This article aims at pinpointing the main characteristics of the notion of logic in the work of Yu Yu, a renowned propagator of Buddhist philosophy and Indian hetuvidyā in Republican China. In so doing, it focusses exclusively on Yu’s work in the late 1920s and 1930s, when Chinese discussions on Buddhism and logic were at their height. The study sets out from Yu Yu’s early investigations into the hetuvidyā, from whence it then gradually traces the development of a comprehensive notion of logic. In the main analysis, it aims at shedding some light on Yu’s later view on the relationship between Western and Chinese logic and his subsequent adoption of a special kind of language-conditioned “logical relativism”. Concurrently, the study also aims at presenting a few preliminary insights into how Yu’s notion of logic was influenced by contemporary reinterpretations of Buddhist epistemology on one side and contemporary Chinese discourse on logic and language on the other.
目次
Keywords: Buddhism, Chinese logic, hetuvidyā, Yu Yu, Republican China 151 1. Prologue 151 2. A Biographical Sketch 153 3. Yu’s Notion of Logic: Cultural Relativity, Ethics, and the Question of Epistemological Limitations of Logic 155 3.1 Preliminary Notes on Buddhist Philosophy and Intellectual Trends in the 1930s 155 3.2 Initial Explorations into the Hetuvidyā and Western Logic - Late 1920s 157 3.3 Developing a Discourse on Yinming(xue), 1930-1935 159 3.4 From Hetuvidyā to Western and Chinese Logic: The Rise of a Language- Based Notion of Logic, 1935-6 163 3.5 Late 1930s: Indian Logic and Maturation of Yu’s Cultural Relativism 169
4. Epilogue: From Buddhist Modernist Apologetics to an Alternative Version of Cultural Relativism 170 Appendix: A Brief Overview of Contemporary Scholarship on Yu Yu and Hetuvidyā 174
