Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China PDF
Preview Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China
Zhenbin Sun Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China Zhenbin Sun Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China 123 ZhenbinSun School ofArt andMedia Studies Fairleigh DickinsonUniversity Teaneck, NJ USA ISBN 978-3-642-54864-2 ISBN 978-3-642-54865-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54865-9 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014946195 SpringerHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon ©Springer-VerlagBerlinHeidelberg2015 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionor informationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) To Dr. James Morriss and Dr. Joan Boyle without their varied and consistent support this book would be impossible Acknowledgments IamindebtedtotheJournalofChinesePhilosophy,thejournalAmericanReviewof China Studies, and ShongwuYinshu Guan toallow metoincludeinthis bookthe followingarticles:“Yan:ADimensionofPraxisandItsPhilosophicalImplications” (in the Journal of Chinese philosophy, 1997, Vol. 24, No. 2); “Bian: The Concept ofArgumentinAncient China”(inthejournalAmerican Review ofChinaStudies, 2002, Vol. 3, No. 2); “Discourse as a Method of Philosophy” (in Chinese Phi- losophy and the Trends of21st Century Civilization, ed. Fang Keli, 2003, Beijing: Shongwu Yinshu Guan); “The Discourse on Language and Reality in Pre-Qin China”(inthejournalAmericanReviewofChinaStudies,2003,Vol.4,No.2);and “ReasoninAncientChinesePhilosophy”(inthejournalAmericanReviewofChina Studies, 2005, Vol. 6, No. 2). Iwanttothanktheanonymousreviewersofmywork.Mysinceregratitudegoes tomyeditorLeanaLiforherenthusiasmaswellashertimelyhelp.Iwouldliketo offer my thanks to the excellent creative, production, and marketing teams at Springer. vii Contents Introduction ............................................... xi 1 Methodological and Historical Inquiry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 Discourse as a Method of Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Context of the Discourse on Ming and Shi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2 Four Notions of Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1 Rectification of Names (Zheng Ming) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.2 Abandonment of Names (Wu Ming) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.3 Analysis of Names (Bian Ming) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.4 Examination of Names (Shen Ming) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3 Synthesis of Language and Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3.1 Shi as a Practical Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3.2 Ming as a Theoretical Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3.3 Ming-Shi as a Synthetic Issue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.4 Practice and Praxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4 Moral Practice and Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 4.1 Humanity (Ren) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 4.2 Rightness (Yi). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4.3 Propriety (Li). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 4.4 Truthfulness (Xin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 5 Sociopolitical Practice and Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5.1 Government (Zheng). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5.2 Benefit (Li) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 5.3 Law (Fa). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.4 The Ming-Shi Issue and Sociopolitical Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . 71 ix x Contents 6 Linguistic Practice and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.1 Pragmatic Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.2 Semantic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.3 The Paradigm of Ming-Shi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 6.4 Chinese Language and Chinese Thinking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 7 Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.1 Confucian Perspective on Yan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.2 Daoist Perspective on Yan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 7.3 Moist Perspective on Yan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 8 Argument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 8.1 The Roots of Argument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 8.2 Great Argument and Small Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 8.3 Criteria of Argument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 9 Dao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 9.1 Dao as Way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 9.2 Dao as Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 9.3 Dao as Saying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 9.4 Dao as Guiding Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 10 Practical Zhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 10.1 Action and Knowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 10.2 Discourse and Reason. