Der Machiavellismus von Ost und West

In our age of rising competition and quick change, made possible by digital networks, not only knowledge and experience are called for, but also a pragmatism which helps to find the way of solutions and to follow one’s own way in the real world. Machiavelli’s ideas regarding real world and real policy have established a significant model of political philosophy. Similar thought models are found in ancient Chinese philosophy: the rigorous legalism of Hanfeizi (韓非子) with ist epistemology to overcome Evil, the strategy of Sunzi (孫子) and ist reference, in analogous thought, to human society. An East-West-comparison of real-pragmatic topics is not a “labyrinth“ of cultural differences. Rather, political anthropology and ist concepts of the nature of human beings have turned into a common topos of survival by overpowering evil by means of prudence and cunning. One-sided perception of Sunzi’s “Strategy“, as it is sometimes found with Western thinkers, shows an open gap in Comparative Philosophy between reflections pertaining to ontology and to cultural philosophy. – In contrast to Indo-European languages, Chinese is a language of metaphoric signs. Word formation is not governed by rules of grammar leading to definitive compounds, but each Chinese ideograph has a multiple dimension capable of extension within the sentence: Combined with further ideographs each one expresses a multidimensional structure to extend a correlation from word to word. This multiple structure of the individual ideograph enables an enormous range of individual interpretations within the syntactical unit. Sunzi’s teaching of “Strategy“ is not only a way to a quick victory. Behind the primary dimension of the prudent strategy, secondary and tertiary dimensions of deep anthropological insights are hidden, which – by way of analogous thinking – may provide applications to diverse situations in real life.