Abstract
Philosophy, in China as well as elsewhere, has been a handmaid, a defender, a critic, or an opponent, of religion. In any one of these roles, philosophy is seen always together with religion as her partner, her client, or her antagonist. Even in the most radical thinkers, there lingers the ghost of religion. Socrates, who was condemned to death on the charge of disbelieving the gods of his city, died with the last instruction to his disciples to pay “a cock to Asclepius,” the god of healing. And Lao Tse the founder of philosophical naturalism in China, was centuries later made to father a superstitious religion and was deified as one of its supreme gods.
Chapter Note: Sophia H. Chen Zen, ed., Symposium on Chinese Culture. Shanghai: China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1931. pp. 25–58.
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© 2013 Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Chou, CP. (2013). Religion and Philosophy in Chinese History. In: Chou, CP. (eds) English Writings of Hu Shih. China Academic Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31181-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31181-9_9
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