AUC PHILOLOGICA
AUC PHILOLOGICA

AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.

The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, EBSCO, and ERIH PLUS.

AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2017 No 4 (2017), 51–61

The Turn Towards Philosophy in the Earliest Cosmologies: A Comparative Study of Selected Excavated Warring States–Period Manuscripts and Pre-Socratic Fragments

Kateřina Gajdošová

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2017.40
published online: 21. 03. 2018

abstract

Excavated texts from the fourth century BC bring new elements previously thought missing in the earliest Chinese thought. They develop cosmological theories comparable to those found in the pre-Socratic tradition, especially in processual thinkers such as the Milesians and Heraclitus. The article explores the resemblances, suggesting that the Eastern and Western thought may have not been so radically different at the beginning. On both sides, the texts attest to a new stage of intellectual independence of an individual, using strikingly similar patterns of explanation and means of expression.

keywords: early Chinese thought; cosmology; metaphysics; excavated texts; pre-Socratics; Anaximander; Anaximenes; oneness; process philosophy

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