Q0417

Feng Youlan

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The function of philosophy is not to increase positive knowledge, but to raise the level of the spirit.
Thinker Feng Youlan
School New Rational Philosophy
Source A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, within the tradition of New Rational Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Feng Youlan's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Feng Youlan. (n.d.). The function of philosophy is not to increase positive knowledge, but to raise the level of the spirit. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0417

MLA: Feng Youlan. “The function of philosophy is not to increase….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0417.

Chicago: Feng Youlan. “The function of philosophy is not to increase….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0417.

Same thinker

More from Feng Youlan

  1. Human life is life with awareness and understanding — or with a higher degree of such awareness. This is what distinguishes humans from beasts, and human life from the life of other animals.

All quotations by Feng Youlan

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme