The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies 9781472580313, 9781474295024, 9781472580306

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction Why Methodology Matters
Is There Chinese philosophy?
Methodological Pluralism
“Revitalizing the Old to Realize the New” (溫故而知新)
“What to Do? What to Do?” (如之何？如之何？)
“Rocks of Other Mountains Can Serve as Grind-.stones ...” (他山之石可以為錯)
Critiques and New Directions
Continuing the Conversation
Notes
References
1 Philosophizing with Canonical Chinese Texts: Seeking an Interpretive Context
The Inseparability of Method and Its Madness
“Method” and “Methodology” in Classical Chinese Philosophizing
Granet and Needham on Correlative Thinking
“How Things Hang Together”: A Doctrine of Internal, Constitutive Relations
Shi 勢: An Aesthetic Alternative to the Logic of “Things” and “External Causality”
The Centrality of Human Sagacity in the Optimizing of the Daode 道德 Experience
Sageliness as the Qualitative Transformation of the Tianren Relationship
Daode as Focus-Field Holography: Getting Past the Inner/Outer Dualism
C. S. Peirce and Abductive Reasoning: Step One in Focal Resolution
Ars Contextualis: Step Two in Focal Resolution
Notes
References
2 Methodological Reflections on the Study of Chinese Thought
A Methodological Approach
Two Perspectives on the Study of Chinese Thought
A Multistaged Approach
Three Tasks in the Study of Chinese Thought
Resolving the Potential Tensions
Notes
References
3 On What it Means to “Let a Text Speak for Itself?”: Philosophizing with Classical Chinese Texts
Introduction
Translation
Structure of Texts
Interpretation
Final Remarks
Notes
References
4 Academic Silos, or “What I Wish Philosophers Knew about Early History in China”
Manuscript Culture vs. Printed Culture
Failures to Understand the Historical Contexts for Specific Expressions
Failures to Understand the Role of Education and Debate, as Well as the Social Identities of the Debaters
Haphazard Choices of Less-than-helpful Translations
Notes
References
5 Studies of Chinese Philosophy from a Transcultural Perspective: Contextualization and Decontextualization
Notes
References
6 Gongfu Method in the Analects and its Significance Beyond
Traditional Chinese Thought under the Perspective of Modern Western Philosophy
Gongfu Perspective Exemplified in the Analects
Prospects of Gongfu Philosophy and Philosophy of Gongfu
Gongfu, Pragmatism, and Virtue Theories
Concluding Remarks
Notes
References
7 Methodological Inspiration from Teaching Chinese Philosophy
Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Eurocentrism
Pedagogical Methods in Chinese Philosophy Classrooms
Classroom Practices Drawn from Chinese Philosophy
Conclusion
Notes
References
8 Confucianism and Pragmatist Methods: Keeping Faith with the Confucian Moral Mission
Centrality of Practice and Pragmatic Methods
Words and Practical Effects
The Truth of the Way (Dao 道) and the Way of Truths
Rejecting Pragmatist Methods: Confucianism as Moral Metaphysics
Knowing the Mandate of Heaven
“Self-restriction of Moral Knowing” and Pragmatist Hope
Notes
References
9 Metaphysics and Methodology in a Cross-Cultural Context
Is There Chinese “Metaphysics”?
Metaphysics, Experience, and the Basis for Dialogue
“Deep Critique” and Learning from Chinese Metaphysics
Mind-.Body Dualism in Chinese Philosophy
Notes
References
10 On Constructive-Engagement Strategy in Studies of Chinese Philosophy
Characteristic Features and Emphases of Constructive-Engagement Strategy
How the Constructive-Engagement Strategy Is Possible
Two Methodological Emphases of Constructive-Engagement Strategy
Philosophical Interpretation
Philosophical Issue Engagement
Adequacy Conditions of Methodological Guiding Principles
Recent Trend of Systematic Constructive-Engagement Practice
Notes
References
11 Issues and Methods of Analytic Philosophy
Introduction
Is the Transcendentalist’s Reasons for Rejecting MAP Acceptable?
Is the Pan-Scientific Historian’s Reasons for Rejecting MAP Acceptable?
Is Fung Yu-lan’s Approach Really Logical?
Is the Comparativist Project Feasible?
Why Is MAP Necessary?
Notes
References
12 Traveling Around the Threshold: Continental Philosophy and the Comparative Project
A Beginning
Approaching
Engaging
Dwelling
Notes
References
13 Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics: Methodologies and Practices
References
14 Methods from Within the Chinese Tradition
Introduction
Why Methods from “Within” the Chinese Tradition?
Problems with this Approach and Some Responses
Further Projects and Implications
References
15 Methodology in Chinese-Indian Comparative Philosophy
What Is Comparative Chinese-.Indian Philosophy, and How Is It Different from “Comparative Philosophy”?
Obstacles to the Chinese-Indian Comparative Project
Motives and Methods
Historical Investigative Methods
Through Historical Connection—Buddhism
Without Historical Connection
The Analogical Method
Cosmopolitan Methods
The Future of Chinese-.Indian Comparative Philosophy
Notes
References
16 Daoism, Naturalism, and Chinese Culture
Confucianism and the Chinese Sciences
Confucianism and Strategic Thinking
Daoist and Naturalist Eudaimonism
Notes
References
17 Interdisciplinary Methods in Chinese Philosophy: Comparative Philosophy and the Case Example of Mind-Body Holism
The Myth of Strong Mind-Body Holism in Early China
Debunking the Myth of Strong Holism
Points of Contact, Part I: Textual Analysis
Concepts of Xin in Early China: A Large-Scale Corpus Analysis
Methodological and Theoretical Issues
Points of Contact, Part II: Cognitive Science Evidence Regarding Mind-.Body “Folk” Dualism
The Impact of Cognitive Science: Shifting Our Hermeneutical Starting Point
Integrating Cognitive Science with Cultural Studies
Are Folk Views of the Self “Dualistic”?
“Weak” or “Sloppy” Folk Dualism: Mind and Body Interpenetrate
Conclusion: Doing Comparative Philosophy
Notes
References
18 Chinese Philosophy as Experimental Philosophy
Introduction
Empirically Informed Philosophy vs. Experimental Philosophy
Three Types of Experimental Philosophy
Psychological Modeling
Philosophical Restrictionism
Experimental Chinese Philosophy
Example 1—Filial Piety
Example 2—Ritual
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

THE BLOOMSBURY RESEARCH HANDBOOK OF

CHINESE PHILOSOPHY METHODOLOGIES

BLOOMSBURY RESEARCH HANDBOOKS IN ASIAN PHILOSOPHY Series Editors: Chakravarthi Ram-​Prasad, Lancaster University, UK. Sor-​hoon Tan, National University of Singapore.

Editorial Advisory Board: Roger Ames, University of Hawai’i; Doug Berger, Southern Illinois University; Carine Defoort, KU-​Leuven; Owen Flanagan, Duke University; Jessica Frazier, University of Kent; Chenyang Li, Nanyang Technological University; Ronnie Littlejohn, Belmont University; Evan Thompson, University of British Columbia.

Series description: Bringing together established academics and rising stars, Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy survey philosophical topics across all the main schools of Asian thought. Each volume focuses on the history and development of a core subject in a single tradition, asking how the field has changed, highlighting current disputes, anticipating new directions of study, illustrating the Western philosophical significance of a subject and demonstrating why a topic is important for understanding Asian thought. From knowledge, being, gender and ethics, to methodology, language and art, these research handbooks provide up-​to-​date and authoritative overviews of Asian philosophy in the twenty-​first century.

Other titles in the series: The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender, edited by Ann A. Pang-​White The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, edited by Arindam Chakrabarti The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics, edited by Joerg Tuske The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics, edited by Shyam Ranganathan

THE BLOOMSBURY RESEARCH HANDBOOK OF

CHINESE PHILOSOPHY METHODOLOGIES Edited by Sor-​hoon Tan

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 Paperback first published 2018 © Sor-​hoon Tan and Contributors, 2016, 2018 Sor-​hoon Tan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-​1-​4725-​8-031-​3 PB: 978-​1-​3500-​5-804-​0 ePDF: 978-​1-​4725-​8-030-​6 ePub: 978-​1-​4725-​8-032-​0 Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Tan, Sor-hoon, 1965– editor. Title: The Bloomsbury research handbook of Chinese philosophy methodologies / edited by Sor-hoon Tan. Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2016. | Series: Bloomsbury research handbooks in Asian philosophy Identifiers: LCCN 2016012993 (print) | LCCN 2016022007 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472580313 (hardback) | ISBN 9781472580306 (epdf) | ISBN 9781472580320 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Chinese. | Methodology. | Philosophy, Chinese—Research. Classification: LCC B5231 .B56 2016 (print) | LCC B5231 (ebook) | DDC 181/.11—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012993 Series: Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy Cover design: Clare Turner Cover image © VII–photo/Getty Images Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List

of

Contributors

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Why Methodology Matters Sor-​hoon  Tan

1

Part I:  Philosophizing with Traditional Chinese Texts35 1 Philosophizing with Canonical Chinese Texts: Seeking an Interpretive Context Roger T. Ames 2 Methodological Reflections on the Study of Chinese Thought Kwong-​loi  Shun

37 57

3 On What it Means to “Let a Text Speak for Itself?”: Philosophizing with Classical Chinese Texts Ronnie Littlejohn

75

4 Academic Silos, or “What I Wish Philosophers Knew about Early History in China” Michael Nylan

91

5 Studies of Chinese Philosophy from a Transcultural Perspective: Contextualization and Decontextualization Ming-​Huei  Lee

115

Part II: Methods from Practice125 6 Gongfu Method in the Analects and its Significance Beyond  Peimin Ni

127

7 Methodological Inspiration from Teaching Chinese Philosophy Sarah Mattice

143

8 Confucianism and Pragmatist Methods: Keeping Faith with the Confucian Moral Mission Sor-​hoon  Tan

155

vi

Contents

Part III:  Adapting Borrowed Methodologies181 9 Metaphysics and Methodology in a Cross-​Cultural Context Franklin Perkins 10 On Constructive-​Engagement Strategy in Studies of Chinese Philosophy Bo Mou 11 Issues and Methods of Analytic Philosophy Yiu-​ming  Fung

183

199 227

12 Traveling Around the Threshold: Continental Philosophy and the Comparative Project David Jones

245

13 Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics: Methodologies and Practices Eva Kit Wah Man

257

Part IV:  Critiques and Future Possibilities271 14 Methods from Within the Chinese Tradition Leigh Jenco

273

15 Methodology in Chinese-​Indian Comparative Philosophy Alexus McLeod

289

16 Daoism, Naturalism, and Chinese Culture Lisa Raphals

307

17 Interdisciplinary Methods in Chinese Philosophy: Comparative Philosophy and the Case Example of Mind-​Body Holism Edward Slingerland

323

18 Chinese Philosophy as Experimental Philosophy Hagop Sarkissian and Ryan Nichols

353

Index

367

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Roger T. Ames is Professor of Philosophy at Peking University, after retiring from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2016. Yiu-​ming Fung is Professor of Chinese Philosophy at Hong Kong University of ­Science and Technology and Visiting Professor at Soochow University (Taiwan). Leigh Jenco is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the London School of ­Economics. David Jones is Professor of Philosophy at Kennesaw State University. Ming-​Huei Lee is Professor at Taiwan National University and Fellow of the ­Academia Sinica, Institute of Literature and Philosophy. Ronnie Littlejohn is Professor of Philosophy at Belmont University. Eva Kit Wah Man is Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Sarah Mattice is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at the ­University of North Florida. Alexus McLeod is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. Bo Mou is Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University. Peimin Ni is Professor of Philosophy at Grand Valley State University. Ryan Nichols is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. Michael Nylan is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Franklin Perkins is Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University. Lisa Raphals is Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy at the ­University of California, Riverside. Hagop Sarkissian is Associate Professor at City University of New York, Baruch College. Kwong-​loi Shun is Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Edward Slingerland is Professor of Asian Studies at University of British Columbia. Sor-​hoon Tan is Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks are due to the contributors who took precious time from their very busy schedules to write the chapters of this volume. No editor could ask for a more cooperative and genial group of scholars to work with. They made the entire process so smooth that I still could not believe my good fortune in completing this project only two years after the publisher’s acceptance of my proposal. I am grateful for the generous sabbatical leave and financial support offered by the National University of Singapore, which permitted me to start this project while spending a semester in the department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Special thanks go to Michael Puett for arranging the visit and for permitting me to audit his graduate class reading of the Guodian manuscripts. Harvard’s nurturing atmosphere and its amazing library resources played a significant part in quite a few research projects, of which this edited volume is one. The team at Bloomsbury, Colleen Coalter and Andrew Wardell, have been very supportive and efficient in getting this volume through its various stages and the copyediting team engaged by Bloomsbury did an excellent job. It has been a great pleasure working with the various individuals who have made this volume what it is.

INTRODUCTION

Why Methodology Matters SOR-​H OON TAN

工欲善其事必先利其器 A craftsman wanting to be good at his craft must first sharpen his tools. – Analects 15.10 This research handbook on Chinese philosophy methodologies presents various methods employed by some of the best researchers in Anglophone Chinese philosophy. Contributors demonstrate their methods and discuss difficulties in applying any method, evaluate and justify some specific methods, criticize and reject others. This volume is more than a manual to help readers conduct research in Chinese philosophy; through methodological discussions, it also illuminates the nature of Anglophone Chinese philosophy, its historical development, current concerns, challenges, and future possibilities. To accomplish the best results in any undertaking, one must find the best method(s). In order to recognize which methods are best or better than others, one has to understand what one is trying to accomplish. Methods and goals in philosophy are however not related in a straightforward instrumental manner; philosophy has often been defined partly or wholly by its method(s). John Dewey (1910: 46), for example, maintained that “philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.” Methodological distinctiveness has import for not only the nature but also the very viability and autonomy of philosophy thus conceived. More recently, some who believe that modern science offers the sole means to knowledge have predicted the end of philosophy. Other philosophers who favor adopting scientific method(s) attempt to carve out a new niche for philosophy that cannot be supplanted entirely by the sciences. Even if defined by its purpose(s) or substantive content rather than the uniqueness of its methods, methodological efficacy matters to philosophical inquiries’ claim to deliver knowledge or wisdom—​ which methods are viable depend on how one understands the goals. The methods of explanatory and justificatory reasoning that seek propositional truths may obscure rather than illuminate certain aspects of human flourishing that is the concern of praxis-​guiding discourse—​quite different

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methods may be warranted for Chinese philosophy focused on “way-​making” rather than “truth-​seeking” (Rosemont 2015). Discussions of methods are not new to philosophy which, from its very beginning, has self-​consciously reflected on its own nature and method(s). From Plato and Aristotle, through Descartes and Kant, to Collingwood in the twentieth century, philosophers sought to establish the unique correctness of their own philosophical views by defending a conception of philosophy that includes specific philosophical methods. Methodological reflections become livelier during periods of transition that herald significant change in the discipline. Some have observed a recent “methodological turn” in philosophy with relatively more discussions of the interrelated issues of the nature of philosophy and philosophical method(s) in the field.1 Much of this could be attributed to the challenges posed to philosophy by scientific advance in domains that intersect with philosophy, especially cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Beyond perennial philosophical problems, to avoid obsolescence and irrelevance, philosophy cannot ignore the new problems presented by today’s globalizing world, which may require new methods of philosophizing, and certainly have implications for judgments about which methods are more effective from the perspective of solving real problems. With increased connectedness and expanded horizons brought by globalization, knowledge and practices outside the Anglophone world are demanding more attention. Although Anglophone publications that describe their content as “Chinese philosophy” have a long history, the struggle to be taken seriously by mainstream, especially Analytic, Anglophone philosophers continues, and methodology has been central to this struggle for the past several decades. Insofar as methods contribute to a conception of philosophy, they also serve as criteria for delineating its boundaries: diverse subfields of the academic discipline can be unified through common methods, whether an inquiry is considered philosophical can be decided by examining its methods as much as by its goals. If a subfield claims to have unique methodological demands, then its status within the discipline has to be justified by some other understanding of what counts as philosophical. Some have questioned the philosophical status of “Chinese philosophy” on methodological grounds, such as the lack of systematicity, disinterested rational arguments, and independence from religion and other disciplines.

IS THERE CHINESE PHILOSOPHY? In his lectures on the history of philosophy, Hegel (1995: 8) dismissed “Chinese philosophy” (together with Indian philosophy, comprising “Oriental philosophy” or “Eastern philosophy”) as Thought rather than “true Philosophy,” which he defined by its end: “Truth” which is “unchangeable, eternal, in and for itself.” Philosophical systems are produced when Thought is preoccupied only with itself, when it “has sought and found itself ” (Hegel 1995: 5). By this standard, Confucius “is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom—​one with whom there is no speculative philosophy. We may conclude from his original works

INTRODUCTION: WHY METHODOLOGY MATTERS 3

that for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated” (Hegel 1995: 121). The symbols of the Yijing “are quite abstract categories, and consequently the most superficial determinations of understanding” (ibid.). In Hegel’s (1995: 125) opinion, Taoism still stands on the “most elementary stage” of philosophy, having got no further than “the abstract universal” expressed as “nothing, emptiness, the altogether undetermined.” While many contemporary philosophers ignore Hegel’s definition of philosophy and reject his philosophical system entirely, his ghost still hovers when we continue to be confronted with similar remarks that question the very existence of Chinese philosophy, a kind of philosophy rooted in the historical intellectual traditions of China that impart to it a unique character, to be distinguished from “philosophy in China” which refers to Chinese academics in China doing the same kind of philosophy as philosophers working in North America or Western Europe, just as physicists anywhere do the same kind of physics (Jin 1990: 280). Whether China has its own philosophy is a question that the Chinese had asked themselves when the foreign term, “philosophy” and its Japanese kanji translation, which the Chinese eventually adopted as the Mandarin translation for “philosophy” (zhexue 哲學), was first introduced into China. Wang Guowei’s “Defending Philosophy against Misunderstandings” (Zhexue Bianhuo 哲學辯惑) criticizes its exclusion from the new curriculum proposed in Zhang Zhidong’s education reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century. In arguing for the benefits of philosophy and the need for the Chinese to study philosophy, including Western philosophy, Wang asserted that the six classics and the teachings of the various Masters, as well as the scholarship of Song dynasty Confucians, also contain philosophy, which theorizes the principles of the “true, good, and beautiful” (Wang 2008: 257). The term was applied to the works of the Chinese Masters at least since 1902, and these works form the subject matter of Xie Wuliang’s 1916 History of Chinese Philosophy, which simply assumes that “the distinctions between metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics in contemporary Western philosophy were essentially no different from such categorizations as the Six Arts (Liuyi 六藝) and the Nine Trends of Thought (Jiuliu 九流) in traditional branches of learning” (Zheng 2005: 13, 14). Not surprising that the book did not draw much attention as its borrowing of the Western term is no more than a crude following of fashion, oblivious to the problems raised by the encounter between Chinese traditional learning and Western learning at that time. Hu Shih’s Outline of History of Chinese Philosophy published three years later addresses those problems and presents Chinese philosophy as an academic discipline modeled after the discipline of philosophy in Western academia. Clearly influenced by John Dewey, his teacher at Columbia University, Hu (1996: 1) defines philosophy as inquiries that seek fundamental solutions to important problems of life. The introduction to the published version of Hu’s doctoral dissertation, The Development of Logical Method in Ancient China (1922: 303), began with the assertion that “philosophy is conditioned by its method.”2 He identified the fundamental difference between Confucianism and Mohism as a difference in philosophical method (Hu 1996: 134). According to Hu (1996: 96), Confucius’s method, though positive in emphasizing logical

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inference and systematic in having “one thread” that connects all, is inadequate because he confined “learning” (xue 學) to book-​learning. In contrast, Mo Zi’s method is “pragmatic” in emphasizing not just what is ideal, but why and how to achieve it (Hu1996: 135–​137).3 Hu’s analysis is framed by a certain view of the scientific method which he equated with the philosophical method. Mo Zi’s “three laws of reasoning” (sanbiao 三表) is explicated as tests of truth in terms of (1) compatibility with the best of established conceptions; (2) compatibility with the facts of people’s experience; and most important, (3) practical consequences in achieving desirable ends. Hu (1996: 144, 145) considered the attention given to direct observation and people’s experience in the first “law” “the fundamentals of science,” and the inference from past experience in the third “law” an example of inductive reasoning similar to that found in all scientific laws. He also identified a later branch of Mohism, the neo-​Mohists (biemo 別墨), associated with six books (32–​37) in the Mo Zi, as “scientific Mohism” (in contrast to “religious Mohism”), which is concerned with problems that he took to be “scientific and logical”—​such as conceptual distinction, inference, causation, form, deduction and induction (Hu 1996: 163–​207). In his final overview of Chinese philosophy during ancient times, Hu (1996: 344) singled out the neo-​Mohist period as its acme, and the texts associated with them as exemplifying “the scientific method and the scope of scientific problems” of that time; it could have developed into a kind of “scientific philosophy” but was unfortunately interrupted by contingent historical factors: the rise of epistemological skepticism, narrow utilitarianism, authoritarian monism, and the superstition of the “formula masters” (fangshi 方士). Hu later expanded his claim about the “scientific spirit and method in Chinese philosophy” to encompass Confucianism and Daoism, especially the Confucian tradition. He traced this “scientific spirit and method,” which he equated with “dispassionate and disciplined inquiry, of rigorous evidential thinking and evidential research,” back to the “Socratic Tradition” of Confucius, and identified two periods of Chinese thought that “illustrate the rise and development of the critical and scientific spirit and method”—​the movement of criticism represented by Han dynasty Wang Chong’s Essays in Criticism (Lun Heng 論衡) and the Song dynasty neo-​Confucian movement’s “extending human knowledge to the utmost by investigating the reason or law (li 理) in all things” (Hu 1959: 29–​31). Though critical of the narrowing of the ideal to textual studies and corresponding neglect of empirical investigation, especially of the natural world, Hu (1959: 31) praised Zhu Xi for developing a “method of evidential thinking and research” that was responsible for development of evidential investigation (kaozheng 考證, kaoju 考據) in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, a “new age of the Revival of Learning” that produced “a body of knowledge answering to the rigorous canons of evidence, exactitude, and logical systematization.” For Hu (1923: 643), Qing dynasty “Han Learning” scholarship represents a “Chinese Renaissance,” an age with the maxim of “base every conclusion on evidence,” and is scientific in spirit despite “the absence of natural or physical science.”4 Hu Shih was not the only twentieth-​century Chinese academic who reconstructed Chinese philosophy by borrowing some Western understanding of the discipline and

INTRODUCTION: WHY METHODOLOGY MATTERS 5

its methods. Fung Yu-​lan’s (2000: 3) much more widely read History of Chinese Philosophy, covering the entire period of Chinese history up to the nineteenth century, also adopts as criteria his understanding of the content and method of Western philosophy in undertaking a project described as “discovering in the various scholarly works in the history of China that can be named by philosophy as the West understands it.” Referring to common subdivisions of philosophy into a theory of the world (cosmology and ontology), a theory of life (psychology and ethics), and a theory of knowledge (epistemology and logic), Fung (2000: 7–​9) judged China to be strong in the theory of life; but other than a brief appearance during the pre-​ Qin period, logic and epistemology had not received much attention, and the same focus on practical affairs also led the Chinese to a relative neglect of cosmology and ontology. However, in an article published in the Philosophical Review nearly two decades later, Fung (1948: 540) argued that it is in their metaphysical theories that Chinese and Western philosophies are “most easily compared” to show that there “must be some fundamental similarity” that entitles them both to be referred to by the same word. In his History, Fung saw no significant difference between the philosophical method and the scientific method which, he maintained, is simply a more rigorous and precise form of ordinary thinking. Specifically, reasoning and logic is central to the philosophical method; Fung (2000: 5) rejected the views popular among some Chinese at the time that the philosophical method is intuitive rather than rational. Fung acknowledged that the Chinese texts which provide the material for his History do not employ the same method(s) of reasoning and argumentation as modern Western scientific or philosophical works, but maintained that this lack of “formal” system does not exclude “real” system in reasoning that his History aims to make explicit, quite often by comparison with Western concepts and theories. Though Fung (2000: 7) defended the “weakness” of Chinese philosophy as resulting from an (implicitly admirable) interest in action rather than empty words, practice rather than theory, he became more critical after twenty years of trying “to introduce the method of logical analysis into Chinese philosophy and make it more rationalistic” (1948: 545). Despite the occasional remarks that imply or acknowledge the inferiority of Chinese philosophy, Fung’s considered position defends the value and continued relevance of Chinese philosophy. His mature view advocates a “union of rationalism and mysticism” to combine the strengths of Western and Chinese philosophies. The positive method of logical analysis has to be complemented by the negative method of “crossing the boundary” between the known and the unknown posited by reason (a negation of reason by reason) for the highest philosophical understanding and achievement of the ideal life. The evolution of Fung’s methodological views went hand in hand with the transformation in his understanding of philosophy, which he (1948: 546–​547) came to see in terms of an understanding of the universe that sustains the transcendent and moral spheres of living, which are the creation of human spirit (the two lower spheres of human living being the “gifts of nature”). Fung’s approach of explicating and analyzing traditional Chinese texts with terms borrowed from Western philosophy—​ rationalism, empiricism, idealism,

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materialism, realism, mysticism, naturalism, utilitarianism, among them—​has been very influential both in the People’s Republic of China (despite the vicissitudes of Chinese philosophy during the Mao years) and in the Anglophone Chinese philosophy community. The English translation of Fung’s History of Chinese Philosophy by Derk Bodde was first published in Beijing in 1937. A second edition published by Princeton University Press in 1952 has been used by a few generations of students. Wing-​tsit Chan’s A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), another key reference for researchers, employs the same approach in translating the selected primary texts of the subject. Only recently has this approach been questioned, but it remains widespread in practice. The borrowing of Western philosophical conceptual frameworks and theoretical tools has become more sophisticated, often critically self-​ conscious, sometimes deliberately questioning or modifying the borrowed concepts and theories, but completely breaking free of cross-​cultural borrowing is no simple matter as the discussions in this volume will show. Many university philosophy departments in the PRC today offer courses in “Chinese philosophy,” together with courses in Western philosophy, and sometimes Indian philosophy. Despite its institutionalization as a modern discipline in Chinese academia, the question of whether there is such a thing as “Chinese philosophy” has not been laid to rest. This “implicit debate” has shadowed the retrospective creation or recognition of Chinese philosophy in order to establish it as a modern discipline. Carine Defoort (2001) identified four responses to the question: “Is there such a thing as Chinese philosophy” along two axes, the descriptive and the emotive. One could defend or reject “Chinese philosophy” while valuing philosophy understood in a certain way; one could criticize prevailing definition of philosophy via the defense of Chinese philosophy as providing a better alternative (or expanded) understanding of the discipline; or one could reject “Chinese philosophy” because one believes that traditional Chinese thought would be better off not being associated with that discipline, thereby questioning the value of philosophy. A remark by Derrida (Du and Zhang 2002: 82) during his visit to China in 2001, “China has no philosophy”—​ which was not intended as criticism or insult given his view of “philosophy”—​ sparked off heated debates among Chinese academics about the “legitimacy” of Chinese philosophy and this became “one of the ten major issues in the field” (Defoort and Ge 2005: 3). A selection of contributions to this debate have been translated and published in three issues of Contemporary Chinese Thought (2005). Critics maintained that the approach pioneered by Hu and Fung of interpreting and reconstructing ancient Chinese texts with various Western philosophical frameworks has produced only misunderstandings and furthermore distorted Chinese wisdom beyond recognition. The activities of such twentieth-​ century academic Chinese philosophy bear no resemblance to the teachings of the ancient Chinese Masters, which were embedded in their specific ways of life. Even if it is philosophy, it is certainly not Chinese in the relevant sense. Some even question the philosophical value of such academic exercises. Instead of eliciting any simple answer to the question of whether there is Chinese philosophy—​it all depends on the definition of philosophy and how one approaches the Chinese texts—​the debate brings out disagreements about appropriate methods and terminology for interpreting Chinese

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texts, whose value is accepted by all participants. Many participants in the debate suggest introducing “a variety of philosophical or other methodologies to replace the rather uniform philosophical approaches of the twentieth century” (Defoort and Ge 2005: 7). To some extent, the methodological diversity sought by those working in the PRC can be found in Anglophone research in Chinese philosophy, but Chinese philosophers working in North America and Europe also are not spared the sense of crisis that arises from a perceived lack of recognition by philosophy colleagues; many of them work out of East Asian studies, religion, history, and other departments, rather than philosophy departments. Bryan van Norden reported one of his undergraduate professors asserting that “there is no such thing as Chinese philosophy” in a review of the state of the subfield in the United States triggered by online discussions on the Leiter’s Report of the difficulties faced by graduate students wishing to specialize in Chinese philosophy (Olberding 2008: 4). In the same review (Olberding 2008: 3), Roger Ames contends that, rather than being threatened with extinction, there are more professional and other opportunities for Chinese philosophy today than in past decades. Justin Tiwald and David Wong confirm that there is healthy student interest at both undergraduate and graduate levels (Olberding 2008: 6–​7, 13). Others who do not see any crisis in terms of the options for doing doctoral work in Chinese philosophy nevertheless worry that top philosophy departments do not have faculties who are specialists in Chinese philosophy. In this context, the way forward requires that research in Chinese philosophy meets the standards of “mainstream”—​usually taken to mean Analytic—​ philosophers (van Norden, in Olberding 2008: 5), and that Chinese philosophers continue “to engage our colleagues whose research is on historical or contemporary issues in Western philosophy in constructive dialogue” (Angle, in Olberding 2008: 2; also Wong in Olberding 2008: 14). This clearly raises the issue of research methods in Chinese philosophy: should we, and how can we do Chinese philosophy in ways that justify its inclusion by the discipline of philosophy, while at the same time do justice to its subject matter? This handbook reveals that Anglophone Chinese philosophy has reached a point where methodological discussions are not just about procrustean reading of traditional Chinese texts to fit some given foreign (to Chinese culture) understanding of philosophy and its prevailing standards; some of the contributors to this volume clearly challenge such understandings and standards, while those who do borrow concepts and adopt perspectives with origins in other philosophies transform them in using them to understand and philosophize with traditional Chinese texts. Those who find Chinese philosophy a worthwhile area of research and study, with serious and rigorous scholarship that contributes to the education of future generations, often study primarily traditional Chinese texts, that is, writings of Chinese thinkers before the significant introduction and adoption of modern Western thinking by Chinese intellectuals since the late nineteenth century. I use “traditional” in a broad and nonideological sense to include any texts that record or preserve the teaching, learning, or practice of Chinese society before the nineteenth century, without taking any specific stance on the nature of tradition or modernity, or assume

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any criteria of canonicity that privilege some texts over others, albeit these are contentious methodological issues. My own understanding of Chinese philosophy (not necessarily shared by other contributors to this volume, not to mention others working in this subfield) also includes contemporary works that are continuous with those traditional texts, for example, the works of twentieth-​ century new Confucians and other contemporary philosophies that seek to extend, develop, or make relevant for contemporary life the teachings of those traditional Chinese texts. Sometimes, such works are not intended to be merely academic, but emphasize the importance of practice. While some researchers of Chinese philosophy might not be committed to the teachings of Chinese traditional texts as a living tradition, other contemporary Chinese philosophers go beyond academic research. Even if their practice could not (and I would argue should not) replicate all the details of the lives of the ancient Chinese masters, they defy the pessimistic irony of Chinese philosophy having “died of its own birth” (Defoort 2001: 395)—​were it limited to the content of traditional texts existing only in a foreign institutional setting, as a separate corpus and object of study that no long supports a living tradition. The inseparability of theory and practice itself is a central methodological issue of academic research in Chinese philosophy.

METHODOLOGICAL PLURALISM Methodologies in this handbook refer to the methods of doing Chinese philosophy as well as theories about them, why some methods are better than others, how they work, their justification and significance. These methods include any means that advance inquiries in Chinese philosophy, from the selection of materials, mostly but not necessarily limited to texts, interpretation of the materials, to the questions that focus and guide philosophical inquiry, the methods of thinking (not limited to argumentative reasoning), and even methods of practice beyond the academic activity of philosophical inquiries. Thus broadly defined, there are almost as many methodologies as there are Chinese philosophers (meaning anyone who conducts research in Chinese philosophy, regardless of their ethnicity or geographical location), although certain resemblances among some may constitute a methodological approach distinguished from others with different sets of resemblances, for example those whose methodologies take contemporary philosophical questions as focus differ in approach from those who are more interested in understanding the content of the texts within their own historical contexts, those who confine their inquiry to the Chinese materials and contexts differ from those who attempt to understand Chinese philosophy through comparison with philosophical products of some other culture(s). Among the last group, there are approaches that work within some kind of Pragmatist framework; others look to Analytic philosophy for comparison, or prefer ancient Greek philosophy for comparison or contrast; still others adopt methods developed in Continental philosophy, especially philosophical hermeneutics, or methods popular in Feminism, to name only a few methodological possibilities. Some methodologies are influenced by disciplines other than philosophy, including

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literature, history, cognitive science, political science, and so on. Apart from weighing the strengths and weaknesses of different methods, vis-​à-​vis one’s philosophical goals, it is also worth considering whether methods from different approaches could be combined, not arbitrarily but after critical reflection and effort at synergistic integration, or innovating new methodologies through criticisms of inadequacies in existing methods. The most often studied and cited primary material in Anglophone Chinese philosophy are undoubtedly the Analects, the Mencius, the Laozi, and the Zhuangzi. However important their influence on the Chinese civilization, these are only drops in the ocean of philosophically interesting and important Chinese texts. Recent calls (Neville 2010) to pay more attention to Xunzi when discussing early Confucianism has met with some success. Stephen Angle (2009; 2012), Sébastien Billioud (2012), and Yong Huang (2014), among others, have published monographs on later periods of Confucianism. Karyn Lai’s Learning from Chinese Philosophy (2006) engages both Confucianism and Daoism in philosophical topics of contemporary interest. Following earlier works on Tiantai Buddhism (Ziporyn 2004) and the neo-​ Daoist philosophy of Guo Xiang (Ziporyn 2003), Brook Ziporyn’s (2013) study of the concept of li (理)—​often translated as “principle”—​as harmonious coherence focuses on Chinese Buddhist philosophy but also traverses Daoist and neo-​Confucian philosophies. Signs of greater range and breadth in selection of textual materials for philosophical studies notwithstanding, certain key texts of the pre-​Qin period, not to mention the later centuries of China’s long history, remain neglected. There is no consensus on which are the canonical texts for Chinese philosophy, or on the criteria for identifying them. How one negotiates the trade-​ off between breadth and depth, and whether a narrow focus on only one or two texts matters, depends on the philosophical objectives of a project and how Chinese philosophy is understood. If one is engaged in an exercise of answering certain philosophical questions with resources from the selected texts, whether or not the questions are directly raised in or by the content of the text themselves, then the narrow focus might be justifiable, but the results should not be generalized to represent Chinese philosophy as a whole. If one studies Chinese philosophy not so much (or not only) as answering certain general philosophical questions with particular Chinese materials, but as an integral part of Chinese culture, then even if one is not seeking representative philosophical views, the way the philosophy found in any one text is related to the rest of Chinese culture, or at least to other Chinese philosophies or the content of other texts of roughly the same discourse, become much more important. Identifying the boundaries and characteristics of any discourse is itself a tricky business. In general, too narrow a selection of materials hampers one’s philosophical understanding of the selected materials themselves; even if comprehensiveness is always constrained in a single publication, it should be informed by knowledge as broad and diverse as possible of background knowledge of other texts and Chinese philosophical views that have bearings on what is explicitly discussed. Methodological debates, or at least differences, in Anglophone Chinese philosophy begins with the methods of translating the texts into English and interpreting them.