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 10.3 Dao: Chinese Wisdom and Worldview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Introduction Sincelanguageisaprimarymediumofcommunicationandevenaformofhuman life,itsrelationshiptorealityanditsroleintheformationofcultureandthinking- modeisalwaysasignificantissueinterestingscholarsindifferentstudyareas.For example, Piaget illuminates the connection between language and cognitive development; Sapir explores how grammatical categories shape world views; Geertz enquiries into the influence of symbolic forms on patterns of culture; Foucaultrevealshowseriousspeechesgiverisetodisciplineandpower.Thisissue has also drawn much attention from philosophers in the past 2,500 years. Parmenides stresses the correspondence among Being, thought, and speech; Heraclitus interprets reason, truth, and law in light of logos which implies conversation; Plato thinks of names as the starting point of obtaining knowledge; Aristotle treats language as the reflection of the structure of logic and existence. Thelinguisticturnintwentieth-centuryWesternphilosophygoesmuchfurtherby suggesting philosophical problems being first and foremost linguistic ones. It not onlycausesrevolutionarychangesinphilosophy,butalsoinspiresreinterpretations of traditional problems in other disciplines of humanities and social sciences. To understand the vital impact of the linguistic turn on philosophy and its influenceonanystudyareathatconcernslanguage,reality,thought,andbehavior, onemaylookattheworksofNietzsche.ForNietzscheisprobablythefirstthinker who systematically and thoroughly rejects the Platonic tradition by critically reviewing the role language plays in basic metaphysical categories (including universe, subject, object, reason, truth, meaning, logic, and knowledge). Among hisoriginalandinsightfulpointsonlanguageandphilosophy,thefollowingisvery thought-provoking: because of the guidance of similar grammatical functions, Indian,Greek,andGermanphilosophizingexperiencesimilardevelopment.Thus, “It is highly possible that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the concept of the subject is least developed) look otherwise ‘into the world,’ and will be found on paths different from those of the xi xii Introduction Indo-Germanic peoples and the Muslims.”1 This point actually raises an issue in comparative philosophy; moreover, it challenges us to think about such questions as:Towhatextentorinwhatrespectsdodifferentlanguagesleadthephilosophical discourseofvariouscountriestodifferentorientations?Canpeoplephilosophizing indifferentlanguagesreachsimilarorevenuniversalunderstandingsoftheworld? Is it the structure of language alone or the actual employment of language that givesmeaningtorealityandmakesitpresenttomankind?Whatarethedifferences (and similarities) among the ways different philosophical traditions handle the relationship of language to realty? How do different interpretations of the language-reality relationship shape different world views and cultural patterns? This book aims not to give a detailed answer to every one of the above questions;instead,itfocusesonChineseunderstandingandtreatmentoflanguage andrealityandsetsforitselfthreetasks:(1)exploringhowChinesethinkersliving in pre-Qin times (551–221 BCE2) analyze the two concepts: ming3 名 (language) and shi 實 (reality) as well as their relationship in various settings; (2) investigating relevant issues in ontology, epistemology, ethics, axiology, and logicasaddressedanddevelopedinanancientChinesediscourseonlanguageand reality;(3)discussinghowthisdiscourseshapesacentralcharacteristicofChinese culture,which Icall “practicalzhi”實踐知智4(practicalknowledge,intelligence, and wisdom) and distinguishes Chinese culture from Western culture in ancient times.Furthermore,thisbookisinnaturenotacomparativestudyofChineseand Western theories of language, although it would be very significant to involve an equal analysis of Western discourse on words and objects and to reveal the differences and similarities between the two discourses. Nevertheless, in some casesitmentionsWesternphilosophers’ideas.Mygoalofdoingsoistwofold:on the one hand, to display effectively the meaning and significance of certain Chinese ideas by setting Western ideas as a reference; on the other hand, to help the reader better comprehend Chinese ideas since he/she might be familiar with Western theories of language. By fulfilling the above tasks and goal, I hope, the book will shed light on the abovequestionsonewayoranother.Specifically,itmakesfivemainpointsamong 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books,1966),27–28. 2 In 551BCE Confucius was born and Lao Zi was about 20 years old. In 221 BCE, the Qin dynasty,thefirstChineseEmpire,wasestablished.Wheneverreferringtothisperiodoftime,Iuse “Chinainancienttime”or“pre-Qintimes.” 3 Throughoutthisbook,Chinesecharactersarepresentedinthepinyinsystem.Chinesepeople’s namesarealsospelledintermsofthissystemexceptthosenamesthathavebeenknownpopularly amongEnglishreaders.Bythesametoken,whenevercitingaChinesepassagedirectly,Iusethe originalbooktitleplusitschaptertitle.Inaddition,unlessotherwiseindicated,Englishtranslations ofpassagesquotedfromancientChinesetextsaremyown.ThereasonwhyIdonotuseexisting English translations is simple: translation is interpretation, and my interpretations of the quoted ChinesepassagesaresometimesdifferentfromthatofEnglishtranslators. 4 實踐知智 does not sound correct grammatically; but, I delivery use 知 to replace 之 to emphasizethedifferenceandconnectionbetween知asknowledgeand智aswisdom.
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