"...one of those great men

whose eminence grows more obvious

with the lapse of years.

Like a mountain

obscured at first by its foothills,

he rises as he recedes."

For the philosophical community in the West as in America, no word of introduction is needed for our author: recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, such as "Man of the Year in Philosophy" (1967), "Award of Lifetime Achievement," etc. The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself is already a symbol: a symbol of genuineness, of dedication, of fulfillment. For the vast non-English readership, however, a few words about the author as I know him perhaps would not be out of place.

A great work is a dialogue with eternity. This small classic, I am sure, well qualifies as such a category, despite its deceptively lucid, simple, familiar, and compact style in presentation. Only one word can describe it: mellowness. As our competent overviewer, Professor Joseph S. Wu of California, has aptly and wittily put it, the present work of Dr. Hahn’s is not published for the sake of tenure or promotion, nor with a view to money or fame. It is a labor of love, with distilled wisdom of life mellowed into a work of art appearing in a book form. It reads more like a sweet grandpa telling some of his "funny" stories to his beloved grand children in the intellectual sense.

Some thirty years ago, when I just started my graduate studies in philosophy at SIUC, I attended one colloquium given by Professor Brand Blanshard of Yale University. I was struck with a humorous remark he occasionally dropped, though I cannot recall the context in detail: "The only right thing I have done all my life was by accident!" Now, I am inclined to agree, because it is precisely the case with me while serving as translator for the present work at hand.

It was purely by accident that I happened to serve as Coordinator for the First International Conference on Cultural Interflow between East and West, Macao, 1993. The author’s gracious acceptance of the invitation, in spite of his incredibly tight daily schedule as Editor of the Library of Living Philosophers, makes possible the "actual occasion" for the present work coming into being. I have only served my humble role as a translator making available his mellow thought to the younger generation of the Chinese-speaking world and, hopefully, of other cultures as well.

In less than thirty years he has succeeded in developing Carbondale from what was a small college town in the Mid-West into the Mecca of American philosophy. Particularly, as his phenomenal achievement and contribution, we may refer to the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives he helped install at SIUC which, among others, will remain a unique glory of American philosophy as the "documents and monuments" in the history of human thought.

For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for a human to accomplish so much, so well, and in so short a span of time--less than one century--in breadth and height, in depth and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the New Continent and the Old, William James was thus hailed as a great genius of international friendship in the intellectual sense; but we now find a greater such genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who has succeeded in bridging at least four Continents in East and West: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia (China, Japan, India, Korea, Singapore, etc.). To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries as well are as widely read and liberal-minded as he is, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers he helped continue since the passing of its founder Dr. Paul A. Schilpp. What type of man is Hahn? Our younger generation must wonder. Only a pluralist approach could help us unriddle such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In one word, "A full personality!"

As I remember, while working on my dissertation with him in the 70s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" thus he responded, laconically. Suddenly I realized: To quote The Analects, "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, you must have philosophy before you can appreciate philosophy. Many friends of my generation admire him so much: Dr. Te Chen of the Chinese University of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America"; the German-educated Dr. Cheng-Hua Huang in Taiwan said: "Many of the Confucian virtues that have been lost in China today are now rediscovered in the person of Dr. Hahn!" If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had missed our author.

As a paradigm of academic leadership, he is just irreplaceable--a tribute I have personally heard in the late 60s in Carbondale. As a superb administrator, it is not exaggerating to say that he can serve as the best Secretary of the State ever known in history for, definitely, he has more philosophical wisdom than all of his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he is no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than Cassirer[1], and, I should add, with loving stricture and rigor in discipline. He has exemplified the experientialistic ideal of unity of theory and practice, knowing and doing, action and thought; he has exemplified the Deweyan ideal of religiosity as naturalistic piety, with deep awareness of one’s intimate relationship with Nature; he is thus profoundly inspired by the cosmic feeling of fellowship in unity, the deep sense of cosmic identification and participation. He is a walking example of the Buddhist ideal of "karun~ and prajñ~ (compassion and wisdom) in interaction"; the Confucian ideal of "loving-consciousness and wisdom in mutual illumination"; the Tolstoyan ideal of "kindness before liking"; the Tagorean ideal of Sadhana as self-realization." In addition, he is a natural nobility, a silent fighter (against mediocrity, injustice, and lack of quality), and a true hero. As the American proverb goes, "The still water runs deep!" For all such rare qualities and virtues as he has possessed--all in the superlative degree--it is little wonder that quite a few scholars of my generation feel the same as I do: We are fortunate and proud to be contemporary with Lewis E. Hahn, as Plato said of Socrates, his fabulous and immortal mentor!