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This handbook has no pretension to adjudicate among the plethora of textual interpretations, be it based on philologically rigorous evidential research (kaozheng 考證), philosophical hermeneutics, Straussian esotericism or Foucauldian genealogy, structuralist or post-​structuralist readings, reader or discourse sensitive analyses, to name only a few interpretive possibilities. It suffices to highlight a number of issues and questions that must be answered when one reads a traditional Chinese text or its translation for philosophical purposes. It is debatable whether one could do Chinese philosophy without at least some rudimentary knowledge of classical Chinese, even if more English translations of an increasingly number of Chinese texts become available, because translation and interpretation, though distinct, are particularly difficult to disentangle in Chinese philosophy.5 Several features of the classical Chinese language—​phonetic, syntax, and semantics—​contribute to polysemy and multiple possible readings of any passage in a given text (Fuller 1999: 2; Nylan 2011: 66). The context then becomes all important, but disagreements arise over what counts as context or what within the context should be given weight in philosophical discussions. How helpful, if at all, are archeological and philological findings in decoding traditional Chinese texts for philosophical purposes, or could a Chinese philosopher today simply work from a standard modern edition of the received texts, if not an English translation? What kind of historical knowledge is required to understand what the texts meant to the authors and the readers of different periods? How are historical contexts related to philosophical arguments? Those who admit the relevance of archeological, philological, historical, and other inputs that contextualize a text may continue to disagree about its interpretation due to the lack of consensus in those specialized areas of expertise. How far should historical readings constrain the meanings of the text in the contemporary philosophical discourse? If one permits going beyond historically contextualized meanings, how are they related to the meanings within contemporary contexts or discourses? Scholars working with traditional Chinese texts are divided, among other questions, over the extent to which generalizations about Chinese culture, or even Chinese philosophy, should frame the reading of any text. If no exegesis is innocent, and every reading proceeds from cultural assumptions, both conscious and unconscious, then philosophizing in a language different from that in which the text was written already risks substituting the readers’ cultural contexts for that of the text. In that case, explicitly foregrounding the cultural differences and the “uncommon assumptions” of Chinese culture, especially when contrasted with Anglophone and European cultures, becomes a critical methodological move to avoid Eurocentric distortion of Chinese philosophy (Ames 2011: 21). On the other hand, awareness that China defies generalization—​ ”Chinese civilization is simply too huge, too diverse and too old for neat maxims” (Goldin 2008: 21)—​should caution us to take any generalization as tentative, always subject to questioning in the light of new evidence. Giving the ancients their due, understanding the traditional texts in the contexts of the discourses that produced them, and what they meant to the various generations of Chinese readers is important in Anglophone Chinese philosophy. However, the

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philosophical meanings and values of the traditional texts (and any other materials admitted) should be generalizable and applicable beyond China and specific historical periods. Indeed, identifying the philosophical aspects of past discourses, or discourses in different cultures, for all their differences, qua philosophical in order to bring them into today’s philosophical conversations, often already acknowledges that their claims go beyond the cultural and temporal limits of those specific discourses. This basic assumption underlies most comparative methodologies in contemporary Anglophone Chinese philosophy. Although the comparative approach in Chinese philosophy—​especially comparisons with European and Anglophone philosophies—​owes much to the contingent backgrounds of individuals and the institutional frameworks within which academics could claim specializations in philosophy and secure jobs in philosophy and other departments of Anglophone universities, the approach is also justifiable in terms of engaging other philosophies and investigating general philosophical questions with the resources of Chinese philosophy, thereby understanding all of them better. Besides the translation and interpretive issues discussed above, comparative approaches also involve other methodological difficulties that are discussed in several chapters of this handbook. The handbook is organized into four parts. Part I begins with chapters which showcase some contrasting methods in the philosophical study of traditional Chinese texts. These different ways of philosophizing with Chinese texts provide an overview of the methodological challenges in the field. They are followed by two chapters addressing a key methodological challenge of doing Chinese philosophy: the tension and balance between historical contexts and philosophical arguments. The three chapters in Part II highlight an important methodological issue in Chinese philosophy, the centrality of practice, although these chapters could have been distributed between the preceding section and the one that comes after. Both the history of Chinese philosophy as a modern discipline and the methodological reflections in this volume testify to the cross-​cultural engagement (or its entanglement) with Western philosophies, which has raised concerns about distortions of Chinese thought by imposing foreign frameworks, even as some philosophers in both Anglophone and Sinophone academic communities argue that cross-​cultural comparisons are both inevitable and beneficial for Chinese philosophy today. Beyond asking whether or not to borrow Western philosophical frameworks, Part III explores methodological issues from perspectives of such engagement, offering diverse views of which Western frameworks and methodologies could be borrowed with positive results and how to do so without distorting traditional Chinese texts. Besides crossing cultural boundaries, Part III suggests that crossing standard disciplinary boundaries in contemporary academia and challenging the boundaries of “philosophy” could also bring new methodological possibilities in Chinese philosophy. The last part of the handbook explores possibilities of new directions and methodologies in Chinese philosophy, both from internal critiques of how traditional Chinese texts have been studied and from tuning in to current trends in philosophy engaging scientific research methods. The division of the chapters into different parts, intended to give some convenient “map” for readers with specific interests and insufficient time to read every chapter, indicates relative emphases of the chapters. The different parts

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are therefore not mutually exclusive: macro methodological reflections are found not only in Part I, centrality of practice is discussed in chapters not included in Part II, comparative methods are involved in discussions outside Part III, and new methodological possibilities and research directions are suggested by chapters other than those in Part IV. Any chapter in a particular part may also touch on issues that are emphasized more by chapters in other parts labeled by those issues.

“REVITALIZING THE OLD TO REALIZE THE NEW” (溫故而知新) The first two chapters by leading figures in Chinese philosophy exemplify different ways to philosophize with Chinese texts, while reflecting on important methodological issues in Chinese philosophy. Roger Ames emphasizes that philosophizing with canonical Chinese texts requires an interpretive context that is sensitive to significant cultural differences and appreciates the distinctive Chinese way of thinking found in the way those canonical texts “do” philosophy, beginning with the Yijing 易經, which provides the Chinese tradition with its philosophical terms of art. The methods of early Chinese philosophizing, arising “from the need to make practices more productive and intelligent within the context of the practices themselves,” challenges common understandings of theorizing and philosophizing in the European-​Anglo-​American tradition and contemporary Anglophone philosophy that focus on dialectical disputes framed by dualistic separation of theory and practice. Chinese philosophical methods involve a distinctive mode of associative, correlative, analogical, or coordinative thinking, which has been discussed also by Marcel Granet, Joseph Needham, and Angus Graham, among others, in contrast to the analytic reasoning emphasizing formal systems and argumentative rigor that characterizes much of Western philosophy. Despite his emphasis on the distinctiveness of the early Chinese method of philosophizing, and ever wary of the danger of distorting Chinese thought with the categories of Western philosophical analysis, Ames is not endorsing any claim of cultural incommensurability or rejecting cross-​ cultural engagements, as he demystifies this Chinese mode of thinking by comparing it with C. S. Peirce’s notion of “abductive reasoning.” Peirce developed the notion of “abductive reason” to supplement the familiar modes of deductive and inductive reason, which do not provide adequately for creativity needed in inquiry. Contemporary philosophers have adopted Peirce’s notion in distinguishing different phases of reasoning: abductive reasoning belongs to the “discovery” stage of constructing theories, where going beyond proven premises is productive of new ideas; however, abductive reasoning needs confirmation by the other modes of reasoning to justify its conclusions. For Ames, this interpretation of Peirce does not go far enough; Peirce’s abductive method is best appreciated, clarified, and extended by taking a further step toward the canonical Chinese texts. The philosophical method he and David Hall have developed in their works of Chinese philosophy, ars contextualis, interprets the vocabulary of early Chinese cosmology—​daode 道德, yinyang 陰陽, tiyong 體用, tianren 天人, ziran 自然, qi 氣,

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and shi 勢, among many other terms from the canonical Chinese texts discussed in their other works—​ to generate a holistic framework for understanding and valuing human persons and the world, related not as parts to whole, but in internal constitutive relations of focus and field. This “art of contextualizing” produces not merely new philosophical theories or readings of ancient Chinese texts, but creates a new aesthetic order through the vocabulary of early Chinese cosmology. It facilitates a distinctive way of understanding the world and human persons, in a process of collaborative cosmic meaning-​making. This is what it means to live wisely, that is, to philosophize in the ways of the canonical Chinese texts. Ames begins with the assumption that there is philosophizing in the canonical Chinese texts, and advocates a method that he believes reflects the way the early Chinese thinkers do philosophy. The chapter is a demonstration of the proposed philosophical method that invites readers to judge for themselves whether the practice of ars contextualis is philosophy. The methodological reflections on the study of Chinese thought in the second chapter take us through the evolution of Kwong-​loi Shun’s approach to Chinese philosophy. Using “Chinese thought” to describe the contents of traditional Chinese texts postpones the question of whether there is Chinese philosophy which is addressed later in the chapter. Shun avoids the oversimplification that often results from trying to determine whether Chinese thought fits a specific definition of philosophy; he is interested in the question of whether the study of Chinese thought can contribute to contemporary philosophical inquiry in the Anglo-​ American tradition. His proposed methods for Chinese philosophy thus understood comprise textual analysis, articulation, and philosophical construction, each of which has its own goal. The goal in textual analysis is to approximate the ideas and perspectives of Chinese thinkers. Articulation aims to draw out the relevance of Chinese thought to our present-​day concerns and experiences. Philosophical construction seeks a linkage between Chinese thought and contemporary Western philosophical inquiry. Although all three can be combined and carried out simultaneously, they are in principle separable. Ideally they should be carried out sequentially to avoid confusion of the different goals when studying Chinese thought, as being clear about which of these goals one is pursuing at any one time is critical for negotiating the tensions between them, that is, the tension between the past and the present, and the tension between China and the West. If not handled well, these tensions could lead one to ignore the historical and cultural contexts of Chinese thinkers by uncritically assuming that they shared our present concerns and perspectives, and thereby distort their thought. Misunderstandings will also result if one imposes Western philosophical frameworks that distort what we are studying, besides showing toward the subjects of study a lack of jing 敬, a cautious and serious attitude the understanding of which is distorted by the common translation of “respect.” Or one might be reduced to a study that has no more than historical and local interest, and thereby fail to engage present concerns and philosophical inquiry. The latter matters if our interest is in doing Chinese philosophy, while elaborating on the ideas of past Chinese thinkers so that they are relevant to current problems and able to engage other traditions of thought and culture is also important if one understands Chinese

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thought to be less about abstract theorizing and more to do with practice and living wisely. Shun’s works have included several exemplars of how to engage contemporary philosophical inquiry in the Anglo-​American tradition with Chinese philosophy, especially Confucianism; he does not study Chinese thought with purely Western philosophical methods. He also links his own multistaged methodology to the approach of studying Chinese thought advocated by Tang Junyi and Xu Fuguan, and the methods of reading Confucian classics proposed by the Song dynasty Confucian Zhu Xi. The potential pitfalls and tensions Shun addresses in his philosophizing are concerns shared by representative Chinese intellectuals of the twentieth century who have debated how to study Chinese thought, in particular the apparent dilemma of attending appropriately to the historical and cultural contexts of Chinese thought in order to understand it properly and in the interest of preserving and promoting Chinese culture, while acknowledging that, to avoid being relegated to the museum of dead cultures, Chinese thought needs to be relevant to contemporary issues and to engage other traditions of thought. Shun’s multistaged methodology takes historical and cultural contexts of Chinese thinkers and texts seriously while articulating the relevance of their ideas to contemporary experience that bears some affinity to past experience; it does justice to distinctive features of Chinese traditions while engaging Western philosophical traditions. Shun’s methodological distinctions between textual analysis and philosophical construction resemble but also differ from methodological distinctions in contemporary Western philosophical discussions: Rorty’s (1984: 49–​51) distinction between rational construction and historical construction in studying historical figures in the history of Western philosophy and MacIntyre’s (1984: 39–​40) distinction between studying the history of philosophy and philosophical inquiry. While approaching Chinese philosophy in contrasting ways, Ames and Shun share a key methodological concern in Chinese philosophy: how to avoid distortion of the teachings of traditional Chinese texts, whether by anachronistic assumptions and projections or insensitive procrustean imposition of conceptual and theoretical frameworks from foreign cultures. This concern is also addressed by the methodological recommendation “to let a text speak for itself ” that anchors the discussion in Ronnie Littlejohn’s contribution to the theme of “how to philosophize with traditional Chinese texts.” Besides the worry of falsely attributing something to a text or forcing on it something that does not fit, this method also cautions against generalizing a view found in a particular text as though it represents classical Chinese philosophy as a whole. Littlejohn examines three possible meanings of this method, beginning with translation that must be ever vigilant of influences of philosophical frameworks that are far removed from the Chinese context. To illustrate what is involved, Chapter Three discusses some influential translations of Chinese classics—​ by James Legge, David Hall and Roger Ames, Wing-​tsit Chan, and Fung Yu-​lan—​ that have been charged with not letting the texts speak for themselves, and shows how a very different understanding of the Chinese texts emerges by consciously avoiding terms with heavy philosophical baggage, for example Fung’s translation of Zhu Xi’s works that understands “Principle (li 理)” in terms of Platonic Forms.

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Another meaning of “letting a text speak for itself ” pays attention to the complex composition of Chinese texts, which often have multiple authors and editors with different contexts while belonging to a lineage. Littlejohn demonstrates with specific examples how appreciating the different strata and divergent philosophical views that come from diverse authorial voices and editorial choices could illuminate our understanding of texts—​the Analects, Daodejing, Zhuangzi, Mozi, among others—​ and the relationship between different texts and different traditions, and how a thinker approached his own tradition. He also critically assesses the philosophical significance, as distinct from historical interest, of the question of which parts of any received Chinese text can be reliably attributed to the historical “Confucius,” “Mencius,” Zhuang Zhou, and so on. For philosophers, who said what is not as important as what was said and how it was defended. Even though the recognition that traditional Chinese thought is significantly rooted in practice may impart philosophical weight to the tie between author and text, Littlejohn cautions against allowing the quest for historical authenticity to distract philosophers from what matters: the ideas, arguments, claims, teachings, and positions. Some philosophers take the principle of “letting a text speak for itself ” to mean avoid reading traditional Chinese texts through the lens of an interpreter’s own philosophical views to give them readings that they do not have and should not have—​for example, by distinguishing between “reading a text historically” and “reading a text hermeneutically,” or between “historical meaning” and “scriptural meaning.” Philosophizing with Chinese texts requires one to go beyond historical readings and meanings, and insofar as the Chinese commentarial traditions have done so, they succeed in philosophizing to different degrees, although the commentaries themselves are also bound by their own historical contexts and open to different readings as parts of a tradition of interpretation. Interpreting and reading texts to make them “live in the vocabulary of one’s own age” is a valuable exercise, but such readings must not treat the text as mere inspiration, becoming so independent of the texts that the latter exerts no push-​back or correction to any readings. Letting the text speak for itself means engaging the text as a dialogical partner, reading it historically not in the sense of treating its meaning as singularly specific and fixed by a particular ancient context, but conducting a “historical critical analysis” to clarify concepts, claims, and how these were understood in the appropriate historical contexts. Such historical critical analysis ensures “push-​back and correction” from the texts, which should lead the interpretation so that, in the midst of multiple possible readings, the text always matters. The importance of attending to historical contexts of traditional Chinese texts in Chinese philosophy generates tensions between the perspectives of historians and philosophers who work on the same texts. This has given rise to disagreements, talking past one another, as well as opportunities for mutual learning. The last two chapters in Part I bring together historians’ and philosophers’ perspectives on the tensions between taking historical contexts seriously and the demands of philosophical inquiry. Michael Nylan offers a philosophically informed historian’s perspective on how philosophers who work on the texts of early China routinely fail to elucidate the distinctive way of thinking of those works. She elaborates on

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three broad categories of such failures: (1) failures to understand the particularities of manuscript culture; (2) failures to understand the historical background of expressions or longer phrases; (3) failures to understand the role of debate in early China, and the class and status identities of the participants. The practices of early Chinese manuscript culture imply that early Chinese texts are “composite in nature” and citations are rarely marked. This precludes verifiable claims of “influence” of one text on another. Some style of composition results in the core arguments of texts being buried in “copious verbiage” from which they could be identified only with wide and deep reading in a range of sources. Among the many and varied misunderstood characters, binomial expressions, and slogans, Nylan highlights the problems that arise from misunderstandings of wuwei 無為, wu 無and you 有, and ming 命, to show such misunderstandings impede the appreciation of the distinctiveness of early Chinese thinkers, who “did not only see things differently. They saw different things.” Texts are better understood if readers do not attempt to fix the meanings of characters or phrases in isolation but instead consider concept clusters that contextualize their meanings in the conversations in which the piece of writing is a participant. Failures to understand the historical use (and therefore meaning) of characters and phrases are compounded by failures to take into account the very different socioeconomic milieu of pre-​industrial societies. Intended readers of early Chinese texts, and participants in the debates those texts record or refer to, belonged to a small elite. Nylan protests against the ahistoricity of philosophers converting many status markers into virtue words, for example xian 賢, sheng 聖, de 德, and shi 士, but she does not deny the value of ancient Chinese texts for readers from very different economic classes and social backgrounds, with different agendas in today’s societies. What she insists upon is that “inventions of traditions” should not replace responsible historical understanding, rather it should “seek to locate what still speaks to us today coupled with a full appreciation of the strange, for only radical challenges urge us to rethink human dignity and value, and its possibilities at the personal and social levels, so as to devise appropriate therapeutic measures” (102). Nylan observes that philosophers often have very odd ideas about the social realities of the distant past. In particular, she criticizes the anachronistic assigning of various texts to sectarian “schools” (Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism), and the related claim that Han dynasty thinking is “syncretistic” or “eclectic,” which fail to understand the role of education and debate, and the identities of debaters in early China. The debates during Warring states era through the Han dynasty were not among sectarian groups vying to represent the one “true” set of beliefs against all rival views; their participants were employed or hoping for employment with the court. Rather than the cool and consistent analysis aimed at the truth favored by many contemporary philosophers, winning in those contexts depends on a participant having erudite command of all viable positions on a given topic and proposing a “comprehensive” or “complete” way with increased chance of practical success in dealing with the set of issues confronting the dynasty, the community, or the person being addressed. Nylan maintains that ascertaining the historical contexts within which the Chinese texts were produced would improve the outcomes of Chinese philosophy.

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Chapter Five contributes to the dialogue between historians and philosophers. Ming-​huei Lee engages Chinese historian Yu Ying-​shih’s criticism of approaches to the neo-​Confucian “school of principle” influenced by European philosophy. Yu’s criticism provoked a debate that highlights the contrast between intellectual historians’ approach to the study of Chinese philosophy emphasizing “contextualization” and philosophers’ approach emphasizing “decontextualization.” Of the different contemporary philosophical approaches to Chinese philosophy, New Confucian Mou Zongsan is Yu’s main target. Lee himself, whose “problem consciousness” is inspired by Mou and having conducted his doctoral research on Kant in Bonn University, defends the philosophical approach that emphasizes “decontextualization.” He illustrates what kind of decontextualization is involved in his research on Chinese philosophy from a transcultural perspective, which shows that there are parallels in the disagreement between Zhu Xi and the Huxiang school about whether the “four buddings” (siduan 四端) are the same in nature as other emotions and feelings, the debate about the distinction between the “four buddings” and “seven feelings” in Joseon Korea, and Schiller’s criticism of Kant’s later ethical views presupposing a dichotomy between reason and emotions. Decontextualization is inevitable in exploring philosophical questions—​specifically “Are moral feelings different from ordinary emotions? Or in other words, is there a transcendent ‘feeling’?”—​across the different historical contexts of Chinese Confucianism, Korean Confucianism, and German ethics. Lee criticizes the total rejection of “decontextualization” in studying Chinese thought, which fails to appreciate its relevance to “universal questions” of philosophy. He argues that any research method contains both contextualization and decontextualization, even if it emphasizes one over the other. For Lee, Chinese philosophy gives due weight to contextualization when contexts matter, not only social and historical contexts but also the contexts of the classics. He discusses how the debates among Korean Confucians, for example, might be considered from the perspective of “contextualization.” In the traditional study of Confucian classics, “overlap of multiple texts” creates complex relationship between texts and nuanced changes in concepts and claims that are often expressed in the form of “slogans” with very different interpretations; disregarding such contexts of the classics lead to misunderstandings and misjudgments of individual texts and thinkers. In Lee’s view, “A competent researcher must be keen and adept in understanding and tackling the tension between ‘contextualization’ and ‘decontextualization’ in order to highlight the multiple facets of one’s subject of research” (123).

“WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO?” (如之何？如之何？) Some would gladly forego the label of “philosophy” for traditional Chinese texts such as the Analects and Daodejing and read them as guides for living; in contrast, philosophical texts are supposed to be theoretical theses in demanding systematic expression with some governing logic and clear arguments establishing specific conclusions that may or may not have practical import. That traditional

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Chinese texts may contain moral instructions enabling its readers to live a better life in various ways should not preclude philosophizing with them in the sense of articulating how their various insights relate to one another to offer a coherent vision to better people’s lives. However, the centrality of practice in those insights, how they come to be made and how they are justified, cautions us not to impose any simplistic dichotomy of theory and practice. Furthermore, claiming that theory and practice are inseparable, no less than imposing a dichotomy, assumes that they can at least be conceptually distinguished—​but whether early Chinese thought work with any equivalent concept of “theory” that can be distinguished from practice is an issue that needs more careful scrutiny. Earlier chapters have noted that the centrality of practice and actual experience has significant methodological implications for Chinese philosophy. The relation between experience/​practice and concept/​theory is also discussed in later chapters, for example, Chapter Twelve’s location of the main methodological difficulty of Chinese metaphysics approached cross-​culturally in the distance between experience and metaphysical concepts/​theories, and the diverse ways a practice can be theorized, and its suggested method of using concrete experiences to create dialogue on metaphysical questions. Part II takes a closer look at the way methods arise from practice in some specific concerns of Chinese philosophy. Peimin Ni resists subsuming Chinese philosophy into Western philosophy by proposing to read the Analects as offering a gongfu 工夫 method; instead of it fitting into the Western-​centric framework of philosophical systems, acknowledging the Analects as philosophical requires an expansion of our philosophical horizon. The term “gongfu” refers not to martial arts alone; it was frequently used by Confucians of Song and Ming dynasties to refer to “all the arts of life that require cultivated abilities and effective skills, such as the art of cooking, of speaking, of dancing, and of dealing with human relationships” (130). Ni argues that the Analects, as an example of traditional Chinese texts that could be read from a gongfu perspective, becomes more relevant, less enigmatic, and trivial when one abandons the search for logical reasoning connecting premises to conclusions, and instead starts with the specific circumstances of the practitioner and traces the practical steps that would lead to artistic perfection of that particular person. With constituents linked more dynamically through their practical implications, gongfu systems cannot be complete in a theoretical sense, as they need to adapt to changing historical circumstances in order to continue to be realized in actual life through their embodiment in the cultivated dispositions and abilities of actual persons. Chapter Six details the differences between the gongfu method and philosophical or theoretical reasoning with textual evidence pertaining to philosophical views of self that seem to point in mutually exclusive theoretical directions, but could fit together in the gongfu perspective, in which “the key issue is not whether Confucius and Mencius truly believed that we are relational or autonomous; it is rather what practical results each of these views will lead to” (131). With the gongfu method, theoretical incompatibility of two conceptions does not preclude their complementing each other in practical life, with one or the other being more constructive or damaging in any particular set of circumstances.

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The gongfu method does not yield systems of rigid rules for application, but offers instructions for concrete cultivation of skills, sensitizing them to certain aspects of experience and prompting them to develop the ability to respond to situations flexibly. From the gongfu perspective, Confucian teachings are not necessarily about morality; conduct that would seem too trivial to be considered moral duties or obligations are significant as constituents of an artistic style of living that cannot be adequately conveyed dialectically but need to be demonstrated by a master of the art. Ni uses examples from the Analects to show that sensitivity to the relevant conversational context and practical intent is needed to comprehend the statements recorded in traditional Chinese texts as moves to help specific persons in their gongfu pursuit. Theoretical evaluation of traditional Chinese texts that usually finds them inadequate in numerous ways actually misses their point; as gongfu texts, they can only be fully appreciated through practice. Despite their differences, Ni suggests that the gongfu method and the philosophical method can cross-​fertilize and enrich each other, by abandoning the narrow understanding of philosophy as a particular way of theorizing, or love of intellectual wisdom separated from practical life. He argues that insofar as philosophical ideas, even when purely theoretical, have always functioned as guides to human life, they can be viewed from a gongfu perspective, which can bring inspiration to all areas of philosophy. Chapter Seven takes methodological inspiration for contemporary education from Chinese philosophy. Drawing on her own practical experience, Sarah Mattice argues that how Chinese philosophy was understood and practiced in its own context is not only relevant to but can serve as a meaningful resource for teaching Chinese philosophy, which demands different methods from those used to teach other philosophies. Teaching and learning are important aspects of Chinese traditional texts, many of which were produced in the course of such activity. The question of educating the next generation in Chinese philosophy is still a serious concern for the modern discipline. In addition to pedagogical issues common to all area or time period philosophy courses (Greek Philosophy, Indian philosophy, and Ethics, among others), Chinese philosophy shares specific concerns with other non-​Western or comparative philosophy courses. The main challenge lies in ensuring that students do not read other traditions as simply reflections of their own (primarily Abrahamic) assumptions. Grappling with such postcolonial concerns as the construction of non-​Western tradition by Western scholars for and with Western interests, when introducing students to non-​Western traditions, Mattice emphasizes the need to ask, “Whose tradition is this? How do/​have insiders understood themselves, their practices, their ideas? How has this changed over time? How is it different from ways in which insiders to Western traditions understand themselves?” (145). She suggests using the hermeneutics of faith, suspicion, and charity, as complements to one another in the classroom to help students tackle the problems of interpretation and navigate the complex issues posed by translation, culture, and coloniality. Mattice advocates an “aesthetic approach” to teaching Chinese philosophy in contemporary classrooms, which is “an orientation towards holistic, embodied experience, where philosophical thinking and practice aim at nonalgorithmic

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responses, where metaphysical/​ epistemological/​ ethical questions are located in an inescapably aesthetic context, where harmony is an overarching philosophical concern and value, and where the quality and style of experience and cultivation are not only necessarily part of but are often primary to questions of content” (146). One way in which this approach differs from teaching Western philosophy lies in the foundational roles given to metaphors in thinking and understanding, which characterize Chinese traditions. Taking images and the concrete seriously by treating metaphors as more than mere ornamentation and recognizing that it is an explicit method for doing philosophy has at least two pedagogical benefits: it helps teachers and students see just how different the world looks, how genuinely different are understanding, thinking, conversing, and critiquing from another perspective; the explicit framework it provides for engaging a text, idea, or practice shifts the emphasis from “what” to “how” questions that are more characteristic of Chinese thinkers. Mattice concludes with a discussion of classroom practices drawn from Chinese philosophy: commentary writing, contemplative practice, passage memorization, finding contemporary examples of textual images/​figures, and journaling. Several works have appeared in the past three decades interpreting and comparing Chinese philosophy with American Pragmatism. Chapter Eight examines applications of Pragmatist methods to contemporary studies of Confucianism. It shows that efforts to identify Pragmatist methods in ancient Confucian texts run into some serious difficulties, whether one is trying to show that Confucius made his ideas clear according to Peirce’s method or analyse the conversations in the Analects as instances of Deweyan inquiry. Admitting the possibility that, despite sharing an emphasis on practice, Confucians might think in very different ways from modern Pragmatists, the chapter then examines an anti-​Pragmatist interpretation of Confucianism in the works of modern neo-​Confucian, Mou Zongsan, which nevertheless is still very much practice-​centered. From the perspective of Mou’s moral metaphysics, Pragmatism, especially when emphasizing a close association with modern science, is limited to knowledge of the phenomena, and cuts itself off from any access to noumena, which the Pragmatist conception of reality denies. Mou insisted that moral practice gives access to noumena because human beings, though finite in their existence as phenomena, possess infinite intellectual intuition, which manifests itself in the attainment of sagehood, Buddhahood, or the Daoist authentic human (zhenren真人). In the Confucian context, intellectual intuition is the immediate manifestation of heaven’s principle (tianli天理) in moral knowing (liangzhi 良知). Rather than resolve the interpretive disputes between the Pragmatist and Mou’s approaches, Chapter Eight highlights a challenge posed by approaches such as Mou’s, which ground the absolute conviction of Confucian moral commitment in the certainty of the transcendent. The chapter suggests that one need not justify the use of Pragmatist methods in today’s research on Confucianism by showing that Confucius and other Confucians were Pragmatists avant la lettre; instead Pragmatist methods could contribute to contemporary Confucian philosophy because John Dewey’s value inquiry provides a more efficacious method for realizing the Confucian moral mission. However, given that Confucian philosophy owes its influence and

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endurance in no small measure to the strong conviction and commitment with which Confucians have pursued their moral mission through the ages, are fallibilistic Pragmatist methods compatible with such resolute purpose? The chapter offers an interpretation of Confucius’s “knowing heaven’s mandate” that does not invoke religious transcendence, but implies a more realistic assessment of any possible realization of ideals, and views any individual’s contribution as only a small phase in an open process, trust in one’s own efforts contributing to the continuation, and hopefully progress, of the process. To keep faith with the Confucian moral mission, Pragmatist moral commitment is secured not by the certainty of ideals, but by courage in the hope that more intelligent direction of actions through experimental thinking will have a better chance of realizing Confucian ideals and bringing about a better world.

“ROCKS OF OTHER MOUNTAINS CAN SERVE AS GRIND-​STONES . . .” (他山之石可以為錯) The very history of Chinese philosophy as a modern discipline in China is intertwined with Western philosophies. Growing concern about the “perplexing asymmetry” of using Western concepts to explain or evaluate Chinese philosophy, but not vice versa, does not preclude doing Chinese philosophy comparatively; it only demands the improvement of comparative methods with greater awareness of the distorting tendencies of that interpretive and methodological asymmetry. As more philosophers in the PRC have become interested in comparative philosophy, especially comparison of Chinese philosophy with European and Anglo-​American philosophies, this will probably have an impact on research in Chinese philosophy, regardless of whether such comparison is necessary. Outside the PRC, especially when working in English and European languages, research in Chinese philosophy inevitably must address issues of influence from, and engagement with, Western philosophies. Many of the methodological questions in the field revolve around the pros and cons of borrowing theoretical and conceptual frameworks from Western philosophies. Methodological discussions in Chinese philosophy have shown increasing awareness and sophistication in handling the engagement with Western philosophies. Whether seeking an appropriate interpretive context in Chinese cosmology and stressing its radical cultural difference from dominant Western philosophical worldviews, urging readers to “let the text speak for itself,” defending decontextualization in philosophical approaches to the history of Confucian thought, or developing pedagogical methods from Chinese philosophy that differ from methods for teaching Western philosophies in contemporary classrooms, chapters in Parts I and II already address the benefits and risks of engaging Western philosophies generally in relation to other methodological concerns. Part III focuses on more specific methods of engagement with Western philosophies and discusses the use of methods borrowed or developed from specific Western philosophies in some subfields. Chinese philosophy methodologies in Anglophone research have developed by being more self-​consciously critical in engaging Western philosophies,

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and becoming more diverse in the Western philosophies, methods, and topics engaged. Examples of such methodological development cross not only cultural boundaries, but also the boundaries that divide different philosophy subfields and separate philosophy from other areas of inquiry. Chapter Nine takes up the methodological implications of Chinese-​ Western comparisons in the philosophical subfield of metaphysics. Despite a common impression that Chinese philosophy is primarily ethics, with little interest in or relevance to other areas of philosophical inquiry such as epistemology and metaphysics, Fung Yu-​lan had suggested that comparisons between Chinese and Western metaphysical theories are most persuasive in justifying labeling traditional Chinese thought as philosophy. The “Manifesto for a Reappraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture” (Chang et al. 1958), signed by Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan, together with Carsun Chang (a.k.a. Zhang Junmai) and Xu Fuguan, also rejects the common view of Chinese thought as practical and without spiritual or metaphysical interests; it insists that Song and Ming dynasty Confucian philosophy should be approached as metaphysics, which is central to Chinese philosophy. Frank Perkins gives an affirmative answer to the question, “Is there Chinese metaphysics?” as he finds in Chinese thought discussions pertinent to metaphysics, understood as inquiries into questions about the nature of existence. He acknowledges that the definition of the domain itself is contested: defining metaphysics narrowly—​ for example as the study of the eternal and unchanging or the study of what is transcendent and beyond appearance—​ discourages cross-​ cultural dialogue as it already assumes specific answers to questions about existence, and privileges some questions over others. Imposing metaphysical positions from the history of European thought through such narrow definitions would exclude Chinese thought from metaphysical inquiry. A broader understanding invites cross-​cultural dialogue which, however, needs to be aware of the dangers of assimilation that comes from applying the familiar label of “metaphysics” to Chinese thought. A fair and genuine cross-​cultural dialogue is possible only with the recognition that “the questions asked in Europe and China regarding the nature of existence varied considerably and that there is hardly a single metaphysical term that would translate unproblematically between classical Chinese and any western language” (185). Perkins tackles the methodological challenges of Chinese metaphysics in this cross-​cultural context with specific examples of gender hierarchy and mind-​body dualism—​after explaining the cause and nature of the difficulties and suggesting a method of using concrete experiences to create cross-​cultural dialogue in metaphysics. Bo Mou has developed a constructive-​engagement methodological strategy not only for his own research in Chinese philosophy; he has also been promoting it actively through other activities of professional associations, conference series, and a new open access journal titled Comparative Philosophy (Mou 2010). Chapter Ten illustrates this methodological strategy with recent studies in Chinese philosophy and explains the conceptual distinctions and explanatory resources required for this way of doing Chinese philosophy comparatively. Constructive-​ engagement methods of reflective criticism (including self-​criticism) and argumentation bring together distinct approaches from different philosophical traditions to effect mutual

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learning through appropriate philosophical interpretations and to contribute to a range of philosophical issues or topics from a broader philosophical vantage point. Mou emphasizes that a philosophical interpretation needs to go beyond historical readings, arguing that it can benefit from conceptual and explanatory resources that another tradition has developed more explicitly and effectively, and explains how such interpretations are carried out. Constructive-​engagement studies are oriented toward specific philosophical issues that could benefit from comparative methods. Mou addresses three worries that arise from this orientation: oversimplification, overuse of external resources, and “blurring assimilation.” Chapter Ten suggests eight adequacy conditions for methodological principles of constructive-​engagement. The programmatic constructive-​ engagement proposed by Mou encompasses various types of philosophies, cutting across the common (though not unquestioned) divide in the discipline between Continental and Analytic philosophy (Mou and Tieszen 2013). It is possible to categorize Anglophone research in Chinese philosophy along this axis in terms of both topics chosen and methods adopted in individual works. Those who emphasize the divide between Chinese philosophy and “Western philosophy” often have in mind contemporary Analytic philosophy of a certain kind. Yiu-​ming Fung identifies and critiques three main reasons for rejecting the method of Analytic philosophy (MAP) in Chinese philosophy research: (1) the “transcendentalism” of Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi insists that Chinese philosophy at its core is “moral metaphysics,” whose wisdom and truth cannot be accessed by MAP and instead requires a special kind of inner and transcendental experience possible only via long-​term moral practice; (2) the intellectual historian’s approach rejects MAP for taking Chinese thought out of historical context, and maintains that only historical cum philological method is scientific and a reliable tool; (3) comparative philosophers who believe that the correlative or associative mode of thinking in Chinese philosophy is incommensurable with the Western analytical or causal mode of thinking. Drawing on the philosophy of John Searle and Donald Davidson among others, Chapter Eleven picks up the gauntlet to argue that MAP understood mainly as conceptual and logical analyses is necessary, if not sufficient, for doing Chinese philosophy. After noting the Analytic/​ Continental divide in philosophy, Chapter Twelve moves on to insist that insofar as the divide signifies different methodological preferences between analysis and synthesis, both approaches are not only necessary, but valuable and meaningful for philosophizing. David Jones brings the insights of phenomenology and Gadamer’s hermeneutics to bear on the difficulties of understanding other cultural traditions, which never occurs as straightforward progression in one direction. Instead, the “hermeneutic circle” involves “crossing over, and again over, between what we bring to a text and the text itself and moving back again from the text to check our own assumptions and understandings. And as we travel this ground, we often discover the nature of our own assumptions of which we were unaware” (247). Appreciating the temporality of language and surplus of meanings renders Continental philosophy more open to other traditions. Attention to language and engagement with the relationship between language and thought in Continental philosophy are not just about linguistic exercises and intellectual games;

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they are central to the process of encountering others that is also the encounter with our authentic selves. Cross-​cultural comparative philosophy is such an encounter. This has methodological as well as ethical implications for those who enter Chinese philosophy from European and other cultural traditions, implications which the chapter explores through Levinas’s discussion of responsiveness as responsibility for the other and his critique of Western philosophy for its repression of the other. Chapter Thirteen moves beyond academic philosophy and textual analyses into more interdisciplinary inquiries, Eva Man offers readers methodologies arising from critical practices in studies of gender, the body, and aesthetics. By describing how she goes about her research and its outcomes, she shows how methods borrowed from Feminist research, for example, the use of case studies to ground philosophical discussions, and the use of Freudian analysis, could be fruitful in research on Chinese philosophy. While suggesting that the Mencius’s ideas of the mind and the body can contribute to Feminist critiques and help to develop an alternative model of corporeality, Man also interrogates the Chinese text with Feminist concerns and sensitivity to gender bias, based on a radical rethinking of the connections between reason, the body, and a range of ethical-​ political issues. Comparing Feminist aesthetics and Chinese aesthetics through the works of Heide Gottner-​Abendroth, Tang Junyi, and Mou Zongsan, she suggests that more explorations and comparisons at both metaphysical and experiential levels between the types of archaic myth/​ritual complexes to which the Feminist paradigm refers and the myths or rituals in the Daoist texts could offer resources that might deconstruct patriarchal attitudes and provide us with new directions in considering cross-​cultural aesthetics. Her research on the body shows how Chinese philosophical ideas about the body influence practices such as Chinese portrait painting; and from the study of those practices, she seeks answers to questions such as the following, “How are body discourses related to different bodily expressions? Can active engagement via the process of reworking art create new possibilities of bodily expression?” Her comparisons between Chinese understanding of those practices and Western approaches to similar practices explore how Confucian ideas of the body shed light on the recent discussions of the reclaiming the body in the West and whether the Confucian tradition offers some way of resolving the problems of mind and body dichotomy. Her research on alternative “body ontology” takes her beyond the traditional Chinese texts favored by Chinese philosophers into diverse domains of female aesthetic representations, including women’s embroidery, social attitudes regarding sexuality, and contemporary body art and fashion, where she has to combine philosophical methods with methods from other disciplines.

