Absorbing Chinese philosophy through the dispositif of French philosophy can strike one as retranslation at its most unwelcome, like channeling Ismail Kadare from Albanian through French to English or playing the childhood game of Telephone in high-cultural mode. We all prefer nonstop flights to connections, original-language films to the hopelessly dubbed. For the non-French reader, it’s only sensible to approach François Jullien, the magisterial French ponderer of Chinese thought and language, with caution.
