1、Book ReportName: Aaron 李浩亮 Date: December 30th, 2013The book : Feng Youlan: A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Chinese version translated by Tu Youguang)Publisher: Peking University PressThe book A Short History of Chinese Philosophy is mainly about the history of Chinese philosophy as the title
2、 writes, and it also talks about how the Chinese philosophy came into being and explain it by showing lots of detailed information, political and economic situation at that time and background knowledge included. And the book shows us the development of Chinese philosophy in the order of time, too,
3、besides main thoughts and ideologists of several chief schools, such as Laozi, one of the most well-known ideologists of Taoist school. In addition, in the last two chapters we can have a further understanding of the mixture of Chinese and western philosophy during latest centuries, when our country
4、 was facing the import of western culture as well as the invasion. In a word, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy is a brief summary of Chinese philosophy with a great number of main details, and the vital part is to give us readers especially foreign ones a brief introduction of several chief sch
5、ools including their main thoughts and characters.The author, Professor Feng Youlan, had a lecture on Chinese philosophy in University of Pennsylvania. Then his English lecture scripts were collected and the book A Short History of Chinese Philosophy was published Macmillan USA. He taught foreign st
6、udents this lecture using words as simple as possible, because it was difficult for them to understand so many short but nearly nonsense sentences. As a result, we can also easily understand some complicated and strange views of ancient ideologists.For example, when the author talks about the way of
7、 achieving Relative Happiness and Absolute Happiness at first, as well as the distinguish between these two kinds of Happiness of Taoist school, I think it is certainly difficult for foreign people to understand, because its also hard for us Chinese readers to realize the true theory entirely. There
8、fore, Professor Feng explains it with many simple stories. Furthermore, he transforms the original words of those classic masterpieces into some simple though long sentences. With the help of relative stories and simple sentences, we can figure out the key to achieve Relative Happiness that we have
9、to have a full and free exercise of our inner natural ability, and follow the free development of our nature without any artificial change of it. And the method of getting Absolute Happiness is to have a higher level understanding of the nature so that we will not be disturbed by the emotions, so we
10、 wont be sad, upset or even angry. However, if we can do this, we will become God. In conclusion, only a few people can achieve Absolute Happiness while most of people can only but absolutely achieve Relative Happiness.Besides the simplicity of words of this book, I also appreciate the complete and
11、overall narration covering almost all aspects of knowledge and information of the chief thoughts and schools. Before this book was published, another book, A History of Chinese Philosophy, which was also written by Mr. Feng, had been published and he became one of the most famous and knowledgeable p
12、hilosophers of this field. A History of Chinese Philosophy shows us more details. So many people draw a conclusion that A Short History of Chinese Philosophy is a simplified version of A History of Chinese Philosophy, but its not true, the author said this in the preface. Although A Short History of
13、 Chinese Philosophy has less details, it doesnt just list the names or the main points of those famous thoughts of schools in the book A History of Chinese Philosophy. On the contrary, the book A Short History of Chinese Philosophy has its own clue to illustrate the thoughts. Comparing with the form
14、er masterpiece A History of Chinese Philosophy, the latter book selects less but more precise examples and quotations to demonstrate his opinions of those thoughts, in the meanwhile, it also covers all items referred in the former one. For instance, in order to include nearly all items needed, the b
15、ook eliminates a appropriate number of details without any impact of the proof, and some secondary views of thoughts and ideologists are referred one time but not explained in details. The chapter of the Ying-Yan School refers to less details and explanations, but it reserves and quotes some sentenc
16、es from the relative masterpieces in this school, by the way, the sentences are easy to understand so as to no need of more detailed information and illustration. In another way, it has included all aspects of knowledge about the universal and natural thoughts of the Ying-Yan School, so it can still give readers a full and complete understanding. Therefore, though it is in such a short edition, the book A Short History of Chinese Philosophy can still shows out