CRITIQUES AND NEW DIRECTIONS Despite the sense of crisis felt by some who still worry about whether there is such a thing as “Chinese philosophy,” research on traditional Chinese texts and modern works that seek to extend and develop their teachings is flourishing both quantitatively and qualitatively. Its vibrancy is evident in the diversity of topics of inquiry and

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methodological approaches, as well as its dynamism. Just as it has not been possible to include every representative methodology, the concluding part of this handbook registers its dynamic character with only a few examples of constructive critiques of how Chinese philosophy has been pursued and of methodologies inspired by new research trends beyond the field of Chinese philosophy that could have significant impact on its future. Leigh Jenco argues that the “openness” of philosophy in admitting Chinese philosophy into the discipline must extend to recognizing the contemporary value of methodological discussions and techniques found in traditional Chinese thought and applying those methods from within the Chinese tradition in contemporary research. Methods for applying evidence, generating and identifying knowledge, and evaluating claims found not only in explicitly methodological discussions but also in less obvious places in Chinese texts “may constitute new forms and audiences of knowledge, such that the terms of the original inquiry (‘philosophy,’ ‘methodology,’ ‘comparison,’ etc.) may be refigured or displaced entirely” (273). With examples drawn from discussions of Chinese thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jenco illustrates how working with the methods from within the Chinese tradition (1) yeilds new and unexpected solutions to old problems; (2) finds new ways of asking questions, including those that otherwise would never have occurred to modern Western readers; (3) recognizes and acts upon the ambitions to generality or universality present in certain Chinese claims and traditions, rather than reduce them to particular reiterations of already existing universalism from some outside source; (4) avoids reproducing the very Eurocentrism that a turn to Chinese or other philosophies is meant to overcome; and (5) moves from merely speculating about the methodological changes needed to comprehend knowledge situated in different places and times to actually enacting those changes themselves, and thereby opening philosophical inquiry to “new ways of exploring our world, which may displace or shatter existing practices” (283). Jenco is critical of the still dominant trend of borrowing methodologies from Western philosophical traditions not just because it limits Chinese philosophy’s learning from the methodologies of other fields and other cultures or developing new methodologies from engaging others; her critique is concerned that methodologies, even for academic philosophical research, are not innocent of the power relationships of cultural encounters, in particular the history of colonialism and imperialism. She disagrees with those who believe that contemporary research in Chinese philosophy, even when conducted in English, cannot avoid invoking conceptual frameworks and perspectives from European traditions and currently dominant forms of Anglo-​ American philosophy. Insofar as cultural encounters are characterized by different power relations, not all cross-​cultural comparative methods will pose the same problems for research in Chinese philosophy. Comparisons with philosophical traditions outside those associated with colonialism could deliver the methodological benefits of comparative approaches without invoking historically problematic power relations. Besides its encounter with Western philosophies which is so central to its course in the modern era, Chinese philosophy has a long history of learning from other philosophies and incorporating their methods and other aspects, going

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back to Buddhism’s spread through China and becoming an integral part of Chinese thought and culture, influencing other native philosophical traditions, Confucianism in particular, and continuing to exert an important influence today. In the early twentieth century, Chinese philosophers who compared Chinese philosophies with those of other cultures did not limit themselves to Chinese-​European/​Anglo-​ American comparisons (Liang 1934; Tang 1965). Some works in Anglophone comparative philosophy acknowledge more than two major philosophical traditions in the world, comparing Chinese, Indian, and Western philosophies (Bahm 1977), but more often, the comparisons are between various “Eastern” philosophies and Western philosophies rather than between two “Eastern philosophies” such as Chinese and Indian philosophies (Scharfstein et al.1978). Alexus McLeod’s survey in Chapter Fifteen of recent philosophical comparisons of Chinese and Indian traditions gives one hope that comparative methodologies in Chinese philosophy will overcome some of its current bias and limitations and continue to grow in the coming decades. McLeod explores the methodological difficulties of research in Chinese-​ Indian comparative philosophy in the West. While it shares some methods and methodological difficulties with other cross-​ cultural philosophical comparisons, there are additional complications, beginning with the tricky question of whether researchers working in the West, in Western languages, in departments in the modern Western academy, can ever truly get away from the “Western” aspects of their thought. There are also institutional barriers—​ for example, philosophy departments’ language requirements and definition of “basic competencies” and knowledge necessary for philosophical expertise—​that pose greater obstacles to specialization in Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy than those involving comparisons of some Western philosophy with a non-​Western philosophy. As with other comparative methods, approaching the study of Chinese philosophy through comparisons with Indian philosophy will vary depending on the motivations of particular philosophical projects. McLeod highlights two main categories of comparative methods based on their goals: historical investigative and cosmopolitan. Historical investigative methods are often employed to explore the interaction between Chinese and Indian philosophies through their historical connection via Buddhism, and indirect influence of pre-​Buddhist Indian thought in China as those earlier ideas were present in the assumptions and concepts of Buddhism, such as dharma, karma, and citra (mind). Cosmopolitan methods in Chinese-​ Indian comparative philosophy are more focused on the present and future than the past. Becoming increasingly influential in comparative philosophy in general, they are used to better understand some key concept, develop contemporary debates, or understand the relative position of a particular tradition of thought in world philosophy. It shares many methodological concerns with other efforts to engage contemporary philosophy with Chinese philosophy. Besides contributions to contemporary philosophical inquiry, cosmopolitan methods also respond to current political and economic trends of development in which China and India are playing conspicuous roles; this encourages studies of Chinese philosophy to move beyond Chinese traditional texts to include contemporary Chinese and Indian

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works. Besides methods explicitly suggested by existing research, such as reading a Chinese text “through the lenses” of an Indian thinker/​text to open new questions and suggest different approaches of interpretation, McLeod examines in more detail the “analogical” method not developed explicitly in current works and addresses objections to it. The “analogical” method seeks to “fill in the gaps” in a text by comparing it with another text showing similarities of views in issues closely related to one where a gap has been identified, but which has something to say about that issue in question. If becoming aware of the limitations and biases of past and current research in Chinese philosophy has the potential to initiate methodological changes and set new directions for Chinese philosophy, then the domination of explicit Chinese-​ Western comparisons and unacknowledged Western influences is not the only bias that needs attention. Chapter Sixteen is critical of another kind of bias in Chinese philosophy: an exclusive focus on Confucianism as the dominant paradigm of Chinese philosophy and culture. Ronnie Littlejohn implicitly criticizes this when Chapter Three notes in passing that many key texts of the classical period, including the entire Daozang, besides the Xunzi, Mozi, and Huainanzi, have been undervalued in a canonical sense. Lisa Raphals develops the critique more systematically by showing how the Confucian bias obscures or ignores three fundamentally important Daoist and naturalist elements of Chinese culture and history: (1) the sciences, both natural—​astronomy, mathematics, and so on—​and human, especially medicine and pharmacopia; (2) strategic thinking, military and otherwise; and finally (3) non-​ Confucian ideals of a good life: areas of explicitly Daoist influence such as poetry, painting, and other areas of aesthetics, as well as independent or “individualistic” elements in Chinese thought. The common perception of Chinese philosophy, even Chinese culture as a whole, as inhospitable to science is due to a stereotypical view of Chinese philosophy as Confucianism. Raphals presents examples of a high degree of engagement between philosophy and science in astronomy and medicine very early in Chinese history. The rich history of scientific discovery in China has been obscured by ignoring knowledge interests and activities that fell outside the scope of Confucian expertise and knowledge, especially after the Han and later projects to define the canon and repeated Confucian marginalization of texts of technical traditions associated with formulae masters (fang shi 方士), among others. If “scientific” thinking in Chinese traditions has been neglected by Confucians, military thinking has been explicitly attacked as incompatible with basic Confucian teachings. Chapter Sixteen explores this incompatibility, especially on the issue of deception, and suggests that more flexible and ethical attitudes toward strategic and military thinking are available given that some Confucian works (e.g., Liu Xiang of Han dynasty) acknowledged the importance of such thinking in Chinese accounts of agency and efficacy; the current Confucian bias is accompanied by a narrow perspective on the Confucian tradition itself. For a “naturalist” account of a Chinese eudaimonism very different from the Confucian ideals of the good life, Raphals turns to the Zhuangzi, which prefers natural over human cycles and rhythms. She argues that Daoist ideals, by rejecting Confucian categories of classifications, make possible individual autonomy

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in their suggestions of ways to “take charge” and transform ourselves, even though the amalgamation of qi that results in our birth partially determines who we are. Recovering the “naturalist” (in modern term) daos that stress the continuity of life, and position humans as part of the natural world may broaden the potential of Chinese philosophy to contribute to contemporary philosophical inquiries, given the rise of philosophical interest in various forms of naturalism—​including methodological naturalism.6 Some would disagree with Raphals’s insistence that naturalist elements of Chinese traditions cannot be subsumed into “Confucian cultures,” as Confucianism has learned from Daoism and other traditions of Chinese thought and culture; moreover, modern Confucians are prepared to go quite far in modifying Confucianism for various reasons—​for example, Mou Zongsan’s suggestion of a necessary self-​ restriction (ziwo kanxian 自我坎陷) for Confucianism to accommodate modern science. The Confucian bias has not stopped some contemporary research in Chinese philosophy from availing itself of the observational and experimental research from the social, behavioral, and natural sciences to inform, enrich, and adjudicate the philosophical claims of traditional texts. In doing so, Chinese philosophy joins other philosophical inquiries—​especially in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, moral and political philosophy, applied ethics—​in a methodological move from the armchair to the laboratory, in a manner of speaking. Besides the a priori methods, which have been the target of this “empirically responsible philosophy” dating back to David Hume, methods of textual interpretations/​ analyses and vague cultural generalizations in Chinese philosophy have generated “endless, circular debates” on many topics. Edward Slingerland’s Chapter Seventeen using mind-​body holism as a case example shows how an interdisciplinary approach, borrowing methods from the sciences to supplement traditional methods of the humanities, can significantly advance our understanding of Chinese philosophy and enhance the contributions of traditional Chinese texts to contemporary philosophical discussions. After reviewing some traditional humanistic evidence (from textual interpretation and analysis) against the common claim of “mind-​body holism” in early Chinese thought, contrasted with that of “mind-​body dualism” in European philosophical traditions, Slingerland offers two new sources of evidence employing methods borrowed from the sciences against radical holism, the view that “there exists no qualitative distinction at all between anything we could call mind and the physical body or other organs of the body.” Based on an actual research project conducted at the University of British Columbia, Canada, the chapter provides the detailed steps of performing large-​scale random sampling and multiple researchers’ coding of occurrences of “xin 心” (usually translated as “heart-​mind” or “mind”)—​for example, whether it is contrasted with the body or refers to a bodily organ, locus of feelings and emotions, or a locus of cognition in the deliberative reflective sense connoted by mind. This method borrowed from the sciences provides a check against qualitative intuitions of research on traditional Chinese texts that turn out to be often misleading or intellectually self-​serving. The project’s results undermine the claim that xin in early Chinese thought is qualitatively no different from other organs, and find significant increase in references to xin as locus of cognition and emotion during the Warring states period, and a shift from associating it with emotions to

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portraying it as the unique locus of higher cognitive abilities, while references to xin as a bodily organ remained fairly constant and relatively few. While aware of the potential limitations of the method, which he addresses briefly, Slingerland remains confident that the project provides convincing support for at least “weak” mind-​ body dualism early Chinese thought—​”in which mind and body are experienced as functionally and qualitatively distinct, although potentially overlapping at points.” He goes further to argue that some form of mind-​body dualism—​not the Cartesian version but one that admits an evolved embodied mind—​is probably a human universal by drawing on a body of scientific studies of human cognition. The methodological reflections of this chapter also emphasize that the collaboration between the humanities and the sciences is not a one-​way street by showing how the study of early Chinese mind-​body concepts can improve contemporary conceptions of the self and models of ethical education. Slinglerland includes experimental philosophy in “empirically responsible philosophy,” but Hagop Sarkissian and Ryan Nichols distinguish this recent movement from what they call “empirical philosophy”—​experimental philosophers do not only use research results from the sciences in philosophical inquiries, they involve themselves in the experiments by generating the hypotheses, developing the experimental design, collecting data, and doing the statistical analyses, often in collaboration with researchers in related fields who are experienced in such experimental methods. Such experiments have been conducted to extend conceptual analysis by systematically canvassing the intuitions of ordinary language users in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the concepts being analyzed or to see whether philosophers’ analyses track or depart from ordinary, prephilosophical intuition. Most recent experiments are closely allied with cognitive science, as experimental philosophers are currently less interested in the nature of concepts themselves and more interested in the psychological mechanisms underlying the application of concepts. Some experimental philosophy projects seek to restrict the universalist ambitions of philosophy, problematizing traditional philosophical methods by showing that the intuitions or judgments that they yield stem from processes that are unreliable or prone to systematic bias. Among such restrictionist projects, the ones documenting the pervasive and systematic psychological differences between East Asians and Westerners are highly relevant to Chinese philosophy, given its close relation with East Asian cultures, even though Sarkissian and Nichols admit that, as yet, “there is little work that qualifies as experimental Chinese philosophy.” Chapter Eighteen explores the still relatively rare use of experimental tools of science in Chinese philosophy in two broad types of projects: (1) to test for the impact of internalized Chinese social/​philosophical culture in East Asian societies inheriting Confucian cultural and moral values, such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam; (2) to test specific philosophical claims that appear in the philosophical tradition itself, such as claims concerning the nature of moral judgment or the effects of observing ritual propriety. As a case study in the first type of project, the chapter presents an experiment to test the extent to which Confucius’s advice in Analects 13.18 is reflected in East Asians’ willingness to conceal the immoral conduct of

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kin, relative to members of other cultural groups, as a measure of the influence of Confucian views about filial piety. For the second type of projects, it suggests an experiment to test the relative importance of meaning and form in ritual efficacy. The key to experimental Chinese philosophy is generating testable hypotheses to adjudicate competing philosophical claims in debates about the teachings of the traditional texts and their consequences. Sarkissian and Nichols maintain that experimental methods provide new and more effective ways of adjudicating competing claims in and about Chinese philosophy. Arguing that such an approach still requires the expertise of those who specialize in studying traditional Chinese texts, even though scientists may be more experienced with experimental methods, they agree with Slingerland and others in advocating more interdisciplinary studies in Chinese philosophy.

CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION This handbook focuses on research methods in Anglophone Chinese philosophy as an academic discipline, although research in Chinese philosophy is being carried out worldwide in many languages besides English. While some methodological issues might be common across different linguistic contexts, there are also likely to be issues that are unique to each linguistic and cultural context. The parameters of this handbook of limited length in no way imply that Anglophone Chinese philosophy is in any sense more important qua Chinese philosophy than research in other languages; indeed, some might insist that Chinese philosophy must be conducted in the Chinese language to be authentic. Without pretense to comprehensive coverage of the subfield, this volume should nevertheless convey the methodological diversity of Anglophone Chinese philosophy. This diversity is not a mere proliferation of methodologies and inability to arrive at common methods and standards. There are significant convergence and resonance, even though some common concerns remain unresolved and continue to provoke debates and divide the field. There is general agreement that historical contexts are important even though philosophical inquiries differ from those of purely historical interests, despite disagreement about the extent of importance and how best to take them into account. Several authors noted the importance of practice and experience in understanding the teachings of traditional Chinese texts, while different methodological implications for contemporary research in Chinese philosophy are drawn from this importance. For the majority who see engaging other philosophical traditions (especially Anglo-​ American and European philosophies) as inevitable or beneficial, there are shared concerns about possible distortions introduced by comparative methods and various recommendations on how to overcome such dangers. Some chapters bear testimony to how hospitable Chinese philosophy has been to interdisciplinary inquiries, and promote further interdisciplinary collaboration. Apart from addressing some common questions and sharing certain methodological concerns, some of them hold methodological positions that are quite close to one another, for example the chapters by Ames and Ni, while a number of them engage other contributors’ views, such as Fung’s critique of Ames and his collaborators.

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This collection does not pretend to present a “complete” picture, define the subfield, and determine its methods, if such is even possible. All chapters point to further resources for broadening and improving readers’ understanding of methodological issues in the field. They participate in a conversation that has been going on outside this volume and will no doubt continue. The growing maturity of the field is evident in the more frequent and sophisticated discussion about methodology that has been included in recent monographs in Chinese philosophy as well as in shorter works on methodological topics that have already been published (including some by contributors to this volume). It is the hope of this editor that the volume introduces to readers some key methodological issues in Anglophone Chinese philosophy and sparks their interests in methodological reflections. While contributing to current methodological debates, its limited scope will hopefully prompt more works on methodologies of Chinese philosophy conducted in various languages.

NOTES 1. The opening panel of the recent World Congress of philosophy (2013, Athens) consists of a paper on “the methodological turn in philosophy” and another on “philosophical methods.” The heightened focus on methodology is also evident in recent philosophy publications, with titles such as An Introduction to Philosophical Methods (Daly 2010); Philosophical Methodology: Armchair or Laboratory (Haug 2014), not to mention self-​conscious methodological reflections in works on various philosophical topics. 2. The Outline is basically a revised and expanded version of the Logical Method, and they share the same understanding of philosophy and philosophical method. 3. His doctoral thesis (Hu 1963: 63) explicitly used the term “pragmatic method.” I refer to his thesis for translation of the various Chinese terms, given the significant overlap between these two works. 4. This earlier work is to be distinguished from the lectures Hu (1934: 45) delivered as Haskell lecturer at the University of Chicago in 1933, which identified five periods of “Chinese Renaissance” in China’s history—​it also discussed the “scientific spirit and methodology of the late Qing dynasty” (69–​70). 5. The rest of this section owes much to Henry Rosemont’s (2015) illuminating discussion of the debates about the nature of the classical Chinese language, and the methodological implications of translation and exegetical debates for philosophy. 6. Haug (2014: 4) argues that naturalism has supplanted linguistic philosophy as an organizing theme for discussions of methodology. See also Maddy (2007); Williamson (2008).

REFERENCES Ames, R. T. (2011), Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Angle, S. (2009), Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-​Confucian Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Angle, S. (2012), Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity. Bahm, A. (1977), Comparative Philosophy: Western, Indian and Chinese Philosophies Compared, Albuquerque: World Books. Billioud, S. (2012), Thinking through Confucian Modernity: A Study of Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics, Leiden: Brill. Chan, W. T. (1963), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chang, C. et al. (1958), “Manfesto for a Reappraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture,” in Carsun Chang (2002), Development of Neo-​Confucian Thought, vol. 2, New York: Bookham, pp. 455–​483. Daly, C. (2010), An Introduction to Philosophical Methods, Peterborough: Broadview Press. Defoort, C. (2001), “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate,” Philosophy East and West, 51.3: 393–​413. Defoort, C. and Z. G. Ge (2005), “Editor’s Introduction” to issue on “Legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 37.1: 3–​10. Dewey, J. (1910), “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,” in Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 10, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Du, X. Z. 杜小真and Zhang Ning 張寧 (eds.) (2002), Derrida’s Lectures in China (德里達 中國講演錄), Beijing: Central Translation Press. Fuller, M. (1999), An Introduction to Literary Chinese, Harvard East Asian Monographs 176, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fung, Y. L. (1948), “Chinese Philosophy and a Future World Philosophy,” Philosophical Review, 57.6: 539–​549. Fung, Y. L. 馮友蘭 (2000), History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史), vol. 1., Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, First published 1931. Goldin, P. R. (2008), “The Myth That China Has No Creation Myth,” Monumenta Serica, 56.1:  1–​22. Haug, M. (2014), Philosophical Methodology: Armchair or Laboratory? New York: Routledge. Hegel, G. W. F. (1995), Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, E. S. Haldane (trans.), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. First published 1892. Hu, S. (1922), The Development of Logical Method in Ancient China, in Hu Shih’s Complete Works (胡適全集), vol. 35 (English Writings), 2nd ed. (1963), New York: Paragon. Hu, S. (1923), “The Chinese Renaissance,” Chinese National Association for the Advancement of Education Bulletin 6, vol. II, Hu Shih’s Complete Works, vol. 35 (English Writings), 2nd ed. (1963), New York: Paragon. Hu, S. (1934), The Chinese Renaissance, The Haskell Lectures 1933, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. (1963), New York: Paragon. Hu, S. 胡適 (1996), An Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史大綱), Beijing: Eastern Press. First published in 1919. Huang, Y. (2014), Why Be Moral? Learning from the neo-​Confucian Cheng Brothers, Albany: State University of New York Press. Jin, Y. L. (1990), “Review of Fung Yu-​lan’s History of Chinese Philosophy (馮友蘭中國哲 學史審查報告),” in JinYuelin Collected Essays (金岳霖學術論文集), Beijing: Chinese

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Social Sciences Press. First published 1934, as Appendix to Fung Yu-​lan’s History of Chinese Philosophy. Lai, K. (2006), Learning from Chinese Philosophies: Ethics of Interdependent and Contextualized Selves, Aldershot: Ashgate. Liang, S. M. 梁漱溟 (1934), Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (東西文 化及其哲學), Shanghai: Commercial Press. First published 1922. MacIntyre, A. (1984), “The Relationship of Philosophy to Its Past,” in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Maddy, P. (2007), Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mou, B. (2010), “On Constructive-​Engagement Strategy in Comparative Philosophy: A Journal Theme Introduction,” Comparative Philosophy, 1.1: 1–​32, http://​www.comparativephilosophy.org. Mou, B. and R. Tieszen (eds.) (2013), Constructive Engagement of Analytic and Continental Approaches in Philosophy: From the Vantage Point of Comparative Philosophy, Leiden: Brill. Neville, R. C. (2010), “New Projects in Chinese Philosophy,” Pluralist, 5.2: 45–​56. Nylan, M. (2011), Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China, New Haven: American Oriental Society. Olberding, A. (2008), APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-​American Philosophers and Philosophy, 8: 1. Rorty, R. (1984), “The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres,” in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rosemont, H. (2015), “Translating and Interpreting Chinese Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​chinese-​translate-​ interpret/​, accessed December 17, 2015. Scharfstein, B.-​A. et al. (1978), Philosophy East/​Philosophy West: A Critical Comparison of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, and European Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell. Tang, J. Y. 唐君毅 (1965), Introduction to Philosophy (哲學概論), Kowloon: Mengshi Education Foundation. Wang, G. W. 王國維 (2008), Wang Guowei Collected Works (王國維集), Zhou Xishan 周 錫山 (ed.), Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press. First published in World of Education 教育世界, 55 (1903). Williamson, T. (2008), The Philosophy of Philosophy, Malden: Blackwell. Zheng, J. D. (2005), “The Issue of the ‘Legitimacy’ of Chinese Philosophy,” Contemporary Chinese Thought, 37.1: 11–​23. Ziporyn, B. (2003), The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-​Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang, Albany: State University of New York Press. Ziporyn, B. (2004), Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism, Chicago: Open Court. Ziporyn, B. (2013), Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist thought and Its Antecedents, Albany: State University of New York Press.

PART ONE

Philosophizing with Traditional Chinese Texts

CHAPTER ONE

Philosophizing with Canonical Chinese Texts: Seeking an Interpretive Context ROGER T. AMES

THE INSEPARABILITY OF METHOD AND ITS MADNESS A familiar way of thinking about “methodologies” that we associate with rational, systematic philosophies are the formal principles or theoretical procedures of inquiry employed in a particular field or discipline—​for example, in philosophy, we speak of Socratic dialectics as a method, and of an analytic, a hermeneutical, or a phenomenological method among others. It is a commonplace, however, to observe that familiar dualisms that would separate theory from practice and the formal from the informal are anathema to the holistic, aesthetic cosmology that serves as interpretive context for the classical Chinese canons. Indeed, these canons challenge such an understanding of theorizing itself by beginning from the primacy of practice and by taking theorizing as an intrinsic feature—​a nonanalytic aspect—​of practical activity itself. Such a way of thinking as an antidote to the exclusionary limits of rigor must take into account the indeterminacy that attends what are always unique activities. We will see that erstwhile theoretical tools arise for philosophers in this tradition in media res—​that is, from the need to make practices more productive and intelligent within the context of the practices themselves. Angus Graham famously offered us a contrast between the dialectical dispute among philosophers seeking fixed ends who would ask “What is the truth?” as opposed to those who would look for an emerging consensus in asking “Where is the way?” (Graham 1989: 3) Since the word “methodology” itself suggests a particular “way” of thinking in the production of meaning—​that is, taking “method” as “a way” and “logos” as “thinking”—​any search for a “methodology” distinctive to Chinese philosophical texts will lead us necessarily to the oft-​referenced mode of associative, correlative or analogical thinking ascribed to these canons that serves them as a source of aggregating meaning.

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In this chapter, then, I want to try to answer the question: How do these Chinese canons “do” philosophy? And we will see that philosophy in this tradition is at its best when it coordinates the ongoing process of human activity and enables it to coalesce most productively within the patterns of relationships that constitute the familial, social, cultural, natural, and cosmic environments to serve the project of human flourishing.

“METHOD” AND “METHODOLOGY” IN CLASSICAL CHINESE PHILOSOPHIZING As important as the Daoist and Confucian canons have been in the articulation of Chinese intellectual history and as much as they can be appealed to as textual evidence for claims about early Chinese philosophizing, perhaps no single text can compete with the Yijing 易經 (or Book of Changes) in terms of the sustained interest it has garnered from succeeding generations of China’s literati, and the influence it has had on the Chinese self-​understanding. This signal importance of the Yijing is due at least in part to the fact that this text is explicit in defining a cosmology that is most often assumed implicitly as the interpretive context for the Chinese canons broadly. The deliberate coordination of an optimally productive relationship between the changing world and the human experience is the main axis of the Great Commentary 大傳 that provides the Yijing and early Chinese natural cosmology with its philosophical terms of art. The purpose of this Great Commentary is fundamentally normative and prescriptive. It purports to address what is perhaps life’s most pressing question: How do we produce the intelligent practices needed to optimize the possibilities of a world in which natural and human events are two inseparable, mutually shaping aspects? Willard Peterson in analyzing this profound, protean, and frustratingly opaque document—​the Great Commentary—​insists that it “has been for some two thousand years one of the most important statements in the Chinese tradition on knowing how the cosmos works and how humans might relate to that working” (1982: 67). Edward Shaughnessy in his retranslation of this text based on the Mawangdui archaeological materials echoes Peterson’s evaluation of its critical importance when he observes that the worldview of the Great Commentary “is arguably the most sophisticated (it is certainly the most subtle) statement of the correlative thought that has been so fundamental to all of China’s philosophical systems” (1997: 1). The Yijing as a text has itself been taken as an object lesson in the worldview that it purports to present. As Peterson continues, “The Change [Yijing] is not separate from but equal to the cosmos, and it is in virtue of that relationship that it ‘works’ ” (1982: 91). This same claim is made explicitly in the Great Commentary itself: As a document, the Yijing is vast and far-​ranging, and has everything complete within it. It contains the way of the heavens, the way of human beings, and the way of the earth. (B8) As Peterson suggests, the text of the Yijing as a particular foci in the field of experience “duplicates relationships and processes at work in the realm of heaven-​and-​earth,”

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and thus provides those who understand it with a window on the workings of the cosmos. In other words, when we reflect upon the nature of nested “events” (rather than discrete “things”) within this processual cosmology, the relationship between these particular foci and their fields encourages a holographic understanding of world systems that begins from the assumed primacy of vital relationality. The manifold of relations that constitutes each event extends to the furthest reaches of the cosmos, thus reflexively implicating the entire cosmos in each and every phenomenon. The Great Commentary as a text brings the dynamic nature of the vital cosmic process of persistence and transformation into clear resolution for those who can understand and apply its insights. Thus the closing of the swinging gate is called kun 坤; the opening of it is called qian 乾. The ongoing alternation of openings and closings is called flux (bian 變), and the inexhaustibility of the comings and goings is called continuity (tong 通). When something is manifest, it is called an image (xiang 象), and taking on physical form it is called a phenomenon (qi 器). To fashion and make use of these things is called emulation (fa 法). Putting them to good use in everything that is done so that all of the people can take advantage of them is called spirituality (shen 神). (A11)1

GRANET AND NEEDHAM ON CORRELATIVE THINKING We might turn to Marcel Granet who was a pioneer in making the claim that it is this early Chinese cosmology grounded in the language of the Great Commentary that provides the interpretive context for the reading and application of the early canons in the production of intelligent practices. Granet finds in these texts a distinctive way of thinking—​what some sinologists and comparative philosophers have come to call variously “correlative,” “analogical,” “associative,” or “coordinative” thinking. Joseph Needham relying heavily as he does upon Granet provides us with a starting point for a sustained reflection on what this notion of “correlative thinking” might entail: A number of modern students—​H. Wilhelm, Eberhard, Jablonski, and above all, Granet—​have named the kind of thinking with which we have here to do, “coordinative thinking” or “associative thinking.” This intuitive-​ associative system has its own causality and its own logic. It is not either superstition or primitive superstition, but a characteristic thought-​form of its own. H. Wilhelm contrasts it with the “subordinative” thinking characteristic of European science, which laid such emphasis on external causation. In coordinative thinking, conceptions are not subsumed under one another, but placed side by side in a pattern, and things influence one another not by acts of mechanical causation, but by a kind of “inductance.” (1956: 280) Needham describes this correlative thinking with “its own causality and its own logic” as “a characteristic thought-​form of its own,” and invites us down a portal

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that would seem to take us like Alice to the other side of the looking glass. He goes on to share with us his encounter with a wonky, wobbly world that has left the reassuring stability of our own rational structures behind: The key-​ word in Chinese thought is Order and above all Pattern (and if I may whisper it for the first time, Organism). The symbolic correlations or correspondences all formed part of one colossal pattern. Things behaved in particular ways not necessarily because of prior actions or impulsions of other things, but because their position in the ever-​moving cyclical universe was such that they were endowed with intrinsic natures which made their behaviour inevitable for them. If they did not behave in those particular ways they would lose their relational position in the whole (which made them what they were), and turn into something other than themselves. They were thus parts in existential dependence upon the whole world-​organism. And they reacted upon one another not so much by mechanical impulsion or causation as by a kind of mysterious resonance. (1956: 280–​281) In this chapter, I want to try to temper the claim by Granet and Needham about the uniqueness of this associative way of thinking, and in so doing, to demystify this putatively other world by building on the notion of “abductive reasoning” as a more familiar form of correlative thinking that was developed by C. S. Peirce, the reputed founder of American pragmatism. Indeed, when his fellow pragmatist William James characterizes the pragmatic method as simply asking “What difference does it make?” he is requiring that “doing philosophy” be an imaginative and experimental way of thinking directed at enhancing the human experience through the production of the capacity to live life intelligently—​a demand that resonates immediately with the Chinese canons. I also want to explain why David Hall and I in our interpretive studies of Chinese philosophy have needed to introduce the neologism, ars contextualis, in order to provide a sufficiently capacious account of the ontological force of this “correlative thinking” as it functions in early Chinese cosmology. I will argue that it is our human capacity for ars contextualis—​for engaging in “the art of contextualizing”—​that gives consummate persons the important generative and normative role required of them in the early Chinese cosmology. Indeed, it is the role and the responsibility of the human being to live life wisely and in so doing, to become a full collaborator in cosmic meaning-​making that serves as ground for a pervasive “role ethics” that I take to be a signature of this philosophical tradition. Needham describes the emergence of both human and cosmic order in the following terms: Social and world order rested, not on an ideal of authority, but on a conception of rotational responsibility. The Tao [dao] was the all-​inclusive name for this order, an efficacious sum-​total, a reactive neural medium; it was not a creator, for nothing is created in the world, and the world was not created. The sum of wisdom consisted in adding to the number of intuited analogical correspondences in the repertory of correlations. Chinese ideals involved neither God nor Law. (1956: 290)

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As Needham observes, the unique identity and persistence of any particular thing is a function of what it means for the full, unbounded complement of all other things that give it context. It is in this sense that, as corollary to the primacy of vital relationality, early Chinese cosmology is an aestheticism. What makes this cosmology an aesthetic rather than a rational or logical order in this Whiteheadian sense is that it is holistic and inclusive rather than reductionistic (Whitehead 1938: 58–​63). This means that in the patterned order of the cosmos in which no single privileged order predominates, all things without exception not only participate in the production of the “social and world order,” but also collaborate with one another in generating everything else. The “one” and the “many”—​the boundless dao as the unsummed totality and the myriad things that constitute it—​are simply two “aspects” of the same phenomenon. Marcel Granet uses this language of “aspect” to express the way in which erstwhile things are in fact dynamic matrices of productive relations that constitute continuous, extended events: Instead of observing successions of phenomena, the Chinese registered alternations of aspects. If two aspects seemed to them to be connected, it was not by means of a cause and effect relationship, but rather “paired” like the obverse and converse of something, or to use a metaphor from the Book of Changes, like echo and sound, or shadow and light. (Cited in Needham 1956: 290–​291) Granet is here reflecting on the resonant “pairing” among alternations of aspect defining of all events that is denoted by the familiar vocabulary of yinyang 陰陽, “field” and “focus” (daode 道德), “determinacy” and “indeterminacy” (youwu 有 無), “change” and “persistence” (biantong 變通), “the heavens” and “the earth” (tiandi 天地), “the world” and “the human experience” (tianren 天人), “forming” and “functioning” (tiyong 體用), “the social grammar” and its “musicality” (liyue 禮 樂), “heartminding” and “spirituality” (xinshen 心神), “intensity” and “extension” (jingshen 精神), “the consummatory” and “the optimally appropriate” (renyi 仁義), and so on. Both “determinacy” and “indeterminacy” (youwu 有無), for example, are nonanalytic “aspects” that we must appeal to in giving a fair account of the ceaseless emergence of any of the things and events that come to constitute the continuing human experience. And a process that always entails “forming” (ti 體) and “functioning” (yong 用) requires a gerundive, explanatory language that gives an account of the measured cadence of this ineluctable process of transformation. Dao as an “appellative” or “courtesy” name (zi 字) for this complex, anarchic field of order—​ a “style” name that reflects its provisional, contingent, and speculative nature—​ is ever provisional and emergent, and accrues enhanced resolution from the narratives of those persons whose realization is such that they are able to bring a peculiarly intense foci of meaning and value to a particular time and place. Such consummate persons have a determining influence on the direction that dao takes and the intelligent activities it produces as an aggregating and unfolding way forward in the human experience. Given that this early Chinese cosmology begins from the primacy of vital relationality and the doctrine of internal, constitutive relations that follows

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from it, the real challenge for us lies in understanding that, in this cosmology, “knowing” is not limited to a cognitive and theoretical grasp of the real world; it is to acquire the wisdom to fund the practical activity of realizing a world in the sense of making an optimally desirable world real. And “the myriad things” are not discrete “things,” but in fact reference the interdependent, dynamic events that constitute our shared experience, including the narratives of sagacious human beings who, as active collaborators with the heavens and the earth, occupy a prominent role in the emergence and evolution of this meaningful and yet always provisional world. Needham again draws on Granet to provide what is a vivid description of the unfamiliar cosmological vision we will need as our interpretive context for reading the Chinese canons—​that is, a vision of not only of what this cosmology is, but perhaps, more importantly, of what it is not: The uncreated universal organism, whose every part, by a compulsion internal to itself and arising out of its own nature, willingly performed its functions in the cyclical recurrences of the whole, was mirrored in human society by a universal ideal of mutual good understanding, a supple regime of interdependences and solidarities which could never be based on unconditional ordinances, in other words, on laws . . . Thus the mechanical and the quantitative, the forced and the externally imposed, were all absent. The notion of Order excluded the notion of Law. (1956: 290) To clarify what Needham means by “rotational responsibility” with each thing having “a compulsion internal to itself ” and with the “efficacious sum-​total” being “a reactive neural medium,” we will have to first explore the doctrine of internal relations and its alternative holistic “logic” and “causality.” This notion of intrinsic, constitutive relations brings with it an understanding of creative advance as a continuing in situ or “situated” increase in meaning that defies any severe separation between creator and creature.

“HOW THINGS HANG TOGETHER”: A DOCTRINE OF INTERNAL, CONSTITUTIVE RELATIONS Angus Graham echoes Granet when he clarifies the meaning of “relations” relevant to this Chinese cosmology by alluding to an important equivocation that might obscure our understanding of relationality: As for “relationships,” relation is no doubt an indispensible concept in exposition of Chinese thought, which generally impresses a Westerner as more concerned with the relations between things than with their qualities; but the concern is with concrete patterns rather than relations abstracted from them . . . (1990: 288–​289) Early Chinese cosmology assumes a doctrine of internal relations that are constitutive of the patterns of “events” rather than a notion of external relations that merely conjoin putatively discrete and independent “things.” We might cite Peter Hershock here who offers a rather straightforward and uncontested account

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of these internal, constitutive relations in diagnosing the persistent problem that we have in seeing the world as being comprised of discrete “things”: Autonomous subjects and objects are, finally, only artifacts of abstraction . . . What we refer to as “things”—​whether mountains, human beings, or complex phenomena like histories—​ are simply the experienced results of having established relatively constant horizons of value or relevance (“things”). They are not, as common sense insists, natural occurring realities or [things]. Indeed, what we take to be objects existing independently of ourselves are, in actuality, simply a function of habitual patterns of relationships. (2006: 140) Hershock offers us a perceptual cure that allows us to see “through the conceit that relations are second-​order realities contingent upon pre-​existing actors:” This amounts to an ontological gestalt shift from taking independent and dependent actors to be first order realities and relations among them as second order, to seeing relationality as first order (or ultimate) reality and all individual actors as (conventionally) abstracted or derived from them. (2006: 147) Indeed, for Whitehead the very assumption that there is a world comprised of deracinated “individuals” who are perceiving discrete “things” wherein all such persons and things are defined by external relations is a prime and prominent example of what he calls the “Fallacy of Simple Location”: that is, the familiar and yet fallacious assumption that isolating, decontextualizing, and analyzing “things” as simple particulars is the best way to understand the content of our experience. Whitehead rejects a world of “objects” as being mere retrospective, second-​ order abstractions from our continuous experience, and argues the fundamental realities of both experience and nature itself are best understood as irreducibly extended, transitory, and interdependent events. For Whitehead, the notion of the discrete individual is a specific and persistent example of what he calls “misplaced concreteness.” This second, closely related fallacy is to regard abstracted entities presumed to have a simple location as being “more real” than their “transitivity,” that is, than their field of dynamic, extended relations and all of the untidy transitions and conjunctions that constitute the genuine content of any event in the human experience (Whitehead 1925: 51–​52). In classical Chinese cosmology, the animating, transforming qi 氣 is conceptualized in terms of what in modern parlance we might call a “vital energy field” in which “things” are sometimes more and sometimes less persistent, vital perturbations or foci that, once having arisen, continue in the fullness of time to transform into other things. This hylozoistic field is not only pervasive as a condition of all things, but is also Needham’s animating “neural,” existential medium through which all things come to constitute what they have become, whether it is their transition from cabbages to kings or the aspirated energy of finger snaps. There is neither animating qi without form nor form without qi. Indeed, “form” and “animating qi” are again two nonanalytic aspects of the same irrepressible transforming reality, where its “transitivity” and its “form” are both implicit ways of registering the rhythm of the “functioning and forming” (tiyong 體用) process.

