Suter
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Ostasiatisches Seminar » Sinologie » Prof. Dr. Robert H. Gassmann (emeritiert) » Suter
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | The Early Logical and Epistemological Works of Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) | ||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||
| Original title / Originaltitel | Die frühen logischen und erkenntnistheoretischen Schriften Mou Zongsans (1909-1995) | ||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | Mou Zongsan (牟宗三) is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers among so-called contemporary Neo-Confucianists and one of the outstanding philosophers of 20th century China. Most research so far has concentrated on Mou's later works. These are dedicated to the preservation and actualization of traditional Chinese thought, which he reconstructs as an essentially Confucian philosophy. Mou claims the superiority of Chinese moral philosophy over Western ethics. In his writings, he seeks – against Kant – to develop a positive notion of intellectual intuition accessible to humans. Mou's effort in proving the relevance of Chinese traditional philosophy in a modern context remains rather controversial with both Chinese and Western scholars. In rather sharp contrast to Mou's later works, his early texts written in the 1930s and 1940s are rarely considered. These texts broadly reflect the philosophical discussion of their time in and outside China. Main points of reference are Alfred N. Whitehead's “philosophy of organism”, the logical and epistemological writings of Bertrand Russell, as well as the reception of Kant by Mou's teacher Zhang Dongsun (1886-1973). A third source of inspiration is the Neo-Confucian Xiong Shili (1885-1968), trained in vijñānavāda Buddhist logic and epistemology and an expert in Yijing (Classic of Changes) studies. The project concentrates on a discussion of the notion of logic developed in some of Mou's early writings. Mou Zongsan departs from Russell's logicist program of deducing mathematics from logic. However, Mou does not accept Russell's empiricist approach. It is at this point that Mou develops a genuine interest into the origin of the laws expressed by and represented in logical calculus. This leads him to the notion of an a priori principle which makes up for the laws of logic that are reflected in logical representations. This principle is conceived as the source of both the normative character of laws as reflected in their constitutive function for thought, as well as of their formal representation in systems of symbolic notations. In this sense, it resembles a limiting concept. For its designation Mou uses the traditional Chinese term of li 理 “principle of normative order”, sometimes also referring to it as “reason”, “reason proper or in itself” (lixing benshen/ziji) or simply as the expression “logic”, or “logic proper” (luoji benshen). Mou Zongsan's interest in logic arises from his opposition against the materialist dialectics promoted by many of his leftist contemporaries. Mou's intensive occupation with issues of logic lead to a series of articles during the 1930s and finally, in 1941, to the publication of a monograph entitled The Norm of Logic (Louji dianfan). In this work, Mou formulates a theory of logic which starts from a priori rules of thought and then proceeds to their formal representation. In many respects, the book is arranged according to Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica. In addition to extensive reflections on the character of logic as the standard of thought, Mou also deals with Aristotelian logic, trying to dissolve Aristotle's entanglement of logic with ontology in relating the notions of subject and predicate to the yinming 因明 (Tang-dynasty Buddhist logic) concepts of ti 體 (“object”) and yi 義 (“predicable”). While The Norm of Logic mainly concentrates on deduction and the foundation of the logical calculus, the last of Mou's early works, the Critique of Intentional Consciousness (Renshixin zhi pipan, published several years after its composition in 1954-5) concentrates on epistemological issues. This work is designated as a reevaluation of Kantian criticism by Mou himself. We find here an extensive discussion of inductive logic, combining Whitehead's concept of immediate judgment, the Buddhist (vijñaptimātra, weishi 唯識) notion of perceptual judgment (xianliang 現量, pratyakṣa) and the logical concept of the elementary proposition in an effort to establish a foundation for inductive inference. The project initially concentrates on a critical discussion and contextualization of Mou's notion of logic within a doctoral dissertation. I then intend to publish certain early articles by Mou Zongsan, as well as selected excerpts of The Norm of Logic and the Critique of Intentional Consciousness in an annotated German translation. |
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| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | 20th century Chinese Philosophy, Contemporary Neo-Confucianism, logic, epistemology, principle (li), transcendentalism, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, Xiong Shili, Republican China, Kant | ||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career) |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Feb 2009 to May 2011 |