The Fusion of Intellectual Horizons in Chinese and Western Thought

This new monograph by senior scholar Mingdong Gu is nothing less than the distillation of his own lifetime-long reflection on the intellectual and critical possibilities available to us, both East and West, in the fusion of our philosophical horizons. Gu begins by guiding us through the history of our cultural encounters and then offers us a rigorous and insightful account of the substance of our importantly different narratives. The story he tells is prescriptive rather than simply descriptive, searching out ways in which activating our philosophical differences from each other can make a profound difference in enriching the intellectual lives for each other. Indeed, his unwavering goal is the mutual intellectual empowerment that comes with giving each tradition its own voice and allowing it to engage the other on its own terms. -- Roger T. Ames, Peking University