My experience with Dr. Hahn has strengthened my belief in Mahayana Buddhism: How can I deny that there must be an invisible hand of karma constantly at work in the creative advance of the Cosmos--in view of my own simple life experience? For illustration, I would like to suggest two sets of karmaic workings in the background as follows:

In the late 50s I was a junior student of English literature at the National Taiwan University, incidentally I took a course in Translation with Professor Beauson Tseng[2], who first aroused my interest in studying philosophy with Thomé H. Fang. In the mid-60s, as a graduate student at UCLA, I studied Ethics with Professor Donald Piatt, who was crucial in recommending me to study with Hahn at SIUC.

Hahn was well known to Dewey by the early 40s; Fang was taught by Dewey in the early 20s, though seldom noticed by the public. Yet Hahn was the first to perceive their affinity with unique insight, saying, "Reading Thomé Fang’s works, I am sure there must be some sorts of relationship between him and John Dewey."

After a few years, in 1973, Hahn’s bold hypothesis, through my careful verification, came to be fully confirmed in the words of Fang himself: "John Dewey was my first teacher at the Chingling University, in Nanking (from 1920-21); he taught me History of Western Philosophy: the Ancient Period." Thus, Dewey was his "initializer" in Western philosophy!

Ten years afterwards, in 1983, when working at the Chinese Culture University, Taipei, replacing Dr. John Wu , a great Bible translator (both of The Psalms and The New Testament), as Director for the Institute of Graduate Studies in Philosophy, one day I was urged by the University Press there to read for publication a parcel of translation manuscripts. I find, to my great surprise, it was John Dewey’s Lectures in China! No English original version was extant (or only some Outlines available). Now after the lapse of sixty years, thanks to the cooperative effort and dedication of Professor Ou Tsuin-chen in California and Professor Robert Klopton in Hawaii, more than thirty of the Dewey Lectures were restored to the English version, as a result of retranslation from the Chinese version collected from various sources--newspapers, journals, reviews, etc. I was so overwhelmed with the joy of discovery that on the one hand, of course, I strongly recommended it to the University Press for publication; on the other hand, I at once wrote Dr. Hahn of the wonderful news, air-mailing him a xerox copy of John Dewey Regained for permanent deposit with the Dewey Center in Carbondale, IL.

Moreover, most surprising of all perhaps is the interrelationship between Piatt, Fang and Hahn. A great disciple of George Herbert Mead, Piatt was a T. A. to Fang, hence his "big brother," at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the early 20s, and he taught Hahn at the University of Texas, Austin in the early 30s. Piatt never knew that I had been taught by Fang, nor did Fang know that I had been taught by Piatt. In less than a month after he had sent out his recommendation for me to Hahn, Piatt passed!

For all such riddles of life there is only one way to explain it: to rephrase Lovejoy, in terms of "the Great Chain of Becoming"; to quote Leibniz, in terms of "the pre-established harmony"; to follow the Buddha, "All are the workings of karma!" to echo the religiously minded, "I have a mission to fulfill." After all, I believe, my karma must be good; otherwise, my course of life must be different from the way it is.

For preparation of this work my sincere thanks, of course, go to various sources of assistance, e.g., my former students Mr. David Falgout, Kenneth Patridge, Mrs. Mary Mincy, and Mrs. Dianne Marshall of University of South Alabama, here in Mobile, AL., and especially to my wife, Dora, for her most conscientious, painstaking final proofreading throughout as well as her most dedicated and unswerving support all along.

For decades Dr. Hahn has remained to me a source of inspiration, especially in my humble effort at the founding of the Thomé H. Fang Institute and its Kumªrajiva Project (for translation) underway. The publication of this work in bilingual is the Institute’s first product of honor, as a token of gratitude and appreciation, for celebrating his Ninetieth Birthday Anniversary, to be followed soon by the publication of Comprehensive Harmony: International Journal for Comparative Philosophy and Culture as an antidote to an Age of Universal Conflicts, whose passing is long over-due, in honor of these two great philosophers and educators of China and America for their deep concerns and ennobling ideals of education and culture.

Suncrates

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Thomé H. Fang Institute

Mobile, Alabama, USA

September 26,1998

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