A Conceptual History and Philosophy of Understanding

Contemporary studies on understanding originating from philosophy of science has been a main field in the theory of knowledge and its significance even surpass the theory of knowledge itself. However, in such studies, the long history of the concept of understanding has not been paid enough attention to. Whereas the core concept occupied 100-year-length history since modern epistemic turn is “understanding” and it provide a central battlefield btween empiricism and rationalism. Analogous to contemporary studies of theory of knowledge, the studies on understanding can be descripted as three aspects: relations between understanding and truth or fact, between understading and justifiction and between understanding and agent. But if we try to locate such studies on a boraderly philosophical perspective, we should specially highlight the other origin of them which has ignored from philosophy of mind. Back to the theory of sense in linguistic philosophy, philosophy of understanding may naturally be applied into moral philosophy and be hopeful to settle the disputes between judgmental cognitivism and non-cognitivism, between moral realism and antirealism and between motivational internalism and externalism. Meanwihle, two constructed pre-historical traditions (of the concept of understanding respectively in China and in the West) manifest the consitecne and universality of the theory of understanding.