Some thoughts on intercultural philosophy and Chinese philosophy

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 3-4, 2003, Pages 357-372

  Shen, Vincent ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049357215     PISSN: 03018121     EISSN: 15406253     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6253.00125     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Charles Taylor, "Politics of Recognition," in Multiculturalism, edited and introduced by A. Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25-36
2. Vincent Shen, "From Politics of Recognition to Politics of Mutual Enrichment," in The Ricci Bulletin 2002 (Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, number 5, February 2002), pp. 113-125
3. I have worked out a philosophy of contrast in my works, especially in my Essays in Contemporary Philosophy, (Taipei: Li-ming Publishing Company, 1985)
4. and Contrast, Strangification and Dialogue (Taipei: Wunan, 2002)
5. F. Wallner has initiated in recent years the philosophical movement of Constructive Realism as an epistemology of interdisciplinarity, with which I myself have been in cooperation from its beginning. I have corrected his two layers of reality, Reality Itself and Constructed Reality, into three related circles of reality by introducing the Life-world as mediation. Also I have introduced the dimension of interculturality into Constructive Realism and applied my philosophy of contrast to Constructive Realism. Later I have extended it to interreligious dialogue. See Fritz Wallner, Acht Vorlesungen uber den Konstruktiven Realismus (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 1992)
6. Fritz Wallner/Joseph Schimmer/Markus Costazza (Eds.), Grenzziehungen zum Konstruktiven Realismus (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 1993)
7. Vincent Shen, Confucianism, Taoism and Constructive Realism, (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 1994)
8. as to its extension to religious dialogue, see Vincent Shen, "Inter-religious Dialogue Between Buddhism and Christianity Conceived with Strangification and Contrast," in The Movement of Constructive Realism, edited by Thomas Slunecko (Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1997), pp. 225-242
9. For a recent development, see Vincent Shen, Contrast, Strangification and Dialogue (Taipei: Wunan Publishing Company, 2002)
10. Vincent Shen, Disenchantment of the World (Taipei: China Times Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 31-37
11. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982b 12, translated by W. D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonatthan Barnes, Vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 1554
12. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b 6-7
13. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a 20-982b 10, 1003a 21-30
14. The Text of Yi Ching. Chinese original with English translation by Z. D. Sung, Reprint, (Taipei: Wenhua Books Company, 1973), p. 334
15. As Joseph Needham has suggested, "Mathematics was essential, up to a certain point, for the planning and control of the hydraulic engineering works, but those professing it were likely to remain inferior officials." Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 30. For me, this social and political reason given by Needham explains partly the unimportance of mathematics in Confucianism. A more internal reason for it might be that mathematics was considered a technique of calculation and an instrument of organizing empirical data, not as an objective structure of reality and discourse
16. Concerning Confucianism, B. Schwartz is right when he says, "To Confucius knowledge does begin with the empirical cumulative knowledge of masses of particulars, . . . then includes the ability to link these particulars first to one's own experiences and ultimately with the underlying unity that binds this thought together." Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: The Nelknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 89
17. Confucius, Analects(Lun Yu), XV-3
18. Confucius, Analects(Lun Yu), 11-15, my translation
19. Vincent Shen, "Annäerung an das taoistiche Verstädnis von Wissenschatt. Die Epistemologie des Lao Tses und Tschuang Tses", in F Wallner, J. Schimmer (eds.), Grenzziehungen zum Konstruktiven Realismus, (Wien: WUV-Univ.Verl., 1993), S188ff
20. Fritz Wallner understands ontological strangification on the level of interdisciplinary research and takes it to mean the movement by which we transfer from one micro-world in one discipline to another micro-world. For me, the fact that we can move from the micro-world of one discipline or research program to another is still limited to the ontic level. Only when this transfer happens through the detour by Reality Itself is there ontological strangification
21. As for the Buddhist strategy of strangification and its success in China, please see Vincent Shen, "Appropriating the Other and Transforming Consciousness into Wisdom: Some Philosophical Reflections on Chinese Buddhism," in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, December 2003. Forthcoming