On The Writing Features Of Lao Siguang’s A New History Of Chinese Philosophy

Lao Siguang wrote A New History of Chinese Philosophy after his reflections on the histories of Chinese philosophy written by Hu Shi,Feng You-lan as well as new Confucians in Taiwan and Hongkong.This paper studies the writing and compiling features of Lao’s A New History of Chinese Philosophy,figures out the scope of his research of Chinese philosophy by examining his historical view of philosophy and methodology of historical research,aspiring to bring some inspiration to the writing of history of Chinese philosophy and the development of history itself.Lao perceives Chinese philosophy as “orientative philosophy” and explores appropriate writing methods for history of Chinese philosophy by putting forwards his unique “research method of basic source issues”.By means of this method,Lao distinguishes the production process of theories from the contents starting from analyzing the “occurrence process” and “connotations” of theories in Chinese philosophy,probes into the “open factors” and “closing factors” in the development of Chinese philosophy and puts forward the “theoretical standards” for the research of Chinese philosophy,attempting to establish a philosophical concept with general openness,which can cover various specific theories that have appeared and may appear in future in philosophical history and provide a foundation for mutual dialogues.Lao has his unique understanding of the features of Chinese philosophy,which makes me develop his own school in the research of Chinese philosophy.His writing of Chinese philosophy is apparently influenced by his view of philosophy.Therefore,the paper adopts the “background research method” to elaborate the Lao’s original intention,reasons and purpose of his writing of A New History of Chinese Philosophy,in order to interpret his masterpiece from a macroscopic perspective and in a comprehensive way.In the writing of the paper,“comprehensive analysis policy” and“case analysis approach” are applied to draw a comprehensive conclusion of the“research method of basic source issues” on the one hand,and to discuss pros and cons of the usage of this method in the writing of history of Chinese philosophy on the other.At last,the paper also attempts to make an overall evaluation of the values and defects of A New History of Chinese Philosophy after reviewing Lao’s doctrine of“three phases” of history of Chinese philosophy and his doctrine of “one system” of the Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties.While writing A New History of Chinese Philosophy,Lao had strong consciousness of theories and methods.Previous studies of Lao’s research of philosophy history either stressed the research history of Chinese philosophy,analyzed the content of his philosophy history,highlighted his comments on some philosophers or certain schools of thought in China,compared him with other authors of history of Chinese philosophy,or discussed the advantages and disadvantages of his writing of history of Chinese philosophy.However,according to the author of this paper,Lao thinks the writing of history of Chinese philosophy as a starting point and multiple placements—the starting point of preparing to study Chinese philosophy as well as multiple placements of methods in the writing of history of Chinese philosophy in the future.Only by examining comprehensively,analyzing in an allround way and observing from the exterior to the interior,can we truly understand the writing features of Lao’s A New History of Chinese Philosophy.