美国思想家至今在用一些标签来表示过去3000年来中国思想整体的各个部分,而几千年来中国思想家却始终用诸多种方式来划分和命名他们的思想遗产。英国的学者们用一系列“学说”来称呼较大块的思想,几乎每一种对中国思想史的叙述都要提到儒家、道家、法家和佛家,但却没有任何一种能够被普遍接受的标准可以运用于具体的思想家、本文或思想。“四大学说”这一用法的部分理由是:在中国它们具有明显的相互对应性,但问题在于儒家、道家、法家和佛家这些术语的用法并不能清楚地区分彼此,甚至只是 American thinkers have so far labeled them all parts of the entire Chinese thought for the past 3,000 years, and for thousands of years Chinese thinkers have consistently divided and named their intellectual heritage in many different ways. British scholars refer to larger chunks of thought as a series of “doctrines.” Almost every account of the history of Chinese thought includes Confucianism, Taoism, legalism, and Buddhism, but none of them can be Generally accepted standards can be applied to specific thinkers, texts, or ideas. Part of the rationale for the usage of the Four Doctrines is that they have obvious interdependencies in China but the problem is that the usage of the terms Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Buddhism do not clearly distinguish each other,