Tang Junyi

Dzieła

• 1953Duchowa wartość kultury chińskiej

  Napisane na hongkońskim wygnaniu: kultura chińska opiera się na humanistycznym duchu, w którym niebo i ludzkość, to, co moralne, i to, co naturalne, nie są rozdzielone; może z niej wyrosnąć nauka i demokracja.

• 1958Manifest na rzecz kultury chińskiej do świata

  Opracowany przez Tang Junyi i podpisany wraz z Mou Zongsanem, Xu Fuguanem i Zhang Junmai: kultura chińska nie jest martwym przedmiotem sinologii, lecz żywą tradycją, której rdzeniem jest nauka o umyśle i naturze; powinna przyjąć naukę i demokrację.

• 1977Życie, istnienie i horyzonty umysłu

  Jego ostatnie wielkie dzieło: dziewięć horyzontów, w których umysł odnosi się do pojedynczych rzeczy, rodzajów, przyczyn, siebie, znaczeń idealnych, moralności i wreszcie transcendencji – od buddyjskiej pustki i chrześcijańskiego Boga po konfucjańską jedność nieba i cnoty.

Stanowisko

Tang Junyi started from the moral self: in “The Establishment of the Moral Self” (1944) and later works he argued that every form of culture – science, art, religion, politics – expresses a moral reason that transcends the individual and connects people with one another. Chinese culture, in his view, had developed this humanist spirit most fully, because it did not separate heaven and humanity, nature and morality; its weakness was that it had not developed science and democracy, which it could and should take up. After 1949 he saw Chinese culture as scattered like blossoms and fruit that have dropped to the ground and called on the diaspora to replant its roots. His late system, “Life, Existence and the Horizons of Mind” (1977), describes nine horizons in three groups: horizons of objects (individual things, kinds, causes and purposes), horizons of the subject (mutual sensation, contemplation of ideal meanings, moral practice) and horizons beyond subject and object – the one God of Christianity, the emptiness of self and dharmas in Buddhism, and the Confucian flowing of heavenly virtue. The order recalls Hegel’s Phenomenology, but Tang understood the horizons as mutually responsive rather than as stages that are simply overcome. With Mou Zongsan he is regarded as a central figure of the second generation of New Confucianism.

Życie i kontekst

Tang Junyi was born on 17 January 1909 in Yibin, Sichuan, the son of a scholar and teacher. He studied in Beijing, where he heard Liang Shuming and Xiong Shili, and then at the National Central University in Nanjing, where he graduated in philosophy in 1932. He taught in Sichuan and at Central University, where he became professor and head of the philosophy department during the war years. In 1949 he moved to Hong Kong and, with the historian Qian Mu and others, founded New Asia College, which in 1963 became part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. There Tang taught philosophy and built up the department. In 1958 he drafted the “Manifesto on Chinese Culture to the World”, which he published together with Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan and Zhang Junmai. In the 1960s he wrote a six-volume study of the basic concepts of Chinese philosophy. In 1974 he left the university after disputes over its reorganisation and continued teaching at the New Asia Research Institute. He completed his last great work while ill with lung cancer and died in Hong Kong on 2 February 1978.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• The Establishment of the Moral Self (Daode ziwo zhi jianli, 1944)
• The Spiritual Value of Chinese Culture (1953)
• The Reconstruction of the Humanist Spirit (Renwen jingshen zhi chongjian, 1955)
• Cultural Consciousness and Moral Reason (Wenhua yishi yu daode lixing, 1958)
• Manifesto on Chinese Culture to the World (with Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan and Zhang Junmai, 1958)
• Fundamental Treatises on Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexue yuanlun, 1966–75)
• Life, Existence and the Horizons of Mind (1977)