Kant-Studies in the Hong Kong Philosophical Context

 

Prof. Stephen Palmquist, D.Phil. (Oxon)

Department of Religion and Philosophy

Hong Kong Baptist University

(stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk) 

            Hong Kong might seem at first sight to be just about as far away from the interests of Western philosophy as possible. But underneath the façade of materialistic business-minded­ness and apparently superstitious religious tendencies lies a depth of interest in philosophy that has barely been acknowledged outside the territory.[1] So Westernized is Hong Kong's approach to doing philosophy that the task of giving an account of Kant-reception in Hong Kong is not very different from that of describing Kant-reception in say, Buenos Aires—or even Memphis, for that matter! While there may be certain individuals living in such regions who have devoted a significant part of their career to Kant-studies of one sort or another, they have done so with such constant interaction with scholars outside the region that the region itself would seem to be irrelevant. Indeed, most of the philosophers to whom I will refer are either not indigenous to Hong Kong or have done a significant amount of their work outside the territory.

 

            I will begin with a brief overview of the general state of philosophy in the city of the "Fragrant Harbour",[2] after which I will focus on the work of four philosophers now living in Hong Kong whose research interests include Kant. Not having the ability to read Chinese, I must limit my attention almost exclusively to works written in English. However, I will conclude with a brief discussion of a philosopher who is generally regarded by those familiar with the Chinese side of Hong Kong philosophy as the most significant Chinese interpreter of Kant alive today. The works of this philosopher, Mou Tsung-san,[3] are discussed so frequently in Hong Kong that even a person with only second-hand knowledge of his writings (most of which have not been translated from Chinese to English) is capable of making some intelligible comments on them.

 

            Despite appearances to the contrary, philosophy is alive and well in Hong Kong. Of seven tertiary institutions, three have well-established Philosophy Departments (one com­bined with Religion), and one of the others has a Humanities Division that includes an M.Phil. in Philosophy. (The other three are more polytechnic-style institutions, where phi­losophy is taught only as a relatively minor component of other classes.) Regular departmen­tal seminars in philosophy are held at Hong Kong University and Hong Kong Baptist University. The for­mer institution, as well as Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, regularly sponsor visiting lectureships. These seminars and lectureships often attract prominent philosophers from overseas, including in recent years philosophers such as Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, and the North American Kant Society's own Ar­nulf Zweig—just to mention a few. Starting in 1984, Hong Kong University also supported an extra-mural B.A. in Philosophy under the London University extension program, by of­fering evening classes on a variety of philosophical topics. These were generally well-at­tended by devoted students who would come in after a full day's work to study philosophy, until the classes were discontinued a few years ago.

 

            Another significant arena for doing philosophy in Hong Kong is the Hong Kong Philosophy Society, an organization supported as much by non-academics as by those em­ployed in tertiary education. The society conducts most of its monthly meetings in Can­tonese, with a few meetings in English each year. The current President and co-founder of the Society, Cheung Chan-fai, is currently editing a book (with Man Si-wai) to be entitled Philosophy in Hong Kong, which will be published next year in conjunction with the cele­bration of the Society's tenth anniversary. The range of interests covered by the titles of the essays being written for this book reflects the breadth of meaning given to the term "philosophy" by the Society's membership. The titles range from fairly standard topics, such as "Continental Philosophy" (Kwan Tze-wan), "Analytic Philosophy" (Laurence Goldstein), and "Political Thought" (Joseph C.W. Chan), to highly practical or "applied" issues, such as "Economic Thought" (Tsang Shu-kei), "Green Thought" (Chung Shan-shan), and "Sexual Ideas" (Chow Wai-shan). The latter set of topics is "philosophical", according to the so­ciety's President, "in the widest possible meaning" of the term, whereby "philosophy" is equated with "systematic thought".[4]

 

            Let us turn now from the general philosophical context to the status of Kant-studies as such, beginning with tertiary education, where Kant classes are or have been taught in at least four institutions. At Hong Kong University, Alan Griffiths and Colin Davies teach classes on the first Critique and on Kant's moral philosophy, respectively. At Chinese University, the person mainly responsible for teaching Kant is Kwan Tze-wan, who teaches classes on the first Critique and on Kant's moral philosophy, as well as a graduate seminar on the third Critique. Lee Shiu-chuen and Chan Te also do some teaching on Kant. At the new University of Science and Technology no classes specifically on Kant have yet been taught, though Kim Bock-ja's specialization on Hegel makes her naturally interested in Kant-studies as well. At Baptist University I have taught a class on Kant, as well as interjecting Kantian ideas into most of my other classes, and three of my colleagues (Gerhold Becker, Lo Ping-cheung, and Tsang Lap-chuen) have also published and/or taught extensively on Kantian themes. And HongKongUniversity'sextra-muralphilosophyprogramhasoffereda50-hourcourseofin-depth classes on Kant's philosophy,which I have had the pleasure to teach on two occa­sions.

