Philosophy Today

Volume 67, Issue 3, Summer 2023

Special Topic: Hermann Levin Goldschmidt’s Contradiction Set Free

Zhen LiangOrcid-ID
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.