Philosophy in Taiwan: The Continuation of Tradition and the Creation of New Theoretical Paradigms

Abstract

Taiwanese philosophers are playing a rather prominent role in the context of preserving the Chinese ideational tradition, even though their significance in this context is still widely unknown. The present article is thus focused upon the critical introduction of their work, and its positioning into the context of the political, economic and intellectual conditions of the second half of the 20th century. The role of the Taiwanese philosophy was especially important precisely in the period which begun in 1949 and lasted until the end of the century. In these five decades, the philosophical production on the mainland was mostly dominated by censorship, and the prevailing regulations of the Communist Party’s policies mainly demanded that researchers working in philosophy stayed in the field of the sinization of Marxism, whereby investigating the Chinese intellectual tradition was not so much in favour. The article clearly exposes the reasons for and significance of the preservation of continued research into Chinese ideational history in Taiwan, and points out that without this extraordinarily constructive role of the Taiwanese philosophers, these studies would have suffered immense damage. The author also shows that the work carried out by the Taiwanese philosophers was not merely important in respect of preserving the continuation of Chinese philosophical research, but also because they have at the same time created numerous innovative methodological and theoretical concepts that have fundamentally enriched the recent history of investigating and developing Chinese philosophy. In this regard, the author exposes and critically analyses some of the central philosophical concepts of Mou Zongsan, who is among the most important representatives of modern Taiwanese philosophy.

Keywords:  Taiwanese philosophy, research in the Chinese intellectual tradition, Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, new concepts, new methodologies