Liu, The Rise of Analytic Chinese Philosophy

"The existence of Chinese philosophy has long been dismissed from both sides of the world. In the West, Hegel famously denied the presence of Chinese philosophy, focusing on the essential speculative nature of "philosophy" itself. Of Confucius, he wrote that Confucius was "only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom-one with whom there is no speculative philosophy.""

"Of the Daodejing, Hegel wrote: "If Philosophy has got no further than to such expression, it still stands on its most elementary stage. What is there to be found in all this learning?" (Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1). When Derrida visited China in 2001, he proclaimed that China "does not have any philosophy, only thought" on the grounds that "philosophy" is "something of European form." This has since become a popular, if not the received, view in the Western philosophical world."

Western assessments long dismissed Chinese thought as lacking speculative philosophy, describing Confucian teachings as practical wisdom and treating Daoist expression as philosophically elementary. A claim emerged that China "does not have any philosophy, only thought," on the basis that "philosophy" is a European form. Many traditionalist Chinese scholars reject the label "Chinese philosophy" and resist applying Western categories such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. A modern history of Chinese philosophy was criticized for "contaminating" indigenous thought by introducing Western concepts. Since the 1980s, younger scholars trained abroad have promoted analytic engagement.

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