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SHI 勢: AN AESTHETIC ALTERNATIVE TO THE LOGIC OF “THINGS” AND “EXTERNAL CAUSALITY” This doctrine of constitutive relations sheds light on what Needham is referring to as “the universal uncreated organism” with “its own causality and its own logic.” We might select one of the philosophical canons at this point that draws upon the Great Commentary cosmology—​the Daodejing—​as our test case to illustrate how an understanding of correlative thinking and the holographic cosmology described by Granet and Needham above is necessary to produce an interpretation of this text sufficiently robust to do justice to the profundity of how it does philosophy: 道生之，德畜之，物形之，勢成之。是以萬物莫不尊道而貴德。道之尊，德之 貴，夫莫之命常自然。 Way-​making (dao) brings all things to life, Their virtuosity (de) provides them with nourishment, Environing things shape them, And their contextualizing circumstances (shi) usher them to completion. It is thus that all things revere way-​making and esteem virtuosity. As for this reverence and esteem, It just arises spontaneously without anything decreeing it to be so. (Chapter 51) This text describes how deference among things in our lived experience produces its intelligent practices. Putative “things” are horizons, and thus are only convenient abstractions from persistent and continuous matrices of interdependent relations. And these relations do not terminate anywhere, but reach out to the furthest limits of the cosmos. Any particular “thing” or situation emerges at the pleasure of every other situation, and is thus at once a cause and an effect. If, as Hershock has observed above, we see the “relationality as first order (or ultimate) reality and all individual actors as (conventionally) abstracted or derived from them,” then we must understand the term ziran 自然 or “self-​so-​ing as it appears here as the backgrounding and foregrounding relationship between particular focus and unbounded field. Ziran means that the “self ” (zi 自) in the “self-​so-​ ing” process is inclusive of all of the extended relations of a thing or event as this manifold of relations conspires and gives life to the unique conatus (ran 然) that makes anything insistently so. A pervasive reverence and esteem for way-​ making and virtuosity emerges spontaneously among things as they flourish in their environments and as they are ushered by the propensity of circumstances to full fruition. Shi 勢 here—​translated as “the contextualizing circumstances”—​is a generic term that expresses the complex, holistic, and dynamic process of “trans-​form-​ ing” (tiyong 體用) as it occurs within the evolution and consummation of any particular “thing” or situation. There is the aesthetic of the cultivating and refining of things that is captured in the etymology of shi as “sowing and cultivating” (yi 蓺) with its cognate term, the “performing arts” (yi 藝). Situations do not just happen; they emerge in their complexity as a growing pattern of changing

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relations that are vital, and that display the possibilities of incremental design as well as an achieved, aesthetic virtuosity. At the same time, situations by definition are “situated” and as such, have a formal morphology or “habituated” aspect—​a localized place with its insistent particularity and its own persistent yet always changing configuration. We might be initially overwhelmed when we rehearse and examine what is in fact a nonexhaustive list of the possible English translations for this term shi 勢 provided here. The complex significance of shi can be parsed with the following glossary of terms and subsumed under four selected rubrics from among them: Relationality: leverage, differential, advantage, purchase Vitality: potential, momentum, timing, tendency, propensity Virtuosity: influence, power, force, style, dignity, status Embodiment: terrain, configuration, situation, circumstances, disposition, shape, appearance Such a range of renderings that are in different contexts used to translate shi is revealing of the extraordinarily broad compass of meaning implicated in this one term. Even so, on reflection and with imagination, we can recover a perhaps unfamiliar logic and an alternative sense of causality from a survey of these seemingly disparate meanings. In lifting coherence out of this pattern of disjunctive associations, we must begin from the matrix of relations that constitute any particular situation and register the vital and thus changing pattern or structure that emerges from them. And this dynamic structure—​from its first-​order relationality and vitality to its achieved virtuosity as it bodies forth—​can be drawn upon to answer some of our basic cosmological questions. First, this reflection on shi provides an alternative vocabulary for thinking through the dynamics of our field of continuing experience and the multiplicity of its content. Shi provides a centered, “from-​field-​to-​focus” conception of the principle of how we come to individuate things and set horizons on them. That is, beginning from the wholeness of experience, we divide up, conceptualize, foreground, and thus make determinate a “thing” within an otherwise continuous flow of relations by bringing focus and meaningful resolution to its horizons as it is entertained from one perspective or another. The primacy of vital relations means that situation will always have priority over agency, and that no putative agent does anything by itself. An ostensive “thing” is first a specific focus or matrix—​a particular configuration—​ within an expansive context of always changing, constitutive relations. Importantly, it can be cultivated and shaped to achieve insistent focus and resolution in its interdependent relations with the “other” things that constitute it. The dynamics of shi explains what it means for something that is at once unique and yet continuous with other things to act and to move, and to be acted upon and to be moved, where the shaping and being shaped is one continuous process. Shi as thus one and many—​ as unique foci within their respective fields—​ provides some insight into the logic of a more fluid sense of continuity within

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diversity, and of an internal and spontaneous ziran causality in which everything “causes” anything. Indeed, the inseparability of continuity and diversity guarantees the uniqueness of each situation, and means at the very least that there can be no single dominant order, but only many interdependent and interpenetrating sites of order. When shi is used to reflect on the human condition specifically, it explains the emerging individuality of unique, potentially large-​souled “persons” situated within the evolving circumstances of their extended families and communities, and within the changing conditions of their natural and cultural environments. Shi suggests how the persisting habits and the specific habitudes that constitute identities are shaped from originating impulses—​ the “sources of our propensities” (shiyuan勢源)—​ into the definite and significant activities of always unique persons. Such persons are irreducibly transactional, ingesting and embodying their environs as uniquely focused fields of roles and relations. The cultivated distinctiveness of such persons far from being exclusive of their relationships is rather the immediate product of the quality that is being achieved in them. To the extent that we are able to thrive within productive relations, we can emerge as distinctive and sometimes even distinguished persons, thereby bringing distinction to the nexus of relations to which we belong. The holographic reversibility of inner and outer means that in searching inwardly for a unique, lived identity we are in fact exploring the web of outward relations that make us who we are. And in projecting outward to register most fully the unbounded web of relations that give us context we are discovering our innermost selves. The somatic and vital aspects of shi, and the interpenetration of all things as focus and field brings clarity to the further claim in the Daodejing thus: 故貴以身為天下，若可寄天下；愛以身為天下，若可託天下。 Those who esteem their own persons as much as they do the world Can be entrusted with its governance, And those who love their own persons as much as the world Can take the world as their charge. (Chapter 13) The point here is focus and field: since the entire world is implicated within each of us as persons, it is only appropriate that we regard ourselves with the same esteem that we would extend to the world. Or said more simply, to love ourselves is to love the world. It is only those who by fully realizing this interpenetration between world and things, and the interpenetration among things themselves, can “grasp and cherish the ‘three treasures’ ” (sanbao 三寶) enumerated in the Daodejing as compassion (ci 慈), frugality (jian 儉), and deference (bugan wei tianxia xian 不敢為天下先). And it is these “three treasures” that are necessary to extend oneself to the full compass of experience as a precondition for making one’s own distinctive contribution to it and exercising one’s influence within it.2 It is in this way—​through compassion, frugality, and deference in our transactions with all things in allowing them to be fully what they are—​that consummate human beings have a vital role in expediting the creative possibilities that experience has to offer.

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THE CENTRALITY OF HUMAN SAGACITY IN THE OPTIMIZING OF THE DAODE 道德 EXPERIENCE Before turning to a reflection on Peirce’s method of abductive reasoning and on our notion of ars contextualis as an effort to appreciate, clarify, and extend Peirce, I want to first register the centrality and cosmic stature of the human being in the key terms of art that are defining of the Daodejing. There is in this text a much elevated and amplified expectation of human participation in the emergence of a micro and macro cosmic order that in its own time challenged the more narrowly defined views of Confucianism found in texts such as the Analects—​what John Berthrong (2008, 60–​61) has called early Confucianism’s “meso-​cosmic” or “in between” view of the cosmos. And it would seem to be this Daoist challenge that occasioned a response by the evolving Confucian tradition in producing self-​consciously hyperbolic texts such as the Daxue and Zhongyong that rise up to celebrate the cosmic reach of personal cultivation. The clear interpenetration and complementarity of dao and de—​of the human focus within the cosmic field—​reinforces the assumption that this early cosmology is really a generalized sociology in the sense of being a phenomenology of the possibilities of the human experience. It is an account that is not simply descriptive of human flourishing, but is also prescriptive in advocating a deferential and compassionate way of pursuing such flourishing, and is indeed exhortative in recommending that we get on with it. The daode dyad with each graphic component having “human” and “right way forward” inscribed and implicated within them defines human virtuosity as an optimization of the relations that constitute our interpenetrating focus and field narratives as we journey forth within our natural, social, and cultural contexts (Ames 2015: 93–​94). Another way of thinking about this quest for virtuosic relationality is to remember that dao can also be parsed as “a way of speaking,” and the quality of dao is an important measure dependent upon the productivity of the continuing human discourse in its broadest sense. The graph for “sage” (sheng 聖) suggests that the sages “hear” (er 耳) what is valuable to hear, and on that basis are effective in “making manifest” (cheng 呈) and communicating effectively their vision of what will be. Sages (shengren 聖人), then, are virtuoso communicators of cosmic and epochal proportions. Two expressions frequently associated with sages in the Great Commentary and in the canons broadly are (1) a kind of prescience that enables them to see what is still inchoate (ji 幾), and (2) on that basis, to take the initiative (zuo 作) in guiding the unfolding propensity of things in a positive and productive direction. Given that in this cosmology persons are constituted by their relationships, we must register the fact that implicated within the sages are the inspired worlds they have raised to higher levels. Indeed, they do not lead their people; they embody the heights that they and the people together have been able to achieve. This enhanced awareness of the sages gives them the capacity to go beyond the particular time and place in which they live, thus effecting a continuity not only with their contemporaries, but with those who have preceded them, and also with those who

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are yet to come. Their sagacity is measured by their success in orchestrating and embodying in themselves the efforts of the people to realize a shared, contrapuntal harmony. And as such, they themselves through their deference to and compassion for the full content of their experience are camouflaged and remain imperceptible as a collaborative source of influence. The metaphors used to describe the sages are cosmic and celestial, and the culture that finds its focus in these rare persons elevates the human experience to heights of profound aesthetic and religious refinement, making the human being a worthy partner with the heavens and the earth. It is the sages who collaborate with the ways of the world (tiandao 天道) and through deference extend the way of becoming consummately human (rendao 人道) into its more certain future.

SAGELINESS AS THE QUALITATIVE TRANSFORMATION OF THE TIANREN RELATIONSHIP What differentiates the Daodejing from a text such as the Analects is that, whereas the Analects focuses its attention on the human way (rendao 人道) to the extent that it at once assumes and yet defers speculation on the way of the world (tiandao 天道), the Daodejing is concerned with a productive symbiosis of what are ostensibly “two” ways.3 This again prompts the same question posed by the Great Commentary: What in the Daodejing is the perceived relationship between ren 人 and tian 天—​between the human drama and the numinous context within which it is performed? Binomial expressions such as this notion of tianren 天人, yinyang 陰陽, and “knowing and acting” (zhixing 知行) must be understood in terms of the primacy of vital relationality and the continuity that is assumed by it. Since relationships come first, the two distinctive aspects are second-​order abstractions from these concrete constitutive relations. It is the deepening of the horizon of constitutive, internal relationships that transforms the two aspects qualitatively into “sagacity” (sheng 聖) for tianren, “contrapuntal harmony” (he 和) for yinyang, and “intelligence practices” (zhi 智) for zhixing. In each instance, the two aspects themselves are simply conceptual abstractions from a complex relational process. The proper and effective measure (du 度) sought in this Confucian cosmology is not the combination of either more or less of two quantitatively distinct things—​two erstwhile independent bits of experience. Taking mind and body as an example, du is not the combination or integration of two separate things, but rather a qualitative and transformative change that occurs within the somaesthetics of the “lived bodyheartminding” experience itself.

DAODE AS FOCUS-​FIELD HOLOGRAPHY: GETTING PAST THE INNER/​OUTER DUALISM We have seen that the focus-​field notion of person assumed in this daode and qi cosmology stands in stark contrast to a metaphysical realist conception of an inner, private domain and a shared outer world. It begins from this doctrine of internal,

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constitutive relations and requires a fundamentally different understanding of persons in which their particular identities (de) and the unsummed totality (dao)—​ their foregrounded focus and its field—​are two holographic and thus mutually entailing ways of perceiving the same phenomenon. Just as each live note in a symphony has implicated within it the entire performance, so persons as live focal events have implicated within them their entire field of experience. And just as the symphony is the complex totality of the effect as it is construed from the perspective of each unique note without the privileging of any particular one among them, so persons are anarchic in construing the entire field of experience from their own unique perspective without the regulation of some invisible hand. The following Daodejing passage with its holographic understanding of persons and their fields of experience is explicit in calling into question our familiar distinction between an inner self and an outer world, and in advocating for patterns of deference in constituting most productively the emergent and symbiotic social and natural order: 聖人恆無心 ，以百姓心為心。。 。 。 聖人在天下，歙歙為天下渾其心，百 姓皆注其耳目，聖人皆孩之。(Chapter 49) Sages are ever without their own thoughts and feelings (xin) And take the thoughts and feelings of the people as their own.4 . . . As for the presence of sages in the world, In their efforts to draw things together they make of the world one muddled mind. The common people all fix their eyes and ears on the sages, And the sages treat them as so many children. Xin 心 has conventionally been translated as “heartmind” as a deliberate challenge to the familiar separation of the cognitive and the affective, connoting as xin does both thinking and feeling. In this Daodejing passage, implicated within the narratives of the sages are the lives of the common people. The ordinary people certainly look to these sages for direction in finding their bearings, but they also retain the spontaneity (ziran 自然) needed to live their own many diverse lives in a way that retains the anarchic indeterminacy of so many children, with everyone being given the space and the resources to create their own unique narrative in the world. Treating the people as so many children, far from demeaning them, is refraining from the violence of imposing a single order upon them that in so doing would rob each of them of their own uniqueness. Without any specific regimen being imposed upon them, the world around them is simply the unsummed totality of many different orders, allowing everyone to happily achieve and enjoy the diversity of participating wholeheartedly and like-​mindedly in a happily muddled xin in which their differences make a difference for each other, and for the sage as well. In order to make sense of this passage—​a passage that is reminiscent of the Mencian claim that “the myriad happenings of the world are all implicated here in me”—​we need to invoke an alternative to our common realist understanding of the “inner” and “outer” as two separate domains.5 Most obviously, as noted above, it is a commonplace that xin does the work of both cognizing and feeling in a life

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experience that includes both felt thoughts and cognitively informed feelings. But in addition to resisting the cognition-​affect dualism, xin also precludes the familiar mind-​body, inner-​outer, subject-​object, and agent-​action dichotomies, and might be better read gerundively (if ungrammatically) as “lived bodyheartminding.” These aspectual distinctions are nonanalytic and mutually entailing; they do not serve to separate and isolate different components within “lived bodyheartminding” nor fragment the activities that are defining of it, but rather reflect the aesthetic achieved in all of its complexity and multivalence. The familiar dualistic separation of inner and outer domains follows from a doctrine of external relations and brings with it “introspection,” where introspection is usually understood as turning from a normal outward orientation to a reflective examination of one’s own internal mental states and feelings. Inspired by this Daoist understanding of “lived bodyheartminding,” however, we might want to challenge this description of what takes place when we look inward by inventing an alternative term—​“intra-​spection.” Such a neologism would signal the fact that the process of “looking into our own lived bodyheartminding” is at the same time a looking outward into the quality of the productive coalescence our “lived bodyheartminding” has achieved with its contextualizing world. When the sages go “inward” to “intra-​spect” they are in fact surveying the quality they have been able to achieve in their diverse relations with the common people. Indeed, such “intra-​spection” as a looking “into” the productive connectivity of our lived bodyheartminding with the “outer” world is both inner and outer at the same time. Similarly, for the sages to be “prospective” is again to go “outward” only to survey the relations that are constitutive of their own unique identities—​again, they move inward and outward at the same time. These functions are inner and outer in the sense of having a felt, existential character as well as a more objective mien. The point is that lived bodyheartminding is holographic, and indeed, since “everything is here in me,” in making the most of our bodyheartminding, we are literally bringing the entire cosmos into more meaningful focus and resolution from our own unique perspectives, and more completely adumbrating its whole within the events of our own lives. In so doing, we thus come to function most productively and influentially in our relations with what is happening in the world around us.

C. S. PEIRCE AND ABDUCTIVE REASONING:  STEP ONE IN FOCAL RESOLUTION How do we achieve the quality of resolution and the quantum of intelligent practice needed to live sagaciously? If, as Needham has said above, “the sum of wisdom” is a deliberate increase in “the number of intuited analogical correspondences in the repertory of correlations,” how do we get more wisdom? In trying to explain the process of human reasoning, Peirce found it necessary to develop the concept of “abductive” or “explanatory,” or “presumptive” reasoning as a necessary supplement to the more familiar deductive and inductive modes of reasoning. Peirce was motivated by wanting from reasoning the capacity to create

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new ideas—​to go beyond what is already stated in the premises to produce novel information and content. Deduction cannot possibly do this, and while enumerative induction is content-​ increasing by generalizing a sample to a population, the extra content is not new but rather only a further strengthening of the content of the premises. Hence for Peirce, deductive and inductive reasoning are used for justificatory purposes to confirm the validity of a given hypothesis, and serve as a source of security in our thinking. Abductive reasoning on the other hand is not only ampliative (amplifying the content as induction does) but is also distinctively generative (productive of new ideas). It is at the very least the process of surveying facts and coming up with a theory that can explain them often captured in the description of abduction as “inference to the best explanation.” Abduction is not justificatory but rather belongs to that phase of inquiry in which a theory is formulated in the first place. The more conservative interpretation is that it is a form of sleuthing or diagnostics that produces an educated guess as to the best explanation that is then available for further testing. While abductive reasoning is thus short on security in having to rely upon deductive or inductive reasoning to confirm its conclusions, it is nonetheless taken to be strong on uberty: that is, it is fruitful, and a source of copiousness (Igor Douven 2011). But the perceived strength of abduction is also its weakness. On this reading, abduction allows reasoning to be a source of new information and ideas, but it is still a logic of discovery rather than a source of real creative advance. What it makes “newly available” is information about an existing world rather than precipitating the spontaneous emergence of true novelty. A second liberal and certainly more interesting reading of Peircean abduction is that it is the unbounded process of making productive correlations and generating new meaning, and thus taking only the limits of our imagination as its erstwhile boundaries. Steve Coutinho describes this mode of thinking in the following terms: Successful abduction requires accumulated knowledge, extensive experience and a lively imagination. We start with a mystery, a perception, a text; these provide the “evidence” consisting of a small number of clues, or traces. We then use our imagination, informed and constrained by our extensive experience, and accumulated knowledge to construct an explanation. (2004: 51) Such penumbral thinking is an attempt to grasp and exploit the always attendant indeterminacy that honeycombs determinate activities as an open and bottomless source of increased meaning.

ARS CONTEXTUALIS: STEP TWO IN FOCAL RESOLUTION The general vision of ars contextualis takes us beyond this second, more interesting interpretation of Peirce’s abductive thinking, and any theory and praxis dualism it might still suggest, to make it clear that early Chinese cosmology requires of the human being nothing less than the ontological project of world-​making itself. It

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takes us from reasoning about the world to the practical responsibility the human being is perceived to have in becoming a creative collaborator with the heavens and the earth. As Randy Peerenboom has asserted in his argument against a naturalist interpretation of Daoist philosophy: Dao—​both normatively, as the sanctioned way, and descriptively, as the order of the universe, the environment, the society, the person—​emerges out of our contextual choices rather than as an instantiation of a predetermined blueprint. It is the result of a creative, active, participatory process. The kind of world we live in, in terms of our ethical as well as natural environment, depends in part on the choices we humans make. (2014: 163) Ars contextualis as a practical endeavor is a term that describes the peculiar ongoing art of recontextualization that allows focal individuals to ally themselves with those contexts that they will constitute and that in turn will constitute them. There is no One behind the many; there are, rather, many unique ones, many particular foci that construe and organize the fields about them. Since there is no one-​many or part-​whole model that serves as an overarching context determining the shape of other contexts, the world is an open-​ended affair composed of “thises” and “thats” construable from any number of distinct perspectives. The art of contextualization is a continuing aesthetic project involving the production of contrapuntal harmonious correlations of the myriad of unique details that make up the world. It is through patterns of deference and an achieved virtuosity in relations that persons extend themselves to encompass an increasingly wider range of the conative “presencings” or “arisings” we have associated with de. In the early Confucian texts, one way of expressing this deferential activity is moral imagination—​that is, the analogical and inclusive exercise of viewing a situation from the point of view of others (shu 恕) and to “correlating one’s conduct with those near at hand” and in so doing, achieve an optimal and inclusive appropriateness (yi 義) in one’s practices.6 We see in the Zhongyong that becoming consummate in one’s own person produces the virtuosity that simultaneously brings wisdom to one’s world: 誠者，非自成已而已也。所以成物也。成已，仁也。成物，知也。性之德也。 合外內之道也。故時措之宜也。 But resolve is not simply the self-​completing of one’s own person; it is what ushers other things to their completion. Completing oneself is becoming consummate in one’s conduct (ren 仁); ushering other things to their completion is exercising wisdom in realizing one’s world (zhi 知). It is an achieved moral virtuosity (de 德) in one’s natural propensities (xing 性) that is the way of integrating what is more internal and what is more external. Thus, when and wherever one applies such virtuosity, the result is fitting. (Chapter 25) In the Daodejing, such generative deference is achieved through the cultivation of the optimal disposition toward one’s contextualizing others captured in the “three treasures” I rehearsed above—​compassion, frugality, and deference—​and in the various wu 無-​forms: “non-​coerceive acting” (wuwei 無為), “objectless desiring” (wuyu 無欲), “unprincipled knowing” (wuzhi 無知), “non-​interfering doing” (wushi

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無事), and the (wuxin 無心) “unmediated thinking and feeling” we saw above as the sage defers to the child-​like minds of the common people. Through patterns of deference, the creative possibilities of a person’s conditions and their potency for self-​construal are proportionately increased. When virtuosity (de) is cultivated and the reach and influence of such persons is extended efficaciously into their environments, the environments reflexively become increasingly adumbrated in the particular person. The distinction between dao and de—​between focus and field and inner and outer—​fades as the individuating capacity of insistent de is transformed into its coalescing and integrating capacity. That is to say, in the person of the sage, the enhanced, resolute focus of de extends without disjunction to embrace the indeterminate field of its context. De is both particular (the sage) and its particular field (the common people as they are implicated in the sage). De is both focus and focused field. The term “focus” originally referenced “domestic hearth” or “fireplace,” and it is thus metonymic of family and genealogy—​the governing metaphor in Chinese cosmology. Focus has come to mean a “place of divergence and convergence” within a “field,” where field also has a domestic agrarian reference, but that I would use as the orbit of influence of particular focus. At any given moment, items available for ars contextualis can be characterized in terms of the focal point from and to which the lines of divergence and convergence attributable to them move and find resolution, and the field from which and to which those same lines proceed and have influence. To take a concrete example of how philosophy is done in this tradition, we would have to allow that the narrative of Confucius himself is corporate in the sense that the lines of divergence and convergence that have come to constitute his focus and meaning move throughout the entire field of the practices that constitute the continuing Chinese cultural tradition. That is to say, the ars contextualis as it has come to define Confucius is both a “focus” as one of history’s most influential philosophers, and Chinese culture broadly as the “focused field” that has come to be implicated in this person called Confucius.

NOTES A portion of this essay has been carried over from an earlier publication, “Classical Daoism in an Age of Globalization: From Abduction to Ars Contextualis in Early Daoist Cosmology,” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies (July, 2015) with permission of the editor of TJEAS 1. 是故，闔戶謂之坤；闢戶謂之乾；一闔一闢謂之變；往來不窮謂之通；見乃謂之象； 形乃謂之器；制而用之，謂之法；利用出入，民咸用之，謂之神。 2. Daodejing 67: 我有三寶，持而保之。一曰慈，二曰儉，三曰不敢為天下先。。 。 。 天將救之，以慈衛之。 “When tian is going to rescue something, it surrounds it with compassion.” The last phrase in the Mawangdui version has: 天將建之，如以 慈垣之。 “When tian establishes anything, it is as though it fortifies it with a wall of compassion.” 3. See Analects 5.13 and 9.4, for example.

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4. The received text of Daodejing 49 has 聖人無常心： “Sages are without constant thoughts and feelings of their own.” On the basis of a Mawangdui text A variant that has 聖人恆無心, Liu Xiaogan 劉笑敢 (2006: 487) uses received commentaries to argue for the cogency of this alternative: “Sages are ever without thoughts and feelings of their own.” I read the wuxin 無心 here as an additional wu 無-​form that expresses a sedimented habit of engagement: an unmediated “thinking and feeling,” or “thinking and feeling immediately.” Like wuwei 無為, wuxin describes an optimal pattern of deferential relationality rather than the absence of activity. 5. Mencius 7A:4: 孟子曰：萬物皆備於我矣。反身而誠，樂莫大焉。強恕而行，求仁莫 近焉。Mengzi said, “Is there any enjoyment greater than, with the myriad happenings of the world all implicated here in me, to turn personally inward and to thus find resolution with these happenings? Is there any way of seeking to become consummate in my person more immediate than making every effort to act empathetically by extending myself into the places of others?” 6. Cf. the Mencius 7A:4 passage cited above. Also Analects 6.30.

REFERENCES Ames, R. T. (2015), “Reading the Zhongyong ‘Metaphysically,’ ” in C. Y. Li and F. Perkins (eds.), Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ames, R. T. and D. L. Hall (2001), Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Translation of the Zhongyong, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Ames, R. T. and D. L. Hall (2003), Making This Life Significant: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Daodejing, New York: Ballantine Books. Berthrong, J. H. (2008), Expanding Process: Exploring Philosophical and Theological Transformations in China and the West, Albany: State University of New York Press. Coutinho, S. (2004), Zhuangzi and Early Chinese Philosophy: Vagueness, Transformation and Paradox, Aldershot: Ashgate. Douven, I. (2011), “Abduction,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 ed.), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://​plato.stanford.edu/​archives/​spr2011/​entries/​ abduction/​ Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, La Salle: Open Court. Graham, A. C. (1990), “Responses,” in H. Rosemont, Jr. (ed.), Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, La Salle: Open Court. Hershock, P. D. (2006), Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence, New York: Routledge. Liu, X. G. (2006), Laozi Past and Present (老子古今), Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue chubanshe, two volumes. Needham, J. (1956), Science and Civilisation in China, vol. II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peerenboom, R. P. (2014), “Beyond Naturalism: A Reconstruction of Daoist Environmental Ethics,” in J. B. Callicott and J. McRae (eds.), Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Peterson, W. J. (1982), “Making Connections: ‘Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations’ of the Book of Change,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 42: 1. Shaughnessy, E. L. (trans.) (1997), I Ching: The Classic of Changes, New York: Ballantine. Whitehead, A. N. (1925), Science and the Modern World, New York: Macmillan. Whitehead, A. N. (1938), Modes of Thought, New York: Free Press.

CHAPTER TWO

Methodological Reflections on the Study of Chinese Thought KWONG-​L OI SHUN

A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH Methodology has to do with systematic reflections on the methods adopted in a certain kind of activity, including that of intellectual inquiry. But we cannot talk intelligibly about the method of a certain kind of activity without knowing more about the nature of the activity as well as the goals and interests behind it. For example, we cannot talk intelligibly about the method of writing without knowing what it is that we write and for what purpose and audience, nor about the method of building a house without knowing what kind of house and for what purpose. This is no less true of intellectual inquiry, and in our case, the study of Chinese thought. We cannot talk intelligibly about the method of studying Chinese thought without knowing more about the goals and interests behind such study. Such goals and interests depend on the investigator engaged in the study. Though rarely totally changed, it is likely that they have evolved and have been refined over time. In addition, the investigator would have learned from past experiences and identified pitfalls that should be avoided as well as potential tensions and problems that need to be addressed. The method the investigator currently adopts has been shaped by these past experiences and in that sense carries an autobiographical dimension. That a methodological approach carries this autobiographical dimension does not mean that it is of little relevance to other investigators. After all, each investigator works within one or more larger academic communities, and other members of these communities will likely share similar goals and interests. Making explicit in a methodological discussion the goals and interests guiding the study as well as the potential pitfalls and tensions will enable other investigators to ascertain to what extent the discussion bears on their own work. It also reduces the likelihood of apparent methodological disagreements that are not genuine disagreements because the parties involved are working toward quite different goals.

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For this reason, I will begin with a sketch of the way my methodological approach has evolved over time, present a summary of its goals, and identify some of the potential pitfalls and tensions I seek to address. My purpose is to show how this approach bears on methodological discussions among Chinese intellectuals of the twentieth century and, in doing so, elaborate further on this approach. As my own emphasis is on Confucian thought and my philosophical approach in the Anglo-​ American tradition, I will be speaking primarily of the Confucian tradition when I refer to Chinese thought, and of the Anglo-​American tradition when I refer to contemporary philosophical inquiry. In this section, I summarize the methodological approach I have adopted and how it has evolved over time. In the second section, I consider how certain potential tensions I have sought to address are also implicit in discussions among Chinese intellectuals of the twentieth century. Specifically, they have to do with implicit disagreements between Tang Junyi and Lao Siguang on the way to study Chinese thought. In the third section, I consider how the writings of Tang Junyi and Xu Fuguan suggest a multistaged approach to the study of Chinese thought, one also found in Zhu Xi’s views on the way to study the Confucian classics. In the fourth section, I elaborate on this multistaged approach drawing on a distinction between three tasks in the study of Chinese thought that I presented in previous publications, and relate that distinction to the views presented in the third section. In the fifth section, I show how this distinction bears on the disagreements summarized in the second section, and on related methodological discussions in contemporary Western philosophical literature. My methodological thinking has to date evolved in three main phases. In the first phase, working in an Anglo-​American context, I focused on the need to maintain a clear separation between textual study and philosophical inquiry. There is a potential tension between the goal of approximating the ideas in early Chinese texts, and that of elaborating on these ideas in a way that engages contemporary philosophical discussions. The closer we stay to the way the ideas are presented in the texts, the less likely the ideas will engage with contemporary philosophical inquiry. Conversely, the more we elaborate on these ideas to engage with contemporary philosophical inquiry, the further we will move away from the ideas and perspectives of early thinkers as recorded in the texts. To address this potential tension, I proposed to separate these two goals into sequential projects, first engaging in textual studies with the goal of approximating ideas in the texts, and then elaborating on these ideas in a way that engage with contemporary philosophical discussions. As part of this approach, I also proposed that, in our textual studies, we should minimize, if not totally avoid, the use of terms commonly used in contemporary philosophical discussions with special connotations. To the extent that such terms cannot be avoided, we should carefully explain the way we use the terms before actually deploying them. Doing so helps minimize the risk of unwittingly reading contemporary philosophical presuppositions into early Chinese texts.1 In the second phase, I refined this methodological approach on the basis of four observations that arose in the context of working in a Chinese academic community. First, to better appreciate the experiential basis and practical import of key ideas in Confucian thought, it will be important to relate these ideas to our own life

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experiences that bear an affinity to those of the Confucian thinkers. After all, most of the major Confucian thinkers were heavily involved in administration and politics in addition to working toward the moral transformation of themselves and their students. Their ideas evolved in such contexts, and viewing their ideas in relation to similar experiences nowadays would help us better appreciate the import of these ideas. Indeed, it is only through doing so that we know how to move beyond the initial textual studies to the philosophical elaboration on these ideas. The earlier separation between the two tasks of textual studies and philosophical explorations assumes that, after having approximated the ideas recorded in the texts, we can then go on to elaborate on them in a way that engages with contemporary philosophical inquiry. What this first observation shows is that there is another task in between these two tasks, one that involves our making sense of the ideas extracted from the texts in a way that relates to the life experiences of ours that bear an affinity to those of the Confucian thinkers. Only by undertaking this additional task can we appreciate the experiential basis and practical import of these ideas, thereby acquiring a better sense of how to elaborate on them in a way continuous with the perspectives of the Confucian thinkers. I referred to this additional task as one of articulation, as it is an attempt to articulate the ideas and insights of past thinkers. Accordingly, I proposed a three-​staged approach to replace the initial two-​ staged approach. It involves textual analysis, which is directed to approximating the ideas of past thinkers as recorded in past texts, articulation, which is directed to articulating the import of these ideas by moving back and forth between these past ideas and our present concerns and experiences that bear an affinity to those of the past thinkers, and philosophical construction, which is directed to elaborating on these ideas in a more systematic way that is intelligible and relevant to us nowadays and that engages with contemporary philosophical inquiry.2 The second observation concerns the pervasive tendency to interpret ideas of Chinese thinkers in terms of Western philosophical frameworks. While that tendency is clearly discernable in the Anglo-​American context, it could have been explained in terms of the influence of certain habits of inquiry within such a context. What makes the phenomenon particularly perplexing is that it is equally prevalent in Chinese academic communities. Furthermore, in any of these communities, we rarely find attempts to do the reverse, interpreting Western philosophical ideas in terms of conceptions and frameworks of Chinese traditions of thought. I have referred to this phenomenon as a “perplexing asymmetry,” and argued that there is no intellectual grounding for such a phenomenon (Shun 2009). This phenomenon highlights the importance of finding an alternative and intellectually appropriate method of building a linkage between Chinese and Western traditions of thought. The third observation concerns the potential tensions we face in the study of Chinese thought. The tension I referred to earlier, between approximating the ideas of early Chinese thinkers and elaborating on their ideas in a way that engages with contemporary philosophical inquiry, actually combines two potential tensions that can in principle be separated. One is that between the past and the present, between approximating ideas of the past thinkers and drawing out their contemporary relevance. The more we work toward one goal, the further we move away from

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the other. The other is that between China and the West, between preserving what is distinctive of Chinese traditions of thought and relating them to Western philosophical traditions. The more we do in relation to the second goal, the greater the risk of allowing Western philosophical conceptions to shape our understanding of Chinese traditions, thereby missing their distinctive features. These two potential tensions can in principle be separated since the first can be present without the second when we work entirely within a Chinese context without attempting to build a linkage to Western philosophical traditions.3 The fourth observation concerns the longstanding question of whether there is such a thing as Chinese philosophy or, using the corresponding Chinese term, whether there is zhe xue 哲學 in China. Early in the twentieth century, Hu Shi and Feng Youlan, in their pioneering works on the history of Chinese philosophy, made deliberate efforts to defend the view that there is philosophy in China because Chinese thought shares certain characteristics that supposedly define Western philosophical thought. More recently, yet another debate surfaced in mainland China concerning the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” (zhongguo zhexue de hefaxing 中國哲學的合 法性). In light of the persistent interest in such a question, I proposed that we step back and first ask the meta-​question about the point of raising such a question. Once we have addressed the kind of interest that lies behind such a question, whether we use the label “philosophy,” or zhexue, to describe Chinese thought no longer has an independent significance. One kind of interest particularly pertinent to a methodological discussion is whether, and if so how, the study of Chinese thought can be conducted in a way that fruitfully engages contemporary philosophical inquiry. Put differently, the question is whether, and if so how, the philosophical study of Chinese thought is possible. I have defended an affirmative answer to this question, while emphasizing that such a study has to adequately address the two potential tensions just described (Shun 2012). In the third phase, I focused on a theme highlighted in the New Asia tradition. It emphasizes the preservation of Chinese culture in a way that does justice to its distinctive features without viewing it through the lens of Western frameworks. Tang Junyi is particularly emphatic on this point, lamenting the trend of interpreting and assessing elements of Chinese culture through the perspective of Western frameworks, thereby distorting our understanding and missing out on what is distinctive and of value in one’s own culture. This trend still continues in present times, as illustrated by the asymmetrical tendency I referred to earlier. Tang’s sentiments are shared by Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan. These Confucian thinkers are all closely associated with New Asia College, which was founded in Hong Kong upon the communist takeover of the mainland, with the mission of preserving and promoting Chinese culture. The trend that Tang laments runs much deeper than just the explicit deployment of Western philosophical frameworks in the study of Chinese thought. It is at work in the language we use and the questions we ask. I have argued, for example, that thinking of the Chinese notion of jing 敬 in terms of the contemporary notion of respect can distort our understanding of jing (Shun 2013). I also argued that regarding Confucian thinkers as engaged in the activity of ethical justification, of

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the kind that we are familiar with in Western philosophical discussions, fails to do justice to the kind of activity they are actually engaged in, and can lead to a misunderstanding of their views on xing 性 (Shun 2015a). What we need to do is to properly contextualize our study of Confucian thought, taking into account the historical, cultural, and individual context within which the Confucian thinkers propound their ideas. To summarize, my proposed methodological approach is guided by three goals. The first is to approximate the ideas and perspectives of Confucian thinkers, the second to draw out the relevance of their ideas to our present-​day concerns and experiences, and the third to establish a linkage to contemporary Western philosophical inquiry. Two potential tensions are generated by these three goals: one between the first goal and the second, and the other between the first goal and the third. In relation to the first goal, the focus is on preserving what is distinctive and of value in Confucian thought by viewing it in its historical and cultural context, and on avoiding distortions in our understanding due to the unreflective deployment of Western conceptions and frameworks. In relation to the second goal, the assumption is that shared human experiences across cultures and times account for an affinity between our present-​day concerns and experiences and those of the Confucian thinkers, so that our attaining the first goal also provides the basis for drawing out the relevance of Confucian thought to the present. In relation to the third goal, the focus is on establishing the relevant linkage in a way that is continuous with the perspectives of the Confucian thinkers, and on addressing a general question about the relation between Chinese thought and Western philosophical inquiry that is often framed in terms of whether there is such a thing as Chinese philosophy. Similar goals and interests can be discerned in methodological discussions among twentieth-​century Chinese intellectuals. This is a testimony to the fact that these goals are broadly shared, and the potential pitfalls and tensions they generate go fairly deep.4 I turn now to a review of the methodological discussions among these Chinese intellectuals.

