Prof. Cheng Chung-yi graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) with a B.A. in Philosophy in 1987. He then earned an M.Phil. in History in 1989 from the same university, focusing his research on modern and contemporary Chinese intellectual history. He further pursued his doctoral studies in the transformation of the Confucianism in China in the 17th century, and was awarded a Ph.D. degree by the Department of Philosophy, CUHK in 1995. His areas of research include Confucian thought, contemporary Neo-Confucianism, history of Chinese philosophy, comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy, and Chinese culture and its modern interpretation. Prof. Cheng is currently Director of the Research Centre of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, an affiliated research centre of the Department of Philosophy, CUHK.

Since its establishment by the Department of Philosophy, CUHK in 2005, the Research Centre of Chinese Philosophy and Culture (the Centre) has developed its work in three areas. The first is the organization of academic conferences,  which have become significant platforms for academic exchange. The second is the establishment of the short-term visiting scholar program for scholars and postgraduates from mainland China, Taiwan, and overseas, which aims to promote academic communication in CUHK. The third is the publication of the academic journal Chinese Philosophy and Culture, with 10 volumes published up to now. All of these achievements could attribute to the hard work of the former director Prof. Liu Xiaogan. During his leadership, Prof. Liu integrated the work of the Centre with his own research interests to actively explore the issue of methodology in Chinese philosophical studies, such as the hermeneutics of classics, bamboo-slips and silk materials and Chinese philosophical studies, as well as the multiple identities of Confucianism. After Prof. Liu retired, Prof. Cheng has taken over the position of the Centre director.

Prof. Cheng focuses his research on two areas. One is the clarification and systemization of history of Chinese philosophy, especially Confucianism; the other is the exploration of Chinese philosophical thought. In terms of the clarification and systemization work, Prof. Cheng stresses that this is neither upon history nor upon texts, but upon traditional Chinese thought from a philosophical approach. The development of ideas could only be possible upon the clarification and systemization of thought. In fact in present Chinese academia, a strict disciplinary standard of Chinese philosophy still hasn't been comprehensively set up. Therefore, a lot of so-called studies on Chinese philosophy still cannot be distinguished from the studies on intellectual history and textual studies. The latters are unable to show the uniqueness of Chinese philosophical studies as a discipline in its own right. One of Prof. Cheng's writing projects, "The School of Heart-Mind (xinxue 心學) in the Ming dynasty: Issues and Development", is a good example of his concern for this problem. In terms of the exploration of Chinese philosophical thought, Prof. Cheng contends that the most important thing is to focus the research on the reflection on philosophical questions that have universal significance, that is, to embark from philosophical queries on re-examining and interpreting Chinese philosophical texts, a rich resource of ideas that we can draw on.  Another writing project of Prof. Cheng, "Back to the Origin and Opening up New Horizon: Re-interpretation of Traditional and Modern Confucianism", is just undertaken in this way. The new book covers the following areas: the re-interpretation of political thought of Pre-Qin Confucians  and reflections on contemporary Confucianism and democracy; detailed analysis of core Confucian concepts, such as "mind" (xin 心) by Mencius, "principle" (li 理) and "vital force" (qi氣) by Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism;  an examination of the issue of religious dialogues, such as  the "unification of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism",  and the existential or religious experience of contemporary Neo-Confucianism; as well as study on the appropriation of new concepts such as "philosophy" and "truth", and re-construction of existing concepts such as "Confucianism", by contemporary Confucianism.

As the current director, Prof. Cheng has to set the Centre's future objectives in the coming five years or more. The theme of this talk, "Chinese Classics: Reading and Teaching", is exactly one of Prof. Cheng's areas of concern in this regard. This subject is both theoretical and practical, with a strong concern for reality. Prof. Cheng firstly uses Taiwan and mainland China as examples. In mid- 1950s, Taiwan, under the governance of Kuomintang, already made Basic Teaching Material on Chinese Culture as compulsory learning material for senior high school students. It was later abolished due to the change of ruling power. Only until 2011 and 2012, with the help of academicians, was a new Basic Teaching Material on Chinese Culture (Vols. 1 & 2) that features The Four Books published and became an elective area of study for Chinese Language for senior high schools. This teaching material puts forward questions from daily life stories, which are then supplemented with textual interpretations of Chinese classics, in order to integrate students' understanding of the classics with real life situations. The practice, however, brought about heated debates in Taiwan. Opposing voices were from both the academia and the education sector. The core issue was in fact about how to understand the position of Chinese cultural classics in the cultural identity of Taiwan. In 2013, the Beijing branch of Chung Hwa Book Co.  cooperated with Taiwan and introduced this teaching material to mainland China under a slightly revised book title. Chung Hwa Book Co. has also joint hands with a number of key high schools in the mainland to establish teaching and research bases for traditional Chinese culture (high school) and to undertake trial teaching. In recent years, there has been significant development in the research and teaching of traditional Chinese classics in mainland China. This phenomenon is not just due to the influence of "National Learning Fever" (guoxuere 國學熱), but mainly due to actual needs, that is, the expectation of transforming human spirits by means of education and hence solving the problem of serious ethical decline in society. What about the situations in Hong Kong? To strengthen high school students' knowledge of Chinese culture is also one of the teaching objectives of the subject Chinese Language in the HKDSE syllabus, but given the present examination-oriented educational atmosphere, students' study tends to focus only on examination techniques. So how well that teaching objective can be really achieved remains an unsolved question.

