December 2017
·
96 Reads
Following Marcel Granet and Joseph Needham’s explanation of the Chinese way of thinking, some Western scholars in the field of Chinese philosophy, including A. C. Graham, David Hall, and Roger Ames, regard the mode of thinking in some major ancient Chinese thinkers’ thought as nonanalytic, correlative, or mystic, which is essentially different from or incommensurable to an analytic, causal, or rational mode of thinking in the Western philosophical tradition. Similarly, some Asian scholars, such as D. T. Suzuki () and Zongsan Mou () think that the Buddhist nonanalytical wisdom (prajñā, ) in Zen (Chan, ) Buddhism and the way (dao, ) in ancient Daoism cannot be understood or interpreted with analytical language. They also claim that there is an essential difference between the way of thinking in Zen Buddhism or ancient Daoism, on the one side, and that in the Western philosophical tradition, on the other.