Dialogue has a number of meanings according to the level at which it is understood. Rhetorically, it could be taken to mean simply two people speaking at the same time, as is had, at times, in an operatic duet in which each is expressing a train of thought unrelated or even contradictory to the other. Too often human expression can degenerate to this external level, but generally some positive interchange and agreement is being sought.

Taken metaphysically, however, dialogue is a characteristically human form of being in which to be is to exist consciously, to express this in action or especially in word, and to do so in a way that enables one’s being to ‘be with" (mitsein) the other. Dialogue, then, is not mere flatus voices, but a characteristic of being human, namely, to be as being in mutuality with others.

In this conference on "Dialogue between Christian Philosophy and Chinese Culture," the term dialogue is certainly to be taken in this latter manner. For our concern is how Christianity and Chinese culture can cooperate at a philosophical level in their creative advance through the third millennium. To examine this advance, the paper will look first in principle into the possibility and modality of the transformation of cultures through interaction with each other. Secondly, it will look more concretely, for one or more particular points on which a dialogue of Chinese culture and Christian philosophy can be creative.

This interaction must be bidirectional. Thus far, the issue has generally been taken, perhaps especially in China, as an issue of the impact of the West on China—the classical issue of the modernization of China. This issue reflected both the hubris of the modern West and the needs of the Chinese people for economic, political, and military progress. In this third millennium, as we proceed beyond modernity, however, the issue is increasingly that of how the modern mind can be saved from its own destructive rationalist limitations by the addition of new dimensions of cultural sensitivity. This enables a much deeper and more balanced approach.

Here we shall look only at the relation of Christian philosophy to the present transformation of China, hoping and expecting that this impact will be mutual.

In order to look for an interchange of Chinese and Christian cultures in the third millennium, it is necessary first, to investigate the nature of cultures as dynamic and open, second, to project a hermeneutic of dialogue for mutual appreciation, and third, to look for the points of potential positive contribution between Chinese culture and Christian philosophy.

It is unfortunate that cultures have come to be seen more as inert and incommensurable, than as essentially dynamic and interactive. This is characteristic of the modern mind since Descartes and its search for knowledge that is sufficiently clear to be distinguished from all else. This trend tends natively to be analytic, to reduce all to their minimal components; thus, the synthetic and synthesizing character of reality, whereby the parts coalesce into larger organic and interactive unities, has tended to be missed.

For this reason, it can be useful to review the genesis of cultures in terms of the project of being against nonbeing, lived at the human level in terms that generate the values and virtues which guide the exercise of freedom, and which coalesce to form a culture as a distinctive way of cultivating the human person that is passed on as tradition.

Values and Virtues. The drama of free self-determination, and hence, of the development of persons and of civil society, is in human form the fundamental matter of being as affirmation in definitive stance against nonbeing. It was first articulated by Parmenides, the very first metaphysician, identically, this is the relation to the good in search of which we live, survive, and thrive. The good is manifest in experience as the object of desire, namely, as that which is sought when absent. Basically, it is what completes life or the "per-fect," understood in its etymological sense as that which is completed or realized through and through. Hence, once achieved, it is no longer desired or sought, but enjoyed. This is reflected in the manner in which each thing, even a stone, retains the being or reality it has and resists reduction to nonbeing or nothing. The most that we can do is to change or transform it into something else; we cannot annihilate it. Similarly, a plant or tree, given the right conditions, grows to full stature and fruition. Finally, an animal protects its life—fiercely, if necessary—and seeks out the food needed for its strength. Food, in turn, as capable of contributing to an animal’s realization or perfection, is for the animal an auxiliary good or means. In this manner, things as good, that is, as actually realizing some degree of perfection and able to contribute to the well-being of others, are the bases for an interlocking set of relations.

The moral good is a more narrow field, for it concerns only one’s free and responsible actions. This has the objective reality of the ontological good noted above, for it concerns real actions that stand in distinctive relation to our own perfection and to that of others—and, indeed, to the physical universe and to God as well. Hence, many possible patterns of actions could be objectively right because they promote the good of those involved, while others, precisely as inconsistent with the real good of persons or things, are objectively disordered or misordered. This pattern constitutes the objective basis for the ethical good or bad.

