[Editor’s Note:] The author was formerly Chairman and Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo, N. Y., Visiting Professor at University of Moscow, Soviet Russia; Member of the Royal Academy of Science, England; an acclaimed authority on Indian philosophy, especially the C~rvak~ School. In 1964 he earnestly invited Thomé Fang to teach as Visiting Professor at SUNY at Buffalo, but unfortunately Fang could not get one more year’s extended sabbatical leave from his home institute, the National Taiwan University. His reference to Fang as "my teacher…" is not to be taken in the literal sense.

*****

Professor Thomé Fang was my teacher at the University of Hawaii in 1964 and 1969. I had heard about him from my former colleague, Professor Rollo Handy who was Professor Fang’s chairman and co-professor at the University of South Dakota in 1959-60. 1 had first heard his name mentioned to me by Professor Chen Chung-hwan [Ludwig C. H. Chen] who was both a colleague and friend of Thomé Fang in Mainland China and Taipei and mine at Long Island University. Professor Chen, a friend of twenty-five years standing, recently wrote to me to tell me about some experiences he had had with Thomé Fang after I had requested him and Rollo Handy, now living in Massachusetts, to do so.

Thomé Fang was anxious to visit the Wild West, so during the Christmas Holiday at South Dakota, he and a Chinese friend drove West to the Badlands. He was warned that he might run into a snow storm. As luck would have it, he did, so that the two Chinese scholars were adrift in the great West when their automobile wouldn’t go any further in the snow storm. They fortunately saw a light in the distance which turned out to be in the house of a cowboy and his wife. They were taken in and put up for the night. We do not know to what transcendental heights their conversation may have risen as it continued to snow in the night. Nor do we know how they got their automobile moving again the next day.

Another story concerns Thomé Fang in a grandfatherly role with the infant son of Rollo and Toni Handy in Vermillion, South Dakota. Professor Fang demonstrated his mastery of jen with the young Jonathan Handy, now a corporation scientist. He brought the young boy wonderful gifts and played with him man to man. The little boy was so delighted by the ministrations of the Chinese grandfather who treated him with that secret rapport that exists between the very young and the generation beyond their parents. The boy chortled with glee when his mother said, "Professor Fang is coming to visit you."

Another story about Professor Fang concerns a time when a young bachelor philosopher and professor, [Ludwig] Chen Chung-hwan, lay sick in a dormitory in Chung-king. One night, at a critical time of Chen’s illness, Fang paced about and stayed outside the room until morning and the crisis was over. He continued to look after Chen until he recovered and, could that return to teaching philosophy at the university.[1]

In preparation for writing this paper which Professor Huang Chen-hua kindly asked me to present upon the suggestion and recommendation of My good friend Professor George Sun, I read again Fang’s, The Chinese View of Life: The Philosophy of Comprehensive Harmony, published in 1956, and consisting of 274 pages. Upon my reading it, Professor Handy sent me his copy of Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit and Its Development which Mrs. Fang so thoughtfully sent him when it appeared in 1981. It is a truly comprehensive work of 568 pages. I have studied it with keen interest.

Professor Fang’s last work in English seems to be a revision and addition to his previous work. Among other things, it leaves out an account of Motzu but includes much Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism. The terminology is also somewhat different. In the first volume Fang tends to express himself in somewhat Whiteheadian terms. In the second volume he places more emphasis upon existentialist terms as developed in Germany.

Otherwise, I can point out that the first volume is more ebullient and the second richer in contents and perhaps less settled in opinion which had deepened over the years. Concerning its English style, we already know from early opinions of his writing that his teachers believed that it was better than most writing done by college students who were the native English writers. His style is rich in vocabulary and imagery indicating Professor Fang’s poetic nature blossoming out beyond his analytic characteristics which themselves are keen and apposite.

But before I center upon Fang’s philosophy I wish to mention one more personal item. In 1967 my wife and two young daughters visited Taipei after returning from a year in India where I was finishing a book on recent Indian philosophy. We were invited to Professor Fang’s house, where, after he had chained his handsome Doberman Pincer watchdog, we were given refreshments while the girls admired the colorful bird in the bamboo cage. After that he took complete charge of us and showed us the sights of Taipei (the most attractive ones to be sure) for two days. We were astounded at his generosity of time and purse, receiving one of the most gracious treatments ever accorded us. The highlight of the sights for me was the great collection of Chinese art in the Palace Museum where we spent a number of hours admiring the paintings, bronzes and porcelain about which Professor Fang knew more than he believed that we could absorb. It was an experience that left us aglow for the remainder of our return to the United States.

