Swiss philosopher Iso Kern sues former Chinese student Ni Liangkang for alleged plagiarism

Well-known sinologist Iso Kern has accused his former student of publishing his book in Chinese without his knowledge

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Professor Iso Kern, 87, is taking legal action against a former student of his for copyright infringement. Photo: Weibo

Published: 8:00pm, 17 Jun 2024Updated: 2:37pm, 18 Jun 2024

A Swiss sinologist who has spent much of his career introducing Chinese philosophy to the West has filed a lawsuit on alleged plagiarism against one of his former students and a prominent Chinese academic publisher.

Professor Iso Kern, 87, said the Dongcheng District Court in Beijing had formally accepted the case in March and he was now awaiting a trial date.

According to legal documents seen by the South China Morning Post, Kern is suing the two defendants for infringement of copyright: Ni Liangkang, a philosophy professor with Zhejiang University; and the Commercial Press, a publisher known for translation works in humanities and social sciences.

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Swiss sinologist sues Chinese academic and publisher for copyright infringement

“I am suing Ni Liangkang and the Commercial Press in China, because the Chinese-language version of Husserl’s collected works published is basically illegal and infringing,” Kern said in a video statement sent to the Post.

The book in dispute, “On the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity”, is a compilation of the writings of German philosopher Edmund Husserl, born in 1859, who is known as the founder of phenomenology. It is a philosophical movement that sees the ultimate source of all meaning as lived experience.

The book is based on a manuscript of more than 40,000 pages, all written by Husserl in the long-abandoned Gabelsberger shorthand.

After obtaining his doctorate in Belgium, Kern worked as a researcher at the Husserl Archives of the University of Leuven during the 1960s. There, he and his colleagues undertook the painstaking process of sorting through Husserl’s manuscript. It was an arduous task, with Husserl’s shorthand first having to be decoded before then translating the text to modern German.