Because the realm of objective relations is almost numberless, whereas our actions are single, it is necessary not only to choose in general between the good and the bad, but in each case to choose which of the often innumerable possibilities one will render concrete.

When this is exercised or lived, patterns of action develop that are habitual in the sense of being repeated. These are the modes of activity with which we are familiar in their exercise, along with the coordinated natural dynamisms they require; and with practice, come facility and spontaneity. Such patterns constitute the basic, continuing, and pervasive shaping influence of our life. For this reason, they have been considered classically to be the basic indicators of what our life as a whole will add up to, or, as is often said, "amount to." Since Socrates, the technical term for these especially developed capabilities has been "virtues" or special strengths.

This constitutes the basic topology of a culture; the prime pattern and gradation of values and virtues which persons experience from their earliest years and in terms of which they interpret their developing relations. Young persons peer out at the world through lenses formed, as it were, by their family and culture and configured according to the pattern of choices made by that community throughout its history—often in its most trying circumstances. Also, like a pair of glasses, it does not create the object; but it focuses attention upon certain goods involved rather than upon others. This becomes the basic orienting factor for the affective and emotional life described by the Scotts, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith as the heart of civil society. In time, it encourages and reinforces certain patterns of action which, in turn, reinforce the pattern of values.

Cultural Traditions. The development of values and virtues and their integration as a culture of any depth or richness takes time, and hence, depends upon the experience and creativity of many generations. The culture or tradita that is handed on comes to be called a cultural tradition; as such it reflects the cumulative achievement of a people in discovering, mirroring, and transmitting the deepest meanings of life. This is tradition in its synchronic sense as a body of wisdom.

This sense of tradition is very vivid in premodern and village communities. It would appear to be much less so in modern urban centers, undoubtedly in part, due to the difficulty in forming active community life in large urban centers. However, the cumulative process of transmitting, adjusting and applying the values of a culture through time is not only heritage or what is received, but new creation passed on in new ways. Attending to tradition, taken in this active sense, allows us not only to uncover the permanent and universal truths that Socrates sought, but to perceive the importance of the values we receive from the tradition and to mobilize our own life project actively toward the future.

Because tradition sometimes has been interpreted as a threat to the personal and social freedom essential to a democracy, it is important to see how the cultural tradition is generated by the free and responsible life of the members of a concerned community or civil society that enables succeeding generations to realize their life with freedom and creativity.

Similarly, through the various steps of one’s development, as one’s circle of community expands through neighborhood, school, work, and recreation, one comes to learn and to share personally and passionately an interpretation of reality and a pattern of value responses. The phenomenologist sees this life in the varied civil society as the new source for wisdom. Hence, rather than turning away from daily life in order to contemplate abstract and disembodied ideas, the place to discover meaning is in life as lived in the family and in the progressively wider social circles into which one enters.

If it were merely a matter of community, however, all might be limited to the present, with no place for tradition as that "passed on" from one generation to the next. In fact, the process of trial and error, of continual correction and addition in relation to a people’s evolving sense of human dignity and purpose, constitutes a type of learning and testing laboratory for successive generations. In this laboratory of history, the strengths of various insights and behavior patterns can be identified and reinforced, while deficiencies are progressively corrected or eliminated. Horizontally, we learn from experience what promotes and what destroys life and, accordingly, make pragmatic adjustments.

But even this language remains too abstract, too limited to method or technique, too unidimensional. While tradition can be described in general and at a distance in terms of feed-back mechanisms and might seem merely to concern how to cope in daily life, what is being spoken about are free acts that are expressive of passionate human commitment and personal sacrifice in responding to concrete danger, building and rebuilding family alliances and constructing and defending one’s nation. Moreover, this wisdom is not a matter of mere tactical adjustments to temporary concerns; it concerns ,rather, the meaning we are able to envision for life and that we desire to achieve through all such adjustments over a period of generations, that is, what is truly worth striving for and the pattern of social interaction in which this can be lived richly. The result of this extended process of learning and commitment constitutes our awareness of the bases for the decisions of which history is constituted.

The impact of the convergence of cumulative experience and reflection is heightened by its gradual elaboration in ritual and music, and its imaginative configuration in such great epics as the Mahabharata and in dance. All conspire to constitute a culture which, like a giant telecommunications dish, shapes, intensifies, and extends the range and penetration of our personal sensitivity, free decision and mutual concern.