TWO PERSPECTIVES ON THE STUDY OF CHINESE THOUGHT Since the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars of Chinese thought have devoted efforts to showing that Chinese thought exhibits features that characterize Western philosophical inquiry or that it can be approached in a way similar to Western philosophical studies. Hu Shi (1975: 1) characterizes philosophy, or zhexue, in terms of a reflective study of the fundamental problems of human life, and argues that China has philosophy in this sense. Feng Youlan (1970: 4–​8) believes that philosophical activity has to do with a rational process of argumentation, and argues that Chinese thinkers such as Mencius and Xunzi engage in this kind of activity and hence that there is philosophy in China. However, he adds, because of their practical orientation, Chinese thinkers are inferior to Western philosophers in this regard (Feng 1970: 8–​11). Both Hu and Feng seek to identify defining features of

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Western philosophical inquiry and to show that such features are also present in Chinese thought. Lao Siguang (1974: Preface, 20–​21), by contrast, focuses more on the way to study Chinese thought. According to him, Western philosophical methods are characterized by logical thinking and an analytic approach, and these methods can legitimately be used in the study of Chinese thought even if such methods are not developed by Chinese thinkers themselves. Unlike Hu and Feng, Lao’s observations are about how to study Chinese thought rather than about the nature of Chinese thought. As such, his observations are reasonable, especially if they are not intended to rule out other equally legitimate ways of approaching Chinese thought. However, in response to criticisms that he has imposed Western philosophical frameworks onto Chinese thought, he makes other more debatable observations. He proposes that the content of the teaching of a Chinese thinker can be separated from the historical, cultural, and individual context in which the thinker propounds the teaching, and that the former can be studied without regard to the latter. It can be studied and assessed as a body of ideas in the same way that we view a body of ideas in a Western philosophical theory, as ideas that make a claim to universality rather than ideas to be understood in their historical and cultural context (Lao 1974: 360–​ 363). It is doubtful that the content of a teaching can be so separated from its context. Lao (1974: 361) cites and criticizes the Marxist-​inspired approach, common among mainland scholars for the few decades after the communist takeover, which interprets the teachings of traditional Chinese thinkers, especially Confucian thinkers, as ideologically informed and implicitly motivated by a desire to defend the feudal system and the associated privileges of the upper class. But the problem with this approach is not that it views the content of a teaching in a historical and cultural context. The problem is that it has imposed a certain implicit motive on the basis of ideological preconceptions rather than on the basis of historical evidence. That this Marxist-​inspired approach is flawed in no way shows that we can understand the content of a teaching without regard to its context. By contrast to Lao, Confucian thinkers such as Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan emphasize the importance of grasping the distinctive nature of Chinese thought in their historical and cultural context, and the need to avoid artificially imposing Western philosophical frameworks onto Chinese thought. Just as Lao is so criticized, Mou (1978: 2–​4) also criticizes Feng Youlan for committing this error. For both Tang and Mou, it is important to take into account the practical orientation of Chinese thinkers, which has shaped the way their thinking evolved. For example, Tang points out that Chinese thinkers, in reflecting on fundamental human concerns and experiences, are rarely interested in understanding the nature of such concerns and experiences in the abstract. Their interest is in the practical differences their inquiry makes to actual human lives, including their own and others’, and the understanding they seek is instrumental to this practical concern. This is reflected in the downplaying of the importance of understanding (zhi 知) by the Daoist and the priority given to action over understanding by the Confucians. In later Confucian thought, this is reflected in the priority given to moral understanding

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(de xing zhi zhi 德性之知) over empirical understanding (wen jian zhi zhi 聞見之知) (Tang 1936: 52–​53). Similarly, Mou (1980: 21; 1983: 46–​49) points out how Chinese thought is centered in a practical way on human life, and can be summarily described as an “inquiry into human life” (shengming de xuewen 生命的學問). Its primary focus is not an intellectual understanding that takes human life as its object, but the practice (shi jian 實踐) of what one gets out of such inquiry. The inquiry is rooted in a profound moral concern with both one’s own life and human lives in general, a concern conveyed in the terms jing de 敬德, which refers to a serious and dedicated concern for one’s own moral cultivation, and you huan yi shi 憂患意識, a sense of mission and a dedication to the moral transformation of the social and political order (Mou 1978: 10–​15). This practical orientation leads to another distinctive feature, namely, the nature of the kind of understanding the Confucian thinkers seek. The point is put by Mou (1978: 4) in terms of “subjectivity” (zhu ti xing 主體性) and by Tang in terms of “intuition” (zhi jue 直覺), both emphasizing an unmediated relation between oneself and what is understood, a kind of personal resonance that differs from the kind of conceptual understanding in which one stands in a subject-​object relation to what is understood. As Tang (1936: 54–​55) notes, Confucian thinkers have a special vocabulary for describing such understanding. What is understood is something that one silently (viz., not via language and conceptualization) resonates with (mo shi 默 識), personally experiences (ti yan 體驗), and whose validity one personally recognizes (ti ren 體認). The practical orientation and the special form this understanding takes account for a lesser emphasis on argumentation and reasoning as well as the absence of the more systematic and theoretical kind of discourse characteristic of Western philosophical traditions. The difference between these two perspectives on the study of Chinese thought, one represented by Lao Siguang and the other by Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan, results in different concerns that one might have for the other. In explicit criticism of Tang, Lao observes that Tang’s emphasis on preserving the distinctive features of Chinese traditions of thought runs the risk of rendering them of only historical and local interest—​in Lao’s (2007: 9) own words, it has the implication that they “will find their place only in the museum.” While acknowledging its practical orientation, he insists that Chinese thought can be studied in an analytic fashion and in abstraction from its historical and cultural context (Lao 2007: 7–​9). Tang, on the other hand, is emphatic on the importance of studying Chinese thought in its proper historical and cultural context thereby preserving its distinctive features, and warns against inappropriately imposing Western frameworks and standards. The preservation and promotion of Chinese culture is the driving mission of New Asia College, which he cofounded with Qian Mu in 1949 upon the communist takeover of mainland China. According to him, the idea of New Asia signifies the rebirth of China and Asia in the context of a history of colonization and domination by Western powers (Tang 1952). In two well-​known papers published in the 1960s, he notes how the political situation on the mainland poses a severe threat to traditional cultural values, and laments what he perceives as a failure of

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overseas Chinese to take their own cultural heritage seriously, tending to view what is Western as superior.5 This theme is also found in an earlier paper of his on the proper attitude in the study of Chinese thought. In that paper, he points out that traditions of thought are cultural products, and their proper understanding requires one to attend seriously to the historical and cultural context in which they evolved so as to do justice to their distinctive features. He notes the tendency of some scholars to impose Western frameworks onto their study of Chinese thought, thereby presenting Chinese thinkers as if they were working with the same agendas as Western philosophers, and Chinese thought as a variant, probably of an inferior kind, of Western philosophical thought. According to him, we need to have confidence in our own cultural heritage, and make a sincere and serious effort to draw out its distinctive characteristics (Tang 1940: 390–​391). In yet another paper on the future direction in the study of Chinese thought, he emphasizes the need for jing 敬, a serious and cautious attitude genuinely dedicated to proper understanding of the early Chinese thinkers (Tang 1966: 385). As noted earlier, the method to study Chinese thought depends on the investigator’s goals and interests. If one’s primary goal is to make Chinese thought accessible and of interest to a Western philosophical audience, perhaps it is less important to properly understand the perspectives of Chinese thinkers in their cultural context. Or if one’s primary goal is to engage in Western philosophical inquiry while looking to Chinese thought for some stimulation, perhaps it is not important whether one has properly understood the ideas of the Chinese thinkers, as long as one’s construal of these ideas, however removed it might be from their perspectives, does stimulate one’s thinking on the philosophical issue at hand. In projects of this kind, it is still important to make clear that one is not seeking to approximate the perspectives of the Chinese thinkers. Otherwise, as Tang notes, the attempt to fit Chinese traditions into Western frameworks will make them appear as if they were variants, likely of an inferior kind, of Western philosophical thought. Feng Youlan, as we saw, actually makes some such observation about the inferiority of Chinese thought as philosophical inquiry in the Western sense. However, to the extent that one’s study does purport to approximate the perspectives of Chinese thinkers, it will be important to engage in the appropriate historical and textual studies and attend to the cultural context in which these ideas evolved. Indeed, even if one’s primary interest is in the exploration of certain philosophical issues and one is looking to Chinese thought only as a source of stimulation, working toward a proper understanding of the Chinese thinkers will still make it more likely that this inquiry into Chinese thought will make a genuine contribution. Otherwise, one will just be framing one’s purported understanding of these thinkers in terms of one’s own conceptions, and any new perspective on the philosophical issue at hand would be due primarily to one’s own conceptions. It is only through a serious inquiry into the ideas of the Chinese thinkers that one can grasp the distinctive features of their thinking, thereby stimulating new perspectives that one might not have arrived at on one’s own.

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Our discussion highlights two apparently incompatible perspectives on the study of Chinese thought. From Tang’s perspective, we should conduct a serious inquiry into the ideas of Chinese thinkers in their historical and cultural context to do justice to their distinctive features. To seek to establish the relevance of these ideas to the present and to Western philosophical inquiry without regard to their historical and cultural context demonstrates the mindset that Tang criticizes, one that fails to take seriously the cultural heritage of China. On the other hand, from Lao’s perspective, approaching these ideas in this manner would render them of only historical and local interest. Given the very different historical and cultural context within which the Chinese thinkers work, the form their ideas take will be quite removed from our present-​day concerns and experiences and from those of Western philosophical traditions which have evolved independently. The more we seek to approximate the perspectives of the Chinese thinkers, the further their ideas will be removed from the present and from Western philosophical traditions. This apparent incompatibility illustrates the potential tensions that I referred to earlier, that between the past and the present and that between China and the West. To resolve the tensions, we will need an approach that does justice to the two sets of goals that point in apparently opposite directions. We need to show how we can both take seriously the historical and cultural context in which the ideas of the Chinese thinkers evolved, and establish a linkage to our present-​day concerns and experiences and to Western philosophical inquiry. A way to do so is to adopt a multistaged approach. We start by understanding the ideas of these thinkers in their cultural context through careful historical and textual work, and then use this understanding as a basis for a further elaboration on their ideas that will establish their relevance to the present and to Western philosophical inquiry. This further elaboration should be rooted in a proper understanding of their perspectives and, in a sense to be described, continuous with their perspectives. This multistaged approach is implicit in the writings of Tang Junyi and Xu Fuguan as well as in Zhu Xi’s views on the way to study the Confucian classics. I will consider their views before turning to my own proposed approach.

A MULTISTAGED APPROACH According to Tang Junyi, the study of Chinese thought should involve both philological and textual studies (xun gu 訓詁) and studies that focus on ideas (yi li 義理), the former providing the basis for the latter. Understanding the language and key terms used by the thinkers we are studying, and closely examining the texts that record their ideas, provide the foundation for further explorations that focus on these ideas. We need to take these tasks seriously, approaching the thinkers with jing 敬, a serious and cautious attitude genuinely dedicated to proper understanding (Tang 1966: 382–​388). Xu Fuguan (1975: 2–​6) similarly emphasizes the need for jing in approaching the Chinese thinkers; we should do our best to approximate their ideas and be careful not to impose our own conceptions onto the relevant texts. To do so, we need to pay careful attention to the context in which they propound their

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ideas, engage in serious and careful philological and textual work, and on that basis, move on to an investigation of their thoughts and ideas. In the process, we should keep in mind that their ideas are rooted in their life experiences and we should do justice to such experiences. Though their own exposition of their ideas might be unsystematic, they are reflective in developing their ideas and such reflectivity gives reason to expect a reasonable degree of coherence in the ideas they espouse, making possible a more systematic presentation by us. That the study of early texts involves these multiple tasks is also part of Zhu Xi’s (1986: 162, 192–​193) views on the way to study the Confucian classics (du shu fa 讀書法). According to him, the study of classics should start with close attention to textual details, carefully reading every word, sentence, and paragraph, viewing each item in the context of the whole text, and consulting various annotations and commentaries. This corresponds to the kind of philological and textual work that Tang and Xu emphasizes, and just like them, Zhu Xi (1986: 168, 176) emphasizes the importance of the posture of jing. As part of this posture, we should maintain an open mind (xu xin虛心) that is unbiased and receptive, and avoid imposing our own personal opinions (si yi 私意), artificially making the text say what we wish it to say (Zhu 1986: 179, 180, 185). Such careful and detailed textual work is in itself of secondary importance, as the goal of studying the classics is to enrich our understanding of and provide guidance to our own lives (Zhu 1986: 161, 162). Accordingly, we need to personally experience (ti yan 體驗) the ideas they contain to make them personally relevant to ourselves (qie ji 切己) (Zhu 1986: 165, 179, 181). By doing so, we come to personally recognize their validity (ti ren 體認), and our mind and body can enter into what we read (Zhu 1986: 173, 176, 177, 179). In speaking of personally experiencing the ideas in the classics, Zhu Xi makes certain assumptions that we might no longer endorse. For him, the classics are records of the pattern (li 理) that the ancient sages have discerned in themselves; the same pattern resides in us, and studying the classics helps us discern within ourselves the pattern that the sages have transmitted through the classics. While we might no longer work with this idea of pattern, the fact that we nevertheless seek the relevance of the ideas of the Confucian thinkers for the present does assume that their ideas, which reflect their concerns and experiences, also have bearing on our own concerns and experiences. This in turn assumes some affinity between the concerns and experiences of theirs and those of ours. Setting aside the idea of pattern and the related assumptions, a reformulation of Zhu Xi’s point is that his contemporaries, in studying the classics, should relate ideas in the classics to their own life experiences that bear an affinity to those of the early thinkers. And extrapolating his point to our present circumstances, it means that in seeking the present relevance of a past text, we should also relate ideas in the text to our own concerns and experiences that bear an affinity to those of the thinker whose ideas are recorded in the text. Thus, for these Confucian thinkers, the study of a past thinker’s ideas as recorded in the relevant texts should proceed in stages. It starts with close attention to the language and the textual details, seeking to make sense of the texts and of the ideas

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they contain on the basis of textual evidence. This provides the basis for the next task, which seeks to make sense of the ideas of the thinker by relating them to the concerns and experiences of ours that bear an affinity to his. These two tasks correspond roughly to the first two of the three tasks I described earlier. I turn now to a discussion of these three tasks.

THREE TASKS IN THE STUDY OF CHINESE THOUGHT In textual analysis, we seek to approximate the perspectives of past thinkers whose ideas are recorded in past texts. In doing so, we will inevitably be working from our contemporary perspective and in a contemporary language, and so it is not possible to completely free ourselves of the influence of the present. Nevertheless, by working with textual evidence, we can make conscious efforts to minimize the influence of our present perspective and conceptions. The fact that we are basing our conclusions on evidence means that our mentality is primarily one of receptivity and responsiveness—​we keep our minds open to the evidence and respond accordingly, letting our conclusions follow wherever the evidence might lead. Such a mentality corresponds to the state of open-​mindedness (xu xin 虛心) that Zhu Xi emphasizes, and the preconceptions whose influence we consciously seek to minimize correspond to what he refers to as personal opinion (si yi 私意). In textual analysis, we also attend to the historical, cultural, and individual context in which a thinker develops his ideas. Doing so is necessary for us to properly understand the key terms used in the text, the specific way the thinker is using such terms, and the nature of the ideas being conveyed. For example, we might conclude that Xunzi was deliberately redefining the use of the term xing 性 for certain purposes, if we situate his use of the term in the intellectual climate of the fourth and third century bc, including both the evolving connotations of the term, the range of views on xing expressed during this period, as well as Xunzi’s attempt to respond to Mencius and Zhuangzi. Lao Siguang claims that the ideas of a thinker can be separated from the context in which the thinker develops such ideas. Taken as a claim that we can understand these ideas without regard to context, this cannot be correct. To the extent that we seek to approximate the perspective of the thinker, we do need to take seriously the historical and social context in which he develops such ideas, and his concerns and experiences that are conveyed through them. If the thinker were a contemporary who shared with us a similar social and cultural background and who spoke a common language, there would have been sufficient common ground for us to ascertain the content of what he communicated without probing the context further, unless something in his individual circumstances gave reason to believe otherwise. But in studying the ideas of past Chinese thinkers who lived in a different culture and intellectual climate and who communicated their ideas using key terms whose connotations still need to be deciphered, the attention to context is crucial.

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At best, Lao’s claim is correct in the sense that, after we have determined the content of the ideas having taken into account the context in which they have evolved, we can then discuss and perhaps even assess these ideas without further reference to their context. But before we can determine the content of these ideas, we do need to take their context into account; this is part of what it is to approach the early thinkers with jing. The next task, articulation, seeks to draw out the relevance of the thinker’s ideas to us in the present, with the assumption that their ideas have significance not just for them but also for us. This in turn assumes that there is an affinity between their concerns and experiences and those of ours, of a kind that renders articulation a fruitful exercise. This assumption is reasonable as there are presumably fundamental human concerns and experiences that are shared across cultures and times, such as how to confront death and hardship or how to bring about social harmony. In articulation, we move back and forth between the past and the present in an attempt to assess the present significance of past ideas. We start with a certain idea extracted from a past text through textual analysis that initially appears relevant to our own present concerns and experiences. We think through its potential present significance, and then go back to the past text to see if the way we make sense of this initial idea fits in with other ideas in the text, again extracted through textual analysis. To the extent it does, we again take up these other ideas and think through their potential present significance. By moving back and forth between the past ideas and our own present concerns and experiences in this manner, we identify those past ideas that indeed have present significance. Because of the attempt at linking up with the present, the way we elaborate on the past ideas will often go beyond what is supported by the textual evidence. At the same time, our elaboration should be continuous with the text in meeting a number of constraints. It should be consistent with, though not necessarily supported in all its fine details by, the textual evidence, in that it does not contain elements that obviously conflict with the textual evidence or require some forced reading of certain parts of the text. It should also fit in with the text as a whole in that various aspects of this elaboration are corroborated by other ideas that can be ascribed to the text on the basis of textual evidence. And while this elaboration seeks to relate the ideas to our own present concerns and experience, we can also see how it relates to the kind of concerns and experiences that the early thinkers might have, such as the challenges they face in the political realm. Thus, the process of articulation involves both an element of receptivity and an element of creativity, the former in that we have to take seriously the textual evidence and the constraints that it imposes, and the latter in that, while working within such constraints, we provide a further elaboration on the ideas that relates them to our own life experiences. In textual analysis, we expect a significant degree of convergence in our conclusions as the conclusions are based primarily on textual evidence. In articulation, because of the element of creativity involved, we would not expect the same degree of convergence, though the element of receptivity also gives reason not to expect a radical divergence in our conclusions.

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In articulation, we look to the experiences of the past thinker and seek to relate his ideas to relevantly similar experiences of ourselves. This corresponds to Zhu Xi’s observation that, in studying the classics, we need to personally experience (ti yan) the ideas they contain and make them relevant to ourselves (qie ji), so that we can come to personally recognize their validity (ti ren). Setting aside Zhu Xi’s assumptions about pattern, a reformulation of his point is that we come to recognize the validity of these ideas not necessarily in the sense that we actually endorse and seek to live up to them. But we do so at least in the sense that we can appreciate the attractiveness of these ideas in relation to our own experiences, and can understand how they might inform the life of the Confucian thinkers in their own times, and perhaps also of our contemporaries who have been brought up in a culture influenced by such ideas. Textual analysis serves as the basis for articulation in that articulation takes the outcome of textual analysis as its starting point and proceeds in a way that respects the textual evidence. But in the process of articulation, our elaboration on a certain idea extracted from the text might draw our attention to other parts of the text that potentially contain other ideas that corroborate this elaboration. To see if there is such corroboration, we will need to attend to the textual evidence furnished by these other parts of the texts to see if they do contain such ideas. So, articulation might lead to further work in textual analysis, though it will not affect the outcome of the analysis, which should be based on textual evidence. Thus, the two tasks mutually inform each other: the outcomes of textual analysis providing the basis for and constraints on articulation, and the direction of articulation shaping the agenda for textual analysis. The distinction between these two tasks corresponds roughly to the distinction Tang Junyi and Xu Fuguan draw between philological and textual studies (xun gu) and studies that focus on ideas (yi li). But articulation provides only a general direction for our further elaboration on the ideas of the Confucian thinkers. The next step is to build on this direction and develop a more reflective and systematic account of a nature that characterizes the philosophical approach we work with, engaging with contemporary philosophical agendas and frameworks. Zhu Xi himself engages in a similar activity when he reframes the ideas from the Confucian classics in terms of the conceptual frameworks familiar to him and his contemporaries, such as the distinction between pattern (li 理) and material force (qi 氣). This is the task of philosophical construction, whose goal is to bring the ideas of a past thinker into dialogue with a contemporary philosophical community. Textual analysis involves a mentality that is directed maximally to the past and minimally to the present, while articulation involves an imaginary interplay between the past and the present. By contrast, philosophical construction involves a mentality that is directed maximally to the present and minimally to the past. In philosophical construction, using the outcomes of textual analysis and articulation as a starting point, we no longer need to go back to the relevant texts, and our attention is now focused primarily on the present—​we seek to build a reflective and systematic account that we, from our present perspective, regard as appealing and that meets the criteria of excellence that characterize the philosophical approach

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we are working with. Like articulation, there is little reason to expect the same degree of convergence in outcomes as in textual analysis, though there is a limit to divergence since the outcomes of the preceding two tasks provide the parameters within which we work. As mentioned when discussing Lao Siguang’s views, our undertaking such a task does not assume that the thinker under investigation is himself engaged in an activity similar to that of this philosophical approach. Indeed, the outcome of philosophical construction will likely appear alien to what we find in the texts in which the thinker’s ideas are recorded. But that outcome will still be related to his ideas in a way that warrants our describing it as being inspired by these ideas, as long as philosophical construction builds on the outcomes of textual analysis and articulation. As a final comment, we should note that this distinction between the three tasks is not a clear-​cut one; rather, it is a distinction between three kinds of mentality that merge into each other. The difference is more a matter of degrees: the degree of linkage to the past texts decreases and the degree to which our present perspectives shape the outcome increases as we move from textual analysis to articulation and then to philosophical construction. There are certain potential risks in combining the three tasks in a single project, arising from the fact that the three tasks are directed to different goals that point in different directions. A failure to clearly distinguish between these goals might, for example, lead one to ascribe to the thinker under investigation a certain elaboration of his ideas that is not textually supported and that is quite removed from his perspective. Still, it is possible to combine the different goals in a single project without incurring such risk as long as one is sufficiently self-​ conscious about which task one is undertaking at which point in the overall project. Thus, the claim is not that the three tasks must be conducted separately, only that they can in principle be separated, that it is important to be self-​conscious about which task one is undertaking at any one point, and that it is important to be able to separate them if needed.

RESOLVING THE POTENTIAL TENSIONS With this discussion in hand, we may now return to the disagreement between Tang Junyi and Lao Siguang. Tang emphasizes the importance of viewing the ideas of Chinese thinkers in their historical and cultural context, while Lao thinks that doing so will render these ideas of only historical and local interest. The disagreement makes it seem as if there were an incompatibility between taking seriously the thinker’s historical and cultural context and relating his ideas to the present and to other traditions of thought. What I have proposed is that we can combine these projects in such a way that the latter builds on the former. This disagreement between Tang and Lao reflects two potential tensions between different goals in the study of Chinese thought, that between the past and the present, and that between China and the West. The first potential tension is between approximating the ideas of past thinkers and making these ideas relevant to us nowadays. These two goals point in opposed directions—​the more we do with these

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past ideas to make them relevant to the present, the further we will be removed from the perspectives of the past thinkers. The potential risk in combining these two goals is that we might thereby be led to impose on past thinkers our present perspectives. To minimize this risk and address the potential tension, what we can do is to work toward the two goals separately but sequentially. On the approach I proposed, textual analysis is directed to the first goal, philosophical construction to the second, while articulation bridges and makes the latter continuous with the former. The second potential tension is that between doing justice to the distinctive features of Chinese traditions of thought and establishing a linkage to Western philosophical traditions. In working toward the second goal, we run the risk of losing sight of what is distinctive of Chinese traditions or even distorting our understanding of them by viewing them through the lens of Western philosophical frameworks. The approach I proposed minimizes this risk and addresses this potential tension by proceeding in stages and by paying careful attention to the use of Western philosophical concepts. In textual analysis, we deliberately avoid or at least minimize the use of such concepts and seek to approximate the perspectives of Chinese thinkers. In philosophical construction, though we might invoke such concepts, we should do so in a way that does not do violence to the Chinese traditions of thought we are working with. Instead of making these concepts our focus, we can attend directly to the phenomena that they highlight, and describe them in more ordinary language that does not carry presuppositions specific to Western philosophical traditions. We can then explore the perspectives of the Chinese thinkers on such phenomena, by drawing on their ideas as recorded in the relevant texts and by elaborating on these ideas in a way that is continuous with the texts. A similar distinction between goals can be found in the literature on the study of the history of Western philosophy. For example, Richard Rorty (1984: 49–​51) describes two different approaches to the study of historical figures in the history of Western philosophy. In what he calls “rational reconstruction,” we impose enough of our problems and vocabulary on them to make them our conversational partners. In “historical reconstruction” we seek to gain historical knowledge of the intellectual scene in which these figures lived, thereby attaining an understanding of forms of intellectual lives different from ours, though at the expense of rendering these figures no longer our conversational partners. According to him, both are legitimate tasks that we can undertake separately for different purposes. On the approach that I proposed, the two kinds of activities are not just separate legitimate activities, but are actually continuous with each other. Textual analysis seeks to approximate the past perspective of an early thinker in a way that does justice to the intellectual scene in which he lived, while philosophical construction seeks to develop the thinker’s ideas in a way that engages with contemporary philosophical discourse. Philosophical construction does not proceed independently of textual analysis, but is based on the ideas extracted through textual analysis and elaborated on through articulation. This ensures that it is continuous with the efforts at historical understanding. Another common distinction in the contemporary philosophical scene is that between the study of the history of philosophy and philosophical inquiry as

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such, the former being directed to understanding the past with only incidental relevance to the philosophical present, and the latter being directed to our present philosophical concerns and issues. But, as Alasdair MacIntyre (1984: 39–​40) has noted, the supposed philosophical present will itself become part of history. Instead of viewing our own present philosophical inquiry as of future irrelevance, it would be more fruitful to view the history of philosophy as itself of present philosophical relevance, so that it can be studied not just historically but also philosophically. On my proposed approach, as we move from textual analysis to articulation and then to philosophical construction, we view the ideas of past thinkers not just as history, but as something that can engage with contemporary philosophical inquiry. The influence of our present perspectives is at work to an increasing degree as we move from textual analysis to articulation and then to philosophical construction. In philosophical construction, we seek to build an account that speaks to contemporary philosophical agendas. This is a task that Confucian thinkers themselves often engage in, as exemplified in the way Zhu Xi or Wang Yangming elaborates on ideas in the Lunyu or the Mengzi in terms of the conceptual apparatus of their times. Indeed, in our own elaborations on an earlier text such as the Lunyu or the Mengzi, we ourselves also draw on the elaborations by commentators such as Zhu Xi or Wang Yangming, or by more recent scholars such as Tang Junyi or Xu Fuguan. So, for any such early text, what we have is a history of elaborations, each reflecting the influence of the intellectual climate and conceptual apparatus of its own times, and with earlier elaborations often influencing later elaborations. In this way, efforts dedicated to the understanding of the past are of continuing and evolving relevance to the present. Finally, let us return to the question whether there is philosophy, or zhe xue, in China. One approach to the question, as exemplified by Hu Shi and Feng Youlan, is to seek some defining characteristics of the activity of philosophy and then ask whether Chinese thinkers themselves engage in such activities. This kind of approach invokes two broad generalizations, one about the nature of philosophical inquiry in the West and one about the nature of Chinese thought, and each runs the risk of oversimplification. If the question that motivates such an inquiry is about the nature of Chinese thought and how it compares with Western philosophical traditions, we will need to engage in detailed and sustained studies of individual thinkers on both sides to address the question. After having done so, the question that motivates the inquiry will have been addressed, and the additional question whether Chinese thought can be described as “philosophy” no longer has any independent significance. There can be other kinds of interest behind such a question. For example, one might be interested in the place of Chinese thought in institutionalized setups in the contemporary educational and professional context, such as its place in an undergraduate philosophy curriculum or its representation in professional philosophy organizations and conferences. Or one might be interested in whether Chinese thought can be studied in a way that is related to contemporary philosophical inquiry in some intellectually promising way. The two questions are related as an affirmative answer to the latter gives reason for an affirmative answer to the former. On the approach I proposed, the process of philosophical construction is precisely one of drawing out the intellectual relevance of traditional Chinese thought to contemporary

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philosophical inquiry. To the extent that philosophical construction is possible, we will have an affirmative answer to the latter, and hence also to the former, question.6 But this affirmative answer does not depend on our addressing the terminological issues surrounding the use of the term “philosophy,” or zhexue. Instead, it depends on our successfully undertaking the task of philosophical construction.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

I presented this methodological approach in Shun (1997: 5–​13). I described the details of this three-​staged approach in Shun (2009). I discussed these two potential tensions in Shun (2012). In the Anglo-​American context, David S. Nivison’s work provides one example of an attempt to accomplish these goals while addressing the potential pitfalls and tensions. See Shun (2015b). 5. Tang (1961; 1964); see Shun (2013) for a discussion of Tang’s views. 6. For further elaboration, see Shun (2012).

REFERENCES Feng, Y. L. 馮友蘭 (1970), A History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史), Hong Kong: Taipingyang Tushu Gongsi 太平洋圖書公司. Originally published in two volumes in 1931, 1934. Hu, S. 胡適 (1975), A History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy (中國古代哲學史), Taibei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan 台灣商務印書館. Originally published in 1919. Lao, S. G. 勞思光 (1974), A History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史), vol. 1, revised ed., Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lao, S. G. (2007), “Some Thoughts on the ‘Study of Chinese Philosophy’ (關於 ‘中國哲學 研究’的幾點意見),” Chinese Philosophy and Culture (中國哲學與文化) 1: 1–​9. MacIntyre, A. (1984), “The Relationship of Philosophy to Its Past,” in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mou, Z. S. 牟宗三 (1978), The Distinctive Characteristics of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲 學的特質), 5th ed., Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生書局. Mou, Z. S. (1980), Fourteen Lectures on the Linkage between Chinese and Western Philosophy (中西哲學之會通十四講), Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生書局. Mou, Z. S. (1983), Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學十九講), Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生書局. Mou, Z. S. (2011), An Inquiry into Human Life (生命的學問), 4th ed., Taibei: Sanmin Shuju 三民書局. Rorty, R. (1984), “The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres,” in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shun, K. L. (1997), Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Shun, K. L. (2009), “Studying Confucian and Comparative Ethics: Methodological Reflections,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 36.3: 455–​478.

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Shun, K. L. (2012), “The Philosophical Study of Chinese Thought,” Journal of East-​West Thought, 1.2: 25–​37. Shun, K. L. (2013), “On Jing: Thinking Through Tang Junyi on Chinese Culture in Diaspora,” Chinese Studies (漢學研究), 31.2: 35–​61. Shun, K. L. (2015a), “Contextualizing Early Confucian Discourse,” Dao, 14.2: 203–​210. Shun, K. L. (2015b), “Nivison and the Philosophical Study of Confucian Thought,” Early China, 38: 41–​53. Tang, J. Y. 唐君毅 (1936), “On the Differences between Chinese and Western Philosophical Problems (論中西哲學問題之不同),” originally published in Xinmin Yuekan 新民月刊, 2: 4, reprinted in Essays on the Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Philosophical Thought (中西哲學思想之比較論文集), Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生書局, 1988. Tang, J. Y. (1940), “A Brief Discussion of the Attitude Toward the Study of the History of Chinese Philosophy, and Its Classification into Historical Periods (略論作中國哲 學史應持之態度及其分期),” originally published in Xuedeng 學燈 (December, 1940). Reprinted in Essays on the Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Philosophical Thought (中西哲學思想之比較論文集), Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生書局, 1988. Tang, J. Y. (1952), “My Understanding of the New Asia Spirit (我所了解之新亞精神),” Magazine of New Asia College (新亞校刊), Inaugural Issue: 63–​65. Tang, J. Y. (1961), “The Dispersal and Drifting About of the Flowers and Fruits of the Chinese Nation (說中華民族之花果飄零),” originally published in Zuguo Zhoukan 祖 國周刊, 35: 1. Reprinted in The Dispersal and Drifting About of the Flowers and Fruits of the Chinese Nation (說中華民族之花果飄零), Taibei: Sanmin Shuju 三民書局, 1974. Tang, J. Y. (1964), “The Dispersal and Drifting About of the Flowers and Fruits and the Self-​Replanting of Our Spiritual Roots (花果飄零及靈根自植),” originally published in Zuguo Zhoukan 祖國周刊, 44: 4, reprinted in The Dispersal and Drifting About of the Flowers and Fruits of the Chinese Nation (說中華民族之花果飄零), Taibei: Sanmin Shuju 三民書局, 1974. Tang, J. Y. (1966), “A New Direction in the Study of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲 學研究之一新方向,” Inaugural Lecture as Chair Professor of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, delivered in 1965 and published by the Chinese University Press in 1966. Reprinted in Chinese Humanitarian Culture and the Contemporary World (中華人文與當今世界), 3rd ed., Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生 書局, 1980. Xu, F. 徐復觀 (1975), “On the Method and Attitude in the Study of the History of Chinese Thought (研究中國思想史的方法與態度問題),” in Essays on the History of Chinese Thought (中國思想史論集), 4th ed., Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju 學生書局, 1975. Zhu, X. 朱熹 (1986), Sayings of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically (朱子語類), 8 vols, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局.

CHAPTER THREE

On What it Means to “Let a Text Speak for Itself?”: Philosophizing with Classical Chinese Texts RONNIE LITTLEJOHN

INTRODUCTION The discussion whether one should approach classical Chinese philosophical texts with a method and, if so, just what that method should be is one part of the ongoing contemporary explosion in scholarship on Chinese philosophy itself and comparative philosophy as well. To be clear, the supposed advantages of having some identifiable method include the following: (1) to provide a way to systematize the approach to a text; (2) to offer a means by which important considerations are not overlooked; (3) to set up procedures for analysis of the text; (4) to establish the bounds for possible interpretations; and (5) to aid in ranking the cogency and appropriateness of readings of the text and tradition. One strategy which offers itself as a method for engaging classical Chinese texts philosophically is the call to allow the classical texts “to speak for themselves.” Among many others, Michael Puett (2002: 9) has advocated this approach largely to underscore the important and accurate point that failing to let a text speak for itself can lead to the error of generalizing a point of view as though it represents classical Chinese philosophy as a whole rather than what it is: a particular historical iteration of a view in a specific text. But what does it mean to let a text speak for itself? In this chapter, I consider three possible meanings of this principle as a guide for philosophizing with Chinese texts. First, to let the text speak for itself means getting the translations of the text into a new target language done convincingly according to usage in the original language. Second, allowing the text to speak for itself means appreciating the structure of the text, acknowledging, when appropriate, its multiple authorial and/​or editorial source voices. Finally, when the text is speaking for itself, the philosophical reader is able to feel the text leading the interpretation even as it corrects and guides the reading.