Now let us turn to a brief discussion of Thomé Fang’s epitomization of Chinese Philosophy which at this time (1956) he called The Chinese Philosophy of Immanent Harmony.[2]

In his Chinese Philosophy of Life he takes great pains to show his deep appreciation of the obvious beauties of Chinese philosophy, the wonders of the universe, the silent beauty the of Taoism, the delights of the harmony of existence or as he says: "bathing reason in the befitting order of the cosmos so that beauty will enter into the context of consciousness."

Professor Fang’s delight in definition clearly shows his attachment to the pioneer work of the School of Names. That he shared with Fung Yu-Ian great appreciation for Hu Shih’s historical work on Chinese logic under the guidance of John Dewey is well known. His joy in the Li-ness [not lean-ness of things] may be clearly seen in his for principles and his subsequent pleasure in being able to state them. He says that the works of art that are characteristically Chinese are "an expression of exuberant vitality,...even those pertaining to Buddhist sculpture, fresco, and painting..." The works of Chinese artists show, he says, that they are "instinct with metaphysical impulse... [exuding] in their creative works, the integral impressions of cosmic rhythms of life."

And what is the greatest contribution of classical Chinese philosophy? It is, Fang says, "comforting, poetic, ingenious, insightful, hopeful, and inspiring."

Some influences of Western philosophy may be seen in his Chinese View of Life, especially in his use of the Whiteheadian categories of "creativity," "immanence," "ingression," and "process." The influence of Hegel is scarcely discernible or the Hegelian dialectic which one might have believed that Fang would have found some similarity to the extensive treatment of paradox, contradiction and negativity in Taoism and in Chanism and in Fa-tsang and Cheng-kuan. In them we discover the major conceptions of the interconnections of elements in relation to functions which are consummated into the Great Dharrna-dh~ tu which Hegel calls the Absolute Idea. As has been remarked, these two conceptions are by no means equivalent and in some respects not even close.

We reluctantly leave an analysis of the 1956 book an d turn now to Professor Fang’s Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit And Development. This is his magnum opus in English.

I read this exemplary work for the first time in June and July of this year with eagerness. Fang seemed to have moved somewhat away from the Whiteheadian metaphysical analysis to a more Heideggerian or innerly psychopathway. There was more in it of what he Germans have called Gnoseologische Tiefheit mit intuitiv Überschemmung or deep, immediate inundation of knowledge of spiritual truth. In this penultimate work, Fang discriminates among Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese Buddhism. it is enlightening to note how much stress he put on each: 48% on Confucianism; 31% on Buddhism and only 8% on Taoism.

You may smile at this interjection of gross quantification, but pray, be indulgent of one of the foibles of a North American. Since Buddhism was scarcely mentioned in the 1956 book, one can only wonder, without explanation from the author, what has happened to his outlook. Joseph Needham, interestingly enough in his multi-volumed work on Science and Civilization in China, has allotted 46% to Taoism, 26% to Confucianism and 9% to Buddhism in his account of the contribution of each philosophical outlook to the science and civilization of China. How can we account for the difference of 22% in the later Professor Fang’s emphasis? As fascinating as are the hypotheses to explain this I will suggest only one: That Professor Fang in his later years concentrated more on the inward life and upon the aesthetic considerations than he had earlier. Buddhism made great inroads on the artistic and literary life of China alter it had received impetus from similarities with Taoism during the early period. Some there were who believed that Buddhism was not so different from Neo-Taoism and others said that there was not much to Buddhism at all.

Let us now turn to a brief analysis of Fang’s main structure. First, he discusses the importance of Primordial Confucianism. Later on Neo-Confucianism is addressed--near the conclusion of his work. Early Confucianism has two main phases according to Fang. The first is the phase of mystical religion which includes the discussion of spirits and deities. The second phase is the revolt against the "positivity of religion" and the development of a rational awareness of human greatness. Human development moves from acting without conscious aim to the world of "acting reciprocally in communion in moral decency and sympathetic appreciation." Confucianism’s message, put simply, is "Don’t quarrel with the world but develop a constructive philosophy of comprehensive harmony."

When we turn now to Taoism we find man living in a visionary dream-world. It is poetical rather than knowledge-accumulating, says Fang. There is a prolixity of metaphor and a dearth of really real reality to use his underlining phrase. Compared to misunderstanding Confucian-ism, Taoism opens itself to "Taoisoism." Chuangtzu, for example, has attracted at least 170 commentaries diversified into four schools. Professor Fang is not anxious to become a combatant in this fray.

