Las fabulas en su historia Llegamos al aula de clase a las siete de una soleada mañana, dispuestas a realizar la etapa dos de nuestro proyecto La profesora directora

which he could go beyond the surface of diverse philosophical languages and come to grips directly with what he saw to be a single reality.

Chang’s admission of the basic invariance of human nature deserves attention, because it stands in stark contrast to his positions on language, history and politics. His common view on language, history and politics is that they are concrete activities of a particular community, invariably culture-bound and context-dependent. Hence they are peculiar, not subject to one universal standard or measure in determining their truth. They must be put into the context of a particular culture in order to be understood. In Chang’s case, this meant that every aspect of language, history or politics are bound to be "national"

phenomenon. But a concept like "national philosophy" would seem to Chang inappropriate, if not contradictory in terms. This is notwithstanding that he admitted a difference between oriental and occidental mentality. He would argue that it is the various representations of reality, rather than the reality itself, which make the difference. In Chang’s scheme of intellectual pursuit, philosophy is mainly a "transcendental" enterprise. It asks "meta-practical" or "supra-mundane" questions left out by most practical and mundane minds, such as the essence of man and the reality of the external world. In questions like this, the essential uniformity of the perceived object and the perceiving subject would make extremely trivial the philosophical enquiry conducted on national lines. This is why philosophy was also for Chang Ping-lin a highly individual business, unlike language, history and politics which would become impossible or meaningless without the perspective of collective activity. Indeed, when Chang engaged in study of philosophy, he was reasoning mainly as an independent individual, as a member of the human race rather than of some particular community. Therefore, in Chang’s eye the role of philosophy is not only critical but also transcendental. On the one hand it transcends national boundaries and practical concerns. On the other, it transcends languages - for two reasons: firstly, language barriers pose no serious problem for philosophical dialogue - the very reason of Chang’s

justification for the ke-i method. Secondly, there is Chang’s recognition of the limitation of languages. Language would be powerless to penetrate the noumenal world in the Kantian scheme or the Tathatä Consciousness (Chen-ju) in Chang’s own philosophical scheme. On this Chang proposed an "intuitive understanding" surpassing the limit of language. In this regard, Chang’s "transcendental

philosophy" goes farther than the apriorism of Kant.

Clearly, after Chang’s innovative elaboration and practice, the ke-i method is no longer the same as its previous form of the Wei and Chin periods. The earlier form of "the method of analogy" was by and large a one-way traffic reflecting an ethnocentric mentality, be it in the case of the Taoist rendering of Buddhist sultra, or in the case of the drawing on Buddhism to expound Confucian metaphysics by the Sung and Ming scholars - which is perhaps similar to the use of Platonical language by St Paul and later St Augustine to reinforce Christian theology. Yet the ke-i method in the hands of Chang began to produce a two-way process, that is, using indigenous "language" to interpret imported ideas and conversely, exploiting foreign concepts to enrich one’s philosophical heritage. Moreover, in the hope of creating mutual understanding of the compared

concepts, one conducts these on the grounds that the human mind has a common anatomy which transcends all racial and cultural differences. In an age of intense cultural encounters, Chang Ping-lin’s ke-i method has proven, by his own

practice, to be desirable as well as fruitful in achieving the dialogue between diverse minds of different cultures. Thus Chang’s treatment of the ke-i method alone would be perhaps enough to refute the view that the principle of Chang’s nationalism are tainted with ethnocentricity or even xenophobia.

To be sure, Chang did not restrict this ke-i method to the dialogue between Chinese and Indian philosophies. He also extended it to his discussion of Western ideas. Given that he had never set his foot on Western territories and had no knowledge of any foreign language apart from, at best, a mediocre grasp of Japanese, his enormous interest in Western philosophy is quite extraordinary. By

contrast, contemporaries of Chang, such as Sun Yat-sen, Yen Fu, K’ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, who either received Western education or travelled more widely than he did, paid much less attention to Western philosophy proper, or at least, did not approach that philosophy for its own sake. Indeed, Chang is almost certainly the first Chinese intellectual to have appreciated and recognised the strength of Western philosophy in its own right. He is probably also the first Chinese thinker to have investigated and criticised Western philosophies in a systematic way, despite some unavoidable misunderstandings. His knowledge of Western thinking, though limited and handicapped, seems to have been of such a level as to enable him to make the ke-i method plausible without committing seriously the fallacy of excessive analogy. At any rate, there is no question of his seriousness and enthusiasm in the study of Western philosophical achievement.

Now let us take a closer look at Chang’s conception of philosophy. As is well known, the current Chinese term for philosophy, "che-hsiieh" was only a very late 19th century borrowing from the Japanese. Partly because "ehe" in the

Chinese language originally meant no more than "wise man", and in part due to Chang’s increasing contempt for Japanese Sinology, he disposed of this term as tasteless.

As for the ancient expression, "tao", and its later derivatives, "li-hsiieh" or "hsin-hsiieh" (usually referred to the neo-Confucianist school in the Sung and Ming dynasty respectively), these were, in Chang’s opinion, all one-sided expressions, hence inadequate. What Chang proposed in their place was a more neutral as well as more comprehensive term, viz, "chien", the Chinese equivalent to "darsana" in Buddhist philosophy.

In the passage cited at the start of this section, Chang’s reference to "That" (p’i) and "This" (tz’u) which looks like a play on words is quite ambiguous due to the lack of further qualification. But judging from his other writings, it seems clear that by "this" and "that" Chang actually referred to a distinction between the knowing mind and the known object. Tao is the object of knowledge, be it the

physical world or its underlying principle. Yet what is capable of Tao is the active human mind, the knowing subject which is "the Master of Tao". Thus understood, then Chang’s preference for "darsana" or "chien" over "tao" is not simply a matter of chosing favourable words. (It would be of interest to note: the Sanskrit word, "darsana", being a noun and meaning "vision of truth", would make an interesting comparison to "love of wisdom", the etymological meaning of the Greek word, "philo-sophy". The Chinese word, "chien" would make an even more interesting comparison, for it is also used as a verb to mean "to perceive". Its richer meaning can best be appreciated in its hieroglyphic form: ^ . Thus Chang’s adoption of this word, "chien" (to perceive), should be appreciated as to suggest his great emphasis on the active aspect of the knowing mind, which in the end would lead to an idealist system, not incomparable to the doctrine of "to be is to be perceived" advanced by George Berkeley (1685-1753).

Chang Ping-lin’s re-defining the discipline of philosophy is merely a small step in his pursuit of the transcendent truth. Yet it is a significant step,

considering that traditional Chinese philosophies are essentially doctrines about ethics. Conventional Chinese thinkers tended to regard the role of philosophy as providing guidance for proper human conduct. Even their works on cosmology were charged overwhelmingly with ethical connotations. They viewed

philosophy as, at best, a legislative or normative science. In contrast to this, Chang Ping-lin simply proposed to say that: how we perceive the world is what philosophy is all about, and the task of philosophy is to acquire reliable

knowledge, to liberate oneself from superstition and ignorance (avidyä), and to be free from blindness. By defining philosophy as the quest for darsana or the perceiving of truth and reality, Chang virtually reminded his fellow countrymen that the first and foremost concern of philosophy is about the problem of

knowledge. This is also why epistemolgy would occupy such a central place in Chang’s various fields of philosophical enquiry.