Tradition, then, is not, as in history, simply everything that ever happened, whether good or bad. It is rather what appears significant for human life: It is what has been seen through time and human experience to be deeply true and necessary for human life. It contains the values to which our forebearers first freely gave their passionate commitment in specific historical circumstances and then constantly reviewed, rectified, and progressively passed on generation after generation. The content of a tradition, expressed in works of literature and all the many facets of a culture emerges progressively as something upon which character and community can be built. It constitutes a rich source from which multiple themes can be drawn, provided it is accepted and embraced, affirmed and cultivated.

Ultimately, it bears to us the divine gifts of life, meaning, and love and provides a way back to their origin and forward to their goal, their Alpha and Omega.

From this it can be seen that a culture or cultural tradition is not static but a developmental reality. It is:

- living, indeed it is essentially a way of life;

- ongoing, as it faces the new exchanges that continually emerge in the life of a people;

- influenced by the surrounding circumstances; and

- continually enriched as people achieve new cognitive levels and society organizes itself in new manners.

As incremental and organic, this process is essentially developmental. Each challenge must be understood synthetically as emerging within the whole and as needing to be responded to by the whole in and according to its overall awareness and sensibility.

Whereas in the past with a lower level of interaction, the challenges were especially local or from within and were handled in terms of one’s own culture. In the new situation of continuing global interaction, one is continually challenged at all levels: economic, political, and cultural and, moreover, by different cultures so that each culture is challenged to be transformed in all of these ways or at all of these levels. Such development fortunately is not a destructive force, but is creative in keeping with the nature of cultural traditions as passing through time. But how this is so requires hermeneutic insight into the relations between cultures and between any one culture and the emerging whole or global culture. Thus, this challenge and response between different cultures carries our issue of dialogue a step further into the realm of hermeneutics in order to understand how a cultural tradition can evolve through relations with others.

If we take time and culture seriously, then we must recognize that we are situated in a particular culture and at a particular time. All that can be seen from this vantage point constitutes one’s horizon. This would be lifeless and dead, determined rather than free, if our vantage point were fixed by its circumstances and closed. Hence, we need to meet other minds and hearts not simply to add information incrementally, but to be challenged in our basic assumptions and enabled thereby to delve more deeply into our tradition and draw forth deeper and more pervasive truth. How can this be done?

The experience of reading a text might be suggestive. As we read we construe the meaning of a sentence before grasping all its individual parts. What we construe is dependent upon our expectation of the meaning of the sentence, which we derived from its first words, the prior context, or, more likely, from a combination of the two. In turn, our expectation or construal of the meaning of the text is adjusted according to the requirements of its various parts as we proceed to read through the parts of the sentence, the paragraph, etc., continually reassessing the whole in terms of the parts and the parts in terms of the whole. This basically circular movement continues until all appears to be fit and clear.

Similarly, with regard to our cultural tradition and values, we develop a prior conception of its content. This anticipation of meaning is not simply of the tradition as an objective past or fixed content to which we come; it is rather what we produce as we participate in the evolution of the tradition and, thereby, further determine ourselves. This is a creative stance reflecting the content, not only of the past, but also of the time in which we stand and of the life project in which we are engaged. It is a creative unveiling of the content of the tradition as this comes progressively and historically into the present and, through the present, passes into the future.

For this, we must maintain a questioning attitude. Rather than simply following through with our previous ideas until a change is forced upon us, we must remain sensitive to new meanings in true openness. This is neither neutrality as regards the meaning of the tradition, nor an extinction of passionate concerns regarding action towards the future. Rather, being aware of our own biases or prejudices and adjusting them in dialogue with others implies rejecting what impedes our understanding of others or traditions. Our attitude in approaching dialogue must be one of willingness continually to revise our initial projection or expectation of meaning.

The logical structure of this process is the exchange of question and answer. A question is required in order to determine just what issue we are engaging—whether it is this issue or that—so that we might give direction to our attention. Without this, no meaningful answer can be given or received. As a question, however, it requires that the answer not be settled or determined. In sum, progress or discovery requires an openness that is not simple indeterminacy, but a question which gives specific direction to our attention and enables us to consider significant evidence.

