A brief history of analytic philosophy in Hong Kong

APA Studies on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies, 2024

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kaishek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive again only after Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy.

2001

Two Roads to Wisdom? is a collection of fifteen essays, all but two previously unpublished, organized loosely around the topic of philosophical methodology as it bears on Chinese-Western comparative philosophy. The contributors include distinguished analytic philosophers, senior scholars of Chinese and comparative thought from Chinese-and English-speaking lands, younger specialists, and a few unfamiliar names. The best of the essays are excellent, yielding insights into the nature of philosophy, the purpose and character of comparative philosophy, and substantive aspects of Chinese thought. Others challenge mainstream conceptions of the point of philosophical activity and writing. The book is a fertile source of ideas and information about the Chinese philosophical tradition, offering provocative discussions that will benefit both specialists and Western philosophers curious about Chinese thought. Yet on the whole this is an anthology that adds up to less than the sum of its best parts. The purpose of the volume is vague, its structure unfocused. The separate papers do not really cohere as contributions to a conversation about a unified theme or themes. Consequently, it is hard to see a compelling reason for collecting this particular set of papers together in one book. The premise of the volume is that, to a large extent, what sets Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy apart is their different methodologies (Bo Mou, "Introduction," xi). Thus the volume's aims are "to investigate the issue of philosophical methodology through a comparative approach," to promote dialogue between different traditions and philosophers from different backgrounds, and to investigate how Chinese philosophy and "Western philosophy in the analytic tradition" can learn from and complement each other, especially with regard to method (xi). This emphasis on methodology is puzzling, for two reasons. First, interesting differences in philosophical method tend to be so deeply intertwined with differences in substantive belief that it is difficult to say where one leaves off and the other begins. One can hardly give an adequate account of the distinctive methods of different thinkers

Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2022

How to apply an analytic approach to Chinese philosophy has been a controversial issue in the field of the modern Chinese philosophy. The key to such an application is using an analytical approach. Various forms of analysis are used in modern philosophy. The term "analytic approach" refers to both conceptual and semantic analyses by which to analyze meaning and apply philosophical concepts, so as to interpret a different significance of these philosophical concepts. Beginning with the challenge of the analytic approach as applied to Chinese philosophy, it is necessary to address the line of holism and transcendental argument in terms of philosophical methodology. The former provides us with a framework of analysis of particular problems, while the latter helps us clarify the major difference between a philosophical argument and other arguments for knowledge. Chinese philosophy must greatly emphasize the importance of philosophical methodology, so as to reconstruct the framework of Chinese philosophy as it stands today.

Asian Journal of Philosophy

In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the development of analytic philosophy in the Philippines. I first highlight the circumstances that led to its inception in the late 1930s, and some of the notable works by prominent Filipino analytic philosophers that helped shape the tradition. Next, I discuss the socio-political climate in the late 1950s through the 1970s that may have led some Filipino philosophers to move away from analytic philosophy. Finally, I explore some signs of its re-emergence in the late twentieth century and its possible trajectories in the twenty-first century.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2017

This paper is concerned with the reasons for the emergence and dominance of analytic philosophy in America. It closely examines the contents of, and changing editors at, The Philosophical Review, and provides a perspective on the contents of other leading philosophy journals. It suggests that analytic philosophy emerged prior to the 1950s in an environment characterized by a rich diversity of approaches to philosophy and that it came to dominate American philosophy at least in part due to its effective promotion by The Philosophical Review's editors. Our picture of mid-twentieth-century American philosophy is different from existing ones, including those according to which the prominence of analytic philosophy in America was basically a matter of the natural affinity between American philosophy and analytic philosophy and those according to which the political climate at the time was hostile towards non-analytic approaches. Furthermore, our reconstruction suggests a new perspective on the nature of 1950s analytic philosophy.

Iride, 2021

I argue that the dominant concept of analytic philosophy among self-described analytic philosophers is an identity concept. It involves a substantive and always contestable vision of the nature of analytic philosophy that is at the same time a vision of one’s own intellectual identity. In this non-pejorative sense, the concept is intrinsically ideological. I further argue that the anthology by Conant and Elliott (The Analytic Tradition, Norton 2017), while extraordinarily broad and comprehensive, retains this ideological character. I draw attention to four features of their substantive vision.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2018

This paper shows that during the first half of the 1960s The Journal of Philosophy quickly moved from publishing work in diverse philosophical traditions to, essentially, only publishing analytic philosophy. Further, the changes at the journal are shown, with the help of previous work on the journals Mind and The Philosophical Review, to be part of a pattern involving generalist philosophy journals in Britain and America during the period 1925-1969. The pattern is one in which journals controlled by analytic philosophers systematically promote a form of critical philosophy and marginalise rival approaches to philosophy. This pattern, it is argued, helps to explain the growing dominance of analytic philosophy during the twentieth century and allows characterising this form of philosophy as, at least during 1925-1969, a sectarian form of critical philosophy.

Festschrift in Honour of Panu Raatikainen on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 2024

This is my take on the question of how 'analytic philosophy' ought to be defined. I consider the approach that seeks to capture 'analytic tradition' by means of an analytic definition (necessary and sufficient conditions), and point out a number of defects. I argue that not even a modestly revisionary definition of 'analytic philosophy' (as in some works by Panu Raatikainen) will do the job in a satisfactory way, basically because it inevitably misrepresents the phenomenon that it seeks to capture. I also outline an alternative, which is an historical approach. This is not unlike what Hans-Johann Glock argued for in his 'What is Analytic Philosophy+* (2008); on his view, 'analytic philosophy' is a family resemblance and genetic-historical category. But even this won't do as such, basically because it fails to do justice to the 'features' that supposedly characterize the analytic tradition (even when this characterization is construed in terms of family-resemblance). We have to see the analytic tradition as an historically extended, socially embodied argument (MacIntyre). I make some remarks on what is involved here, using 'linguistic philosophy' as an example. Finally, it is argued that the primary job of the 'features' that we use to understand the analytic tradition is not typological at all but explanatory.

The Cultural Politics of Analytic Philosophy examines three generations of analytic philosophers, who between them founded the modern discipline of analytic philosophy in Britain. The book explores how philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin believed in a link between German aggression in the twentieth century and the nineteenth-century philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. Thomas L. Akehurst thus identifies in this political critique of continental philosophy the origins of the hugely significant faultline between analytic and continental thought, an aspect of twentieth-century philosophy that is still poorly understood. The book also uncovers a tripartite alliance in British analytic philosophy, between nation, political virtue and philosophical method. In revealing this structure behind the assumptions of certain analytical thinkers, Akehurst challenges the conventional wisdom that sees analytic philosophy as a semidetached narrowly academic pursuit. On the contrary, this important book suggests that the analytic philosophers were espousing a national philosophy, one they believed operated in harmony with British thinking and the British values of liberty and tolerance.