Salient Features of Chinese Historical Thinking

Imbued with profound historical consciousness, the Chinese people are Homo Historiens in every sense of the term. To be human in China, to a very large extent, is to be historical which means to live up to the paradigmatic past today. Therefore, historical thinking in traditional China is moral thinking. The Chinese historico-moral thinking centers around the notion of dao that is Heavenly principle and simultaneously human norm. In view of its practical operation, the Chinese historical thinking is, on the one hand, concrete thinking and, on the other, analogical thinking. Thinking concretely and analogically, the Chinese people become able to communicate with the past and extrapolate meanings from history. In this way, historical experience in China becomes a library in which the contemporary readers may engage creative dialogues with the past.