In this engagement, there appears the important value of intercultural dialogue. Rather than being merely an external act of mutual acknowledgement, in view of what has been said above it, it is a true requisite if the cultures are open and developed. As culture is the basic configuration of the corporate consciousness of a people, interchange between cultures is important in order that this relation of cultures to their infinite source and goal remain open and be renewed. Indeed, this would seem to be more important the more education, especially in its modern rationalist context, advances. The more a tradition is rationalized or philosophized, the more it is made stable and fixed, and the greater the danger of its becoming closed in upon itself and inadequate for its task of reflecting the infinite and transcendent.

In this, one’s personal attitudes and interests remain important. If our interest in developing new horizons is simply the promotion of our own understanding, then we could be interested solely in achieving knowledge, and thereby in domination over others. This would lock one into an absoluteness of one’s prejudices; being fixed or closed in the past, they would disallow new life in the present. In this manner, powerful new insights can become, with time, deadening pre-judgments that suppress freedom. This would seem to be the supposition of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. Unfortunately, he sees all identities as essentially self-centered and conflictual.

This suggests that openness does not consist in surveying others objectively, obeying them in a slavish and unquestioning manner or simply juxtaposing their ideas and traditions to our own. Rather, it is directed primarily to ourselves, for our ability to listen to others is correlatively our ability to assimilate the implications of their answers for delving more deeply into the meaning of our own traditions and drawing out new and ever richer insights. In other words, it is an acknowledgement that our cultural heritage has something new to say to us.

This takes us beyond the rigid rationalism of the civil society of the later Enlightenment and the too fluid moral sentiment of the earlier Enlightenment. It enables us to respond to the emerging sense of the identity of peoples and to protect and promote this in a civil society marked by solidarity and subsidiarity.

In this as a social work, one guiding principle is to maintain a harmony or social equilibrium through time. In addition, the notion of application allows the tradition to provide resources and guidance in facing new issues and in developing new responses to changing times. With rising numbers and expectations, economic development becomes an urgent need. But its very success could turn into defeat if this is not oriented and applied with a pervasive but subtle and adaptive human governance sensitive to all forms of human comity. This is required in order to orient all smoothly to the social good in which the goal of civil society consists.

This process will require new advances in science and economics, in education and psychology, in the humanities and social services, that is, across the full range of social life. All these dimensions, and many more, must spring to new life, but in a basic convergence and harmony. The values and virtues emerging from a tradition applied in freedom can provide needed guidance along new and ever evolving paths. In this way, cooperation between cultures can be a key to social progress.

Professor Tang Yijie applies these in the context of Chinese culture. He questions how Buddhism from India could be absorbed into the culture of China.

His response is twofold. His first step relates:

As was noted above, the change relates to the needs of the culture. What Tang adds here is that the potential development of a culture is specific to its nature. Thus, the answer of a culture to its challenges is specified to one or another possibility.

Moreover, this is bidirectional. To the degree that the advenient culture can adapt to the potentialities of the resident culture, its influence and contribution can be greater. Conversely, Tang Jijie goes further to note, this influence can be so great that the advenient culture can become an integral part of the recipient.

This suggests then that we need to look to the specific potentialities of Chinese culture and to the way in which Christian philosophy responds.

With this we have the elements of a theory for considering the relation of Christian to Confucian culture. First, as a cultural tradition, Confucian thought is essentially a developmental process and, therefore, not static and closed, but dynamic and open to the challenges of each age. Secondly, like all cultures today Confucian culture is being challenged by the new global character of life in our times, in its economy, politics, and, more profoundly, in its culture as a whole. Thirdly as having a specific configuration, indeed as being the specific humane configuration of life, Confucian culture has specific potentials for evolution. Thus, while the challenge of globalization is the abilities of Chinese cultures to respond are specific they can be enabled and actualized by specific insights. In this case, the question becomes precisely the degree to which the contents of a Christian philosophy respond to the needs and potentialities of the Chinese culture under the pressure of globalization. In brief, in the present circumstances to what degree can Christian philosophy act catalytically upon Chinese culture to evoke and unfold needed new meaning?

Professor Tang Yijie would hold that in the case of Buddhism, it brought new elements without which they could not so correspond to the specific needs and potential of Chinese culture at the time that Buddhism itself became part of Chinese culture. In this light, we might ask in what specific ways in the present situation Chinese culture is challenged, its proper potentials for development and, in this light, assess the significance of Christian philosophy for contributing to the development of Chinese culture in our day.