Taoist emancipation comprises three principles: (1) the principle of individuality requires each individual to "accept his own uniqueness as authentic." (2) but the individual must reach beyond his domination by external forces and discover self-sufficiency. (3) As a third principle man can achieve transcendence [not meant to be outside Nature] through with spontaneous freedom in conformity with Nature which results in a special kind of levelling in which there is equality in inequality. The paradoxical statements of Taoism are the result not of a desire for mystery but because the conceptions themselves are both what they seem to be on the face of it and yet are not what they seem to be. In this way they are some what like the Oracle of Delphi. The master of the paradoxical vision of nature in ancient Greece was Heraclitus whose most ingenious follower was Hegel. Fang is perfectly wel aware of the work of Hegel having written a two-volume work on it. Also he is amply informed about the dialectic of Taoism and Buddhism. He knows that the spiritual equality in the Taoism of Chuangtzu consists finally in a congruity of temporality and eternity, value and disvalue, validity and invalidity, action and non-action, being and non-being, life and death and so forth. The Great Tao prevails over all and in all.

Buddhism crept into China by expressing similarities to Taoism just as Christianity crept into the Roman Empire through pagan myth and ritual residues. Whereas the Taoists turned everything relative and limited into nothing and Confucianism turned everything potential into the infinitely actual by the creativity of creation, says Fang, Buddhism through prophetic poetizing drew human interest to the transcendental world beyond space and time or matter and nature. Fang calls the Taoist the space man; the Confucian the time man; and the Buddhist the space-time man with an alternative, he says, of forgetting. The Neo-Confucian is a concurrent synoptic space-time man. So far I have decided that I am not too clever in interpreting these gnostic descriptions. They are here mentioned as suggestive without revealing precisely what they suggest.

When all is said and done, the world is to be transmuted or transfigured to an aesthetic realm for the Taoist; to a moral realm for the Confucian; and to a religious or spiritual realm for the Buddhist.

The secret of Buddhism in China, says Professor Fang, is that "It accords beautifully with the spirit of Chinese philosophy as a whole." It does so because "the truth of Buddhism, according to Chinese tradition, is the inmost spiritual achievement of personality." Chinese Buddhism is of course different from Indian Buddhism since it is in China meta-philosophy, metalinguistics and metalogical. I have here a question. If in China Buddhism is meta-everything philosophical, how does it accord so well with the spirit of Chinese philosophy? One answer must be that, given its meta-relationship, it does not contradict anything in Chinese philosophy. And if that is true, it may well fail to contradict anything any philosophy, East or West because it makes no substantive assertions. Chinese Buddhism, then, could be considered essentially empty in philosophy although contributing to art, and scientific thought through such notions as the infinity of space, the plurality of worlds, virtual infinity of time, the assessment of the nature of fossils, assessing biological change such as found in embryology and finally, in the expansion of dialectical logic--as found in the Madhyamikas or the San Lun or Khung Tsung school of China and Japan. [Here see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Cambridge, 1956, 11, 419-425.] If we take seriously the list of contributions of Buddhism recognized by Needham we shall be forced to conclude that Buddhist contribution to Chinese philosophy was not superficial but actually significant. This despite*** the assurance from Ch’en Shun and others that the Buddhists irrationally demote the body, that there is no such thing as the wheel of existence, that impermanence implies unreality, say the Buddhists who are simply in error, that Buddhists believe in such absolute nonsense as karma, that Buddhists mistake hsing (human nature) for ch’i (things, matter, enter), that they project mentality or spirit to fill the whole world, that they are really too lazy to discuss cosmogony and merely relegate what they don’t want to study to the unknowable and so forth It is of course scandalous to the Confucians that the Buddhists show scorn for knowledge and spend their energy on getting release or that m~ y~ can be taken as a serious doctrine portraying the world as illusion. Indeed Hu Yin (1093-1151) waxed metaphorical when he said that ice and glowing coals would mix better than Confucianism and Buddhism. And with reference to so-called emptiness as being the of highest category, Hu claimed that "ten thousand Buddhas... would not be able to destroy the world, to arrest its movements or to bring it to nothingness." The ancients, he said, taught men to rightly order their minds, but not to concentrate on the existence of the world as if it were a delusion.

As Professor Fang moves to complete his study, he turns now to Neo-Confucianism whereupon he deplores "that the Neo-Confucians not infrequently quarreled among themselves." In a larger sense, he seemed to be complaining about a primary condition of the real world of scholars. He was asking: why isn’t the world a nicer place in which to live?

It seems to me that one of the major, ineluctable messages of Chinese philosophy before Buddhism is that the world is what it is and should be accepted as it is. Chinese philosophy does not ask: What would the world have to be like before we could accept it? If not, then Chinese philosophy is as utopian as most Indian philosophy has seemed to be (P. 225). The larger generalization might well be that all philosophy, whether Greek, Chinese, Indian or modern European has a rather large utopian component. Professor Fang happens to belong, by temperament, by character, by achievement: to use the categories of Hsün-tzu, one of the Chinese philosophers with a rather large utopian component.