Prof. Cheng analyzes the keys to reading and teaching Chinese cultural classics by using his own teaching experiences as examples. Generally speaking, the Department of Philosophy emphasizes students' abilities of philosophical analysis of texts. Traditionally this is called "clear explanation" (yili jiangming 義理講明). For example, textual analysis involves the interplay of three contexts: historical, textual, and contemporary. What "contemporary context" stresses is exactly what distinguishes philosophical studies from historical or textual studies. In other words, we need to revitalize the classics by exploring how they can possibly contribute to the reflections upon and reactions to contemporary issues. This is what "doing philosophy" means. We also have to carefully scrutinize the classics, find out the real questions behind (i.e., discovery of questions) and the approaches taken (i.e., elaboration of theoretical framework), and finally evaluate their theoretical effectiveness.

Prof. Cheng also poses a challenge to the philosophical-analytical method of reading mentioned above: will we come up with totally different feelings if we use our own personal life experiences to question those classics? For example, since we have all experienced the drudgery of examination or writing dissertation, we may disagree with the very first sentence of The Analects, "To learn and rehearse it constantly, isn't this indeed a pleasure?" (學而時習之，不亦說乎？) Zhu Xi (朱熹), a Song-dynasty Confucian scholar, argues that, "When we read 'to learn and rehearse it constantly, isn't this indeed  a pleasure?', we will wonder what on earth is 'learn' and 'rehearse', and how we could get pleasure from it. I think we will finally make sense of them from our own life experiences. If we just interpret the texts passage by passage and stop there, we'll get nothing."(如讀「學而時習之」，自家曾如何學？自家曾如何習？「不亦說乎」！曾見得如何是說？須恁地認，始得。若只逐段解過去，解得了便休，也不濟事。) (juan 11 of Classified Conversations of Master Zhu) In the eyes of Zhu Xi, if one reads only to understand the literal meaning of the words without proving and illuminating the knowledge with his/her own life, he/she fails to internalize what he/she has learned and making it his/her own principles. This kind of learning without knowing the real way will only be a waste of time. There is a misunderstanding that "clear explanation of knowledge" (學問講明) and "making knowledge one's own principles" (自家道理) are two different approaches respectively adopted by scholars in the past and scholars nowadays. In fact scholars in the past find the combination of the two the real way of learning. This is clearly stated in Zhu Xi's "method of reading" chapter in his Classified Conversations of Master Zhu.

Actually, the real difference between the past and the present lies in the fact that, scholars in the past regard "clear explanation of knowledge" and "making knowledge one's own principles"  as inseparable, but sometimes they may ignore the fact that the two are also irreducible, that is, what one experiences through the study of classics cannot replace textual research, exegetics, and explanation of literal meanings. In comparison, people nowadays usually put too much emphasis on the irreducibility of these two approaches and think they are separable. For instance, in university lectures we can teach the classics in terms of  their literal meanings, philosophical thought, and contemporary significance, but whether they should be transformed into one's own principles is a matter of personal preference which has nothing to do with academic research. In the background of modern academic research, we treat traditional classics as an academic discipline, separate its understanding from its application, and highlight the importance of objective research. All of these are associated with the breaking up of traditional Chinese studies and the reconstructing of it within the framework of modern Western academic categorization in the 20th century. I am not going to get into the historical detail of such a change; what I'd like to emphasize is that, in reading classics, if we neglect the approach of "making knowledge one's own principles"  and only pursue delicate theoretical construction, then the significance of classics will be narrowed down to the significance for researchers only. Therefore, we could only revitalize traditional classics and restore its significance for modern education by combining the two approaches. If we want to promote the reading of cultural classics to universities, to high schools, and even to primary schools, we have to strike a balance between "clear explanation of knowledge" and "making knowledge one's own principles". Prof. Cheng hopes that this will become the future research objective of the Centre.