To the general question of the relation of China to modernization in the last century and a half, there are perhaps three answers, none of which quite contradicts the others. The first is that China modernize, but did so according to a too simplified notion of science; the third and more post-modern is that modernization was never an adequate goal.

The history of the efforts to modernize in China goes back to the previous century and proves to be highly problematic, both theoretically and practically. Essentially, the horizon was always the West and how to develop and absorb that technological and industrial instrumentation. Indeed, could Western technology be taken up simply instrumentally or did it require deeper changes in Chinese culture; and, if so, which would be substance and which accident? In 1919, the protest against the Versailles Conference evolved into a rejection of Confucian culture as it did not try as hard as did the Meji regime of Japan; the second is that it tried too hard to impede progress. Confucius, it was said, needed to leave in order that Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy might enter.

The history of the subsequent decades has raised serious questions about this formula, and there is now a sense that the May 4 slogans must be reviewed and reassured. Indeed, it appears that in order to collaborate effectively in the modernization of China, the two Misters are in need of Confucius, with his aesthetic sense of harmony, as their gracious host.

There is a striking and potentially instructive parallel between the structure of Kant’s three critiques and recent Chinese history. Kant’s first critique focused on science and necessity, while his second critique focused on morals and freedom. He had expected that this would be sufficient, but before that decade was out he came to the conclusion that a new set of categories, those of aesthetic judgment, was necessary.

In this light it can be said that the Confucian vision, contrary to the prognosis of 1919, has the most important potentialities for playing an essential role in the modernization in China. Following the lead of Tang Yijie then, in order to see the specific role Christianity can play, we look at the points at which Chinese culture is challenged by the present globalization, where Confucian thought contains potentiality for related development, and how a Christian philosophy can catalyze these potentialities.

The challenges are many and are found on a number of levels. One is on the material level as the shift is made to a market economy: Is it possible to overcome egoism and yet retain initiative. A second is on the civic level, in view of the general shift from the center to the people: Is it possible to find a sense of the person that will found responsibility in the communities. A third is found in the growing complexity of both physical and social life in view of the increasing power of technology.

Here I will describe this dynamic by looking only at the first of these levels and address the present relation of Christian philosophy to the challenge introduced by the opening of a market economy.

At first, the market, seen ideologically, was supposed to be a matter of vicious competition and conflict, devoid of any ethics. Nevertheless, China chose to open a socialist market to the great excitement of its people. This was necessary in order to engage more intensively the initiative of the people in support of the progress of so large a population. This required that the people, each with their own competencies and each in their own local or village situation, take initiative to develop the quality of their personal and social lives. On the front page of "People’s Daily" on January 12, 2000, an important article reported the decision of the government Ministry of Community Affairs to promote the responsibility of village and neighborhood councils, in part to engage the people more actively in community efforts.

There is here a dilemma, however. It is not that a socialist government and culture is inviting and stimulating the participation and initiative of the people, for socialism was always intended to be a movement of the people. It is, rather, the danger that such initiative will become what had earlier been predicted, namely, a process of vicious competition, marked by the corruption of the rich and the ruin of the poor and the weak. Personal initiative there must be, but it must be directed beyond self in order to be creative.

To this point, the classical position of Confucius and its promotion of harmony in aesthetic terms presents great potential, whose practical value has been proven in the restricted spheres of "the small Asian tigers." Is it feasible on the vast scale of Mainland China? It will be necessary for the billion and a quarter persons to evolve a sense of themselves as both centers of initiative and cohesive one with another. It would seem that to the degree that the former is promoted, the latter is challenged and vice versa. The specific need there is for a context in which these two can be harmonized, personal initiative and social cohesion. What can a Christian philosophy contribute on this precise but nervous point?

First, overcoming egoism. Both socialism and a religious philosophy are centrally concerned with the effort to overcome the degeneration of human initiative into egoism and conflict. This is true of all three components of the culture of China: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. In a recent colloquium of scholars from China in India, it was said that Confucianism focuses on the gentleman, whose concern is etiquette or the modes and customs of refined external behavior. Professor Gu Weikang countered that Confucianism is not simply about the mode of action of the gentleman. Still more fundamental to Confucianism is the wisdom of the sage regarding the goal and foundation of human life. This illumines the values and virtues that inspire a worthy manner of personal and community life. This vision of the sage is the real heart of Confucianism.

