When we talk about teaching logic, what are we talking about? ‘Logic’ education in the Chinese context

This paper examines the revival of ‘logic education’ in Chinese curriculum reform, where logic has expanded into ‘big logic’, and ‘scientific thinking’ has become its organising aim. The concern is the curricular ordering that places logical, dialectical, and innovative thinking within a broader ideal of scientific thinking and extends that ideal across moral and civic judgement. The paper argues that this ordering can narrow moral and citizenship education toward scientistic patriotism. Using Heidegger’s ontological difference, it distinguishes reasoning directed toward beings through naming, distinctions, and public criteria from the prior question of Being through which such criteria acquire meaning. Mohist and Confucian resources present the named Way as relational reasoning concerned with fit, role, and consequence. Drawing on Laozi, the nameless Way marks poetic attunement and a restraint that keeps naming in measure with what matters. Holding the two Ways together brings the ambiguity of ‘logic and thinking’ into view and opens educational space beyond a single governing ideal of scientific thinking.