Jullien, François, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking

摘要

François Jullien has been internationally recognized as one of the most original and creativenphilosophers of our time. Stepping out from the narrow boundaries of sinology, he has beennable to make Chinese thought a place of radical enquiry for Western philosophy. He hasnestablished a comparative method that he consistently applies to different fields, likenhermeneutics, literature, aesthetics, politics, and ethics. Chinese philosophy is not made annabsolute truth, but a remedy, useful for the Westerners to address the limits in their ownnintellectual tradition. A Treatise on Efficacy, originally published in 1997, with the Frenchntitle Traité de l’efficacité, is an extension of a previous work, The Propensity of Things (LanPropension des choses, 1992; English translation 1995). In the Treatise, Jullien showsnfundamental differences by comparing the more realistic texts of the Western traditionn(Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz) with the texts of the Chinese realists, usually callednthe “legalists”—a name that Jullien rejects as misleading. According to Jullien, it was thisnChinese school that developed the notion of efficacy and therefore Jullien draws from them:nthe Sunzi on warfare, the Han Feizi on politics, the Guiguzi on diplomacy.