 

            For the remainder of this paper I will highlight the main ideas of the four scholars cur­rently living in Hong Kong who have published the most substantial works on Kant. Due to the summary nature of this report, I will in most cases merely present  the ideas in ques­tion, without making any serious effort to criticize them. I will treat them in inverse order of their apparent influence on Kant-reception in the Hong Kong philosophical context (based on length of time they have been teaching in Hong Kong, together with extent of their publica­tions on Kant). I should say before I begin that there are several important Hong Kong Kant scholars, such as Chan Te, Lao Sze-kwang, and Tang Chun-i whose work I will not be able to discuss here, because as far as I know it has not been published in English.[5]

 

 

Lo Ping-cheung [pclo@hkbu.edu.hk]

 

            Lo Ping-cheung's main area of specialization is Christian ethics. But before doing a second doctorate in this field, he did one in philosophy on Kant's ethical theory. In recent years he has not been doing active research on Kant, though he continues to use Kant in his teaching of ethics. His two publications on Kant both relate to ethics. The 1981 article (published in Ethics after winning a nationwide prize for the best essay by a graduate student) is a valuable contribution to the literature aiming to dispel the myth that Kant's ethical theory is one of "empty formalism". His ap­proach is noteworthy in that it aims to defend Kantian ethics by taking the second formulation of the categorical imperative, rather than the first, as Kant's richest and most substantial ethi­cal principle. Whereas the first formulation (universalizability) does have something of a formalistic slant, the far less commonly discussed second formulation (treating persons as ends) is explicitly teleological, and is therefore the proper focus for any attempt to refute the charge of "emptiness". Lo further argues that the standard passages in the Groundwork are too sketchy, and must be supplemented by an examination of the relevant Doctrine of Virtue passages, if the grounds for the second formulation are to be fully appreciated. These pas­sages support a radically teleological interpretation of Kant's view of duty—one that differs in several important respects from the old, "empty formalism" interpretation.

 

            Lo's 1987 book, Treating Persons as Ends, extends and expands on the foregoing defense of Kantian ethics. He begins by explaining the teleological character of Kant's theory of non-moral action. This then serves as a backdrop, against which the teleological aspects of his moral philosophy can be understood. Distinctions such as hypothetical/categorical and heteronomous/autonomous might appear to correspond to the means/end or teleological/non-teleological distinctions. But Lo flatly rejects this interpretation as unfaithful to Kant's text, particularly in the Doctrine of Virtue, where ethics is defined as a system of ends of pure practical reason. Hypothetical and categorical imperatives are distinguishable not by virtue of presence versus absence of an end, but by the different source of their respective ends (as stemming from our desires or from practical reason, respectively). The specific, non-formal­istic ground of all "teleological-categorical imperatives" is human personhood, which  Lo un­derstands as meaning "individuated humanity in each person" (§§35-36). He defends Kant's conception of human beings as ends in themselves by clarifying the meaning of the appar­ently paradoxical notion of a "self-existent" end, and by interpreting the former as implying that we are "to treat the essential ends of human beings as ends in themselves" (§30, empha­sis added). He then provides an account of how Kant thinks specific duties can be derived from the second formulation of the categorical imperative, demonstrating that it is teleological without being consequentialist or hypothetically-based, and arguing that it provides a helpful strategy for dealing with the problem of conflicting duties. An Appendix explains how the admittedly formalistic aspects of the second Critique are compatible with the interpretation presented in Lo's book.

 

            Like many Hong Kong-based philosophers, there is nothing particularly Chinese about Lo's approach to philosophy or to Kant (at least, not in his English publications). Such approaches to Kant-studies in Hong Kong are, as I suggested earlier, not different in kind from how Kant-studies might be approached anywhere else. Lo and the next two interpreters both provide ample evidence of how the Western tradition of Kant-interpretation informs most English-language work on Kant in Hong Kong. However, there is a strong tradition (mostly in Chinese) of attempts to compare Kant with various Chinese philosophers—most notably, Confucius.[6] The fourth Kant-scholar, discussed below, is one of the leading participants in this tradition.

