.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      True but this is a clear defect and has limited the scope and subject matter of Chinese philosophy, nor is it a unique virtue of the Chinese since similar works are present elsewhere

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    And yet India is incapable of existing as a society while the Changs could. Curious.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Capable of existing AS moronS

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        moronic means slow and India has been slow in catching up to where China is now

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          It actually means mentally impaired, which the Chinese are in comparison to the Indians

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            India was a joke for the most part compared to Chinese empires, and they're a joke now.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >India was a joke for the most part compared to Chinese empires
            It’s hard to compare them. India and China are polar opposites in that india is the most diverse subcontinent on earth while China is a literal 2,000-year Reich with one dominant culture, one race, under a single authoritarian monarch.
            Apples to oranges.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            What are you talking about? China is full of cultural diversity. Even the notion of a single Han ethnicity is to some extent a modern nationalist construction, to my understanding.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Even the notion of a single Han ethnicity is to some extent a modern nationalist construction, to my understanding.
            Exaggerated by sinophobes or pomo academics who push for diversity or balkanization in China. The concept itself is extremely straightforward. The Chinese having lived under the Shang, Zhou, then the Warring States, were united by the Qin and then the Han dynasty for 400 and some years and that's what they and their invaders have called them since. Genetics and Y DNA also shows it to be much simpler than is claimed.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >sinophobes
            I’m not some sperg that pathologically dislikes all Chinese history because I’m pissed over COVID but I just can’t take the term “sinophobe” seriously

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Yes it's a shit loaded term but there's no alternative for what I mean.

            Though in Cantonese it's more common to use 'Tang' to refer to the Chinese people as a whole, e.g. 唐人街 for 'Chinatown' or 唐字 for Chinese characters.

            You're right, but it basically just means "Han who migrated there during the Tang" for places that weren't properly settled until then.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Though in Cantonese it's more common to use 'Tang' to refer to the Chinese people as a whole, e.g. 唐人街 for 'Chinatown' or 唐字 for Chinese characters.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            A joke in what? Political power? Political power is pointless if you are using it just to vegetate like yeast

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Political power

            >Economic power
            >centralization
            >social mobility
            >literacy
            >science
            >historic relevance
            >culture
            And much more.
            >Political power is pointless if you are using it just to vegetate like yeast
            What is this supposed to mean? Is that unlike India that's been in continuous decline since at least 1000 AD?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Economic power, centralization, literacy, and so on and so on are worthless unless they support cultural achievement, which is what we are currently discussing when discussing philosophy
            >What is this supposed to mean?
            That Chang should have written some philosophy books instead of just sitting on his ass

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Economic power, centralization, literacy, and so on and so on are worthless unless they support cultural achievement
            They did, for all of those factors. People have always been gung-ho about Japan and they would not exist without significant Chinese influence.
            China degenerated hard because the Qing enserfed the Chinese, but Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming made more cultural achievements than Indians since Buddha easily.
            >That Chang should have written some philosophy books instead of just sitting on his ass
            He did, people know about Chang and not Rakesh.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming made more cultural achievements than Indians since Buddha easily
            The only thing East Asians do better than Indians is painting, in every other art India defeats them
            >He did, people know about Chang and not Rakesh
            idgaf what Chang says unless I have some reason to believe him

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >they would not exist without significant Chinese influence.
            More pertinently, Neo-confucianism.

            >Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming made more cultural achievements than Indians since Buddha easily
            The only thing East Asians do better than Indians is painting, in every other art India defeats them
            >He did, people know about Chang and not Rakesh
            idgaf what Chang says unless I have some reason to believe him

            Compared to Europeans they both suck ass at art, except the Chinese during their realism phase around the 1000s, and the Japanese. Music is shit for both, literature is relatively sparse (literally just Mahabharata and Rama for India) for both but China had far more literacy so they always had more output in prose and poetry but caught up in fiction too with monkey king and their other novels, but still fall short to Europe.
            Dancing and sculpture is something Indians are probably better at, architecture is a tie.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Compared to Europeans they both suck ass at art, except the Chinese during their realism phase around the 1000s, and the Japanese.
            According to what standard?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            According to that of the learned and erudite circles.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Of which learned and erudite circles? I imagine traditional Chinese art was good according to the standard of the contemporary learned and erudite circles of China.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Of the current learned and erudite circles.

            >literature is relatively sparse (literally just Mahabharata and Rama for India)
            you have no idea what you are talking about, I can name you countless Indian poets, prose writers, playwrights, art critics, aesthetical theorists who wrote centuries after the composition of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, you might as well say that all of European literature is the Bible
            >architecture is a tie
            Indian architecture completely surpasses the Chinese in both scale and intrication and cultural value given

            That's because you're Indian. That's like a Chinese man saying "Oh I learned about xx in school he's super relevant" but chances are very few even know about those two works, but lots do know about JTTW and ROTK at least from hearsay or derivative media.
            >Indian architecture completely surpasses the Chinese in both scale and intrication and cultural value given
            Matter of opinion, I prefer East Asian garden landscapes. I find those big Indian buildings too cluttered and chaotic.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Of the current learned and erudite circles where?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            On the planet called Earth.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Opinion among those is quite varied.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >That's because you're Indian
            Am not
            >chances are very few even know about those two works
            We're not debating what is more known but what is superior and there while I enjoy the Chinese I do prefer the Indian poets
            >Matter of opinion
            True, I am of course in favour of the Indian architecture but Iconfess that its reception is greatly divided

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >literature is relatively sparse (literally just Mahabharata and Rama for India)
            you have no idea what you are talking about, I can name you countless Indian poets, prose writers, playwrights, art critics, aesthetical theorists who wrote centuries after the composition of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, you might as well say that all of European literature is the Bible
            >architecture is a tie
            Indian architecture completely surpasses the Chinese in both scale and intrication and cultural value given

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