A Few Important Landmarks in the Chinese Debates on Dialectical and Formal Logic from the 1930s

Bibliographic Data

ID13070379
AuthorsJan Vrhovski (0000-0002-5962-5051, University of Ljubljana, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume9
Issue2
Pages81-103
Publication date2021-05-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2232-5131 • E-ISSN: 2350-4226
PublisherUniversity of Ljubljana (PUBLISHER • SI)
DOI10.4312/as.2021.9.2.81-103
OpenAlexW3163611317
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited3

With the rise of the discourse on dialectical materialism in the late 1920s, ideas related to the Marxist notion of dialectical logic started to circulate in the Chinese intellectual world. Not long after the first public discussions on dialectical materialism started to emerge in the early 1930s, the discussants on both sides started to address the question of the Marxist notion of logic and its relationship with Western formal logic. Consequently, over the 1930s, a series of separate public debates ensued, in which dialectical logic contended against the “conventional” forms of logic, such as traditional Aristotelian and modern formal logic. This paper outlines the major landmarks within the public as well as internal Marxist debates on logic in the 1930s. The discussion starts with a general overview of the intellectual background of the debates, and proceeds by analysing the principal developments in them, starting with Ye Qing’s and Zhang Dongsun’s polemic about “dynamic logic” from 1933, and concluding with the internal Marxist discussions on the sublation of formal logic in the last years of the decade

Dialectic · Dialectical materialism · Epistemology · Historical materialism · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Philosophy of logic · Political science · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy, Science, and History

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