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Chinese Philosophy

Chinese Philosophy has a long history. Its sources date from the beginning of the first millennium B.C. As early as the 8th–5th centuries B.C., Chinese Philosophy had a widespread doctrine of the "primary sources", the Five Elements of nature: water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. The ancient Chinese thinkers taught that combinations of the Five Elements create the entire diversity of phenomena and things.

There was also another system for revealing the primary sources of the real world. The Yi King (Books of Changes) named eight such primary sources, whose interaction formed different situations of reality. Basically Yi King was merely a collection of surmises and only somewhat later it was given a philosophical interpretation. The images and symbolics of Yi King exerted exceptional influence on the subsequent development of Chinese Philosophy.

At the same time, the main principles of the doctrine of the opposite and interconnected yin (passive) and yang (active) forces were shaped. The action of these forces was regarded as the cause of motion and change in nature. They were symbols of light and darkness, positive and negative, male and female elements in nature.

Ancient Chinese Philosophy was further developed from the 5th to the 3rd century B.C. It was in this period that the main Chinese philosophical schools emerged. Proponents of Taoism, above all Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, took a great interest in philosophical problems. Mo Ti (see Mo Tzu) and his followers studied questions of epistemology. Many ancient Chinese thinkers sought to solve the logical problem of the relationship between concepts "name" and reality. Hsün Tzu and others held that concepts are reflections of objective phenomena and things. Kungsun Luna gave an idealist explanation of the problem. He was known for his statements resembling Zeno's aporias and for absolute abstraction of concepts and their divorce from reality. His doctrine of "names" has much in common with Plato's theory of "ideas".

During this period Tsou Yan elaborated the concept of yin and yang and the Five Elements of nature. The ethical and political constructions of Confucius and Meng Tzu, the statements of Han Fei Tzu and other members of the Legalist school (see Fa Chia) about the state and law became widespread. That was the Golden Age of Chinese Philosophy.

On questions of the philosophy of nature the struggle centred round the concept of tien (sky) regarded by some as nature (Hsun Chi), while others considered it the supreme, purposeful force (Confucius, Meng Tzu); the concepts tao, the way (natural law and absolute); te, virtue, power, character; ch'i, the primary matter; the "elements" of nature, etc. In the sphere of ethics, attention was devoted to the teaching on the essence of man. The views of Confucius led to the concept of Meng Tzu about the innate goodness of human nature and of Hsun Chi about the innate evil of human nature. Yang Chu's theory of individualism and Mo Tzu's theory of altruism were widely known.

The ancient Chinese concepts in the philosophy of nature lacked empirical material. The doctrine of the Five Elements, of the polar yin and yang remained the basis of numerous natural philosophical and cosmological constructions between the 3rd century B.C. and the 3rd century A.D. The concept of ch'i received a materialist interpretation in the deeply argumented system of Wang Chung. At the same time various mystic teachings were developed, and religious trends appeared in Taoism and Confucianism.

The relationship of "being" to "non-being" became the central issue of struggle between materialism and idealism in the first centuries of our era. The concepts of the Beginning (yuan), the Prime Matter (ch'i), tao, and other prime sources of being were developed during this period as a result of the mutual influence and synthesis of Taoist and Confucianist ideas.

Buddhism began to spread in China from the 1st century. Together with Confucianism and Taoism it became a leading trend in Chinese thought. The 5th and 6th centuries were stamped by Buddhist mysticism. Struggle around the Buddhist teaching of the unreality of the world developed during that period. Many philosophers took a great interest in problems of the relationship between essence and phenomenon, being and non-being, body and soul. The materialists Ho Chentien and Fan Chen subjected the belief in the immortality of the soul to withering criticism. Buddhism remained the most widespread teaching in the 7th–10th centuries. Attacks on Buddhist idealism were waged mainly from the positions of Confucianism and Taoism.

Philosophy flourished in China in the 10th–13th centuries as a result of the deep socio-economic changes. The further development of Confucianism, known as Neo-Confucianism, came as a reaction to Buddhism and Taoism. Neo-Confucianism was not limited to the elaboration of ethical and political ideas. Questions of ontology, philosophy of nature and cosmogony were represented more widely in it. The central issue was the relation between the ideal element li (law, principle) and the material element ch'i (prime matter). Early Neo-Confucians approached some questions from the standpoint of materialism (Chou Tun-i and Chang Tsai). Chu Hsi holds an important place in the development and generalisation of Neo-Confucian constructions. Examining the interconnection of li and ch'i, Chu Hsi ultimately came to regard li as primary and ch'i as secondary.

Lu Chiu-yuan (Lu Hsiang-shan) and especially Wang Shou-jen (Wang Yang-ming) developed subjective idealism in Neo-Confucianism. The former said: "The world is my reason (heart) and my reason is the world." Neo-Confucian idealism was opposed by the materialist doctrines of Ch'ien Lung, Yeh Shih, Lo Chin-shun, and Wang Ting-hsiang. The doctrine of the progressive thinker Li Chih played a big part in the struggle against the Orthodox school of Neo-Confucianism. The questions of the relationship between li and ch'i was further developed in the 17th and 18th centuries; its materialist solution was offered by Wang Fu-chih (Wang Ch'uan-shan) and Tai Chen.

The Opium War in 1840 marked the beginning of foreign penetration of China. The Chinese people replied to the oppression of the feudal lords and foreign aggression by a powerful peasant rebellion, the Taiping movement. Utopian ideas on the social reconstruction of society played no small part in it. Subsequently, China was turned into a semi-colony. The best traditions and materialist ideas of Chinese Philosophy were taken over and continued by progressive thinkers (see T'an Ssu-t'ung and Sun Yat-sen).

The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal movement of May 4, 1919, began under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Since then Marxism has acquired ever greater importance as the ideological weapon in the struggle for national independence and the revolutionary transformation of China. But petty-bourgeois ideology has continued to play an important part in the spiritual life of China, and it has inevitably exerted an influence on the Chinese Marxists. That is why various deviations have repeatedly arisen in their ranks. This has also been the reason why vulgar materialism and elements of voluntarism and subjectivism have recently assumed a leading place in philosophy of China.