Recent developments in sinology, cognitive science and research methods in the humanities have given rise to serious questions regarding the view that early Chinese philosophy transcends the supposedly ‘Western’ dichotomies of ‘body/mind’, ‘emotion/reason’, ‘inner/outer’ and ‘subject/object’. Among thinkers exploring this issue is sinologist and philosopher, Edward Slingerland, who, in his book, Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism (2019), marshals powerful evidence against what he regards as ‘the myth of Chinese…holism’, where ‘holism’ refers to an ‘absence of dualism or dichotomies…that are thought to uniquely characterise “Western” thought’ (Slingerland 2019: 1).
My talk will proceed on the assumption that the findings of Slingerland and his colleagues are reliable. In this light, I will consider Billington’s treatment of early Chinese philosophy in his widely read works, East of Existentialism: The Tao of the West (1990) and Understanding Eastern Philosophy (1997). I shall argue that, while Billington’s thinking does in places incline towards the stereotypical interpretation currently under fire, it is nevertheless broadly successful in presenting early Chinese thought in a way that demonstrates its distinctiveness without denying either its heterogeneity, or its commonalities with so-called ‘Western’ modes of thought.
In this connection, I will suggest that Billington’s view of his role as a communicator of others’ ideas helped to shape his approach to early Chinese thought (and to ‘non-Western’ thought in general) in a way that enables it still to serve as a valuable introduction to the area.