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TRANSLATION Critics of James Legge’s translations of the Chinese classics as they appeared in Sacred Books of the East hold that when he puts Chinese texts into the English target language, he too often selects the Christian vocabulary with which he was familiar. This criticism goes back to Legge’s controversy with the missionary Andrew Happer (1818–​1894) who objected to Legge’s translations because Legge said explicitly that the original idea of deity (i.e., God) in China (Shang di 上帝) morphed into the deification and styling of the sky (i.e., heaven, tian 天) with the functions of deity. Happer, unlike Legge, did not believe the Chinese had a revelation of God in their ancient past. So, Happer objected to the translation because it was “overly Christianizing” just as did Herbert Giles (1845–​1935). However, Giles came from quite a different point of view of not trying to protect Christianity, but simply holding that tian should be rendered as “sky” or “nature” (Girardot 2002: 280–​281; 432–​438). Legge was sensitive to these concerns. Unlike his translation of tian as “Heaven” in the sense of “God” when working with the Confucian classics, Legge said that tian is never once used in the sense of “God” in the Daodejing or Zhuangzi. His view was that the Daodejing and Zhuangzi were “pure philosophical” works devoid of religious consciousness. For Legge, Daoists, unlike the Confucians, had no idea of a personal God (Legge 1880). Legge’s translations are not the only ones that have been criticized for having departed from the text as it is. More recently, Roger Ames and David Hall have also published renderings of Chinese texts which have been accused of privileging their process philosophical assumptions. Perhaps Ames’s and Hall’s “philosophical translation” of the Daodejing (Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation) has been the most criticized of their works along these lines, although similar concerns have also been expressed about their translation of the Zhongyong (Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong). In their translation of the Daodejing, Ames and Hall provide more than forty pages of a philosophical introduction entitled “Correlative Cosmology: An Interpretive Context” that is meant to explain and justify the translation they offer. All this is necessary because several key terms of Chinese philosophy are given nonstandard translations. Critics hold that these renderings are purposefully chosen in order to fit a process reading of the text, and may be more rooted in that objective, rather than in faithfulness to the text itself. I will mention only a few of these terms specifically: jing 静 (usually rendered “stillness, tranquility” is translated as “equilibrium,” 40, 62), de 德 (usually rendered “virtue, charismatic power” is translated as “particular focus,” 59), and shu 恕 (usually rendered “reciprocity” is translated as “deferential transactions,” 38). Dao 道 is rendered as “way-​making” (i.e., as a gerund, rather than a mere nominative). For Ames and Hall the purpose of the long introduction to this work is to underscore the correlative cosmology of process which the translators argue is the context of the formative period in which the Daodejing took shape. They hold that their translation lets the text speak for itself and removes a kind of physic of substance and essentialism that has “infected” Western translations of the text

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with as much detrimental effect as did Legge’s “Christianizing” renderings. Critics, on the other hand, have charged that the Ames’s and Hall’s translation represents an example of not letting the text speak for itself by interjecting process philosophy and thereby distorting the text’s meaning.1 Aside from Legge, Ames, and Hall, there are other significant translations of Chinese texts that arguably move far away from the text in itself. In fact, the standard anthologies and introductions to Chinese philosophy that shaped the present generation of scholars of Chinese philosophy in their formative years are not without difficulties of this kind. I refer to Wing-​tsit Chan’s A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy (1963), Fung Yu-​lan’s A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (1948), and A History of Chinese Philosophy (1953). Some of the translations of Chan and Fung have also been challenged for having colored the texts with hues that really are quite alien to Chinese thought. Although not a “classical” Chinese text, I can best illustrate how these criticisms have been expressed by pointing to Fung’s translations and philosophical interpretations of Zhu Xi. In his A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, Fung entitles the chapter devoted to Zhu Xi, “The School of Platonic Ideas,” constantly pointing in his commentary to similarities between Zhu Xi’s conception of Principle(s) (li 理) and the doctrine of Forms in the dialogues of Plato. In fact, Fung thinks that Zhu Xi’s concept of the Supreme Ultimate, which consists in nothing more than the Principle(s) of all things brought together conceptually in a single whole, is very much like Plato’s Form of the Good that also gathers all the Forms into itself. He says, “From these statements we see that the position of the Supreme Ultimate in Chu Hsi’s system corresponds to the Idea of the Good or to God in the systems of Plato and Aristotle respectively” (Fung 1948: 298). But Zhu Xi’s remarks on li can be translated in another way that may be more faithful to the text and also avoid Fung’s overzealous employment of a Western mindset to interpret a Chinese thinker. Consider Fung’s (1952: 2: 535) interpretative translation of Zhu Xi’s Conversations 101.26 in his A History of Chinese Philosophy: “When a certain thing is made, there is in it a particular Principle (li). For all things created in the universe, there is in each a particular Principle.” This rendering exemplifies Fung’s effort to read Zhu Xi through a Platonic lens. Indeed, Fung continues this process in his translation of many passages. Writings 46.26 can serve in illustration of my claim. “Looking from the point of view of Principle, although a certain object may not yet exist, the Principle for that object is already there. Thus there is already the Principle itself, even when its object does not yet actually exist” (Fung 1952: 2.536). However, if the translator is not being guided by the notion that li is analogous to Platonic Forms with each thing having its own single Principle, some of Zhu Xi’s comments make a sense they lack under a Platonist reading. We may take Conversations 4.10 as an example. In that passage, Zhu Xi says that animals other than humans do not have a distinctively different li from humans, but owe their particularity to the configuration of their five elements into the shape (body) they possess. He makes it clear that “each individual thing possesses the entire Supreme

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Ultimate” or set of li and not that each natural kind of thing has a Principle (or Form) to itself. On this reading, li are something like categories of order that underlie all that is. There is not an actual separable Form for each different existing kind of thing as Fung infuses into his translation and commentary. When Zhu Xi says that bricks have within them li pertaining to bricks, he does not mean some archetypal li or “Form of brick.” He means that bricks are bricks because, in their five element configuration, these objects “brick” according to universal li structures. Accordingly, Fung’s translation of Conversations 101.26 above should be corrected to read something like this, “For all things in the universe there is a particular expression of Principle(s).” His interpretation of Collected Writings 46.26 above should instead be, “Looking from the point of view of Principle(s) although a certain object may not yet exist, the Principles for the form in which it could exist are already there [in the Supreme Ultimate].”2 Regardless of whether I have this right or Fung is correct in this specific example, the point is that in letting a text speak for itself, we must be ever vigilant to use care in translation, bracketing the influence of philosophical frames that stand far removed from the Chinese context. Legge and Fung, at least, stand as cautionary examples. Moreover, even if Ames is right in asserting that the Chinese ontology that lies as the context for the classical text is a process one, we may still wonder whether some conventional translations are yet more illuminating than those he provides (e.g., shu as “reciprocity”).

STRUCTURE OF TEXTS Having said all this, there is another aspect of the call to let the text speak for itself that must not be overlooked. Virtually all of the classical Chinese philosophical texts are anthologies—​ composite works often embodying different source traditions within a lineage (e.g., Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism). Allowing a text to speak for itself must take into account the multiple voices that are in a text, and also the different contexts which these voices represent. Scholars who embrace what might be called a form of canonical criticism hold that a strict methodological rule for one wishing to let the text speak for itself might be something like this: “One’s first duty is to read the work as a whole.” This is an important rule which preserves, for one thing, the sense of an entire text as belonging to a tradition. However, although it may be that there is an overall coherence even to a text that is a mosaic of materials from different sources and contexts, we must not gloss over diversity of voices within that work. Not all classical Chinese texts are equally unified in central concepts and claims and some have seriously divergent points of view internally. To allow a text to speak for itself does not mean that we should automatically rule out the unity of the text, but it does certainly mean that we should notice when the text is speaking with multiple voices and that some of these differences will represent divergent philosophical views that must be engaged.

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While evidence for widely divergent thinking among sources is arguably not obviously evident in the Daodejing (even in its Guodian and Mawangdui versions), its composite structure has been long noted by Chinese commentators. In Western scholarship of the modern era, D. C. Lau (1963) and Michael LaFargue (1992) leave no doubt that this text is an anthology and there are significant differences in emphasis and philosophical stance both in the logia it contains and in the way the redactor has chosen to arrange them. Although Mengzi is not set up with logia strung together like beads on a string as we find in Daodejing and other texts, its textual structures do sometimes raise issues of internal coherence (Lau 1970: “The Text of the Mencius,” 220–​222). The thirty-​two chapters of Xunzi probably circulated as freestanding pieces and were quite likely never intended to be read in the form of a single book as we now have it. Moreover, although the first compiler and editor of the text, Liu Xiang (77–​76 bce), reveals that he reduced the materials he had in hand from 322 “chapters” to the present thirty-​two in order to eliminate duplicates, there are still quite a number of passages in our received Xunzi that are verbatim or nearly verbatim parallels, some of which do nonetheless have differences of philosophical importance (Hutton 2014: xviii). The implications of the multiple sources and textual layering of the Analects also pose interpretive challenges for the philosopher.3 Not everything in the Analects as compiled by Zheng Xuan is traceable to Confucius. In fact, the text itself makes this quite clear by providing many other teachers’ names and attributing sayings to them. The Qing dynasty scholar Cui Shu (1740–​1816) used a study of the language and expressions to show that Books 16–​20 were composed much later than Books 1–​15. Other scholars have divided Books 1–​15 into strata, almost always holding that Books 3–​9 are arguably the oldest analects and those most likely traceable with confidence to Confucius and his immediate disciples. As for Books 11–​20, E. Bruce Brooks and Taeko Brooks divide this section into two strata: Books 11–​15 and  16–​20. As philosophers, we may recognize that a great deal of the textual critical study of the Analects is speculative and yet to be resolved; indeed, it may never be. Still, noticing internal collections within the Analects which stimulate philosophical interpretation can be done even if one does not atomize the text to the extent that some critics suggest. Consider that Book 5 seems to contain a “Comments on Disciples and Personages” collection and Book 7 a “Self-​Criticism Collection.” Book 8 represents an “Answers to Critics” collection which consists of remembrances about how Confucius answered those who criticized him or how disciples defended him against critics, and both the method and content embedded in these strategies are of philosophical interest. Book 11 is a collection of Confucius’s assessments of his disciples and Book 13 is a section of sayings devoted to how to govern effectively. Allowing the text to speak for itself with respect to the Analects includes an appreciation for the strata of the text and for why the redactor(s) chose to organize the material as he (they) did. In the Zhuangzi, there are some stark differences of philosophical importance in its component logia that cannot be easily subsumed under a notion of textual unity or

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coherence. One such divergence involves the logia on political philosophy in the text or what might be called the view of rulership and government. The position taken on rulership in the Inner Chapters (1–​7) and Disciples’ materials (17–​28) contrasts dramatically with that advocated in the Huang-​Lao (Yellow Emperor) chapters (11–​ 16, with 18a, 19a, and 22).4 While the Inner Chapters and the Zhuangzi disciples’ materials reject rulership and even portray Daoist masters as hiding, fleeing, or willing to commit suicide in order to avoid it (Watson 1968: 32–​34; 93; 187–​188; 310–​314; 321–​322), the Huang-​Lao logia do not reject rulership. On the contrary, they embrace the role of ruler and teach that the true ruler should govern by wuwei, following the model of the Yellow Emperor (Watson 1968: 117–​120, 142–​148). One who does not pay attention to these differences in emphasis and philosophical positions will find himself quite at a loss in trying to harmonize the Inner Chapters and the Huang-​Lao materials within the Zhuangzi on rulership. Accordingly, if one asked what is the view of rulership in the Zhuangzi, a fairly complicated answer that reflects multiple perspectives within the received text would be required. Allowing the text to speak for itself requires attending to all these divergent voices and not representing the text as advocating a singular position. A philosophical exploration of how logia in the Zhuangzi differ on rulership arises from the use of textual analysis, and the substance of a philosophical understanding of models for rulership is enhanced by noting the differences and not always seeking a unified view, where there may not be one. In addition, an argument can be made that there are both more numerous and more significant philosophical continuities between the Daodejing and some layers of the Zhuangzi than between some logia of the Zhuangzi intertextually. Likewise, a similar finding will result from a comparison of some sections of the Zhuangzi and other Chinese texts such as the Huainanzi. Indeed, such an observation is one supporting reason for seeing the dramatic influence of Huang-​Lao on the Huainanzi.5 As a classical philosophical text that is still much too neglected, the Mozi also presents a unique set of challenges for the interpreter who seeks to let the text speak for itself. Chris Fraser (2002) puts the matter very clearly, “The Mozi is not a single composition or work, in the modern sense, but an anthology of diverse writings probably composed at different times by different writers or editors.” Consider simply the so-​called ten core doctrine section of Mozi which is arranged in triads of essays. Scott Lowe (1992: 57) holds that there are no substantial philosophical differences between each of the essays in a triad. He compares them to three sets of notes taken by different people listening to the same lecture. Angus Graham (1985) is convinced that each of the three essays on the respective doctrines represents different schools or lineages of Mohism. Fraser thinks the triads are chronological, with the “upper essay” (上) being the earliest, then the “middle” (中), and lastly the “lower” (下). He argues that these were composed by different writers or editors and that there are subtle differences worth noting philosophically. A useful guide in beginning to clarify the triads and their function in the text is Ian Johnston’s (2010) section on the structure of the Mozi in his recent complete English translation of the work. When philosophizing with classical Chinese texts, literary and textual criticism is a tool to see what ideas are being advocated and how they are set in conversation

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with related views, whether intertextually, within the same tradition, or in divergent texts or traditions. Textual criticism can make an interpreter aware of how a later philosopher has approached his own tradition, especially if some of the interpreters of the Mozi and Analects are correct. We may also think of the Liezi’s use of the Zhuangzi, even in its “lost” version (Littlejohn 2011). Of course what I have had to say about the importance of the composite nature of an ancient text to interpretation is not unique to the task faced by philosophers working exclusively on Chinese philosophy. One might note divergent passages in Aristotle’s Metaphysics that create puzzles about questions as serious as just how many prime movers there are and wonder whether such differences indicate changes of Aristotle’s mind, modifications made by those who were his students, or just plain inconsistencies. Allowing one’s philosophical interpretations to be influenced by different layers of texts requires a different sort of weighting when those various strata correspond to early and later chronologies. Here we might think of the differences in Nietzsche’s early, middle, and late periods as these are represented by separate texts, but the same developmentalism is present in some single, but multilayered classical Chinese texts, including the Mozi, Mengzi, and Xunzi.6 Noticing the significance of the composite nature of classical Chinese texts for philosophical interpretation often gives rise to a rather distracting concern that may actually have little philosophical relevance. Scholars who readily acknowledge the layers of classical texts frequently focus on questions of just which logion, teaching, or essay is earlier or which is traceable to the “authentic” Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, or Zhuang Zhou, and so on. Indeed, one purpose of speaking of Confucius, Confucian, and Confucianism is to mark these differences, especially if one wishes to disassociate certain practices or ideas (e.g., the role or suppression of women) from “the master” (i.e., the historical Confucius). However, as philosophers, it is worth asking whether this is an appropriate methodological move at all. By this, I certainly do not mean to detract from the important recent works including Thomas Wilson (2002), Annping Chen (2007), and Michael Nylan and Thomas Wilson (2010). These studies of the authenticity of traditions about Confucius each have their merits and represent sets of claims worth considering philosophically. However, we may not have considered rigorously enough this quest for the historical or authentic person behind the texts. At one level, we must admit as philosophers that who said something is not nearly so significant as what was said and how it was defended. If we regarded Confucius on the analogy of Jesus or the Prophet (i.e., Muhammad) investing in him an authority transcending that given to other thinkers, then it might be understandable to seek vigorously after the historical Confucius. But as philosophers, we do not do this, and we cannot do this. For persons in the Christian tradition, whether some statement is ipissima verba of a figure regarded as an incarnation of the divine may be something that theologians should consider, but not for philosophers. Whether a statement is traceable to Confucius ought not really matter much, except to devotees of Confucius such as Fan Ruiping (2010) or Jiang Qing (2013), whose arguments might actually have defensible philosophical grounds quite apart from an insistence that they must be derivable from Confucius. Philosophers, unlike historians or literary critics, are interested primarily in the ideas contained in texts and the support offered for them.

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While philosophers are not interested in source or authorship as an appeal to authority, we nevertheless may want to know how a view is connected to what can be known with some degree of probability as traceable to the source. It is possible that if we believe the life of an individual is emblematic of or evidence for the veracity or efficacy of his philosophical claims, then perhaps it is a legitimate philosophical exercise to pursue some reconstruction of the tie between the author and text. We may think of how it was that Socrates faced death as an existential embodiment of his philosophy. Yet, does it really matter whether he actually died in this way? Or, is it the case that what matters philosophically in the Crito and the Phaedo stands on its own, quite apart from the historicity of the events? One who studies the Platonic dialogues considers each on its own philosophical merits. If we found conclusively that there was no historical Socrates at all and that he was a theatrical creation of Plato’s dramatic flair in the dialogues, this would not be a sufficient reason to disregard the cogency of the arguments and dialectic put into his mouth. The rough analogy for such a situation in my view would be something like the role played by Laozi or almost any one of the other fictive characters in the Zhuangzi, including the Yellow Emperor of course. In religious traditions, the situation is different. The Buddhist practice of tracing a sutra through its lineage of teachers all the way back to the historical Buddha (Siddhartha) is done even when it is obvious that some sutras are starkly in contradiction with each other and there are real questions about whether any individual could have maintained such divergent positions. In Islam, at least one function of an isnad is to provide a chain of authenticity back to the historical Prophet. Of course, we must admit that there are tendencies during the Han and around the first century bce to do this kind of thing with both Confucius and Laozi. But as philosophers, this kind of exercise cannot and should not preoccupy or impress us and we can simply notice the hagiographic and even theomorphizing functions of such strategies and then move on to what does matter: the ideas, arguments, claims, teachings, and positions. Similar comments may be made about the importance of the antiquity of a claim or viewpoint. For example, quite a lot of ink has been spilled by scholars of Chinese history, philosophy, and religious studies over whether the so-​called five phase physics (wuxing) is of pre-​Qin origin or Han. For myself, I think there is considerable evidence for pre-​Qin prototypes of wuxing ontology, although its labyrinthine versions surely develop in the Han and afterward (Littlejohn 2011). But even if one could establish with reasonable consensus a well-​defined ontology of the five phases in a pre-​Qin provenance, does this somehow give it more veracity or explanatory power simply because of its antiquity? Surely not. The five phase physics needs to stand on its own merits philosophically and, for myself, there is little of determinable truth here apart from its stress on correlation and process. Of course, if one is focused on the historical development of ideas in the period of classical Chinese philosophy, then determining which ideas are earlier is a worthy pursuit. But strictly speaking, this is history of philosophy, not necessarily philosophizing with Chinese texts. I agree that, for philosophers, it might be useful to know when a view took a turn toward being more undesirable (or desirable)

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philosophically, but it is the turn itself and what makes it persuasive or not on which philosophers focus. Let me be clear about my point. I mean that after doing rigorous historical-​ cultural analysis, if one idea is demonstrably more ancient than another, this simple fact of its greater antiquity says little if anything about its philosophical value. If the wuxing physics in some recognizable form is not pre-​Qin in origin, but some other cosmology is demonstrably present in the sources, knowing this does not guide us in assessing the philosophical cogency of the one relative to the other. Antiquity is a chronological, not a philosophical methodological operator. In the above remarks, I have been giving attention to the composite nature of classical Chinese philosophical texts, that is, the connection between component logia and the relevance of the antiquity of the material. But I have said nothing as yet about how the most important classical texts are identified. Everything I have said up to now has assumed the canon of classical Chinese philosophy, but the question of canonicity of Chinese classical texts is clearly important to the project of philosophizing with them. Although we do not have a fully developed philosophical exposition of the grounds for canonicity, one way to approach this choice is simply to take the curriculum of the Imperial Exam System (keju) as defining the standard classics of Chinese philosophy. Sinologists and historians can provide a good deal of information about the ins and outs of when and why a text came into, or was excluded from this collection. But all too often these explanations are more political and social than philosophical. There were many different versions of the textbook lists for this exam and these are often varied because of who was influencing the court and what philosophical tradition was on ascendancy or decline for social or political reasons. In the West, Legge’s first delineation of the Chinese classics in his early Hong Kong translations and then later in the Sacred Books of the East (1879–​1910) exerted a great deal of influence on what works were considered important simply because he chose to translate some works and not others. While the Daodejing moved in and out of the exam system curriculum as a basic text beginning as early as the Tang dynasty, we do well to recall that Legge’s 1891 “Texts of Taoism” was composed of three texts based on the usage he knew in the nineteenth century: Daodejing, Zhuangzi, and the Tract of the Most Exalted on Action and Response (Taishang ganying ping 太 上感應篇). The last of these works is one which is almost never taken seriously as an example of Daoist moral philosophy by contemporary scholars, but its widespread use in China during the period of Legge’s lifetime was staggering. As for what texts to include in a philosophical study of Daoism, Russell Kirkland (2008: 153) seems to have a point when he asks us to imagine a teacher from a non-​Christian culture handing his/​her students a copy of the Gospel of John and telling them that all the other texts associated with Christianity are simply moribund superstition. Texts in the Daoist canon have suffered just such a fate.7 But either way, it is incumbent on us to notice that certain key texts of China’s classical period have been largely undervalued in a canonical sense including Mozi, Xunzi, Huainanzi, and the entire Daoist canon (Daozang)!

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INTERPRETATION To let the text speak for itself has another possible meaning: one which serves as a caution to the interpreter not to import his own philosophical biases into his reading. The concern here is that in seeing the text through the lens of the specific philosophical view of the interpreter one may be giving it a reading that it did not have and should not have. A number of skillful and thoughtful philosophers take the principle of letting a text speak for itself in just this cautionary way, applying it primarily to how the philosopher approaches the text. Lauren Pfister (2006: 11–​14) makes a distinction between “reading a text historically” and “reading a text hermeneutically.” John Makeham (2006: 96–​97) speaks of the “historical” and “scriptural” meaning of the text. By “scriptural” meaning of the text he intends to point to the ways the text’s meaning cannot be fixed even by its historical context, because no interpreter is immune from the ongoing process of the text’s reception and its living presence in a later appropriation. He recommends instead that the greater emphasis should be given to understanding the scriptural meanings of the texts in the commentarial literature of the history of Chinese philosophy (Makeham 2006: 105). Just why he stops with the commentarial tradition is not altogether clear to me. A commentator’s reading of a specific classical text is, in one very real sense, just one more possible appropriation of it. Why should we privilege a given commentary reading as the best, most accurate, or most philosophically compelling? If Zhu Xi’s context made his readings of Daoism or Confucianism particularly convincing or illuminating in his period, that does not mean that they are transferable into a contemporary context with the same efficacy.8 The concern that I am expressing is not that a commentator’s remarks on a classical text might be wrong. I mean rather that they represent only one appropriation of the text within the broader stream of the tradition of interpretation. I think this has very convincingly been demonstrated by Makeham (2004; 2006), Ivanhoe (2002), and MacIntyre (1984: ­chapter 15). In a study of the commentarial tradition, we will find varying degrees of success in philosophizing with Chinese texts. Some commentators, perhaps Zhu Xi, maybe Wang Yangming, perhaps others, will sometimes offer interpretations in which their own philosophical biases have overridden the text as clearly as any contemporary interpreter might. In fact, Makeham aptly titles his work on the commentators of the Analects as Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects. He highlights both transmission of text and creativity in philosophizing among the commentators.9 There is a way of approaching classical texts that valorizes interpretation and the skill to read a text so as to make it live in the new vocabulary of one’s own age. Here I think primarily of Roger Ames’s comments in answer to his critics in his Confucian Role Ethics in which he defends his work, and that of his collaborators, arguing that the philosopher’s task in approaching a classical text is by no means a passive one. Try as we might, we cannot avoid to some degree “making up” our interpretation and “making over” the text with it. But at the same time, one way or another,

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there is always the possibility of enlarging the meaning of the text in making it our own. To thus “appreciate” the text means not only to become aware of its scale and sophistication, but also to become creatively responsive to it, and in the process of becoming intimate with it, to add our own unique value that expands the text further. ( 2011: 39) An often raised caution to understanding the philosopher’s role as ‘making up’ an interpretation in Ames’s words is that the text itself becomes superfluous and insignificant. I do not really think Ames means this. However, if one differentiates his reading from the text itself to such a point that the text becomes only a source of inspiration and exerts no push-​back or correction to any reading he offers, then he may be doing constructive philosophy, but not philosophizing with the text. The resulting philosophy may have merit or not, but the ground for my saying that it is the meaning of a classical Chinese text is tenuous or nonexistent. To say that a text in its original form has multiple possible meanings or applications is not the same thing as saying the text does not matter. This is the point at which a “historical reading” must complement any philosophizing with classical Chinese texts. A “historical reading” can be taken in two senses. On the one hand, it can mean that a text has a singularly specific or true meaning and that this is identifiable as the “historical reading.” Such a position may lead philosophers to say that the actual meaning of the text resides in its ancient context and its ability to offer anything of current value is unlikely. On the other hand, “historical reading” may mean something more like “historical critical” analysis. This is the kind of analysis by which one gets clear on the concepts being used, the claims being made and how these were understood in the historical context, and what delimitations seem reasonable in how the text could plausibly have been understood in the time of its source formation. If the text as analyzed by historical critical analysis offers not only the content, but also push-​back and correction to views one wishes to construct, then it is actually a dialogical partner and he is philosophizing with the text, not merely about it. Allowing a text to speak for itself with respect to the approach the philosopher takes to it means that the philosopher enters as a dialogical partner with (1) the text as historically critically analyzed, (2) the commentarial tradition on the text, and (3) the creative philosophical insight of the interpreter himself. I would like to say that this process of understanding always “appreciates” the text, that it adds richness of meaning and application to the appropriation of the text. Unfortunately, sometimes there is misunderstanding and some readings seem far removed from the text. What is it to “understand” the text? It is not that the text has some single objective meaning dwelling above its words like a shadow to a person, which we can discover by digging into the philology or history. I suggest that we think of understanding a text on the analogy of understanding another person. What sort of process is this? Do I understand another when I repeat back his exact words? Clearly not. Do I understand him only when I have guessed some sentence that he has in his head that is not the same as the words he said, but it is the meaning of the words he said?

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That is, that understanding is some mind meld between us. I think these models for understanding are flawed. It is not that the speaker already has in his mind some sentence in addition to what was said that must be absolutely duplicated in order to say that another understands. Rather, understanding something another person says occurs in the actual lived dialogue between the listener and the speaker. This dialogue may sometimes require or involve many persons, and understanding is “achieved” when everyone is able to “go on” whether in action, conversation, or human relationship. In the case of persons understanding what is said by another, it is often the case that different sentences offered to the speaker by more than one person as an “understanding” of what the speaker meant may be accepted by the speaker as counting as understanding. It is this analogy that best represents what it is to philosophize with a text and create understanding.

FINAL REMARKS The most significant challenge to philosophizing with classical Chinese texts may not be methodological at all. It is expressed by one of America’s most careful and courageous interpreters of Daoism: Russell Kirkland. He holds there is a quandary that philosophers face in exploring classical texts and that it may be stated simply and clearly. Classical Chinese texts deserve to be understood and respected in their own right and not for any “scriptural” or “edifying” use they can have for us. Kirkland argues that the idea that ancient philosophers considered their thoughts applicable to persons who would live thousands of years later in a world that they could not even imagine is wildly absurd. He doubts that any of the classical texts was written to help us with our lives or even to have some enduring message for generations beyond those most immediate to the text. He thinks that they should be approached as texts from an alien culture, in a distant age and studying them means exploring an alien world . . . not ourselves. Kirkland (2008: 152) holds that approaching classical Chinese texts as guides for ourselves in the twenty-​first century is actually a reflection of our Judeo-​ Christian faith in the eternal relevance of scripture, in which we have simply replaced the Bible with a classical Chinese text. He thinks such an approach rips the classical texts from their moorings in Chinese culture and society and recreates the text as some idealized image made to speak to moderns and postmoderns. Kirkland’s position may be understood as a specific reservation about the kind of project Ames is setting out: the appreciation of the text that enlarges the text and makes it our own. Consider that the subtitle of the Ames and Hall (2003) translation of the Daodejing is “Making this Life Significant.” That is to say that these two philosophers see their work as an explicit rendering of the text into a contemporary context so that it may speak to us. Ames and Hall, of course, are not the only philosophers who seek to bring classical texts into philosophical significance for our present age. In fact, it might be best to say simply that philosophers of Chinese texts see this as the ultimate end of philosophizing with Chinese texts. Michael LaFargue (2008: 169) recommends a kind of confrontational hermeneutic in which once the difference between the classical text and our own interpretation of it come into

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dialogue, we might adopt the message of the text, or develop what we consider to be a better version of its meaning which speaks primarily to our own lives. At the most basic level, whether source authors or editors of classical Chinese texts had any idea that they would be appropriated twenty centuries later or regarded as existentially valuable for persons living in a world and time they could not even imagine is irrelevant. It is that these texts are taken in such a way by persons so situated that is crucial. It is the fact that persons philosophize with Chinese texts in a dialogical relationship and not merely about them that explains their ongoing interest and impact. The text as analyzed historically and critically must be a dialogical partner, along with the history of the commentaries on the text, shaping the resulting constructive philosophy we offer as philosophers. P. J. Ivanhoe argues that as we join the ongoing tradition of interpretation and commentary with classical philosophical texts, it is our responsibility to make a case for the connection of the particular interpretation we espouse and the text with which it is connected. He understands this process to be very much like building evidence in a court room, accounting for as many facts as possible and weaving them into a coherent and comprehensive story (Ivanhoe 2012: 310). My own view of the role of the classical text in this process is that it should provide resistance, guidance, and correction, just as the creation of understanding between speaker and hearer occurs in everyday discourse. The philosophers of classical China may have had no notion of the reach of their ideas into the twenty-​first century (or even of that demarcation of time at all), but quite apart from what they believed to be the scope and force of their ideas, if generations of interpreters down to our own period have found many of these arguments for how to live, construct governments, and think of our relation to nature to be of value, then this is the ongoing story of their reach across the ages.10

NOTES I am grateful to P. J. Ivanhoe, Mark Anderson, and Andrew Davis for their comments and improvements on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1. A good example of the concerns over Ames’s and Hall’s work is Eske Mollgaard (2005). See also Ames’s response (2005). 2. A more generous reading of Fung would be one that did not interpret him as equating Platonic forms and li, but only using them as an analogy for understanding. I take a more critical view based on the passages I cite. Moreover, Plato never held that various particular things contain all the principles, as Zhu Xi does. 3. See Kim and Csikszentmihalyi (2014) and Brooks and Brooks (1998) as samples of philosophers occupied with the importance of textual criticism to philosophizing with the Analects as a source. 4. Contemporary scholars, such as Graham (1986), Liu (1994), Roth (1991), and Littlejohn (2010), have all suggested models for understanding the structural layers of the text of the Zhuangzi and the lineages or sources with which the component logia may be associated.

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5. For a discussion of the sources of the Huainanzi see Major et al. (2010: 27–​32). Harold Roth (1991; 1994) argues specifically in favor of the Yellow Emperor-​Laozi (Huang-​Lao) version of Daoism as the primary influence on the text. 6. In his early period (Birth of Tragedy) Nietzsche is quite hostile to science, but in the middle work, Human, All Too Human, and the later work, The Antichrist this is not so. 7. Holmes Welch (1965) was read as the standard overview of Daoism for over twenty years. In his chapter on “Later Philosophical Taoism” (158–​163), Welch tells the reader that the Daozang is a collection of religious not philosophical texts, and that it is traceable to thinkers “whom we can only regard as representatives of quaint, but moribund superstition” (163). In contrast, Welch traces real philosophical Daoism from the Daodejing and Zhuangzi into the neo-​Confucians and Chan Buddhists. 8. Without doubt, Zhu Xi was one of the most influential intellectuals and spiritual philosophers of East Asia. His systematization of the Confucian Way (Dao) into a coherent program of education became the foundation for educational systems in China, Korea, and Japan for centuries. A general study that sets Zhu Xi in his intellectual context is Tillman (1992). 9. Along with Makeham’s study of commentaries, I recommend as well Henderson (1991) and Huang (2001). 10. It is my contention that what I have had to say about philosophizing with classical Chinese texts is applicable to the interpretation of other philosophical texts and traditions as well. Some other important comments on such work include Ivanhoe (2012), Garcia (1992), and Hare (1988)

REFERENCES Ames, R. T. (2005), “Getting Past the Eclipse of Philosophy in World Sinology: A Response to Eske Mollgaard,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 4.2. Ames, R. T. (2011), Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Ames, R. T. and D. L. Hall (trans.) (2001), Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ames, R. T. and D. L. Hall (2003), Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine Books. Brooks, E. B. and A. T. Brooks (1998), The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors, New York: Columbia University Press. Chan, W. T. (trans.) (1963), A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, 4th ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fan, R. P. (2010), Reconstructionist Confucianism: Rethinking Morality after the West, Heidelberg: Springer. Fraser, C. (2002), “Mohism,” in E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 2014, http://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​mohism/​. Fung, Y. L. (1948), A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, New York: Macmillan.

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Fung, Y. L. (1953), A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2 vols., Princeton: Princeton University Press. Girardot, N. J. (2002), The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage, Berkeley: The University of California Press. Graham, A. C. (1985), Divisions in Early Mohism Reflected in the Core Chapters of Mo-​tzu, Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Graham, A. C. (1986), “How Much of Chuang-​tzu Did Chuang-​tzu Write?” in Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature, Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Henderson, J. B. (1991), Scripture, Canon and Commentary, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Huang, C. C. (2001), Mencian Hermeneutics: A History of Interpretations in China, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Hutton, E. (trans.) (2014), Xunzi: The Complete Text, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ivanhoe, P. J. (2002), “Whose Confucius? Which Analects?” in B. W. Van Norden (ed.), Confucius and the Analects: New Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ivanhoe, P. J. (2012), “Understanding Traditional Chinese Philosophical Texts,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 52.3: 303–314 . Jiang, Q. (2013), A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Johnston, I. (trans.) (2010), The Mozi: A Complete Translation, New York: Columbia University Press. Kim, T. H. and M. Csikszentmihalyi (2014), “History and Formation of the Analects,” in A. Oberdling (ed.), Dao Companion to the Analects, Heidelberg: Springer. Kirkland, R. (2008), “Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Methodological Issues,” in G. DeAngelis and W. Frisina (eds.), Teaching the Daode Jing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. LaFargue, M. (1992), The Tao of the Tao-​te-​ching, Albany: State University of New York Press. LaFargue, M. (2008), “Hermeneutics and Pedagogy: Old-​Time Historicism,” in G. DeAngelis and W. Frisina (eds.), Teaching the Daode Jing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lau, D. C. (1963), Tao Te Ching, London: Penguin Books. Lau, D. C. (1970), Mencius, London: Penguin Books. Legge, J. (1980), The Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared with Christianity, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Littlejohn, R. (2010), Daoism: An Introduction, London: I.B. Tauris. Littlejohn, R. (2011), “Wuxing.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://​www. iep.utm.edu/​wuxing/​ Littlejohn, R. (2012), “The Liezi’s Use of the Lost Zhuangzi,” in J. Dippmann and R. Littlejohn (eds.), Riding the Wind: New Essays on the Daoist Classic the Liezi, Albany: State University of New York Press. Liu, X. G. (1994), Classifying the Chuang-​tzu Chapters, Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.

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Lowe, S. (1992), Mo Tzu’s Religious Blueprint for a Chinese Utopia, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. MacIntyre, A. (1984), After Virtue, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press. Major, J., S. Queen, A. S. Meyer, and H. Roth (trans.) (2010), The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China, New York: Columbia University Press. Makeham, J. (2004), Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. Makeham, J. (2006), “A New Hermeneutical Approach to the Early Chinese Texts: The Case of the Analects,” in C. Y. Cheng and L. F. Pfister (eds.), Hermeneutical Thinking in Chinese Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell. Mollegaard, E. (2005), “Eclipse of Reading: On the “Philosophical Turn” in American Sinology,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 4.2. Pfister, L. (2006), “Hermeneutics: Philosophical Understand and Basic Orientations,” in C. Y. Cheng and L. F. Pfister (eds.), Hermeneutical Thinking in Chinese Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell. Puett, M. (2002), To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-​Divinization in Early China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rotella, M. (2002), “Dao de Jing: A Philosophical Translation,” The Publisher’s Weekly, 249: 56. Roth, H. (1991), “Who Compiled the Chuang-​tzu?” in H. Rosemont, Jr. (ed.), Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts, LaSalle: Open Court. Roth, H. (1992), The Textual History of the Huai-​nan Tzu, Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies Monograph 46. Roth, H. (1994), “Redaction Criticism and the Early History of Taoism,” Early China, 19:  1–​46. Tillman, H. C. (1992), Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Watson, B. (trans.) (1968), The Complete Works of Chuang-​Tzu, New York: Columbia University Press. Welch, H. (1965), Taoism: The Parting of the Way, Boston: Beacon Press. Wilson, T. A. (ed.) (2002), On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER FOUR

Academic Silos, or “What I Wish Philosophers Knew about Early History in China” MICHAEL NYLAN

I hold the discipline of Philosophy in high esteem, for several reasons: its insistence on rigor, its preference for close readings, and its occasional willingness with great dispatch to jettison the “common wisdom” on seemingly settled matters (hence the bracing quality of Wittgenstein and Bernard Williams). A recent survey of academic writing shows that professional philosophers tend to use fewer abstractions than their colleagues in the sciences (though twice as many as their History colleagues). At the same time, philosophers rely heavily on “two other clusters of words associated with dense, passive prose” (the various forms of the copula, and also the “it, this, that, there” group), using those more than twice as often as academics in other disciplines (Sword 2012: 19).1 That said, some of the most engaging and stylish writing I know—​the sort of writing I curl up in bed with—​comes from some of the best modern philosophers (Gilbert Ryle, Bernard Williams, and Timothy Chappell come immediately to mind) or relates trenchant philosophical debates (as in Wittgenstein’s Poker or How To Read Wittgenstein). For years now, partly because I esteem the field of philosophy, I have considered the question, “Why does the term ‘Chinese philosophy’strike so many Anglo-​American philosophers working in Western traditions as an oxymoron?” (Surely Hegel and Kant are partly to blame, as is the “mathematical turn” taken by so many analytical philosophers expounding “mind” and “logic,” the contemporary equation of “ritual” with “rote,” and the modern academic expectation that every philosophical text be as self-​contained as possible.2) In this chapter, however, my charge from a generous editor differs: I am to explain, from the point of view of a sympathetic historian, where, why, and how philosophers committed to the elucidation of the distinctive ways of thinking in early China routinely fail at their tasks. To a historian, these failures fall under three broad categories: (1) failure to understand the particularities of manuscript culture, as against print culture; (2) failure to understand the historical background (the

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then-​current “use” and hence “meaning”) of expressions or longer phrases, which occasionally bleeds into implausible dating schemes for the relevant Classics and masterworks; (3) failure to understand the role of debate in early China, also the class and status identities of the participants in those debates. As not all philosophers of Chinese thought are accomplished readers of the most demanding forms of classical language (including those dense commentarial traditions), the foregoing failures lead, as often as not, to a rather haphazard choice of available translations of early works, which makes any attempts at the close reading of texts quite farcical. Admittedly, it will be difficult to prove some of my contentions absent citation of published works, yet long training in Zhuangzi and in early Confucian texts advises me to avoid bruising egos unnecessarily. I have no desire to channel Achilles Fang,3 in other words, being mindful of how often the best scholars can disagree about readings. I will simply try my best below, in the serene expectation that good philosophers, like good historians, prefer on the whole to be challenged, when the gauntlet is thrown. The goal, after all, is to liberate us all from our safe but narrow academic silos, so as to enter into spirited exchanges on the matters of cross-​ disciplinary interest.

