On Taking Appearances Seriously: Phenomenology, New Confucianism, and the Yogācāra Theory of Consciousness

This paper examines whether proto-phenomenological accounts in Chinese thought, introduced through Buddhism, provide a conceptual bridge to Husserlian phenomenology. It explores the renewed interest in Yogācāra among twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals, in particular Xiong Shili, revealing inevitable tensions in his interpretation of Yogācāra concepts. Coseru argues that while something analogous to an appearance-reality distinction is present in classical Chinese philosophy, it differs in important ways from how that distinction is drawn in the Yogācāra and Husserlian traditions. He further argues that the fundamental act-content distinction central to Husserlian phenomenology may be absent in Xiong’s monism, raising questions about the compatibility of his New Confucian thought with Yogācāra and the broader phenomenological project, and showcasing the challenges that cross-cultural philosophical inquiry sometimes faces.