Daoism also focuses on a transcendence of the individual’s possessions and competitive concerns. The Dao that can be described—it is noted famously—is not the Dao. If it has to do with objects that can be possessed, one in contrast to another, it is not the Dao. Daoist thinking goes beyond any particular individual or object to include the harmony and meaning of all.

In this way, both Confucianism and Daoism open a most important dimension for the contemporary mind. Where Descartes sought only ideas that were clear enough to be distinguished from all else; Daoism seeks just the opposite. In talking of "this" rather than "that," one has not yet touched the roots and the meaning of human life. Only by transcending objects and individuals can their real meaning for human life be attained.

Finally, Buddhism has a similar message. Some have misinterpreted Buddhism to be a pattern of ritual superstition or an escape from society. In discussions in India with the professors from Shanghai and the Chinese National Academy, Professors Nayak and Mishra suggested the contrary. What the Lord Buddha suggested was a middle way: neither the great asceticism of his earlier efforts nor the great indulgence of a consumer society, but a properly balanced life between both. This entails abandoning all clinging, that is, all seeking, grasping, or holding onto things. As a result, one’s consciousness is freed to direct the heart along a virtuous path; this is also the karma yoga of the Hindu roots of Chinese Buddhism.

It is set directly and purposively against individualism and egoism, corruption and exploitation, which must be overcome for a healthy socialist market system. Instead, the Buddhist message provides a deep basis for a sense of justice, of compassion for the poor and the suffering, and a universal concern. In other words, it includes a deeply social ethics, which it vigorously supports philosophically with an elaborate epistemology and metaphysics.

It is the task of a Department of Philosophy and Religion in China today, especially in Beijing, to enable these dimensions of the heritage of Chinese culture to be appreciated as more than superstition or flight. Their deep social wisdom is supported by a rich metaphysics that needs to be unfolded and applied by the tools of philosophy. This is needed for a broad social (and socialist) vision to guide the present process of transition.

Second, joining personal initiative with social concern. We come here to a difficult juncture. The challenge is not only to overcome the dynamics of the consumerist, which is at the heart of the three components of Chinese culture, but at the same time to stimulate the initiative of the people of the country. All the competencies of the people in their many specializations and configurations must be mobilized in order to face the challenges of so great a population on the move into the new millennium. Initiative must be stimulated in a context that protects it against degenerating into egoism and exploitation. For all lose if the values of peace and harmony are abandoned in order to stimulate initiative, or, on the other hand, if harmony is stressed in such a way that the initiative of the people is suppressed. The challenge is to join together both personal initiative and social harmony not in an isometric that paralyses both, but in a dynamic union that can build the future.

This is the point at which a religious, grounded philosophy plays its special role in enabling social life. For it opens a transcendent dimension for a culture that frees one’s self-understanding from being reduced to one’s material conditions, as are rocks, plants, and animals. Instead, it opens the mind to meaning and values according to which we judge and value concrete temporal options. Moreover, it provides a sense of our origin and dignity and that of our fellow humans. This counters centripetal self-concern by love for others as brothers and sisters under the one Source and Goal of all. This ideal provides a basis for real hope that people can be enlivened and mobilized for social goals, for it is the same vision that both ensures the importance of the self and sets one in relation to others as well.

A religious philosophy at once inspires both human initiative and its social relatedness by providing cultures with a sense of the human person—not reductively as the result of lesser physical forces as do the sciences—but as an image of God and, hence, transcending or opening beyond itself. This it does in three steps, which the Hindus would summarize as existence, consciousness, and bliss. First, the person is appreciated as self-sufficient in existence, that is, as existing, not of one’s self, which is the character of the God as Absolute Being, but in its own right. Thomas Aquinas would use the term "autonomous," that is, possessed of all that is required in order to be fully human and to be able to act accordingly. The person then is active and a center of initiative. To use Heidegger’s term, this is the dasein, namely, being as emerging into time through the conscious reality that is the human person. As seen by a religious vision, the person erupts or bursts into time and will not be suppressed. This is initiative indeed.

