A special issue of The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Guest editors: Andrea Altobrando, Haiming WEN, Haojun ZHANG.
The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology’s special issue
Phenomenology and Chinese Philosophy
Guest editors: Andrea Altobrando (University of Padua), Haiming WEN (Renmin University of China), Haojun ZHANG (Renmin University of China)
The last few decades have seen an exponential growth in studies of Chinese “philosophy” around the world and, particularly, in the English language. We put “philosophy” in quotation marks since whether the tradition of thought developed over more than two millennia in China is properly to be considered as “philosophy” has long been a matter of debate. On the one hand, eminent scholars of that long history such as Anne Cheng have preferred to speak of “thought” since the Chinese tradition lacks certain elements considered essential for it to be properly philosophy. This is a fully understandable and reasonable perspective, which does not intend by such a choice of terminology to diminish the value of the Chinese tradition but, on the contrary, to respect its specificity and difference from what, precisely, in “the West” has been called philosophy. It is a choice that does not intend to place itself on the Heideggerian ridge of the question, according to (a perhaps somewhat superficial view of which philosophy coincides – up to Heidegger himself) with metaphysics and, more precisely, with a specific type of metaphysics. Undoubtedly, the Chinese tradition has not much questioned Being and the copulative function of the verb to be. Systematic treatises are lacking and grammar has not, as happened in the European tradition, then determined philosophical speculation and its horizon.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that many of the issues that have been and continue to be considered genuinely philosophical in the West have also largely occupied Chinese thinkers and “literati.” Certainly, the mere fact that “philosophical” questions have also arisen in China does not mean or imply that the way of dealing with them is necessarily philosophical. Many “philosophical” questions, such as that of origin or life after death, or the fate of the world, or the relationship between events can be considered questions that also animate many mythological and religious “reflections,” or “theories.” To hold that any speculation on the origin of the world, on good and evil, or on the identity of objects and persons is in itself philosophical could only lead to a view for which the specificity of philosophical thought is lost and would thus end up flattening all the ways in which certain questions are approached and treated. Rather, it is a question of understanding whether a systematic, logical and argumentative treatment of such issues is also present in China, as well as in other cultures of the world.
The topic is undoubtedly huge and of enormous scope. In this volume, we do not intend to deal with it directly, but rather to offer a contribution in that direction and, more generally, to a contemporary philosophical reflection on various issues that would derive from a fruitful interaction between the Chinese “philosophical” tradition and that of a phenomenological matrix. Phenomenology, in fact, as it is initially proposed by Husserl, aims and has as its task to describe phenomena by trying as much as possible to disregard both scientific and philosophical preconceptions. For this reason, from its beginnings phenomenology promises to be able to go beyond cultural and “relative” determinations. Relativism, in fact, is one of the main opponents of the enterprise inaugurated by Husserl. It certainly cannot be denied that such a vision and ambition may seem desperate, naive or arrogant. However, it is perhaps no coincidence that phenomenology has been the philosophical movement one of the most successful worldwide in the twentieth century, and notably also in geographic areas, particularly Japan and China, where the “conceptual” distance would seem most obvious, given the difference in language and writing from the European tradition in which phenomenology is fully and consciously situated. This is all the more relevant with respect to the Chinese landscape when we consider that the latter has consistently claimed to have its own millennia-old philosophical tradition that has developed entirely independently of the “Western” one and has produced a primary and secondary literature that is difficult to diminish. That Chinese thinkers have welcomed phenomenology may perhaps be a sign that it does, in fact, allow for the construction of a non-parochial ground for reflection and discussion.
Nevertheless, to date, non-Chinese-language works that synergize and/or compare ideas and reflections from the two traditions are quite rare.
This special issue of JBSP aims to offer a contribution and, in particular, a starting point to fill that gap. Articles are invited that show how the phenomenological tradition can fruitfully interact with the Chinese philosophical tradition and vice versa, either by showing similarities and differences from a methodological and/or ends and concepts point of view, or by phenomenologically developing ideas from the Chinese tradition or offering ways of interpreting “phenomenological” authors and texts in light of the latter.
We welcome contributions that focus on the following or related issues:
- How can the phenomenological perspective and methodology interact with the tradition of Chinese philosophical thought, and/or vice versa?
- Phenomenological interpretations of classical texts in Chinese thought.
- Phenomenology from the perspective of Chinese philosophy.
Deadline for articles submission: 31st May 2025
Articles should be submitted at the following link: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rbsp
Instructions for authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rbsp20
For inquiries, please write to one or all of the following addresses:
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