Confucius: Philosophy between Philosophy

Abstract The article is devoted to the philosophy of the well-known ancient Chinese sage Confucius paying attention to the Western misunderstandings of it. The fundamental differences between Chinese and Western civilizations, the problem of transcendence, and different attitude towards history are discussed in the text. Being neither a religion nor a philosophy in the strict Western sense of the word, Confucian thinking still finds its parallels among Western philosophies. The article faces the phenomenological task to discover concrete modes of awareness, their active engagements, and their correlate contents that are sufficiently broad and founding to cut across diverse disciplinary and cultural phenomena. This brief essay is a step in that direction with explicit commitment to Confucian explication and continuity of Chinese civilization. Despite variations and different levels of interpretation, a common context between Confucius and Western philosophical trends may be found.