Alexander Statman - Hegel's Encounter with Chinese Philosophy
Channel: Nathan Hill
Date: 2022-01-27

Alexander Statman - Ancient Wisdom and Unhistorical History: Hegel's Encounter with Chinese Philosophy 

At the end of the Enlightenment, European engagement with China underwent a fundamental transformation. For the philosophers of the eighteenth century, Chinese thought had been defined by what they took to be a Confucian philosophy of reason and an illustrious ancient past. But for Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, China was instead characterized by the doctrines of Daoism: what he called a “religion of magic” and a relic of "unhistorical history." How did this remarkable change take place?

In this talk, I explore the contexts and consequences of Hegel’s engagement with Chinese philosophy. He first encountered it through an essay by the ex-Jesuit missionary Joseph-Marie Amiot that had been published in 1791, then expanded his interpretation in the 1820s with the work of Europe’s first professional Sinologist, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat. In 1827, the two scholars met in Paris to consider the question: “Has there been or has there not been philosophy in the Orient?” Their conversation reframed ancient wisdom for modern Orientalism and philosophy alike.

Alexander Statman is a historian of science and intellectual historian. He completed his PhD at Stanford University and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Huntington Library and University of Wisconsin-Madison. His book, A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.