MANUSCRIPT CULTURE VS. PRINTED CULTURE Historians for over thirty years now have been grappling with the specifics of manuscript culture, first in Europe and somewhat later in the United States.4 By contrast, most philosophers seem blissfully unaware of the specific character of manuscript culture as opposed to print culture, which came only in late imperial China.5 Specifically, how does it change our perceptions of a “philosophical text”6 when we fully appreciate the fact that it was composed or transcribed within a manuscript culture, at a time when ideas of authorship were far more aspirational and fluid than they are today,7 when libraries were few and private collections ridiculously small by today’s standards, and when verbatim transcription was rare outside of the administrative and legal bureaus with their archives? Given how few manuscripts were available within textual communities (not to mention how expensive they were to produce), there was bound to be widely differing access to highly valuable texts.8 Teaching and transmission were largely oral, with most manuscripts prepared as aides to memory, much like lecture notes today (whence those numbered correlations) (see Nylan 2011; cf. Richter 2013). Graphic and semantic variations abounded; interpolations and omissions were equally common. For activist editors, in the era before large-​scale printings of authoritative editions, felt free to insert passages as they saw fit, or to identify book and chapter titles as the presumed source of a passage, so long as interpolations might conceivably help the circle of readers the manuscript was intended for, and thereby establish the editor’s reputation for probity and erudition. (Needless to say, this attested practice makes it impossible at this remove to identify early citation practices, explicit and implicit, even if it were not the case that we contemplate but a fraction of the materials that once existed.) Such conditions prevailed across manuscript cultures, East and West

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(e.g., Finnegan 1997; Olson 1994), and philosophers have been slow to mull their implications, with some preferring, consciously or unconsciously, to posit a Chinese exceptionalism, despite the absence of evidence.9 For philosophers of texts dating to the pre-​ printing era, the most notable implications of the foregoing are probably these: (1) Nearly all pre-​imperial Chinese texts are “composite in nature” (Boltz 2005; Richter 2013). When unpunctuated editions were the norm, readers of early texts were acutely aware of what many have forgotten today: that punctuation, quotation marks, paragraphing, and verb inflection, as well as certain logical structures (e.g., the syllogism), are largely or totally lacking in early classical Chinese. That said, persuaders in the early empires found it surprisingly easy to foster a sense of significant order via collage, with gestures, allusions, and quotations (often as not unidentified), “based on a ‘logic of signs’ referring to sources lying outside the text.”10 In particular, three organizational features commonly employed in early texts in classical Chinese—​double-​directed parallelism, enumerative catalogues, and referential signifiers—​lend such collages an air of coherence, weaving semantically disparate units of inserted and quoted materials skillfully (Gentz 2015). The early texts meanwhile exhibit a similar propensity to structure arguments through the studied repetition of particles and similar devices (Nylan 2011). Therefore, to insist on the composite nature of most philosophical texts in classical Chinese by no means denies the experience of coherence that early readers may have felt. This explains why students of Chinese culture down through the ages have tended to overlook obvious inconsistencies within composite texts and gaps among commentarial treatments.11 At the same time, no text in classical Chinese was composed to be read “literally,” meaning, apart from related commentaries or other forms of expository traditions. Thus it behooves philosophers, when they are talking about Mencius, to think which Mencius they are describing from which century and why. (I am perplexed as to why so few philosophers consult Yan Lingfeng’s work detailing commentaries, glosses, and other premodern studies of the masterworks.)12 Reading an important text within a historical framework makes philosophical inquiry far more precise, and contextualized, and that, surely, is one of the discipline’s stated goals. By contrast, vague gestures toward “core Chinese traditions” lead away from the requisite precision. (2) In light of the aforementioned, we haven’t a clue how to responsibly sketch the “influence” of one text upon another, just because we presume transcriptions of two or more texts existed more or less at the same time somewhere within the present-​day boundaries of the People’s Republic of China. Away with all schemes purportedly tracing textual influences and out with all charts positing textual "citations." If textual communities outside the capital (and even within) tended to be small, and exchanges across textual communities not the norm (due to primitive transportation and communication), in all likelihood

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ordinary members of the governing elite did not have the resources at hand to compare a wide range of texts with one another. Meanwhile, a surprising number of highly revered masters even in the early empires seemed to have specialized in one or two texts or non-​text-​based practices., Thus, a wide-​ ranging love of the past, if we can trust Yang Xiong’s 揚雄 testimony, was an acquired taste that could not usually be indulged outside the confines of the palace.13 Obviously, when we know multiple versions of the same texts were in existence, we may be on slightly safer theoretical ground, but sadly, we can hardly ever be sure that texts circulating under identical titles had identical content. Many of the so-​called Zhanguo masters texts (as we now know) were actually produced from disparate sources as late as late Western Han, during the imperial library project at Chang’an in 26–​26 bce directed by Liu Xiang 劉 向 (Nylan 2011). Knowing textual histories makes a huge difference when we start to consider which texts or theories might have been in conversation with one another. (If I read another (mis)statement presuming that the Liji was the Rites Classic in pre-​Han times, I may scream!) (3) Citations from other texts, whether extant and or not, were rarely marked, since texts were more likely to be memorized than owned in manuscript form. Appreciating this fact makes all the difference, for example, when approaching Wang Chong’s 王充 [27–​97] Lunheng 論衡, where all the passages simply cannot be by Wang, the contradictions being too numerous for a single author, with the result that modern treatments have tended to casually cherry-​pick paragraphs that suit them out of the mix. That said, “citations” (among experts in manuscript culture, the preferred language is the less philologically freighted “parallels”) are legion in early writings in classical Chinese, and just keeping track of them can tell us a great deal about modes of argumentation long ago, which is all to the good. (4) Based on this, not every word in a “philosophical text” was designed to carry equal weight in an early Chinese text, in stark contrast to modern academic discourse. Just as in the time of Erasmus and Shakespeare, literary elaboration and what strikes us as a superfluity of exempla were widely admired, for a cultivated person had first to establish his bona fides with his intended audience or readers. Unfortunately, only deep reading of a wide range of sources from the period allows someone today to ascertain where the core argument resides among the copious verbiage. Perhaps the only way to identify passages of lesser importance is to undertake a relentless search for parallel passages throughout the early sources, and then systematically assess a host of small discrepancies, divine whether the extant variations appear to be graphic or semantic, and finally try to make sense of any the patterns as possible indicators of the compiler’s intent. By such painstaking processes, one can tentatively begin to isolate the key passages in the text, and hence the foci of evolving debates, often quite misleadingly slipped in after the opening particle fu 夫 (now, as we all know . . .). (5) During the early empires in China, a particular style of composition was trumpeted, a style known as zhuwen 屬文 (“putting together related passages”)

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or zhuiwen 綴文 (“stitching a text together from preexisting units”). Far from the “scissors-​and-​paste” style of composition derided in haughty Western assessments of Chinese writings (a style dependent upon ready access to major libraries of a sort that could be found only in late imperial China, after print culture was in place), the terms zhuwen and zhuiwen presuppose a reliance upon sophisticated mnemonic devices and resort to word clusters. Compilations on a given topic are strung together from other passages (not necessarily devoted to the same theme and possibly oral) that contain the same vocabulary items or the same grammatical patterns (Nylan 2011). An authoritative text may be cited even in the conclusion of an argument simply because of the pleasing coincidence of the same graphs or allied ideas.14 As a result, a masterful compiler, not a bamboo bundle or silk scroll, was the unit of knowledge at the time. And masters in manuscript cultures, including Kongzi/​ Confucius himself, evinced considerable suspicion about texts as but the “dregs” of important teachings.15 One can hardly leave the subject of manuscript culture without highlighting the recent interjection of unprovenanced materials (too often mistaken for and not distinguished from excavated texts) and “fake events” into philosophical discourse. As historian, I must register my growing dismay at the speed with which entirely fictitious events, institutions, and people are being touted as fully “historical” to the general reading public, sometimes by their advocates at prestigious institutions. For example, in the last decade or so, quite a few academics have begun to portray a pre-​Qin “Jixia Academy (稷下學宮)” as some Eastern equivalent to the well-​attested Academies associated with Plato and Aristotle in Athens.16 Over a two-​year period, before giving up, I tracked thirty articles in Chinese, and nearly the same number in Korean and Japanese devoted to this subject. I know of at least one lengthy book in English built up from precisely four early citations, each no more than ten characters long, and none using any term approximating “academician,” “academy,” or “teaching” in relation to Jixia. One citation does tell us that experts gathered at Jixia (who knows how many and when), but they tended to be military men. Nonetheless, the enthusiasts claim that at Jixia, in the pre-​unification state of Qi, either for “one brief shining moment” or for “half a millennium” (the advocates are not sure), there was a “golden age of intellectual creativity” spawned by “an academic community” where “the proponents of Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, and other doctrines debated key points, gained a sense of self-​worth, and set in motion the major philosophical discourses we know today.” These early proponents, we are told, participated in the “first permanent organizations of higher learning.” From a historian’s point of view, the problems with such latter-​ day “reconstructions” are manifest; they include the following: (1) it is not clear what institutions, if any, were ever set up at Jixia, and whether the Jixia institutions, if they even existed, were long-​lasting; thus it is entirely possible that what some now reconstruct as an “academy” consisted of nothing more than a guest house for clients who showed up on an irregular, ad hoc basis; (2) it is not clear who can be associated with Jixia, since the “masters” who supposedly assembled at the state of

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Qi are listed not as “members of schools,” but as individual experts and various lists of those experts at Jixia (not long) don’t include the same people; (3) it is equally far from clear that we can relate Jixia to any later “institutions of higher learning,” since nothing is known of a possible curriculum, roster of teachers, or legacies to Qin and Western Han. Finally, it is hard to see how any of the figures recently associated with Jixia—​the Confucian thinker Xunzi chief among them—​can be neatly retrofitted as pre-​figurations of modern “intellectuals” (as noted below). Thus the so-​called memory of Jixia (celebrated since 1989 for its alleged promotion of “universal values,” “academic freedom,” and “the spirit of free inquiry”) is nothing more than an invented memory underwritten by a nationalistic determination to supply China with its own Axial Age.17 I applaud books like Paul Cohen’s on the legend of King Goujian 勾踐 (r. 496–​ 465 bce) in contemporary China, or essays like Michael Farmer’s, which details the “afterlife” of the Three Kingdoms’ classicist Qiao Zhou 譙周 (201–​270), in novels and internet games. We need more careful reception histories on every philosophical subject, since nearly every aspect of the old narratives in the Chinese history textbooks from the first half of the twentieth century happens to be, however plausible, in key respects wrong, conflations of different historical layers and events with much “filling in” of the gaps. Dong Zhongshu was not a major figure in Western Han times, as Michael Loewe’s latest book from Brill demonstrates (Loewe 2011); the Han did not witness “the victory of Confucianism”; palace women did not cause the downfall of either Han ruling house. And so on and so on (Nylan and Loewe 2010). The issue of gross anachronisms raises the growing problem of faked materials, including fake fossils (Stone 2010), though my own preoccupations center on wooden and bamboo documents, the subject of a superb essay by Hu Pingsheng. For the last twenty years, the Cultural Relics bureau in the PRC has charged Hu, along with several others, with the onerous task of distinguishing fake from genuine documents on bamboo slips, on silk, and on wooden boards. Since the 1990s, Osaka and Hong Kong have been the centers for the disposal of antiquities (although Panjiayuan in Beijing claims a place too). Some documents from Osaka and Hong Kong were obvious fakes. But in a number of cases discussed by Hu, government agencies, interested academics, and market forces have conspired to authenticate forged documents for public consumption. One case Hu singled out is that of the Sun Wu bingfa 孫武兵法 that surfaced in 1996; Hu calls this the most notorious case of fakery in the antique market for “excavated documents.” With the Sun Wu bingfa, the forgers not only invented a plausible provenance for the materials: they also used genuinely early materials confiscated by the Red Guards for the strips, while furnishing the strips with a plausible narrative explaining how they suddenly came to light. (The story involves a heroic act by a collector, who risked death to retrieve the supposedly early materials from a raging fire.) This hit the “New Media” big time in China, and the story fooled the Japanese news agencies as well. The slips were published as genuine, and those who dared to suggest that the fakes were genuine were threatened with prosecution in court for slander. As Hu states plainly, the basic problem was that the “external propaganda department” had already talked about the extraordinary value of the slips, so when the Shaanxi

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Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau asked to subject the slips to scientific analysis, that unit was stonewalled in their every attempt to have the strips analyzed. In the end, the strips were left in a mess (with some abandoned in a garbage pit), but before that, good scholars in good faith had wasted years of hardwork to provide the slips with a historical context. Hu Pingsheng reports that an unspecified number of the Zoumalou 走馬楼 Wu-​ state bamboo slips are fake, and on my shelf sit several book-​length treatments of these very slips from China’s most prestigious presses. Recently in Beijing, some slips have surfaced that were said to represent part of the original Shiji, or even to be by the hand of Sima Qian himself!18 The Beijing media did a story on the slips, which Hu condemns as poor fakes. One could go on and on. As early as the late Qing, the market for forged documents on wood, silk, stone, and bamboo was brisk; as the Qing epigrapher Chen Jieqi 陳簠齋 (1813–​1884) said, “Wherever there exist good examples [of a type of document], there must be fakes as well.” One can go back to pre-​Han and Han times and find many examples of forgeries; faking documents, like grave robbing, has a lengthy, one might even say distinguished, history in China. Still, as Hu warns, it is getting harder for experts to distinguish fake from genuine documents, since the quality of the fakes is improving every year, and the amounts of money exchanging hands on the antiquities market is phenomenal. No less regrettably, the news media often claims that genuinely early materials are fake because they don’t match the fake documents in format, rhyme schemes, or calligraphic style. Once again, we witness the potential for bad stuff to crowd out good. “Best practices” would mandate that philosophers join with an increasing number of historians in saying they won’t treat unprovenanced materials on a par with scientifically excavated documents, and they will label them appropriately in their publications. When properly labeled, a reference to unprovenanced materials could supplement an argument, but an unprovenanced manuscript should never form the sole “proof ” for any hypothesis. Appropriate labels would probably dramatically reduce both looting and fakery, for texts become less valuable on the market, when they cannot be deployed to “prove” dubious propositions about China’s antiquity. As Hu notes, the cops in China are increasingly willing to crack down on forgeries but that is hardly the key issue. The main problem now is how to keep fake strips from being confused with real in academic circles.

FAILURES TO UNDERSTAND THE HISTORICAL CONTEXTS FOR SPECIFIC EXPRESSIONS The list of characters, binomial expressions, and slogans that are routinely misunderstood is long and varied, with the steady compounding of multiple misunderstandings impeding the development of any sense of the distinctiveness of early Chinese thinking. Too many “standard” translations derive either from Protestant Christianity (think Legge’s “righteousness” for yi 義, “appropriate conduct,” a clear steal from the King James Bible) or from ancient Greek philosophy (whence the woefully out-​of-​date “Five Elements” for wuxing 五行).19 Some presume

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it safer to stay within the realm of Chinese texts, but Buddhist inflections, not to mention late imperial usages, are no less out of place when reading the Zhuangzi, to take one example. Sometimes the Chinese texts are mined simply for what does not appear in them, contra Western expectations, surely the lowest life form of academic discourse. Alternately, Chinese texts are chided for not “organizing” information in the “rational” and approved (i.e., Western) way, riffing off Borges’s Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.20 What may prove of most use to philosophers of early (i.e., pre-​Buddhist) China21 are some explanations about wuwei 無為 (mistranslated as “nonaction”), the wu/​you 無有 dichotomy (mistranslated as “Nonbeing/​Being”), and ming 命 (mistranslated as “fate” or “destiny”), also the unpacking of ideas relating to the heart/​mind/​body. The last crops up in the contexts of discussions about the relation of human form to spirit or soul (either xin 心, the heart, or shen 神, the unseen vital force), and, metaphorically, the body politic and economic exchange. Below I offer a quick guide to well-​established but often ignored points: (1) on wuwei 無為: Nearly thirty years ago, Benjamin Schwartz argued that the wei 為 in wuwei should be read in the fourth tone (meaning, “on behalf of ”) rather than in the second tone (meaning, “acting”).22 Hence Schwartz’s “non-​purposive action” (action without a particular end or goal)—​a vast improvement upon Edward Slingerland’s “effortless action.” (Zhuangzi never claims this sort of activity will be “easy,” see below). Although rival translations can be proposed, including “non-​interfering action” and “action with no ulterior motive,” the key thing is to eschew “non-​action,” since multiple passages in the Zhuangzi preclude an understanding of the term as “passivity” or “refusal to act.” After all, in the world of Zhuangzi it could be equally dangerous for the target audience of the text, members of the governing elite, to refuse to act as to act, as Han Feizi’s “Difficulties of Persuasion” attests. (2) on wu/​you 無/​有: Far worse is the rendering of wu/​you as “Non-​being/​Being.” This dichotomy has nothing to do with ontological states, as A. C. Graham (1989: 408) showed decades ago. Certainly such a dichotomy cannot exist in a world where all things are composed of qi 氣, which notion obviates the possibility of passivity or absence and predicates ceaseless activity and transformation. The contrastive terms wu/​you are shorthand for another pair favored in some Han and later neo-​Confucian texts, including the Changes’ “Attached Sayings” (Xi ci 繫辭), xing er xia 形而下 vs. xing er shang 形而上. This pair refers, of course, to the visible world of forms versus the invisible world “beyond form,” a realm of activity that includes nascent trends and most importantly, the mysterious Dao itself. The early cosmologies found in medical texts, in philosophical treatises, and in the apocrypha are consistent: the cosmogonic sequence unfolds in progressive stages, both at the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels, from undifferentiated Oneness, obviously invisible to the eye, to ever-​greater differentiation and hence visibility (usually from yin/​ yang, to Five Phases, to the myriad things or wanwu 萬物). When conditions

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change or things transform (often the word for “die”), those forms may revert to their original states of nondifferentiation and invisibility. (The early thinkers were clearly cognizant of the facts about how bodies disintegrate after death, in eras before embalming.) Wu 無 therefore in pre-​Buddhist China is shorthand for wuxing 無形 (“without form”). It is Buddhism that introduces the Being/​ Non-​being problem, which it would do, as it originated in the Mediterranean sphere of influence. Distortions ensue when an important contrast derived from late Zhanguo and Han cosmology is occluded, with Buddhist ways of slicing up the world substituted for it. Earlier thinkers insist that certain things can be known by intuition and “extension” from things seen and known; the invisible (wu) are not invariably unintelligible. Still, the basis for knowing facts and, more importantly, for understanding processes departs from dominant Western models. That lack of a sharp Being/​Non-​being dichotomy accounts for the comparative unimportance of the related Inner/​Outer (nei/​wai 內/​外) distinction in pre-​ Buddhist writings. The distinction is not entirely absent, of course, but nei/​ wai contrasts refer more often to the official/​unofficial or visible/​invisible or public/​domestic distinctions than to any conception positing a disjunction between surface as opposed to genuine core. Instead, early thinkers apparently believed that power-​holders (i.e., the few with choices who could exert their wills) quickly revealed their commitments and ambitions via gestures, in speech, and in writing, collapsing the inner-​outer distinction, despite attempts at duplicitous conduct at court.23 Jane Geaney (2002) did us an immense service by illustrating this in her book titled On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. The post-​facto characterizations of premodern Chinese society as either a “shame” or “guilt” culture collapse, and the expressed comfort of early thinkers with duplication, imitations, and copying becomes explicable. (3) on ming 命: As Li Zehou’s Lunyu jindu 論語今讀 makes plain, ming 命, if Yang Xiong’s Taixuan 太玄 did not (Nylan 1993: Introduction and “Key Terms” section), does not refer to “destiny” or “fate” but rather to the concurrence of many cycles (e.g., cosmic, the dynasty’s, the place’s, other communities’, the family’s, and the person’s) that conduce to good or ill fortune. Ming refers to the situation one encounters, by design or by happenstance. Therefore the early thinkers proposed “timing” and “timely opportunities” (shi 時) as synonyms for it, or “a person’s lot” (or fen 分). All or nearly all ming can be altered by judicious, timely action; the question is when and how. Thus nearly all thinkers in early China are preoccupied with the question of how to limit the baleful effects accident and coincidence exert upon the thinking person’s life (Li 1998: 20). Resonance theory, which relates to ming, seems a huge stumbling block to most modern readers of classical Chinese. (“Correlative thinking” is an incoherent concept, quite frankly, since all thinking, to the degree that it utilizes abstraction, relies on correlations.)24 By the antique theories, when people, things, and events fit

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within the same category, their effect or influence upon one another is appreciably stronger. It is not that Chinese failed to understand the idea of mechanical causation. It was rather that cause-​and-​effect theories failed to explain most complex problems, including the origins and significance of astronomical patterns (Tianwen in Chinese) and ominous events; cause-​and-​effect explanations could only be applied to a painfully thin slice of phenomenal existence. One smart historian of science reviewing the Roman Empire had this to say about making sense of the world in antique eras: Facts only make “sense”—​indeed may only crystallize as facts—​within a very large web of . . . of what, exactly? Of preexisting knowledge about the world, to be sure; but facts also situate themselves within a far-​reaching social and cultural milieu, not to mention the many interrelationships facts have with our first-​hand experiences of the world (which also implicates our basic apparatus for having those experiences: our perceptual and cognitive systems) and we should not forget the important grounding that facts have in the overarching philosophical . . . and/​or logical background against which standards of accuracy, truth, and acceptability are framed. (Lehoux 2012: 5) That granted, “they [the Ancients] did not only see things differently. They saw different things (italics mine).”25 We had better take note of this, if only because, as Bernard Williams noted, “The ethical thought . . . [of these early thinkers discussed here] was not only different from most modern thought, particularly modern thought influenced by Christianity; it was also in much better shape (italics mine)”26 Needless to say, resonance theories are every bit as “rational” as theories positing cause-​and-​effect, reflecting a more complex view of the role of humans and agency in the cosmos. (Recall the “butterfly effect” in modern physics.) Sadly, modern academics live in a world where objects are typically related to one another by a constellation of physical forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, a world where human actions tend to be read via well-​articulated notions of “human agency” predicated on the model (the contemporary “regime of truth,” to borrow Foucault’s phrase) of autonomous, rational individuals.27 But historians and philosophers reading early texts must aspire to “think away modernity,” as Patricia Crone puts it in Pre-​Industrial Societies.28 By this, Crone means scholars should try to understand the milieu in which members of the governing elite did their thinking, as we have paltry evidence for those outside that circle. Once we undertake to do that, we will see how seldom the early texts address the common people and their concerns, unless they fear alterations to the status quo. Those who disregard pre-​industrial conditions tend to ascribe to antiquity the same conditions and economic classes that we see in the world today. (Most ignore the question of status altogether.) In parroting Kantian and post-​Kantian concerns, they turn too many status markers into “virtue words,” and assume the readers of texts to be Everyman with pocket editions or Internet downloads. Four examples can make the ahistoricity of such moves obvious: xian 賢 (“man of worth”), sheng 聖 (“sage”), de 德 (“charismatic power”), and shi 士 (“man-​in-​service”). Historians of Europe know that, prior to the seventeenth century, the only persons deemed

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“worthy” enough to be expert witnesses, let alone moral exemplars, were those who already enjoyed high status by virtue of birth and service to the state.29 Elites deemed themselves arbiters of what others believed, to put it crudely, and they were gratified to reserve that privilege for themselves. The term xian in the pre-​Song era carries much the same valence as “gentlemen,” in seventeenth-​century England, with neither virtue nor erudition the main criteria for inclusion in the group of “worthy men.”30 Mozi, centuries before Qin and Han, articulated three tests by which to judge events, the first of which was to “seek the origin and investigate the realities seen and heard by the Hundred Clans 百姓,” where this select group can only represent the most prominent clans at the various Eastern Zhou courts.31 Rhetorical pieces in literature (e.g., the Zhuangzi 莊子; the Lienü zhuan 列女傳) and in visual culture (e.g., depictions of the child prodigy Xiang Tuo 相橐) do indeed query the pat assumption that adult male members of the governing elite were invariably equipped with reasoning powers far superior to the young, the female, or the lowborn. But judging from extant texts, those outrageous objections flew in the face of the common wisdom. “Worth” usually implied office-​holding (actual or potential),32 and the idea of charisma (de 德), having “powers in reserve,” rather than undue reliance on a single sort of technical training and expertise (Xunzi yinde, 59/​16/​23–​24). Recall that in pre-​industrial societies specialized training was often equated with servitude.33 Similarly, the word for “sage” so often stood for “ruler” and “minister” that Kongzi had to be crowned as king eventually. (After that crowning, the figure of Kongzi had then to be defended against charges of lèse majesté for pronouncing judgment on his social superiors publicly.) Shi 士 is a fourth word that has proven troublesome. It generally indicated nothing about the level of educational attainment a person had achieved; it again referred generally to the hereditary background that qualified a man for office-​holding. Most often, the shi we know became advisers or persuaders, actual officials at imperial, royal, and local administrative courts (more on this in the next section). “Scholar” only rarely coincides with the status of shi; sometimes knowledge of the past was useful in court discussions, but it was hardly a precondition for participation. Still more tone-​deaf is talk of “academics” or “intellectuals” in the premodern context. Yu Yingshi and others who are wont to talk of “intellectuals” cheerfully ignore the term’s history. Originally, in the nineteenth century, it described “socially alienated, theologically literate, anti-​establishment lay intelligentsia” (McGrath 2004: 53), exiles from court with independent means—​hardly a good description for most thinkers of early China. Then, too, there was no time when the probable readers of the Zhanguo, Qin, or Han masters could safely insulate themselves from threats by those in power. For at the time only an estimated ten percent of the entire population commanded basic literacy and numeracy, and no more than a fraction of the literate enjoyed the sort of “high cultural literacy” that reading the Zhuangzi requires.34 Hence the masters’ propensity to think, and teach, and compile strategically, in the hopes that they might survive and prosper. Pure panegyric could be pure irony; this was the language that they routinely spoke (not academic-​speak) and wove into their theories. As with Pliny the Younger half way round the world, the trick was “neither to mar one’s reputation by some reply that would have been expedient

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but shameful, nor snare oneself in the nooses of so insidious an interrogation.”35 Therefore, the term xiao yao 逍遙 (invariably given as “free and easy” in treatments of the Zhuangzi) initially referred instead to “being in a daze,” as the Shiji parallel makes plain. (I do not deny that the term acquired the meaning of “free and easy” in the post-​Han period, but the subsequent need to cover over the original meaning should intrigue us all.) Clearly, these ancient texts retain much value for modern readers belonging to very different groups with potentially different agendas. After all, the early thinkers set themselves the pragmatic task of addressing this-​ world concerns germane to the human condition, most typically, the questions of how to regulate social relations, how to fashion a life worth living, and how to institute good governance. The moral condition of humanity has not changed so much as to make their keen insights outdated. Elsewhere, I have argued that such finely honed rhetoric calibrated to specific situations neatly, albeit inadvertently, skirts the perennial “is-​ought” dilemma posed in Western philosophy.36 Meanwhile, many students of philosophy, including this author, are willing to contribute to latter-​day “inventions of traditions” (Hobshawn and Ranger 1992), seeing such evolutions as but one form of future-​directed philosophizing on the model as Kongzi’s “warming up [and so reinvigorating] the old.” But the first step in inventing traditions should not be to deny age-​old readings. Rather it should be to locate which messages still have the power to speak to us today, even as we deliberately refuse to deny the strangeness that some of the old readings convey across the centuries. For only that radical sense of strangeness is likely to prod us to rethink today’s “regime of truth” regarding human dignity and value, and its possibilities at the personal and social levels, so that we ourselves can devise appropriate therapeutic measures.37 But the problem persists: how are we quickly to ascertain the precise connotations of words when modern dictionaries usually supply long lists of definitions pertaining to all periods, without indicating early vs. later word usage?38 My advice (learned from Henry Rosemont) is to watch for concept clusters, rather than for single characters.39 It is not only that single characters were likely to be emended by those activist editors down through the centuries; it is also that within their contexts many Chinese verbs, nouns, and particles acquire or lose shades of meaning, depending on how they are juxtaposed with other words.40 The search for concept clusters, on the other hand, quickly moves one to consider the possible conversations a given piece of writing participated in, also the assumptions of the participants, urging philosophers on to accept the mantra, “Context, context, context!”

FAILURES TO UNDERSTAND THE ROLE OF EDUCATION AND DEBATE, AS WELL AS THE SOCIAL IDENTITIES OF THE DEBATERS From a historian’s stance, philosophers sometimes maintain odd ideas about the social realities of the distant past. One possible reason is this: The dominant narratives for the China field came together before World War II in the textbooks penned

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by such monumental figures as Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1873–​1923), Hu Shi 胡适 (1891–​1961), and Qian Mu 錢穆 (1896–​1978). Members of this generation, given the repeated waves of political crises besetting China, avidly sought counterparts in early China for the very phenomena deemed absolutely essential to the course of progress in Euro-​American history. Experts in the classical era duly set about assigning the philosophical writings to Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Logician, or Legalist sectarian “schools,” retrojecting the idea backwards in time, adopting an old academic model lifted from comparative religion, Kantian categorical imperatives, and their presumptions of exclusive allegiances. This cast of thinking reverberated outside China. In a very influential piece, for example, A. C. Graham (1989: 171–​ 174) famously discerned in the Zhuangzi what he regarded as separate philosophical strands attributable to different “schools.” This approach may have made sense in Graham’s time, but regrettably, in recent years, this anachronistic approach has been gaining renewed currency, despite an abundance of counter-​evidence gleaned from recently excavated manuscripts. One need only check out the latest iteration of the ICS Concordance Texts (CHANT) electronic database from Hong Kong, which now forces you to select early texts for examination via their supposed “schools.” And then there are the many general introductions to Chinese philosophy that reflexively base their accounts of Han-​era thinking on an “ideology” they dub “Han Confucianism” said to be a “syncretistic” or “eclectic” product of discrete Legalist, Mohist, Daoist, Ruist, and Cosmologist traditions (e.g., Bai Tongdong 2012; Ge Zhaoguang 2014), despite a stunning lack of contemporaneous evidence for either discrete “schools” in pre-​Han and Han times or for strict genre distinctions.41 Meanwhile, the best Euro-​American historians have long parted ways with such views. They no longer posit a “triumph of Confucianism” at the time of Han Wudi (r. 141–​87 bce), nor do they ascribe to any set of teachings in Western or Eastern Han the sort of systematicity implied by “ism,” aside from, possibly, a few tiny, cohesive religious communities forming in late Eastern Han far away from the capital.42 Not for nothing has Michael Loewe, the premier historian of Han, for decades carefully avoided alluding to “Confucianism” in his writings. Granted, some Han thinkers did call for more coherence in knowledge and action,43 but only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a millennium or so after Eastern Han, did Wang Anshi 王安石 (1021–​1086) and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–​1200) make concerted efforts to cordon off “correct readings” across and within highly intertextual traditions.44 In early China, by contrast, we find Xunzi 荀卿 (?335–​?238 bce) in his influential treatise “On Ritual” 禮論 discarding the possibility that there can and should exist only one idea about social practices and ethical duties. All the major Han thinkers followed Xunzi’s lead in espousing orthopraxy, in large part because early states saw no conceivable advantage in trying to legislate belief throughout society. The unambiguous preference of even the most systematic thinkers from late Zhanguo through the two Han dynasties (Western Han, 206 bce–​9 ce; Eastern Han, 23–​220 ce), including Xunzi, was to seek to capture as many ideas as possible “as in a net,” in hopes of increasing their chances of practical success via a “complete” or “comprehensive way” (bei dao 備道, zhou dao 周道).45 Persuasive speeches

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sometimes entailed a hefty dose of verbal pyrotechnics, but they were more apt to win plaudits when they displayed a sure command of all viable positions on a topic related to policy. Good advice, by definition then, aimed at being broadly applicable, and without overt flaw or bias. Hence Zhuangzi’s view, as summarized by Guo Xiang 郭象 (volume 1, c­ hapter 2, 36), that “it is stubborn and vulgar to blithely trust to the prejudices of one expert” (欣然信一家之偏見，可謂固陋矣)—​a sentiment echoed again and again in the early thinkers’ writings.46 But whereas all the pre-​Han and Han thinkers presupposed the value of at least some earlier ideas and slogans, each thinker was expected to put together his own singular vision mixing past and present ideas (Knoblock and Reigel 2000: 16). That vision could not be justified by any appeal to a single unitary Truth or God or natural law. It had always to be justified by explicit reference to the set of issues confronting the dynasty, the community, or the person. And since nearly all the Han arguments that have come down to us were crafted by skilled persuaders employed or hoping to be employed at courts at the imperial or royal levels, we find in the writings ascribed to them the ad hoc give-​and-​take typical of resourceful debaters, rather than the cool and consistent analysis produced by today’s “intellectuals” operating in a rigorous scholarly environment. Words mean things, especially to philosophers, even if we grant Zhuangzi’s (and Wittgenstein’s) sensible objection, “but what they mean is never fixed.” Thus, stricto sensu, the extant Han dynasty texts display no impulse toward “eclecticism” (let alone “syncretism”), for the simple reason that in early China there was no “single, unitary, and exclusive doctrine, interpretation, or method,” prompting a person to wish for “reconciliation or union of conflicting (as religious) beliefs” (see Webster’s 1971: 719, on “eclecticism”; Webster’s 1971: 2319, on “syncretism”). By analogy one might consider the rather casual adoption in the second sentence of this paragraph of a formula carried over from Latin into English, which hardly constitutes a self-​conscious citation of a specific Latin work, let alone a reconciliation, especially since the phrase now appears in all English-​language dictionaries in my possession. Talk of either “syncretism” or “eclecticism” transfers an inappropriate model from Western (specifically, Judaeo-​Christian) religion, whence it made its way into Kantian and post-​Kantian philosophy, where orthodoxy (“right belief ”) and the allied notions of Truth trumped orthopraxy (“right practice”). However, conditions in China could hardly have been less like those prevailing in Euro-​America, as Voltaire (1694–​1778) realized before the French Revolution. Neither the state nor any other entity mandated a specific set of beliefs for subjects in China; there was no established church. Accordingly, there was no conceivable reason for anyone to espouse the type of highly self-​conscious eclecticism that we associate with, say, Origen. Meanwhile, that quite an astonishing range of people in pre-​Han and Han times, including Mozi 墨子 and Yang Zhu 楊朱, were granted the status of “experts in the past” or "classicists" (Ru 儒) underscores the inappropriateness of applying a sectarian model to the social realities or conceptual landscapes of early China. Historians with some success have been working to produce substantive secondary studies on the related topics of pedagogy, libraries, court debates, and rhetorical usages in early China. Fully one-​fourth of the supplement to The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, entitled China’s Early Empires, concerns rhetorical constructions,

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as does a recent issue of Asiatiche Studien/​Études asiatiques 68.4 (2014). The Way and Word, the various replies to it, and a very helpful volume in French (Tri and Despeux 2003), review the subject of early education, so that now we have some idea of how pedagogy in China compared with that in other classical civilizations.47 Libraries have been the subject of several recent secondary studies.48 Once more, I reiterate my firm belief that philosophers of early China will become much smarter readers of their favorite texts once they take the trouble to ascertain the cultural contexts in which their pieces were composed and edited.