Moreover, as a creature and image of God the human person is a reflection of the All-wise, of knowledge itself or consciousness: cit as Hindu philosophy would say. The human, then, is not a blind, destructive force, but is conscious and creative.

Finally, religion points out that the person is not made as an object, tool, or instrument to serve a need of the creator. Rather, because the Source is already all perfect, it creates out of a generous love or bliss (ananda), and hence, as an image of God, the person’s freedom is not essentially self-centered or self-seeking, but open, sharing and social. Christian philosophy is articulated against a parallel background of the Trinity of Father, Son (Logos, as conscious expression), and Spirit as love. This is of such great import that classical Western philosophy began to codify the transcendental characteristics of being itself as unity, truth, and goodness.

Religion, of course, is not philosophy, but rather a basic component element of the culture and civilization. But if it is true, as hermeneutic and scientific methods now insist, that it is possible to obtain answers only to questions that have been posed, then the religious elements in a culture enable philosophers to ask questions such as the nature and meaning of human life and to restate these questions when the answers thus far do not suffice. Thus, when, as is now the case, a people gives new attention to their cultural roots the religious content of their culture enables their philosophers to pose new and deeper questions, to develop proportional philosophical tools, and to achieve penetrating and properly philosophical insights about the nature and progress of human life. This contribution is that a Christian philosophy can bring to Chinese culture. Whether this will be such that it will become a part of Chinese culture itself is difficult to foresee and will depend on the Chinese people themselves over a number of generations. But the issue of initiative without egoism is bound to be a central issue for many generations.

In the case of modernization for China, where the paradigm tends to be the West as articulated in 1919 in terms of the two Misters, Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy, a Christian philosophy can be important for two quite special and specific reasons.

First, philosophy has always differed significantly according to cultures. It is often noted that the broadest ocean on the philosophical map lies between the Anglo-Saxon tradition of England and the Continental philosophy of France, though geographically the two are but 25 miles apart. In its search for a rational structure for life philosophy can stop at any level. If it takes life in a Humean manner, as basically a matter of material survival, then it can work out a reductive model based upon physical or economic relations, reducing thereto the human person and relations between peoples. All value theory is then substituted by value-free empirical sciences, and ethics can be only utilitarian. This is the position of the positivist and analytic philosophies whose founders, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, visited China around the time of the 1919 movement.

This suggests that a people opening a market economy, with its dangers of individualism and of grasping, has special need for a philosophy compatible with a religious vision. Philosophers can then go back to work in order to take account of additional dimensions of human life—of unity and harmony among persons and with nature, of truth and justice in human interchange, and of love and service to others—that is, of life as possessed of true dignity and beauty.

Human initiative must not be destroyed, for, in analogy with creation, it is essential in order to respond to human needs. Rather it must be inspired and promoted, but in terms that at the same time lift one’s sights, open one’s concerns, and enable and guide one’s will along social paths. This is precisely the character of a Christian philosophy. It recalls to the human person that the great power by which it was created—the source and heritage of its initiative—is self-giving and love, and that this extends to all peoples and things. Hence to exercise this initiative properly and fully is not to attack and subdue, but to live in harmony with others whose welfare is also one’s own. This vision continually inspires philosophy to seek ways to integrate both self and others within the fullness of life.

Secondly, this is not a matter only of speculative knowledge, for philosophy engaged in the life and struggles of society. China has long conceived modernization as a process of assimilating the products and productive processes developed in the West. This can be only partly true, however, for the West is not only a matter of possessions. It is more revealing to look not at what the West has, but at what it is, at its values and way of life. To do this properly would require a long history of the development of its culture which identically is the development of Christian philosophy and it extends from the time of the early Church Father, through the high Middle Ages, to its phenomenological revival in our day. This centers on the revival of respect for persons and rule of law, openness of communication and dialogue, and dedication to human welfare broadly and richly conceived. Thus inspired, the culture can so develop as effectively to apply the particular values needed for concrete forward progress in continually changing circumstances.

Paradoxically, however, this example of the West does not mean copying an alien culture. For the great lesson of a Christian philosophy is not that of techniques of production or of policy which can be copied, but of building upon the deep religious foundations of one’s own culture. This means drawing upon those dimensions of transcendence which we saw above in Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism—and which are found also in Islamic, Hindu and Christian tradition.—These provide the foundations upon which can be built a solid, humane and distinctively Chinese future.