A Short History of Chinese Philosophy

A one-volume survey of Chinese philosophy that Feng Youlan wrote in English, based on lectures he gave at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946–47, edited by Derk Bodde and published in 1948. Feng had already written a longer two-volume history in Chinese. He opens by describing the spirit of Chinese philosophy, which he sums up in the ideal of 'sageliness within and kingliness without', and its background in an agricultural society. He then moves school by school: Confucius, Mozi, Yang Zhu, Mencius, the School of Names, Laozi and Zhuangzi, the later Mohists, the yin-yang school, Xunzi, Han Fei and the Legalists, Han Confucianism, Neo-Daoism, Chinese Buddhism and Chan, and the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. The final chapters look at China's encounter with Western thought and sketch Feng's own philosophy. Throughout, he treats philosophy as a way of raising the mind above everyday concerns rather than a source of factual knowledge.

It remains one of the most readable introductions to Chinese philosophy as a whole, written by a major philosopher who explains each school plainly and with a clear point of view.