Volume 67, Issue 3, Summer 2023
Special Topic: Hermann Levin Goldschmidt’s Contradiction Set Free
Zhen Liang
Pages 697-714
Chinese Philosophy as the Pursuit of the Dao
An Inquiry into the Common Quest of Philosophical Thinking in Both Chinese and Greco-European Traditions
This paper argues for an interpretation of Chinese philosophy as the pursuit of the Dao rather than the popular reading of it as a kind of wisdom literature. I examine the shared pursuit of two major Chinese schools of thought: Daoism and Confucianism—Dao, and compare it to the task of philosophy represented in the works of two major western thinkers—Hegel and Heidegger. By investigating the Dao comparatively with Hegel’s Concept and Heidegger’s philosophia, I reveal the common quest of philosophical thinking in both traditions.