 

 

Pong See-fun (Stephen Palmquist) [stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk]

 

            I began working on Kant well before moving to Hong Kong, but have now spent more time as a Kant-scholar in the East than I have in the West. Although it has never been my intention to develop an explicitly "Chinese" interpretation of Kant, the wheels of fate seem to have destined me to produce something along those lines—an interpretation that is at least com­patible with certain tendencies evident in some Oriental systems of thought. (Indeed, it is my conviction that certain key aspects of Kant's approach to philosophy are in some sense "Chinese".[7])

 

            In Kant's System of Perspectives (and its forthcoming sequels), as well as in a num­ber of articles (many of which represent early versions of chapters later (to be) incorporated in one of these books), I am attempting to set forth a thorough-going interpretation of the en­tire Critical System, with special emphasis on its systematic (architectonic) structure. My claim is that, by paying careful attention to the different "perspectives" Kant defines, and by mapping out their interrelationships according to patterns fixed by the logical structure of ana­lytic and synthetic relations, many of Kant's apparently difficult or contradictory ideas can be shown to be not only self-consistent, but also powerfully descriptive of the way things are. The basic line of argument in each Critique (with the possible exception of the third) turns out to follow the same, twelvefold pattern (viz., the pattern of the categories). Three sequels to Kant's System of Perspectives will demonstrate how this interpretive method greatly facilitates our comprehension of the metaphysical implications of Critical philosophy: particularly with reference to religion (cf. the idea of God), science (cf. the idea of freedom in the world), and political history (cf. the idea of the immortality of the soul), respectively.

 

            Those articles of mine that have not been and will not be included in the above, four-volume project, range over topics such as Kant's doctrines of time (as synthetic), mathemat­ics (critiquing Phillip Kitcher), analyticity (critiquing Kripke), cosmogony (critiquing Jaki), duty (critiquing the common view that duty is a motive), and the categorical imperative (comparing it with three moral principles taught by Jesus). My other book-length projects on Kant include the following: a computer-generated Index to Kemp Smith's translation of the first Critique, as well as a corresponding Concordance; an edited translation of four of Kant's minor essays (originally translated anonymously by John Richardson in 1798-99), together with "An Exhaustive Bibliography of English Translations of Kant"; and a textbook for my Introduction to Philosophy classes, The Tree of Philosophy, that includes three chapters on Kant (one for each Critique).

 

Kwan Tze-wan [twkwan@cuhk.edu.hk]

 

            Kwan Tze-wan, who studied under one of the two most influential Kant-scholars of the older generation, Lao Tze-kwang,[8] is the most active Chinese Kant-scholar currently liv­ing in Hong Kong. He has published widely on various aspects of Kant's philosophy, ranging from his epistemology and moral philosophy to his aesthetics and philosophy of re­ligion. In 1985 he also translated into Chinese Richard Kroner's Von Kant bis Hegel and Kants Weltan­schauung . Although most of his work is in Chinese,[9] he has published a num­ber of articles in English (see the Bibliography), as well as a few in German. In the following I will give a brief survey only of those works he has published in English.[10]

 

            The first of Kwan's two early articles on Kant's theology and philosophy of religion argues for a radically "anthropocentric" and "humanistic" interpretation of Kant's position (see (1983), pp.95-98). By such terms Kwan means to designate the view that God is "a mere product of the intellectual activity of mankind", and that "religion's genuine object is never God himself, but rather man's notion or idea of God."[11] He supports this interpretation by appealing to three characteristics of Kant's theory: (1) religion bridges the gap "between the world of nature and the world of morality, in such a way that the three together answer the question "What is man?" (pp.97-98); (2) religion is not an end in itself, but a means or "vehicle" in relation to the end of morality; and (3) religion is a duty to oneself rather than to God. Kwan then examines "the problem of ‘Willk§r' ", explaining how Kant's usage of this term refers to a power that is truly "arbitrary": it is fully determined neither by practical reason nor by sensibility, though it is always influenced by both (p.106); the human "propensity to evil" is therefore rooted in Willk§r. Kwan concludes with some reflections on Kant's reasons for maintaining the usefulness of religion, despite (or indeed, because of) its basically reductionistic character.

 

            In his second paper on this subject (1984/1987) Kwan touches upon some of the same issues, but focuses more on the theological aspects of Kant's position. After explaining Kant's division between the different types of theology, he introduces the "Antinomy of Practical Reason", and explains at some length how the postulates of God and immortality are meant to solve it. Unfortunately, in the course of expounding Kant's views, he repeatedly interjectswordssuchas"nothingbut"and"mere"(seeespeciallypp.51-52)intowhatap­pears to be a faithful reporting of Kant's own words and ideas. As a result, the view of God that comes out—a God who is supposedly nothing but a merely man-made symbol, to the extent that "only our own practical reason" should be "the ultimate object of our worship" (pp.53-54)—isfarmorereductionisticthan I believe Kant himself ever intended (see above, note 11).


