On Tang Junyi's Interpretation And Digestion Of Hegel's Philosophy

Comparing with the traditional Confucianism, one of the most important features of Modern Neo-Confucianism lies on wide acceptance and critical improvement. The representatives of Neo-Confucianism consider that researching the western philosophy is an important way of reinterpreting Chinese traditional learning and developing the modern Chinese philosophy. With their hard work, they discover lots of philosophic works and achievements. However, in recent years, some scholars in China point out that there are many mechanical applications in the modern Chinese philosophy. They demand to “explain Chinese(thought) in Chinese” to reject the influence of western philosophy. This thesis considers that emphasizing the characteristics of Chinese philosophy is the main purpose of constructing modern Chinese philosophy, while overemphasizing the specialty will lead to deficiency to accept the western philosophy. Therefore, this thesis attempts to discuss the acceptance of Hegel by Tang Junyi, and explain his contribution and deficiency, in order to provide a reference to the question “how to treat the western philosophy in modern times”.By researching Tang Junyi's interpretation of Hegel's philosophy, he has focused on the relationship between dialectics and practical reason, and the structure of system and philosophy of mind. On the dialectics and practical reason, he believes that the practical reason in Kant's mind is the accordance or driving force of dialectics,but in other writings, practical reason has been replaced by moral reason. The so-called “moral reason”, on the one hand is closer to Hegel's “spirit”, which governs all cultural activities, is the unity of theoretical reason and practical reason; on the one hand, it emphasizes the moral meaning of reason or spirit, which considers all cultural activities reveal moral values. In general, the concept of “moral reason” is the comprehension of Kant's “practical reason”, Hegel's “spirit” and the Confucian School of mind.In addition, he thinks the logic, natural philosophy, philosophy of spirit in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences is formed to the three directions of the spirit, and the subjective spirit, objective spirit and absolute spirit in spirit philosophy is the “three outlooks the same spirit”(that is, the three kinds of view or opinion in the same spirit). By this interpretation, he constructs his own philosophy system.Tang's further digestion and sublimation of Hegel's philosophy mainly manifests in the following aspects.First, he mainly assimilate dialectics from the ideal and the reality, the finite and the infinite, essence and application(ti and yong)and so on, and restricts Hegel's dialectics in “application”(“yong”) field. Secondly, he also criticizes Hegel's national outlook and conception of history from the perspective of Ought-to-be, thinks the ideal of Peace is the inevitable development of Hegel philosophy. Thirdly, he questions the Hegel that philosophy is the highest spiritual philosophy, considers that the aims of philosophy is practice and cultivation.Tang's interpretation and digestion of Hegel's philosophy shows the basic characteristics of obvious Oriental position, cutting their focus and consciously discard attitudes, he not only adheres to the subjective Chinese culture, but also actively absorbs the beneficial ingredients of western philosophy, it has an important significance and reference to the contemporary development of the Chinese philosophy and the academic thinking.