Moral metaphysics as philosophy of culture in Tu Weiming’s Boston Сonfucianism

Abstract

New Confucianism is a philosophical movement which seeks to combine Confucian tradition with Western philosophical thoughts. The idea appeared to some extent due to ideological motives. For instance, New Confucian Mou Zongsan formulated the concept of moral metaphysics, which was supposed to compete with Kantian transcendentalism. Moral metaphysics is further developed by Mou Zongsan’s follower Tu Weiming, who belongs to Boston school of New Confucianism. His moral metaphysics is essentially different from that of Mou Zongsan. It is based on the notion of “self-enlightenment” (cheng). It presents an idea that in some cases interpretation can serve as a research method and be more precise than analysis. The focus of investigation is not the way how something first emerged and developed, but how it was examined and interpreted afterwards. In other words, the key to understanding is the “second birth” of things which happens during the interpretation. But to interpret correctly, we should possess the full knowledge of “ourselves”. However, “oneself ” also turns out to be not a separate body subject to analysis, but an aggregation of interpretations offered by others. The drawn conclusion is that everything exists only when it has an opportunity to interpret oneself during interaction. And in this sense “self-enlightenment”, according to Tu Weiming, is a “certain form of metaphysics”. This article, however, suggests narrowing this conclusion to cultural existence. Unlike Mou Zongsan, Tu Weiming does not intend to prove that the Chinese philosophical thinking is better than the Western one. We can view his moral metaphysics as a certain type of philosophy of culture. It does not offer a precise analytical approach, but it does present a certain pattern of thought, which deals with embracing the form of one’s cultural existence.