            Three of the papers Kwan has published in English are related only tangentially to Kant. His 1984 paper mentions Kant only briefly, in connection with Heidegger's criticism of the subjectivist distinction between mathematics and philosophy (pp.50,62). His 1990 paper includes several interesting suggestions regarding the Kantian roots of various aspects of Husserl's philosophy—most notably, Kant's much-neglected an­ticipation of the significance of "horizon" (pp.361,370-3,387,389,393-4,396,398-9). Kwan also includes a short but highly significant section on the perspectival implications of any talk of horizons (p.384)—significant, at least, in light of my own perspectival interpretation of Kant.  And his 1995 paper, which sketches the history of categorial thinking both in Western and in Chinese philosophy, includes a significant section explaining how Kant served as a middle step between the Aristotelian and Heideggerian approaches to the categorization of thought.[12]

 

            These latest publications might seem to indicate that Kwan has in recent years moved away from Kant towards a study of more contemporary German philosophers. Indeed, one of his current research interests is to apply von Humboldt's philosophy of language to certain aspects of the Chinese language. Moreover, he has also been devoting a considerable amount of energy to developing and running the computing and internet resources located at Chinese University. Despite these shifts of interest, however, Kwan continues to teach Kant and re­tains a strong interest in Kant-studies—to the extent that he is completing a book which is to be entitled An Introduction to the Philosophy of Kant. I think the world of Kant-studies has yet to hear the last from Kwan.

 

 

Mou Tsung-san

 

            The name "Mou Tsung-san" is almost synonymous with "Chinese Kant-studies in Hong Kong", so unanimous is the attestation of his influence by those who know the Hong Kong philosophical situation. It is therefore appropriate to conclude this survey with a slightly more lengthy discussion of his ideas. In addition to translating and commenting ex­tensively on all three Critiques,[13] Mou has put forward a widely discussed array of interpre­tive arguments relating to various aspects of Kant's philosophy. Unfortunately for our pur­poses, his prolific writings have been published almost entirely in Chinese,[14] so I will only be able to scratch the surface of his complex and wide-ranging ideas.

 

            Mou's career can be divided into two stages. The first stage runs up to the late 1960's, while the second runs from the early 70's to the present. (Professor Mou, now in his 80's, is currently retired and living in Hong Kong.) His first book on Kant, published in the early 50's, focused on the first Critique. In it, he attempted to reconstruct some of Kant's ideas along the lines of Russell and other contempo­rary Western philosophers. Of particular interest is his rejection of what he took to be Kant's view, that the transcendental conditions (space, time, and the categories) are seen as determining the phenomenological world ontologically, not merely epistemologically. Such a position must be revised, he claimed, so that the transcendental conditions are regarded as determining only our understanding of the world. According to his reconstructed version of Kant, space, time, and the categories perform a merely regulative, rather than a constitutive, function. (It is worth noting here that some Western Kant-scholars, such as Prauss, Allison, and myself, have ar­gued more recently that an epistemological reading of one sort or another need not be regarded as revision­ary, but may have actually been what Kant had in mind in the first place.)

 

            The second period of Mou's career began in 1969 with the publication of his book, The Substance (or Reality) of Mind and the Substance (or Reality) of (Human) Nature.[15] This was followed a few years later by Intellectual In­tuition (or The Intuition of Noumenal Reality) and Chinese Philosophy, and again in the mid-70's, by his book on Phenomena and Noumena.[16] In these books, Mou turns around and accepts the previously rejected ontological interpretation of transcendental philos­ophy. Indeed, he takes it a step further, claiming that Kant's insistence on the unknowability of the thing in itself makes his theory radically untenable as it stands. In its place Mou ap­peals to the wisdom of traditional Chinese philosophers—particularly those known as "Neo-Confucianists". His reason for making such a dramatic change was related to his increased interest in Kant's moral philosophy. Kant's ethical theory is so similar in many respects to various Neo-Confucianist ideas that it has become a commonplace in comparative philosophical studies to call attention to this fact.[17] Kantian conceptions such as moral duty, the categorical imperative, and the primacy of practical reason have clear parallels in Chu Hsi, Mencius, and even Confucius himself. What disturbed Mou was his conviction that, by separating the realm of morality and practical reason so sharply from that of knowledge and theoretical rea­son, Kant had developed a notion of the moral realm that was simply too weak to perform its important function.

 

            The solution to the problem of Kantian transcendent unknowability, according to Mou, can be found in the Neo-Confucianist tradition that regards mankind's moral nature as being rooted in what Mencius called "conscience" (liang-chi). Through a detailed discussion of the Transcendental Deduction, Mou concludes that some type of "intellectual intuition", or "intuition of noumenal reality" (chih te chi-h-chueh) must be possible after all. By failing to recognize that the hu­man capacity to know right from wrong is itself a form of intellectual intuition—albeit, of a type rather different from that which can be attributed only to God—Kant ends up defending a moral system which, despite his protestations to the contrary, cannot be regarded as being as real as the world of empirical knowledge. Without the stronger claim that human beings can have an intuition of the noumenal world, Mou thinks any claim to know anything about the moral realm is vacuous. By providing an alternative view of moral intuition, the Neo-Confucian tradition can fill a gap left by Western philosophy (which Mou more or less identifies with Kant).[18]

