Philosophy and the French Invention of Sinology

At a time when Chinese intellectuals and academics are more and more interested in the way Westerners, especially sinologists, approach and study Chinese culture, it seems relevant to pause and reflect on the critical and diversified approaches contributed by European sinologies. Special attention should be paid more particularly to the French tradition, which was the very first to be set up in the early nineteenth century within various prestigious academic institutions that are still very much alive today, but which has been somewhat pushed to the background by the powerful thrust of American, and more generally Anglophone, sinology ever since the aftermath of the Second World War. This article proposes to look at the way the French invention of sinology in the nineteenth century was under the influence of the concomitant rise of philosophy as a specifically European academic discipline.