Feng Qi

Feng Qi the twentieth-century Chinese philosopher (1915-1995) whose work developed a distinctive theory of wisdom and of the dialectical relation between the knowing subject and the world, and who is regarded as one of the most original Chinese philosophers of the later twentieth century. He combined a rigorous study of logic and epistemology with a broad humanistic concern.

Early Life and Education

Feng Qi was born in 1915 in Zhuji, Zhejiang province. He grew up in a period of national crisis and intellectual ferment, and he entered university at a time when Western philosophy, Marxism and traditional Chinese thought were all contending for the allegiance of students. His early formation combined a classical sensibility with an appetite for modern science and philosophy.

In the 1930s he joined the national resistance to the Japanese invasion, and his youthful years were marked by political commitment and by the hardships of wartime. These experiences gave his later philosophy a practical and social orientation, and a concern with the conditions under which human beings can achieve freedom and understanding.

After the war he took up academic work and eventually became a professor of philosophy at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He devoted himself to a systematic study of the history of philosophy and to the construction of his own theory, working quietly through decades of political change.

The Theory of Wisdom

Feng Qi's central philosophical project was a theory of wisdom, presented in his major works on the subject. He distinguished between knowledge, which is concerned with the understanding and control of the world, and wisdom, which is concerned with the meaning and value of human existence and with the cultivation of the person. Philosophy, he argued, must not lose sight of the second in its pursuit of the first.

He held that wisdom is not a body of information but a capacity developed through the whole of human practice, involving cognition, evaluation and aesthetic sensibility together. He described the human being as a unity of reason, emotion and will, and he argued that the cultivation of wisdom requires the integrated development of all three rather than the cultivation of intellect alone.

His account of wisdom drew upon the Chinese tradition, especially the Confucian concern with self-cultivation, while incorporating the analytical and critical resources of Western philosophy. He sought to show how the pursuit of wisdom could be made rigorous without being reduced to mere technique.

Dialectics and the Theory of Knowledge

A second major strand of Feng Qi's work concerned the theory of knowledge and the dialectic. He developed a sophisticated account of the relation between the subject and the object of knowledge, rejecting both the view that knowledge is a passive copying of an independent world and the view that it is the free construction of the mind. Knowledge, he argued, arises from the interaction of the two within human practice.

He was particularly concerned with the concept of understanding and with the way in which the categories of thought develop historically. He saw the growth of knowledge as a dialectical process in which earlier stages are not simply discarded but subsumed and transformed, and he drew on both the Hegelian and the Chinese traditions in formulating this view.

He wrote extensively on the history of Chinese and Western philosophy, and his historical studies were integral to his systematic aims. He believed that philosophy advances through the critical appropriation of its own past, and his readings of the tradition were guided by the problems he wished to solve.

Major Works and Academic Career

Feng Qi's most influential works include his studies on the theory of wisdom and on the logic of the development of thought, in which he elaborated his systematic position across several volumes. These writings established him as a leading figure in Chinese philosophy and attracted students who continued his concerns.

He was a dedicated teacher and a careful scholar, known for the clarity of his exposition and for the breadth of his reading. He trained a number of philosophers who carried his ideas into the study of epistemology, ethics and the history of philosophy, and his influence was felt throughout the Chinese philosophical community.

He remained intellectually active into his final years, continuing to write and revise his works. He died in 1995 in Shanghai, leaving behind a body of work that his students and admirers continued to develop and to interpret.

Influence and Legacy

Feng Qi is valued for having brought together the analytical, the dialectical and the humanistic strands of philosophy in a single coherent program. His theory of wisdom offered a way to think about the aims of philosophy that resisted both the narrowness of technicism and the vagueness of mere edification, and it addressed problems that remained live in Chinese intellectual life.

His work on the theory of knowledge contributed to the renewal of epistemology in China and helped to establish a dialogue between Chinese philosophy and the traditions of German idealism and modern analytical thought. His students extended his approach to ethics, aesthetics and the philosophy of culture.

He is remembered as a philosopher of integration and balance, one who insisted that the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of wisdom belong together. In the landscape of later twentieth-century Chinese philosophy, his name stands for clarity, depth and a humane conception of reason.

See also

• Epistemology
• Dialectic
• Chinese philosophy
• East China Normal University