In this book, we have assumed that ‘Chinese philosophy’ is an identifiable field of study. However, the meaning of ‘Chinese philosophy’ is debated by contemporary scholars. There are a few reasons why the phrase ‘Chinese philosophy’ is controversial and three of them are discussed here. First, the Chinese phrase denoting philosophy, zhexue, was coined only in the nineteenth century by a Japanese scholar. Thus the phrase ‘Chinese philosophy’ is applied retrospectively to a field of enquiries and debates that arose in China around 500 BCE among thinkers who did not know the term. Secondly, the term ‘philosophy’ is a distinct disciplinary field with ancient Greek origins and as such is characterised, partly in historical terms, by particular topics and modes of enquiry, methods of argumentation and reasoning styles. The term ‘philosophy’ is unlike the term ‘religion’, for instance, whose conception is not necessarily associated with particular aspects of one civilisation. ‘Philosophy’ both in its origin and as it is conceived is a more restricted term of reference. The third reason is a historical one and relates to how the phrase ‘Chinese philosophy’ was used by Chinese intellectuals of the modern period such as Hu Shih (1891–1962) and Fung Yu-Lan (1895–1990), who had studied western philosophy and who were eager to present the intellectual traditions of China as ‘philosophy’.