With the history of Chinese philosophy, the author Dimitris K. Velissaropoulos completes his effort to provide Greek readers with a systematic view of the genesis and evolution of Eastern thought from ancient times to the present.

Six years ago, the History of Indian Philosophy was published, which truly garnered great interest from the reading public and has already been released in a second edition. India and China are considered the cradle of Far Eastern thought, just as Greece is the cradle of Roman and subsequently European culture. All philosophical currents created in the remaining Asian countries are based either on Indian or Chinese philosophy, except for a few much less significant exceptions.

Author D.K. Velissaropoulos aims to fill a serious gap in Greek literature regarding Eastern thought. He believes that this new acquaintance will broaden the horizons of Greek and non-Greek readers, who will be able to ascertain specifically and in comparison the true meaning of the contribution of ancient Greek philosophy to the liberation of the human spirit.

The first volume of the History of Chinese Philosophy deals with the genesis of Chinese thought in the 11th century B.C. and its evolutionary path up to the 2nd century B.C. This is a very long period during which all central philosophical ideas were created, establishing the distinctive, and perhaps exotic for Europeans, way of articulating philosophical truth in China. The division of the work into the smallest possible sections within the larger ones and the attempt to simplify the language - a difficult task when dealing with philosophical concepts - were chosen to facilitate the study of the work.

In the second volume of the History of Chinese Philosophy, the reluctance with which even enthusiastic Chinese reformers of the 19th century had to admit the utility of European philosophical and political ideas for China's progress will be evident. It will also show how difficult it was for them to promote these ideas because this required at least a partial abandonment of the belief that Chinese culture was the only one in the world; this fact forced thinkers to distort the messages of Confucian philosophy. They had to prove that democracy and the constitutional government sought by the reformers could be founded on indigenous ideas without resorting to European ones.

The reader will also see that communism, which initially fought against Confucianism, which was later completely condemned by the Cultural Revolution, is already returning to a more prudent approach to the issue. It only dismisses those elements that are admittedly anachronistic and harmful to progress but accepts, at least some of what is precious to be offered. Essentially, the study extends to 1911, the year of the revolution of Sun Yat-sen. After that, it is limited to the history of the penetration of Marxist ideas and the fluctuations of the stance of New China between 1949 and 1981 towards traditional culture.