The Identity of Chinese Philosophy: New Confucianism and its International Context

Abstract

Despite the divergency of the socio-political systems, the present-day Chinese communities in Asia adopt a similar socio-cultural strategy: material Westernization and spiritual nationalism. Over 90 percent of the population of these societies have practically been westernized with respect to their knowledge, profession and way of life, but the question is why and how the spiritual nationalism can be maintained today and whether there is a new Chinese philosophy guiding the nationalist spirit. Based on the traditional pragmatist Confucianist ideology, Chinese communities have been engaged in the socio-cultural experiment of this kind of Chinese-Western union in order to effectively separate as well as combine their twofold efforts: technical progressivism and ideological conservatism. Westernized modernity and the national tradition are intended to collaborate on a pragmatic level. The paradoxical point is expressed not in the old slogan of last century that "Western learning is utility; Chinese learning is substance", but rather in that of "Western learning is substance and Chinese learning is utility". The essence is that the spiritual and cultural tradition is employed to pursue the Western-oriented socio-technical goal: the modernist compound of science-technology-economy. This industrial-commercial social setting is the very background in front of which current Chinese philosophy faces its multiple possibilities.