"Whether there was philosophy in ancient China" depends on the way of understanding "philosophy". There are two levels of explanation. First, if we answer according to the external characteristics of philosophical activities, that is, "philosophy is speculation", then it is obvious that there was "philosophy" in ancient China. Feng Youlan's History of China's Philosophy: "If you know its content, you will know what philosophy is." Is one of the concrete manifestations of this statement.

The second argument is based on the particularity of the inherent meaning of philosophy. If "philosophy" is the scientific spirit cherished by the west, the "first philosophy" that Aristotle said, and the "language understanding" that appeared after the 1960s, and if this "philosophy" is the current "universal philosophy", then obviously, due to the methodology (thinking that the methodology of studying China's ancient thoughts is metaphysical intuition, which is actually different from western philosophy) and the research object (. The main object of China's study of ancient thought is "body"-the body here, not the noumenon. See Shili Yuyao for details. ). There was no "philosophy" in ancient China.