War Zhu Xi (1130-1200) ein Hegel avant la lettre? Verständnisprobleme zwischen China und dem Westen in der Gegenwart

Abstract

Do the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) and the Chinese thinker Zhu Xi (1130-1200) have anything in common? Indeed, Hegel who held that "comparison represents a relatively low stage of philosophical thought" would be rather astonished about the vast number of Chinese articles which, starting with He Lin in the 1930s, compare him with the paramount thinkers of China. One of these articles, published in 1985, is the object of the present study. There is enough evidence that the Chinese authors of such comparisons have been taken in by superficial linguistic similarities created by the translations of their predecessors or even Japanese scholars. Binomical expressions with the composite character "Li" (pattern, order, "principle" in an inadequate rendering) occur frequently throughout all Chinese translations of Hegel’s works. After splitting the Chinese words for "idea", "reason", "cause", "intelligence", and even "physics" into their compounds, one of them will always be "Li", and, behold!, it can be proved that Hegel was using one of the key terms of the Chinese thought of the Song period. The analysis of this strange kind of linguistic fetishism is carried out through a philological approach. But it can also cast some light on the self-assessment of contemporary Chinese thought: if Hegel’s terminology comprises key concepts of "Chinese philosophy" used by the German philosopher for his admittedly more systematic structure of thought, then, no doubt, the intrinsic value of the Chinese tradition needs no further legitimation. One intellectual step further, there is no need for Hegel or Marx in China, because China had Zhu Xi.