Author ｜
Yu-hsuan Yeh
Abstract ｜
In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between the birth of Chinese philosophy and the intellectual landscape of the Meiji period, as well as the transformation of kangaku 漢學 into Chinese philosophy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This paper aims to explore the significance of the historical event of “transforming kangaku into Chinese philosophy” within the dimension of “global modern history.” This article first examines the process through which Meiji intellectuals “scientificized” (i.e., philosophized) kangaku and analyzes the reasons why Sinology had to become Chinese philosophy. It then takes Shuhei Uchida’s A History of Chinese Philosophy as a point of entry to demonstrate how the intervention of the nation-state order relativized the knowledge space constructed by the Chinese classics and opened up the possibility of thinking about its position from an external perspective. However, this opportunity was soon constrained by the framework of the nation-state. This paper attempts to elucidate the broader significance of the birth of Chinese philosophy: that it signified the acceptance of the order of the modern world (rather than the “West”) by the scholars. The arduous process of institutionalizing Chinese philosophy occurred as a particular, but by no means isolated, event within the overall trend of the Meiji intellectuals “accepting and integrating into the ‘modern world.’” By reviewing the transformation of kangaku into Chinese philosophy during the Meiji period, the paper also demonstrates the intricate and multidimensional interactions among science, the world, and the nation-state, which served as the opportunity and premise for the formation of “Chinese philosophy.”
keywords ｜
modernity, early Meiji period, Chinese philosophy, scientific method, nation-state