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

“I am suing Ni Liangkang and the commercial press in China, because the Chinese version of Husserl's published complete works is fundamentally illegal and infringing,” Kern said in a video statement sent to the Post.

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

After earning his doctorate in Belgium, Kern worked as a researcher at the Husserl Archives at the University of Leuven in the 1960s. There, he and his colleagues undertook the painstaking process of sorting through Husserl's manuscript. This was a daunting task, as Husserl's shorthand had to be decoded first before translating the text into modern German.

Kern first published the three-volume German version of the book in 1973, after more than a decade of work on it.

As the first publication of Husserl's theoretical concepts on phenomenology, the book was a huge success and it also helped Kern become a well-known figure in the Western philosophical community.

Decades later, however, in 2022, Kern was being interviewed by a Hong Kong film crew for a documentary featuring prominent Sinologists, when they mentioned that his book was already published in Chinese. He was shocked.

“This is the result of ten other philosophers and myself, who spent decades editing and translating Husserl's posthumous manuscripts into modern German. Three of them are deceased and I am the only one who understands Chinese. I want justice for all of us and I will never accept an out-of-court settlement,” Kern said in his video statement.

The main translator of the Chinese version was Ni Liangkang, a former student of Kern. It had been published by Commercial Press in 2018, without Kern's permission, and the cover only named Ni as editor, with no mention of Kern.

Ni, a professor in the philosophy department of Zhejiang University and director of its Phenomenology Center, had published 17 volumes of the Chinese version based on Kern's original work, all under his name without any acknowledgment from Kern.

Ni first served as Kern's translator in the 1980s, while Kern was studying ancient Chinese philosophy at Nanjing University. Kern said he once considered Ni one of his favorite Chinese students.

“How can the illegally published 17 volumes of Chinese editions of Husserl's complete works become a major project of the National Social Science Fund? Kern asked in his video statement.

“I’m almost 88 now. I have loved China all my life. This case broke my heart. I wrote a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping and asked the Chinese Embassy in Switzerland to forward it, but I have not yet received a response,” he said.

In his legal motions, Kern demands that the two defendants “immediately” stop the violation and recall the Chinese version of his books nationwide.

It also demanded compensation of 500,000 yuan ($68,900) from the two defendants, while demanding that Ni issue a public apology in the Beijing Daily and that the commercial press publicly apologize on social media.

Ni and his office at Zhejiang University did not respond to emails and phone calls from The Post, while the humanities department also did not respond to a request for comment.

A representative for the commercial press said she was not authorized to comment on the case and would leave it to the court to decide the outcome.

“We are deeply sorry for this and sincerely apologize to Mr. Iso Kern,” the letter said. He promised to remove all unauthorized copies, pay Kern's legal fees and compensation, and offered to appoint Kern as publisher of each new edition.

But in an interview with SwissInfo in December 2022, Ni said the infringement was “the publishers' business and it has nothing to do with me.”

“I don’t think I’m going to apologize to Iso Kern. I think Iso Kern should apologize to me,” he said, as quoted by SwissInfo.