Chinese Philosophy Pre Dates the
Ancient Greek Philosophers
Recently I was asked to write an article for the Australia China Foundation Association (ACFA) web site about Asian and particularly, Chinese Philosophy and why it has been misunderstood in the west for centuries. I must admit this was an article I planned to write for Shadow in the Flame so I highly recommend it to you as a starter for understanding why Chinese philosophy differs from western philosophy although I will write more on this subject in the future.
While we look back on Confucius with great respect, he thought of himself as standing on the shoulders of the ancient Chinese scholars who had left a large body of work which Confucius helped preserve by collating it and writing critiques. This work already stretched back at least two thousand years when Confucius was alive 2,500 years ago.
Yet practically from their earliest contact with the Orient, Western philosophers have had little understanding of the philosophical traditions of China. In fact their common view was, and still is in many places, that ancient Chinese writing is not philosophy, but religion or some form of mysticism.
However, apart from anything else, the strangest thing about this view is, that in all three of the major Chinese philosophies, that is;
- Confucianism
- Taoism
- Buddhism
there is no God, which is viewed as essential in the traditional western understanding of, and a prerequisite to be, a religion. So while the West has often pointed to China as the great atheist nation they have at the same time tended to lump the huge body of ethical and metaphysical discussion, which goes back at least 4,500 years, into the same basket as religion and mysticism. Western philosophy on the other hand traces its roots back to the Ancient Greeks around 2,300 years ago.
Find out why some Western philosophers point to Eastern philosophy and say “Well, this isn’t really philosophy”