 

            This is a direct challenge to Western philosophers in general, and to Kant-scholars in particular. Does our moral nature provide us with a kind of knowledge that is equal in both its objective and subjective certainty to that of our empirical knowledge of nature? If so, can Kant's view of the moral law, and of freedom as the one "fact" of practical reason, be interpreted in such a way as to do all the work that Mou thinks must be performed by his moral version of "intellectual intuition"? Or are we constrained to agree with Mou's view of the superiority of Chinese philosophy over Western philosophy? If, on the other hand, Mou is wrong, and Kant is right to distinguish sharply between theoretical knowledge and practical "knowledge", then how exactly can the latter provide us with a sufficient grounding in the noumenal world to justify belief in its reality?

 

 


Bibliography of English Works on Kant

Relevant to the Hong Kong Philosophical Context

 

I. 45 English works on Kant by scholars living in Hong Kong

 

Kwan, Tze-wan, "The Doctrine of Categories and the Typology of Concern", Analecta Husserliana 46 (1995), pp.243-302.

————, "Hussurl's Concept of Horizon: An Attempt at Reappraisal", Analecta Husserliana 31 (1990), pp.361-399.

————, "Heidegger's Quest for the Essence of Man", in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (1984), pp.47-64.

————, "The Idea of God in Kant's Moral Theology", Dialogue & Alliance 1 (1987), pp.41-57. Also in Tunghai Journal 25 (1984), pp.261-286.

————, "On Kant's Real/Problematic Distinction between Phenomena and Noumena" (long English abstract of an article in Chinese), Tunghai Journal 26 (1985), pp.209-210.

————, "On Kant's Problem of Willk§r", Proceedings of the International Conference on the Role of Christian Higher Education in Asia (Taichung: Tunghai University Press, 1984), pp.261-288.

————, "Kant's ‘Humanistic' Conception of Religion", Tunghai Journal 24 (1983), pp.95-118.

Lao, Sze-kwang, "On Understanding Chinese Philosophy: An Inquiry and a Proposal", in Allinson (1989), pp.265-93.

Lee, Shui-chuen, "A Confucian Critique of Kant's Theory of Moral Cultivation", Compara­tive Studies of Eastern and Western Philosophy, Taipei: Chinese Culture University, 1989), pp.881-902.

Leung, In-shing, "From Kant to Chinese Philosophy: Mou Tsung-san's Construction of moral metaphysics" (an unpublished paper, presented to the Third International Con­ference in Chinese Philosophy, 1988).

Liu, Shu-hsien, "The Problem of Orthodoxy in Chu Hsi's Philosophy", in Chan Wing-tsit (1986), pp.437-60.

————, review of Mou Tsung-san's Hsin-t'iHsing-t'i [Mind and Human Nature], Philosophy East and West 20 (1970), pp.419-22.

Lo, Ping-cheung, Treating Persons as Ends: An Essay on Kant's Moral Philosophy. Lanham: University Press of America, 1987.

————, "A Critical Reevaluation of the Alleged ‘Empty Formalism' of Kantian Ethics", Ethics 91 (January 1981), pp.181-201.

Mou, Tsung-san, Keynote lecture given at a 1989 conference in Taipei, Taiwan. Tr. Paul Jiang, "Professor Mou Tsun-san's Speech", Comparative Studies of Eastern and Western Philosophy, Taipei: Chinese Culture University, 1989), pp.25-30.

————,  lectures given to graduate students at the National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in the 1970's. Tr. Clapton Chan, Fourteen Lectures on the Intercommunication between Chinese and Western Philosophy(in progress).

Palmquist, Stephen R., The Tree of Philosophy3. Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1995.

————, "‘The Kingdom of God is at Hand!' (Did Kant really say that?)", History of Phi­losophy Quarterly 11:4 (October 1994), pp.421-37.

————, Four Neglected Essays by Immanuel Kant. Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1994. Also includes an "Exhaustive Bibliography of English Translations of Kant".

————, "Triangulating God: A Kantian Rejoinder to Perovich", Faith and Philosophy 11:2 (April 1994), pp.302-10.

————,  "How Chinese Was Kant?" An unpublished paper, presented to the March 1994 meeting of the Hong Kong Philosophy Society.

————, Kant's System of Perspectives: An architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.

————, "Studying Religion—Kantian Style", Opening 2 (March 1993), pp.9-12.

————, "Kant's Theocentric Metaphysics", Analele Universitatii Din Timisoara 4 (1992), pp.55-70.

————, "Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?", Kant-Studien 83:2 (1992), pp.129-148.