Yet, perhaps we can still say, that despite many differences here and there and disagreement of both attitude and belief that has gone on since the beginning of philosophy, Chinese philosophy is really quite unified. The great harmony sought by so many is never quite realized in reality or in actuality. It is ultimately found only in the mind. Taoism and Confucianism merge essentially in their belief in the unification of the cosmos as a whole. Fang says that it is a regulating principle (Li) for each of them. Confucius is said to have respected Laotzu; Mencius did not complain about Chuangtzu. Hsüntzu criticized Mencius but not the Taoists because Mencius claimed that men are by nature good. Li and Yi come from practice not from original nature according to Hsülntzu. The virtue of Taoism is in its detachment, says Fang. Diderot, the great French philosopher of the eighteenth century said that what makes the great actor is detachment. The Neo Confucianist, says Fang, can learn from this detachment. Most Neo Confucianists tend to be moral puritans. What this may mean leads me to look up what George Santayana, a philosopher of North America via Spain said about puritanism since he wrote a novel entitled The Last Puritan (1936). I mention him also because he is quoted by Professor Fang. It is unfortunate that Santayana, who had much in common with Chinese philosophy, was induced by circumstances to read mostly Indian philosophy without examining what the Far East had to offer. Santayana has rendered a philosophy that is both poetic (he published two volumes of poetry) and metaphysically and morally detached. He is far from a fanatic or zealot. The puritan virtues, says Santayana, are "integrity courage, scorn of pleasure, material resourcefulness and a seemingly malicious alliance with the unseen" (Last Puritain, p. 225). By the alliance with the unseen in Neo-Confucianism one could refer to the transcendental or the Great Ultimate. Santayana and Fang seem to see eye to eye on the contribution which religion makes to knowledge.

In Professor Fang’s account of Neo-Confucianism he emphasizes its syncretic nature along with three other traits. The root Greek meaning of syncretic is krat© o (kratéo) which means rule, to possess, to prevail, to digest, to assimilate. For Chinese usage I prefer to pick digest as a happy translation. It is a digestion of earlier Confucianism. Neo-Confu-cianism digests (after it assembles) Confucian, Mencian, Hsüntzian as well as naturalistic Taoist and Taoistic Buddhistic elements into a wonderful shark’s fin-bird’s nest-lotus soup. I apologize to all chefs and cooks if this concoction offends sensitive taste. Despite all these elements, and the biocentrism and organicism prevails without much Western mechanical materialism and not much Indian spiritualism thrown in. Hence it does not become entrapped by the heavily "theoretic systems of Indian" sweets, according to Fang. Above all, the glorious digestive system is all-pervasive Reason, says Fang, which may be speculative about the transcendental world, natural and immanent with respect to the natural world and cognitive with respect to the mind-as-encompassing-the-universe and finally, with respect to the important moral component it is kept from too much abstractness or sauces that kill-the refined taste.

Having got up to the eighteenth century in Chinese philosophy, Professor Fang does not assess the last two centuries during the greatest period of Westernization which had begun several centuries earlier. During this unanalyzed epoch of nearly two hundred years has come expansion of learning, colonialism, staggering change, the decline of the West, dying colonialism, neocolonialism, and new views in social and physical science. We do have, however his assessment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during which period Neo-Confucianism encompassed great philological scholarship, but at the same time, he says, declined in wisdom. With reference to politics, the science of society, Fang seems to approve a kind of aristocratic and literati controls in a political democracy with seemingly reluctant willingness for some scientific progress but with continued receptivity to religion. It is unclear as to his views of economic democracy since he does not attack this question directly.

Professor Fang’s apparent approval of Buddhistic conceptions of Universal Mind indicates an idealistic, trend to his thought while it seems to downgrade the materialist, and by implication, the naturalistic view of the universe.

How do these assessments harmonize with Fang's acceptance of integrative harmonizing organicism as being the essence of Chinese philosophy in his earlier book of 1956? What he says there is that we wish to avoid bifurcation, the "hard dualism" that puts events and persons in isolated systems. We wish, he says in his second volume, also "to avoid squeezing the dynamical nature of Man and Cosmos into closed systems of stagnancy and impoverishment." Fang ultimately praises the intuition of Wang Yang-ming whose Principle of Immanent Ideality avoids the mistake of Lu Hsiang Shan’s Principle of Transcendental Ideality. The weakness of that principle is that it does not allow for what Fang calls "the ugly conventional world." It is fair to raise the question concerning this judgment: Is the conventional everyday world merely "ugly?" Is it only the immanent world of ideality which is beautiful?

Has the ugliness of the twentieth century overpowered Professor Fang’s sense of history? Is our epoch worse than the other "ugly periods?" How shall we consider this if there is truth to the often-made characterization of Chinese philosophy as primarily concerned with ethics and society? Perhaps Fang meant to paraphrase Confucius in the following way: Not yet understanding the eighteenth century how can we talk of the twentieth?