————, "Kant's ‘Appropriation' of Lampe's God", Harvard Theological Review 85:1 (January 1992), pp.85-108.

————, "Kant's Theistic Solution to the Problem of Transcendental Theology", Rodica Croitoru (ed.), Kant and the Transcendental Problem (Bucharest: University of Bucharest Faculty of Philoso­phy, 1991), pp.148-178.

————, "Four Perspectives on Moral Judgement: The Rational Principles of Jesus and Kant", The Heythrop Journal 32:2 (April 1991), pp.216-232.

————, "KantonEuclid: GeometryinPerspective", PhilosophiaMathematica II5:1/2(1990), pp.88-113.

————, A Complete Index to Kemp Smith's Translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (distributed privately, 1987). Also published on floppy diskettes as "Kant-Index for Kemp Smith", Philosophy & Theology Disk Supplement, number 3 (1989).

————, "The Syntheticity of Time: Comments on Fang's Critique of Divine Computers", Philosophia Mathematica II 4:2 (1989), pp.233-235.

————, "Kant's Critique of Mysticism: (2) Critical Mysticism", Philosophy & Theology 4:1 (Fall 1989), pp.67-94.

————, "Kant's Critique of Mysticism: (1) The Critical Dreams", Philosophy & Theology 3:4 (Summer 1989), pp.355-383.

————, "ImmanuelKant: AChristianPhilosopher?", FaithandPhilosophy6:1(January1989), pp.65-75.

————, A Complete Concordance to Kemp Smith's Translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (distributed privately on microfiche, 1987).

————, "A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (II) Naming, Necessity and the Analytic A Posteriori", The Review of Metaphysics 41:2 (December 1987), pp.255-282.

————, "A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (I) Mathematics, Method and Pure Intuition", The Review of Metaphysics 41:1 (September 1987), pp.3-22.

————, "Kant's Cosmogony Re-Evaluated", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18:3 (September 1987), pp.255-269.

————, "Knowledge and Experience—An Examination of the Four Reflective ‘Perspectives' in Kant's Critical Philosophy", Kant-Studien 78:2 (1987), pp.170-200.

————, "A Kantian Critique of Polanyi's ‘Post-Critical Philosophy'", Convivium 24 (March 1987), pp.1-11.

————, "Is Duty Kant's ‘Motive' for Moral Action?", Ratio 28:2 (December 1986), pp.168-174. Also published in a German version, tr. Joachim Schulte, as "Ist die Pflicht KantsTriebfeder' des sittlichen Handelns?", Ratio 28:2 (December 1986), pp.152-158.

————, "The Architectonic Form of Kant's Copernican Logic", Metaphilosophy 17:4 (October 1986), pp.266-288.

————, "Six Perspectives on the Object in Kant's Theory of Knowledge", Dialectica 40:2 (1986), pp.121-151.

————, "The Radical Unknowability of Kant's ‘Thing in Itself'", Cogito 3:2 (March 1985), pp.101-115.

————, "Faith as Kant's Key to the Justification of Transcendental Reflection", The Heythrop Journal 25:4 (October 1984), pp.442-455.

 

II. A selection of other English works relating to Chinese Kant-studies or to philosophy in Hong Kong

 

Allinson, Robert E. (ed.), Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Ames, Roger T. and Callicott, J. Baird (eds.), Nature in Asian Traditions of  Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York, 1989.

Ames, Roger T. and Hall, David L., Thinking Through Confucius. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.

Axinn, Sidney, "The Philosophy of History in Confucianism and in Kant", Comparative Studies of Eastern and Western Philosophy, Taipei: Chinese Culture University, 1989), pp.789-806.

Berthrong, John, All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Brière, O., Fifty Years of Chinese Philosophy 1898-1950, tr. Laurence G. Thompson. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956.

Chan, Wing-cheuk, "Confucian Moral Metaphysics and Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology", in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (1984), pp.187-202.

Chan, Wing-tsit (ed.), Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Cheng, Chung-ying, New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.

Ching, Julia, "Chinese Ethics and Kant", Philosophy East and West 28 (1978), pp.161-72.

Fang, Thomé H., The Chinese View of Life: The Philosophy of Comprehensive Harmony Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., 1980.

Fingarette, Herbert, "Following the ‘One Thread' of the Analects", Journal of  the American Academy of Religion Thematic Issue 47.3S (September 1979), pp.373-405.

Goldstein, Laurence, "Philosophy in Hong Kong", Cogito (Autumn 1990), pp.192-197.

Hansen, Chad, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpre­tation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Li Zehou, "Some Thoughts on Ming-Qing Neo-Confucianism", in Chan Wing-tsit (1986), pp.551-69.

Masson, Michel C., Philosophy and Tradition: The Interpretation of China's Philosophical Past: Fung Yu-Lan 1939-1949. Hong Kong: Ricci Institute, 1985.

Metzger, Thomas A., Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China's Evolving Political Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

Moore, Charles A. (ed.), The Chinese Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967.

Thompson, Kirill O., "Li and Yi as Immanent: Chu Hsi's Thought in Practical Perspective", Philosophy East & West 38.1 (January 1988), pp.30-46.

Ts'ai, Jen-hou, "A Reappraisal of Chu Hsi's Philosophy", in Chan Wing-tsit (1986), pp.461-79.

Tu, Wei-ming, "The Problematik of Kant and the Issue of Transcendence: A Reflection on ‘Sinological Torque'", Philosophy East and West 25 (1978), pp.215-21

Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue between Chinese and Occidental Philosophy. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984.

Wawrytko, Sandra A., "Confucius and Kant: The Ethics of Respect", Philosophy East and West 32 (1982), pp.237-57.

 

 

 

 

 


Footnotes

 



[1]Part of the reason for this unfortunate fact is the dearth of quality academic publications based in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong market caters more towards a magazine-style, popularized approach to philosophical issues, so those who wish to publish more serious articles in professional philosophical journals are forced to turn elsewhere—most often to Taiwan for Chinese writings or to the West for those in English.

 

[2]"Hong Kong" means "fragrant harbour" in Cantonese.

 

[3]Throughout this paper I adopt the Chinese convention of putting the surname first, followed by the given name(s). According to the Western convention, Mou's name would be "Tsung-san Mou".

 

[4]Cheung Chan-fai, in an interview held on 23 February 1995. He added that the goal of most Chinese philosophers in Hong Kong is to assimilate as much as can be learned from Western philosophy, but to focus on its application to the Hong Kong situation.

 

[5]Lao (1989) mentions Kant in passing several times (pp.267, 273, 290), but does not elaborate on his own interpretation of Kant as such.

      Before proceeding I would like to express thanks to the following people for providing me with some in­valuable information, without which this paper would have been considerably less informative: Cheung Chan-fai, Laurence Goldstein, Kwan Tze-wan, Lee Shui-chuen, Lo Ping-cheung, Tsang Lap-chuen, and Yip Kam-ming. Naturally, they should not be held responsible for any errors that might appear in the paper.

 

[6]See e.g., Moore (1967), pp.86, 321 and Li (1986), pp.551, 553-4, 557-8. In A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, Hansen claims the only true similarity be­tween Kant and Confucius is that both reject utilitarianism (p.389); he takes the novel approach of empha­sizing their differences (pp.123, 165-6, 353, 415) and suggests some qualified similarities between Kant and Daoism (pp.284, 298). In contrast to both of these approaches, I examine in "How ‘Chinese' Was Kant?" the extent to which Kant matches up to Chinese culture and its philosophi­cal tradition.

 

[7]See my unpub­lished paper, "How Chinese Was Kant?".

 

[8]The other scholar in this pair is Mou Tsung-san, whose ideas will be discussed below. Although Lao wrote a substantial work on Kant's epistemology some 30 years ago, and lectured regularly on Kant, his views will notbediscussedbecauseincomparisontoMou(1) hisinterpretationofKant,asfarasIknow,playedalesssig­nificant role in his overall approach to philosophy, (2) less information is available on his ideas in En­glish, and (3) his most influential successor (Kwan) has published far more in English (than the students of Mou).

      Lee Shui-chuen (one of Mou's most prominent students) has published ex­tensively in Chinese on Kant and numerous other subjects. Unfortunately for our present purposes, only one of his articles on Kant is writ­ten in English. In this (1992) paper, Lee utilizes various notions from the Neo-Confucian tradition to assess Kant's views on "moral cultivation". He elaborates and defends Mou's suggestion that Kant's moral theory in some senses "lies between Mencius' and Chu Hsi's" (p.300). Nevertheless, he concludes that, because it dis­tinguishes too sharply between "wille, willk§r and moral feeling", "Kant's theory is so ... off the target as to be quite useless for moral cultivation" (301). Mencius and Chu Hsi, by contrast, are superior because they united these three powers into one (hsin, or "mind") or two (hsin and hsing, or "human nature"), respectively.

 

[9]Kwan's Chinese papers include studies of the Transcendental Deduction, the third Critique, and Kant's con­cept of philosophy in general. These, however, are beyond the scope of the present discussion.

 

[10]One of these articles, "On Kant's Problem of Willk§r" (1984) was unfortunately not available to me at the time of writing this paper. However, Kwan deals with this same problem as part of his 1983 paper.

 

[11]Kwan (1983), p.95. Kwan's 1985 paper also assumes Kant's support for such a reductionistic position: "In Kant's eyes ... [God] is to the last analysis itself nothing but a Problema" (p.210). I have argued against such a reductionistic interpretation in my articles, "Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?" and "Kant's Theocen­tric Metaphysics". Since Kwan's 1985 paper is mainly in Chinese, with only an abstract in English, I will not comment further upon it here, except to say that in it, Kwan interprets Kant's concept of a "noumenal" realm in the Heideggerian terms of "the reality of human existence or of the Phänomen des Daseins" (p.210).

 

[12]Unfortunately, Kwan assumes throughout this (1995) paper that categories are nothing but "cultural mani­festa­tions" (see especially pp.250, 293). His resulting reflections on the cultural differences involved in various systems are often interesting and instructive. But he never seems aware of the need to treat Kant's categories as transcendental and therefore as acultural (or perhaps, transcultural).

 

[13]As far as I know, Mou is the only translator of Kant's work living in Hong Kong. Several translations of the Critiques, as well as translations of most of Kant's other writings, have been published by Chinese schol­ars on the mainland. These, however, are all in simplified Chinese characters, so they are not widely used in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, most scholars agree that Mou's translations (based as they were on Kemp Smith's English, not on Kant's German) are rather unfaithful to the original text, and can be rather mislead­ing at times. Some have accused him of translating in such a way that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is Kant's original ideas and what is Mou's interpretations.

 

[14]The only two exceptions I know of are a short speech he made at a 1989 conference in Taiwan, and a course of lectures he gave in the 1970's. The latter is currently in preparation by Clapton Chan [chancl@nevada.edu] of the University of Nevada.

 

[15]Liu (1986) discusses the arguments Mou develops in this book (see pp.450 and 458). See also Liu (1970).

 

[16]A good (though rather brief) English account of Mou's interpretation of Kant can be found in Metzger (1977), pp.30,57-8,248-9. Masson (1985) groups Mou with T'ang Ch§n-i as two of the key figures in post-1949 non-communist-oriented Chinese philosophy (p.244). They share a "quest for meaning", the main purpose of which "was to keep alive a tradition" in the face of the communist threat. Theirs, he says, was an apologetic "faith-in-exile", emphasizing "the religious dimension of neoconfucianism" (pp.244-5). See also Ames and Hall (1987), pp.204-206, Chan (1984), pp.187-8ff, and Goldstein (1990), p.195.

 

[17]For helpful discussions of Mou's interpretation of Chu Hsi, see Liu (1986) and Ts'ai (1986), especially pp.464-5,474,476-77n. Li (1986) says Neo-Confucianism and Kant are similar insofar as for both the "basic char­acteristic is to raise ethics to the status of ontology" (p.551; see also pp.553-4,557-8). In other respects, however, they differ (p.557): "Chinese practical thought never separates noumenon and phenomenon and seeks noumenon from phenomenon." In discussing the Neo-Confucian usage of the term "Tao", Mou coined a termtranslatedas"onto-cosmological "to describe this aspect of Confucian moral metaphysics (Ts'ai[1986],p.476n).

 

[18]Mou provides a brief summary of this view of the relation between Kantian philosophy and Chinese tradition in the speech (1989) published in English. He claims (p.25) that "the classical meaning of philosophy" (as "love of wisdom"), though supported by Kant, is now dead in the West, but "can still be found well-preserved in the Chinese tradition". Thanks to Kant, the West has excelled in the realm of phenomena (science); but when it comes to "the transcendental world ... Kant is neither thorough nor mature in his treatment, when compared to the Chinese" (pp.26-27). Mou suggests (p.29) that "in the West, man cannot possess what I call intellectual intuition for the simple reason that man and God are separate.... [In] the Western tradition, ... to transform man's discursive understanding into transcendental wisdom [chih] is not only impossible, but inconceivable.... This is because, according to Kant, God only creates thing-in-itself, but not phenomenon, which presents itself only to man. (Logic, time and space, and number are irrelevant to God.)" It is interesting that, whereas Kant's Western critics tend to chide Kant for relying too heavily on the reality and significance of the noumenal world, his Neo-Confucian critics complain that he relies too little on it. Perhaps there is something to be said for here for the "golden mean"!

      Although he was not from Hong Kong, it is worth mentioning another very influential Chinese philoso­pher, Fung Yu-lan, who was also influenced by Kant. Fung had a rather more sympathetic view of Kant than Mou's, inasmuch as he viewed the "unknowable" as "the object of metaphysics" (quoted in Masson [1985], p.205). If anything, he thought Kant was too affirmative with respect to the transcendent realm (p.206). Inter­estingly, Fung (like Hansen [see above, note 6]) regarded Kant's philosophy as being much more in line with Taoist ideas than with Confucianist or Neo-Confucianist approaches (see Masson [1985], pp.206-7n).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This etext is based on a prepublication draft of the published version of this essay.

 

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