HAPHAZARD CHOICES OF LESS-​THAN-​HELPFUL TRANSLATIONS My last injunction to philosophers is to more seriously consider which translations they adopt and for which purposes. (All translations, needless to say, have historical value as artifacts of a given time, place, and expected readership.) Every translation represents an interpretation. Each translation was made with a specific set of readers in mind; this intended readership affects the translation’s inflections, down to specific word choices, when translators know what they are doing. No translation is “literal” (nor can it be). I am frankly appalled to see philosophers choosing a new translation simply because it’s new, or basing a theory on an old translation simply because the translation is near-​to-​hand. To take one example: D. C. Lau did a brilliant translation of the Mencius, which is hardly likely to be bettered in my lifetime; on the other hand, his translation of the Analects is dreadful, for it has Kongzi intoning solemn injunctions like a stuffy Oxbridge don. Arthur Waley’s translations, undeniably brilliant in their way, are marred occasionally by his assumption that parts of the Analects and Daodejing date to a “pre-​moral phase” [read: “primitive”] within a unilinear scheme of civilizational progress, on the model put forward in Fraser’s Golden Bough. And so it goes. My advice for readers of classical Chinese is always to compare several translations when they exist, as this exercise quickly allows identification of the points where the controversies and distinctive features of the text lie. To the degree that they can, I urge philosophers to think about revising the current translations, as most were penned in eras long before we had abundant archaeological evidence. Thanks to the Web (not to mention paper resources available electronically), it is easy to make informed choices about the books one chooses to base an analysis on, by referring to related essays and reviews. There is moreover a growing pile of books and essays devoted to the topic of translations, among them, the 1998 The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, by Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont (with an illuminating section devoted to translation issues), and, more recently, Gu Ming Dong’s Translating China for Western Readers: Reflective, Critical, and Practical Essays (2014). It would seem a shame to use Legge’s translations without having read Girardot’s fine biography of the missionary, or Karlgren’s translations without Bagley.49 The Norton Critical Edition of the Analects reviews major translations for that work, and entire issues of journals are sometimes now (as with a forthcoming issue of Philosophy

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East and West) devoted to individual translators’ philosophical backgrounds.50 Nicolas Standaert’s Website for KU-​Leuven on the Jesuits offers untold riches, as does Carine Defoort’s journal namely Contemporary Chinese Thought. Three major presses (Belles Lettres in France, Columbia University, and the University of Washington Press in Seattle) have now begun to produce fine translations by reputable scholars with substantial scholarly apparatus and even facing pages of Chinese-​English. Springer seems intent upon supplying us with ever more “handbooks” devoted to individual thinkers.51 John Makeham as well as Matsukawa Kenji 松川健二 (1994) in Japan and Lin Qingzhang 林慶彰 (2006) in Taiwan have supplied thorough analyses of the entire reception history for a single text, the Analects.52 Philosophers, when they can, should make an effort to weigh competing commentarial traditions, primarily so they can see how huge the gap is between Han and Song constructions of same text in the case of the classics and masterworks. Admittedly, Euro-​American scholarship and Chinese are pursuing divergent (and often conflicting) tracks, in part due to funding opportunities in their respective countries. In addition, Euro-​American scholars are increasingly wary of academic trends in the post-​Deng People’s Republic of China, where there exists far greater pressure to “publish or perish” for the benefit of the university numbers-​crunchers, with predictable results in terms of half-​baked scholarship. The hope is that enhanced cooperation between Euro-​American scholars and their Chinese counterparts may eventually bring about the ideal where each learns from the other. China is not the “Other,” and it never has been. The fact of China itself and the relation between China and America, from the days of the Founding Fathers, has been far too complex and protean to be adequately captured by subaltern theories, stimulating though those may be. Turn about is fair play. What do I wish historians knew about philosophy? Within some philosophical circles over the last decade or so, I have witnessed accelerating efforts to upend Eurocentrism coupled with a growing curiosity to learn about what riches China might have to offer. Whereas historians and anthropologists, in Jack Goody’s telling, have found it continues to be most profitable to celebrate this elusive entity called “Western civilization,” a shell game if ever there was one. Recently I have read fine papers by Eric Hutton, Kwong-​loi Shun, David Wong, and Henry Rosemont, to name but a few, that take ways of thinking in early China as the primary focus, feeling no obligation to kowtow to Euro-​American traditions. There is a chance within the discipline of philosophy, in other words, insofar as it centers on the play of ideas, to move beyond sorry national histories and identities, in search of more compelling global perspectives. I have a dear friend who laughs, “There are some ideas too bad to die.” I am more sanguine. May philosophers lead us all, historians included, to happier days.

NOTES 1. Let me first thank Henry Rosemont, Jr. for giving a draft of this chapter a critical reading. All of the infelicities in the chapter are, needless to say, my own.

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2. On the German prejudices against Chinese philosophy, deemed “primitive” and “pre-​ moral” on racist grounds, see Park (2013: 11–​30, 97–​112), especially ­chapters 1, 4. On rote and ritual learning, see Fingarette (1972), as well as the work of Bell, most recently Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (2009). These should alert us to how silly this equation is. 3. Achilles Fang was merciless in his excoriation of others’ translations (though he made errors himself); see Wright (1953: 263–​285). 4. Roger Chartier in Paris and D. F. McKenzie in Oxford were among the first to remind us how much the format, size, medium, and location of a piece of writing determine its reception and interpretations. Two books of obvious interest to philosophers, for comparative purposes, are Identités d’auteur dans l’antiquité et la tradition européenne (Chartier 2004) and Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century (Chartier 2007); for McKenzie, see Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (1986). 5. For the basics of pre-​Song manuscript culture, consult Cherniack (1994); Drège (1991); and Nylan (2001). Joseph McDermott (2006) believes that manuscript culture was more pervasive in the post-​Song period than other scholars would allow. 6. I have put “philosophical texts” in quotation marks for two reasons: First, quite a few Western philosophers have argued that early China had no “philosophy,” since it doesn’t adhere to Western expectations about the value of absolute Truth claims. Though some would say the field has given up on those, preferring clear statements of positions and articulating reasons for and against the proposed positions, some smart philosophers have shown that the field has progressed little in that direction. Highly recommended is Chappell (2014). Second, as there were no strict genre distinctions before the fourth century ce, there is no class of texts that especially qualifies as “philosophical.” To take one example, Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (?145–​?86 bce) monumental history, the Shiji 史記or Archivists’ Records asks a number of philosophical questions, especially in c­ hapters 61 and 129, the “bookends” of the biographical chapters. 7. Such issues do not only pertain, of course, to early Chinese writings; to take one Western example, Alexander Shute in 1888 conclusively demonstrated that what we call “Aristotle” is a collection of writings produced long after the thinker’s death. However, philosophers often choose to ignore this finding, as noted in Montgomery (2000: ­chapter 1). 8. The propensity to refer to “Chinese” readers across the entire expanse of what is now the modern nation-​state of the People’s Republic of China is wildly anachronistic. Everywhere, we see evidence of much smaller textual communities, which is why so many went from master to master, in search of technical expertise. 9. Among the most vociferous “deniers” that manuscript cultures differ from print cultures have been Li Xueqin 李學勤 in the PRC and Edward Shaughnessy in the United States. 10. Most early texts consist of what Matthias Richter (2002) calls “formal elements” which appear in multiple texts and these seem to carry specific literary forms into any given text. I have changed Richter’s “that refers” to “referring,” to suit the sense of the passage here.

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11. Past work involved the Fayan and Taixuan, where I gained a real appreciation of the startling differences ascribed to the same texts by Han versus Song versus modern commentators. That impression of gaps has been duly confirmed by recent work on the Documents classic. 12. The modern scholar Yan Lingfeng 嚴靈峰 (1904–​?) catalogued every known “secondary study” on the masters’ in the six volumes of his Zhou Qin Han Wei zhu zi zhi jian shu mu 周秦漢魏諸子知見書目 (1975–​1979). 13. Drège (1991); see Nylan (2015a). For the “new” fashion to cite “old texts” in late Western Han, see Nylan (forthcoming) on the Ptolemaic and Chang’an libraries, in a festschrift for Geoffrey Lloyd (CUP, scheduled for 2016). 14. One instance may suffice to demonstrate this: a passage in the Hanshi waizhuan (10/​ 72) details Bao Shuya’s 鮑叔牙 generous recommendation of his friend, Guan Zhong 管仲, to his ruler. The anecdote ends with a citation of the Odes line “Splendid were those many knights /​who gave comfort to Wen the King” (jiji duoshi, Wenwang yi ning 濟濟多士, 文王以寧). See Ode 235/​3 (Waley 1937: 250). Now Bao and Guan lived hundreds of years after King Wen, and they served under a very different system of political rule. What prompts the citation is simply the fictive Bao Shuya’s hope that his recommendation will “increase the number of [worthy] men in service” (reading the same two graphs duoshi as verb-​object rather than as adjective-​noun, in order to conjure related themes). Bao Shuya could conceivably be thinking of the Documents and many other compilations, oral and written, as well. (At the risk of taking readers further afield from the main point, it is highly germane that all learned men and women in Zhanguo, Qin, and Han seemed to have studied at least some of the Odes, and so references to that Classic were natural moves in all cultivated rhetoric.) 15. The Zhuangzi is famous for Wheelwright Bian, and for Western civilization, we have Socrates’s suspicion, in the Platonic dialogues. 16. Hartnett (2011), with a foreword from Zhang Baoshu, is one example. 17. Nathan Sivin’s essay should have made this outpouring impossible. He covered the ahistoricity of the Jixia Academy in Sivin (1995). 18. How we would know what the hand of Sima Qian in 100 bc was like is beyond me. 19. The standard Han gloss for yi 義 is yi 宜. On wuxing theory, see Nylan (2010). The experts here are Nathan Sivin and Volker Scheid. 20. Schäfer (1986) is relevant for the first point. See Borges (1942) for the Chinese encyclopedia. 21. Buddhist influence is very slight, outside the sangha, among members of the cultural elite before 316 ce. Legends that put the introduction of Buddhism much earlier, at the beginning of Eastern Han, are probably only pious legends (Barrett 2010). 22. Schwartz (1985: 188). A. C. Graham continued to use “nonacting” although he equated wuwei with ziran. Graham (1989: 232) stated the difference, but without discussion and too compactly to be persuasive: “Wei is ordinary human action, deliberated for a purpose, in contrast with the spontaneous processes of nature which are ‘so of themselves,’ ” but he still translated wuwei as “doing nothing” until his much later work, when he adopted “non-​purposive action.” See Graham (1986). I am grateful to Nathan Sivin for this confirmation (personal communication, March 20, 2015).

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23. This strong belief threads through the Zuozhuan and Shiji, to take but two examples. 24. For a quick overview of how incoherent “correlative thought” (a.k.a. “correlative cosmology”) is, see Luke Habberstad, Appendix, to Nylan (2010: 398–​414). Glaringly ahistorical are attempts to tie Western Han innovations to the Shang period, despite a gap of a millennium in time. 25. Lehoux (2012: 6). Although “omens” can be “distinguished” from portents, in this chapter, as in the Suishu “Wuxing zhi,” they are interchangeable. 26. Williams explained why in the first chapter of his Shame and Necessity: “since this system of ideas basically lacks the concept of morality altogether, in the sense of a class of reasons or demands which are vitally different from other kinds of reason or demand . . . . Relatedly, . . . the questions of how one’s relations to others are to be regulated, both in the context of society and more privately, are not detached from questions about the kind of life it is worth living” (italics mine). Adapting Bernard Williams (1993: 20, 251), for Williams speaks of the Ancient Greeks; and I of thinkers writing in classical Chinese. 27. Henry Rosemont has written eloquently about this pernicious fiction in several works, most recently his work on “individualism” (2015). I am reminded of the old saw that the early Chinese thinkers did not understand the notion of Truth, with a capital “T.” Garret Olberding (2012) goes a long way to explaining the difference, as they saw it, between “factual accuracy” and the “truth of the matter.” Paul Veyne (1988) shows that this distinction mattered very much to the early Greeks as well. 28. For example, Patricia Crone (1989: 10) writes, “To think away modern industry is to think away an enormous amount of wealth.” 29. For this argument about worth, see Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985). Cf. Elvin (1984), which shows that the eighteenth century was the crucial turning point for what he calls the “democratization of virtues” (i.e., the time when virtues once assumed to apply to the noble in rank and spirit came to be required of members of the lower classes). 30. For Ru as men whose testimony and texts can generally be believed, see Lunheng  3/​6b. 31. Mozi 9.3/​58/​21–​29, for both quotations. Hui-​chieh Loy (personal communication) agrees that the Hundred Clans at the time of Mozi cannot be the masses or commoners, since Mozi lists those people separately. Mozi’s third test is to “observe the benefits of the ruling house, the Hundred Clans, and the masses.” 32. For instance, many discussions assert that self-​rule is the best way to rule others. Similarly, the jing’s frequent talk of prioritizing pleasures and choosing among options would have had little or no relevance to over ninety percent of the Han subjects who were farmers living perilously close to the margin of subsistence. 33. This point was emphasized by Joseph R. Levenson (1965, passim). 34. For these figures, see Nylan (2001), citing William V. Harrist and others. More recently, Robin D. S. Yates (2011) has tried to argue on very slim evidential basis (a few excavated letters) that literacy was far more pervasive. Apparently, he forgets that there were scriveners and scribes in early China, which means all bets are off when drawing conclusions from such a slim evidential base. 35. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 1.5.7, cited in Bartsch (1994: 64). In the original, Pliny uses “myself ” instead of “oneself,” and I have changed the pronoun to suit the context.

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36. A. C. Graham continued to be troubled by this dichotomy, and came up with his own solution in Graham (1985) and Graham (1983). 37. Antonio Delbanco (2012: 17), in speaking of reflective citizenship and self-​ knowledge, identifies a “skeptical discontent with the present, informed by a sense of the past” (italics mine), and a “willingness to imagine experiences from perspectives other than one’s own” as two primary routes to development of “a sense of ethical responsibility,” but if the “sense of the past” is merely what suits present exigencies, it is hardly likely to offer possibilities for the sort of therapeutic exercises that Pierre Hadot (2002) finds in neo-​Platonism, and many of us, in early Chinese texts. 38. For those who read French, Couvreur (1947) is a welcome exception. 39. For “concept clusters,” see Rosemont (2013: 17–​21). Cf. Rosemont (2015). 40. I dealt with the particle shi gu 是故 (robotically translated as “for this reason” or “therefore”) in an earlier essay: “Logical Connectives” in Nylan (2013). 41. Earnest if ill-​advised extrapolations from Han-​era library catalogue divisions have often contributed to the present muddle, as has a serious misreading of the term jia 家 (“experts” in the early texts, rather than “schools”). This was the conclusion reached in Kidder Smith (2003). Michael Nylan and Mark Csikszentmihalyi (2003) shows that the first extended talk of “schools” comes in the early fifth-​century Hou Hanshu, although the Hanshu “Yi wen zhi” 藝文志 builds a case for the existence of some “family lineages” which specialized in interpreting a single Classic. See also Jens Østergard Petersen (1995). 42. The phrase “triumph of Confucianism” derives from the writings of Homer H. Dubs, around the time of World War II (Dubs 1938–​1955). For the ahistoricity of the so-​ called triumph, see Nylan (1999 and 2008). For “no schools,” cf. Yuri Pines (2014). Mohism, in its early phase, may have been an exception to the rule, insofar as it apparently called for a religious or quasi-​religious commitment from its followers well beyond a dedication to the past. 43. If we consult the sources at roughly hundred-​year intervals, we find c. 136 bce Dong Zhongshu’s 董仲舒 (c.179–​c104) assessment of the state of classical learning in a memorial to Wudi: “At present teachers propagate strange principles. Our fellow human beings hold to unusual practices. The many experts have idiosyncratic methods, and the conclusions to which they point are not identical.” A hundred years later, Yang Xiong described a cacophonous “marketplace of ideas” prevailing under a court that sadly lacked a truly balanced teacher to weigh contradictory claims. A century after Yang, Xu Shen 許慎 (d. 120 ce?), compiler of the Shuowen 說文, wrote, “Men all use their private judgment, right and wrong has no standard, while clever opinions and slanted pronouncements have caused considerable confusion among scholars.” And a hundred years after Xu, the classical master Ying Shao應劭 (d. c.203 ce) lodged the by-​now all-​too familiar complaint: “Each and every person has his own mind, and none achieves the proper balance.” Of course, the thinkers cited here did not always agree with each other’s ideas on various subjects. 44. Some would object, being mindful of the imperially sponsored Wujing zhengyi corpus compiled by Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–​648). However, as Noma Fumachika 野間

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45. 46. 47.

48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

文史 (2008) has shown, there is little evidence to suggest that the Wujing zhengyi fixed any kind of classical interpretation in the Tang (or that it was meant to), since the text does not appear to have circulated widely, if at all. Only in early Tang were candidates for the mingjing 明經 (“Well-​versed in Classics”) exam ever asked to follow the interpretations outlined in the Wujing zhengyi. See, for example, Sima Qian 司馬遷 summarizing his goals in Shiji 史記 130.3319. For Xunzi, see, for example, ­chapter 3 (“Bu gou” 不 ​ 苟). My own key criticism of The Way and the Word, registered in Nylan (2008), was that it argued that debates were more irenic in early China. In response to that, I have translated a memorial by Gu Yong in 12 bce that was hardly “irenic”; one cannot imagine that more forthright criticism could be offered today at the Whitehouse or in Whitehall. The classic, of course, is Jean-​Pierre Drège (1991); very impressive is Roger Greatrex (1994). Cf. Nylan (2011); also Nylan (2015b), forthcoming essay in honor of Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, comparing the Great Library in Ptolemaic Alexandria with the Chang’an imperial libraries in late Western Han. Girardot (2002); Bagley (2008) (don’t be fooled by the title; this is an in-​depth comparison of Karlgren’s methodologies as against Loehr’s). See the forthcoming issue devoted to Li Zehou, who has written an important “translation” of the Analects, from the original in classical Chinese (wenyan wen) to modern Chinese (putonghua). Amy Olberding (2014) on the Analects; Eric Hutton, on the Xunzi, is due out within the year. Also laudable in this connection is Ashmore (2010).

REFERENCES Ashmore, R. (2010), The Transport of Reading, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. Bagley, R. W. (2008), Max Loehr and the Study of Chinese Bronzes: Style and Classification in the History of Art, Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Program. Barrett, T. H. (2010), “Religious Changes under Eastern Han and Its Successors: Some Current Perspectives and Problems,” in M. Nylan and M. Loewe (eds.), China’s Early Empires: A Supplement to The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, Cambridge: CUP. Bartsch, S. (1994), Actors in the Audience, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bell, C. (2009), Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boltz, W. G. (2005), “The Composite Nature of Early Chinese Texts,” in M. Kern (ed.), Text and Ritual in Early China, Seattle: University of Washington. Borges, J. L. (1942), ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins (El idioma analítico de John Wilkins),’ url=https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_​Analytical_​Language_​of_​John_​ Wilkins Chappell, T. (2014), Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chartier, R. (2004), Identités d’auteur dans l’antiquité et la tradition européenne, Grenoble: J. Millon.

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Chartier, R. (2007), Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, A. Goldhammer (trans.), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Cherniack, S. (1994), “Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China,” Harvard Journal of Asian Studies, 54.2: 5–​126. Couvreur, S. (1947), Dictionnaire classique de la langue chinoise, Peiping: Vetch. Crone, P. (1989), Pre-​Industrial Societies, New York: Blackwell. Delbanco, A. (2012), College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Drège, J. P. (1991), Les Bibliothèques en Chine au temps des manuscrits (jusqu’au Xe siècle), Paris: École Française d’Extême-​Orient. Elvin, M. (1984), “Female Virtue and the State in China,” Past and Present, 104: 111–​153. Fingarette, H. (1972), Confucius: The Sacred as Secular, New York: Harper & Row. Finnegan, R. (1997), Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gentz, J. (2015), “Introduction,” in D. Meyer and J. Gentz (eds.), Literary Forms of Argument in Early China, Leiden: Brill. Girardot, N. (2002), The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s oriental Pilgrimage, Berkeley: University of California Press. Graham, A. C. (1983), “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’,” in V. H. Mair (ed.), Experimental Essays on Chuang Tzu, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Graham, A. C. (1985), Reason and Spontaneity, London: Curzon Press. Graham, A. C. (1986), Yin-​Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking, Paper and Monograph Series, vol. 6, Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, La Salle: Open Court. Greatrex, R. (1994), “An Early Western Han Synonymicon: The Fuyang Copy of the Cang Jie pian,” in Outstretched Leaves on His Bamboo Staff: Studies in Honour of Göran Malmqvist on His 70th Birthday, Stockholm: The Association of Oriental Studies. Gu, M. D. (ed.) (2014), Translating China for Western Readers: Reflective, Critical, and Practical Essays, Albany: State University of New York Press. Hadot, P. (2002), What Is Ancient Philosophy? M. Chase (trans.), Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hartnett, R. A. (2011), The Jixia Academy and the Birth of Higher Learning in China: A Comparison of Fourth-​Century B.C. Chinese Education with Ancient Greece, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Hobshawn, E. and T. Ranger (eds.) (1992), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knoblock, J. and J. Reigel (2000), The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lehoux, D. (2012), What Did the Romans Know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levenson, J. R. (1965), Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Li, Z. H. 李澤厚 (1998), Lunyu jindu 論語今讀, Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu. Lin, Q. Z. 林慶彰 et al. (2006), Lunyu sixiangshi 論語思想史, Taipei: Wanchuan. Loewe, M. (2011), Dong Zhongshu, a ‘Confucian’ Heritage and the Chunqiu Fanlu, Leiden: Brill. Matsukawa, K. (1994), Rongo no shisōshi 論語の思想史, Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin. McDermott, J. (2006), A Social History of the Chinese Book: Books And Literati Culture in Late Imperial China, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. McGrath, A. (2004), The Twilight of Atheism, New York: Doubleday. McKenzie, D. F. (1986), Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, London: British Museum. Montgomery, S. L. (2000), Science in Translation: Movements of Knowledge through Cultures and Time, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nylan, M. (trans.) (1993), The Canon of Supreme Mystery, by Yang Hsiung, Albany: State University of New York Press. Nylan, M. (1999), “A Problematic Model: The Han “Orthodox Synthesis” Then and Now,” in K. W. Chow, O. C. Ng, and J. B. Henderson (eds.), Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, Albany: State University of New York Press. Nylan, M. (2001), “Textual Authority in pre-​Han and Han,” Early China, 25: 1–​54. Nylan, M. (2008), “Classics without Canonization, Reflections on Classical Learning and Authority in Qin (221–​210 BC) and Han (206 BC-​AD 220),” in J. Lagerwey and M. Kalinowski (eds.), Early Chinese Religion, Part One, Shang through Han (1250 BC–​AD 220), Leiden: Brill. Nylan, M. (2010), “Yin/​yang, Five Phases, and qi,” in M. Nylan and M. Loewe (eds.), China’s Early Empires: A Supplement to The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, Cambridge: CUP. Nylan, M. (2011), Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in Han China, New Haven: The American Oriental Society. Nylan, M. (2013), “Logical Connectives in the Huainanzi,” in M. Puett and S. Queen (eds.), Text and Context: New Perspectives on the Huainanzi, Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian monograph. Nylan, M. (2015a), “Structure and Anti-​structure, Convention and Counter-​ convention: Clues to the Exemplary Figures’ (Fayan 法言) Construction of Yang Xiong 揚雄 as Classical Master,” in D. Meyer and J. Gentz (eds.), Literary Forms of Argument in Early China, Leiden: Brill. Nylan, M. (2015b), “Supplying the Capital with Water and Food,” in M. Nylan and G. Vankeerberghen (eds.), Chang’an 26 BCE, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Nylan, M. and M. Csikszentmihalyi (2003), “Constructing Lineages and Inventing Traditions through Exemplary Figures in Early China,” T’oung pao, 89: 1–​41. Nylan, M. and M. Loewe (eds.) (2010), China's Early Empires, supplement to The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, Ch'in and Han, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olberding, A. (ed.) (2014), Dao Companion to the Analects, Dordrecht: Springer Olberding, G. (2012), Dubious Facts, Albany: State University of New York Press. Olson, D. R. (1994), The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Park, P. K. J. (2013), Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press. Petersen, J. Ø. (1995), “Which Books Did the First Emperor of Ch’in Burn? On the Meaning of Pai chia in Early Chinese Sources,” Monumenta Serica, 43: 1–​52. Pines, Y. (ed.) (2014), “Liu Zehua and Studies of China’s Monarchism,” as special thematic issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought, 39. Richter, M. (2013), The Embodied Text: Establishing Textual Identity in Early Chinese Manuscripts, Leiden: Brill. Rosemont, H., Jr. (2013), A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rosemont, H., Jr. (2015), Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family and Religion, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Schäfer, P. (1986), “Research into Rabbinic Literature: An Attempt to Define the status quaestionis,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 37: 139–​152. Schwartz, B. I. (1985), The World of Thought in Ancient China, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard University Press. Shapin, S. and S. Schaffer (1985), Leviathan and the Air-​Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life: Including a Translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sivin, N. (1995), “Myth of the Naturalists,” in Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China, 2 vols., Great Yarmouth: Variorum. Smith, K. (2003), “Sima Tan and the Invention of Daoism, ‘Legalism,’ et cetera,” Journal of Asian Studies, 62.1: 129–​156. Stone, R. (2010), “Altering the Past: China’s Faked Fossils Problem,” Science, 330 (December 24): 1740–​1741. Sword, H. (2012), Stylish Academic Writing, Cambridge: Harvard University Press Tri, C. N. and C. Despeux (eds.) (2003), Éducation et Instruction en Chine, vol. 1 (L’éducation élémentaire), Paris: Éditions Peeters. Veyne, P. (1988), Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination, P. Wissing (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago. Williams, B. (1993), Shame and Necessity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Wright, A. F. (ed.) (1953), Studies in Chinese Thought, Menasha: American Anthropological Association. Yan, L. F. 嚴靈峰 (1975–​1979), Zhou Qin Han Wei zhu zi zhi jian shu mu 周秦漢魏諸子知 見書目, Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju. Yates, R. (2011), “Soldiers, Scribes, and Women: Literacy among the Lower Orders in Early China,” in D. Branner and Li F. (eds.), Writing and Literacy in Early China, Seattle: University of Washington Press.

CHAPTER FIVE

Studies of Chinese Philosophy from a Transcultural Perspective: Contextualization and Decontextualization MING-​H UEI LEE

In the preface to his well-​regarded two-​volume 2003 book Zhu Xi’s Historical World: A Study on the Political Culture of the Scholar-​officials in the Song Dynasty, Yu Yingshi 余英時 provides an explanation of his motive behind writing the book. According to him, the very reason for his emphasis on “political culture” is that he intends to take aim at the approach of “modern historians of philosophy” to the “School of Principle” (daoxue 道學). In his view, “modern historians of philosophy” take European philosophy as their model, and their research of the “School of Principle” has undergone a process of dual “extraction”: first to extract the “School of Principle” from Confucianism, and then to extract the “Principle as Reality” (daoti 道體) from the “School of Principle.” The relation of the Confucians of the “School of Principle” to their ways of life has never entered into the vision of those historians of philosophy from the very beginning (Yu 2003: 33). With regard to this erroneous deviation, Yu (2003: 170) claims, he would like to “make a Copernican turn in concept.” For Yu Yingshi, the approach adopted by “modern historians of philosophy” is a “modern embodiment” of the “ ‘grand narrative’ of Confucian orthodoxy after the Song Dynasty,” often shortened as the “grand narrative of Confucian orthodoxy.” He explicitly points out the two ways in which the “grand narrative” differs essentially in approach from his own book Zhu Xi’s Historical World: First, in the “grand narrative,” “moral nature” or “inner sageliness” refers to a sort of spiritual reality which transcends time and space, and consequently it is sometimes also dubbed “Dao as reality.” This spiritual reality is an eternal

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existence; it does not matter whether it is perceptible or not. Based on this understanding, the researchers under the paradigm of the “grand narrative” often adopt a trans-​spatial-​and-​temporal approach in dealing with the origins and formation of the “School of Principle,” with no regard to the concrete historical context . . . Second, given that the researchers under the paradigm of the “grand narrative” regard “moral nature” as a perfect, self-​sufficient, isolated entity, they not only separate the “School of Principle” completely from the history of the Northern Song, they also go even further to exclude it completely from the family of Confucianism, in a way as if the Confucians of the “School of Principle” fell on earth all of sudden; thanks to “heavenly inspiration and divine will,” they leapt upward to connect directly with Mencius’s heart-​mind, and finally to witness once again the “moral nature,” which “flows along with Heaven and Earth, above and beneath” (Mencius 7.13). (2003: 156f.) Yu Yingshi never makes it clear what he means by “modern historians of philosophy” or the “modern embodiment” of “the grand narrative of Confucian orthodoxy” throughout the book. What Yu Yingshi calls “modern historians of philosophy” however, according to Jin Chunfeng (2004: 300), actually refer to contemporary New Confucians, especially Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. Yu Yingshi’s book provoked a debate between Liu Shuxian 劉述先, Yang Rubin 楊儒賓, and himself (Liu 2003; 2004; Yang 2003; 2004; Yu 2004a; 2004b; 2004c; 2004d). This debate unexpectedly highlights the difference between the two approaches which have long existed in contemporary research of Chinese philosophy, that is, the difference between intellectual historians and philosophers, or more precisely, the difference between the approach of “contextualization” and that of “decontextualization.” Because the “extraction” that Yu Yingshi criticizes refers to the “decontextualization” of contemporary New Confucians, his emphasis on “political culture” actually aims to place stress on “contextualization.” In the present research, I attempt to explore the issue of “contextualization” and “decontextualization” based on my reflections and findings over years in the research of Chinese philosophy from a transcultural perspective. I had studied at the University of Bonn in Germany from 1982 to 1986, and received a degree of Doctor of Philosophy with the dissertation entitled The Problem of Moral Feeling in the Development of Kantian Ethics. Since 2000, I began to conduct research of Korean Confucianism. Superficially, these two research programs seem completely unrelated, but actually they derive from the very same problem consciousness. My problem consciousness comes from Mou Zongsan’s three-​volume book Heart-​Mind as Reality and Human Nature as Reality. In this book, Mou analyzes the framework of Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (Yuanhui 元晦, 1130–​1200) doctrine, which is a dichotomy of principle (li 理) and material force (q i氣) and a trichotomy of heart-​mind (xin 心), human nature (xing 性), and emotion (qing 情). A crucial problem here is that, whereas Zhu Xi conceives of Mencius’s “four buddings of the heart-​ mind” as emotions, and regards all emotions as physical (形而下, literally, “below the figure”), belonging to the category of material force (qi), Mou Zongsan insists that Mencius’s “four buddings of the heart-​mind” might be viewed as emotions, but not all emotions

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are physical. He argues that only within the theoretical framework of “heart-​mind is principle,” as promoted by Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 (Jiuyuan 九淵, 1139–​1193) and Wang Yangming 王陽明 (Shouren 守仁, 1472–​1539), can the “four buddings of the heart-​mind” be properly interpreted. Mou also construes the “four buddings of the heart-​mind” as what Kant calls “moral feelings.” As he points out, like Zhu Xi, Kant also classifies all emotions including moral feelings as sensible or physical. But Mou insists that moral feelings can be elevated and talked about on the spiritual level, not necessarily belonging to the sensible realm. Mou Zongsan comments on Kant’s “moral feeling” in Heart-​mind as Reality and Human Nature as Reality. As he points out, The moral sense and moral feeling can be discussed at different levels. If viewed from a lower level, they subsequently fall in the empirical realm, and naturally moral principles cannot be built from them. But it is also possible to elevate them to the transcendent level, and make them become the most fundamental link in the expression of moral principles and moral reason. (2003, 5: 131). He criticizes Kant for his failure to notice that the moral sense and moral feeling can be elevated to the transcendent level, and transform to the concrete, yet universal feeling of morality and moral mind (Mou 2003a, 5: 130f). Mou (2003a, 5: 131) goes further to point out that the ren (humanity) talked about by Confucius and the “four buddings” of compassion, shame, deference, and the sense for right and wrong by Mencius are heart-​mind and feelings, but they are also principles. Here Mou Zongsan particularly emphasizes that, though this sort of “principle” is transcendent, universal, and a priori, it is universal not in the abstract sense but in the concrete sense, expressed in the concrete heart-​mind and emotions, which in return are elevated to the transcendent and universal realm (2003a, 5: 131f). In short, moral feelings do not necessarily belong to sensible and empirical level; they can be elevated to the transcendent level, becoming a sort of universal and a priori but at the same time concrete feelings, that is, a kind of feelings “both transcendent and immanent.” Mou Zongsan particularly designates this sort of feelings as “ontological feelings.” Mou Zongsan compares the “heart-​mind of four buddings” of Confucianism with Kant’s “moral feelings,” and elevates them to a universal ethical question. The question is: in the German phenomenologist Franz Brentano’s (1838–​1917) words, is the principle of ethics knowledge or emotion? Mou’s comparative stance on the question interests me greatly. Though my doctoral dissertation, which explores the inner journey of Kant’s ethics from the standpoint of development, does not concern Confucian doctrines at all, my findings in the dissertation unexpectedly connect me to the approach of the twentieth-​century German phenomenological ethics. The leading figures of German phenomenological ethics, apart from its founder Brentano, include Edmund Husserl (1859–​1950), Max Scheler (1874–​1928), Nicolai Hartmann (1882–​1950), Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–​1977), and Hans Rainer (1896–​1991). Phenomenological ethics is a relatively neglected field both in the West and in China, but actually it shares tremendous connectedness with Confucian ethics. Mou Zongsan (2003b, 30: 67) does not appreciate phenomenology, classifying

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it as a “fin-​de-​siècle ‘clever’ philosophy.” But he does not notice phenomenological ethics. If he had noticed the connectedness between phenomenological ethics and Confucian ethics, his judgment of phenomenology would have changed. In short, phenomenological ethics starts from examining Kant’s “moral feeling.” Kant’s follower, the poet Friedrich von Schiller (1759–​ 1805), broke the ground for phenomenological ethics in its direction of thought. My doctoral dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part concerns developmental history, analyzing the different connotations of the concept “moral sense” in the different stages of early Kantian ethics. In the 1760s, due to his dissatisfaction with the rationalistic ethics of the school represented by Christian Wolff (1679–​1754), Kant turned to sympathize with the “moral sense” ethics of the Scottish School and Jean-​Jacques Rousseau’s emotion-​based ethics, which leads to a conspicuous difference between the thought in his early and later ethics. In the second part of my dissertation, I systematically explore the theory of “moral feelings” in Kant’s later ethics, and through this I highlight the “dichotomy of emotion and reason” in the framework of his ethics. In the 1760s, under the influence of the Scottish School and Rousseau, he modified the ethical views of the Wolff School, and insisted that either in moral judgment or in moral motivation there is always an essential connection between emotion and reason. But in his later ethical system, Kant construes the moral subject merely as “practical reason,” with all the emotional elements including moral feelings being stripped off. As a result, the moral feeling no longer possesses any function of moral judgment; instead, it merely becomes a sensible effect that the moral law brings about. On the other hand, however, it also becomes the “incentive (Triebfeder) of pure practical reason,” that is, only through it can the moral law lead to moral action. Despite the exquisiteness of the theory, I have discovered a serious theoretical problem hidden in it through an intrinsic criticism of it. In short, it ascribes the “principle of judgment” (principium dijudicationis) and the “principle of execution” (principium executionis) of morality to the rational subject and the moral feeling respectively, which will inevitably empty the concept of “moral responsibility” (cf. Li 2001). It is at this point in Kant’s ethics that Schiller levels criticism, and consequently launches the debate on “duty and inclination” (Pflicht und Neigung). He discerns the potential theoretical difficulty that Kant’s dichotomy of emotion and reason may cause, and wants to include moral feeling into the moral subject. This actually amounts to a return to the position of Kant’s early ethics. In other words, it is the position of Kant’s early ethics that Schiller relies on to criticize the position of Kant’s later ethics, and through which, he breaks the ground for phenomenological ethics. The connectedness of phenomenological ethics to Confucian ethics rests mainly on two aspects: first, phenomenological ethics distinguishes between “Fühlen” and “Gefühl,” with the former particularly to designate our direct grasp of value, that is, the sense of value (Wertfühlen), in order to differentiate it from ordinary emotions. Second, Kant’s later ethics presupposes a dual framework, that is, he equates “the a priori with the formal and rational” and “the a posteriori with the empirical and sensible,” and then juxtaposes the two categories; he puts all emotions including moral feeling in the latter category. But Schiller opposes this dichotomy, insisting

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that there exists a third realm, that is, the “a priori and material” realm, and he goes further to put the “sense of value” in this realm. This amounts to a theoretical support for Mou Zongsan’s insight of the “four buddings of the heart-​mind.” When I launched the research program of the “East Asian Confucians’ interpretations of Mencius’s theory of heart-​mind and human nature” in 2000, the distinction between the Kantian ethics and phenomenological ethics naturally comes to me. If we construe Mencius’s “four buddings of the heart-​mind” as a sort of “moral feeling,” then a theoretical connection of the Kantian ethics and phenomenological ethics to the studies of Mencius by East Asian Confucians will naturally emerge. In the Southern Song Dynasty, due to their different understandings of Mencius’s “four buddings of the heart-​mind,” there was a debate which took place between Zhu Xi and the Huxiang 湖湘 School led by Zhang Shi 張栻 (Nanxuan 南軒, 1133–​ 1180). Zhu Xi, based on his own theoretical framework, criticized Yang Shi’s 楊 時 (Guishang 龜山, 1053–​1135) notion of the “oneness of all things and me,” Xie Liangzuo’s 謝良佐 (Shangcai 上蔡, 1050–​c.1120) theory of “what is insightfully felt by the heart-​mind is called humanity (ren),” and the interpretations of ren by the Huxiang School. In light of his theoretic framework of the dichotomy of principle (li) and material force (qi) and the trichotomy of heart-​mind (xin), human nature (xing), and emotion (qing), Zhu Xi views all “feelings” and “emotions” including the “four buddings” as being of the same nature, all falling into the category of the physical material force (qi). For Yang Shi, Xie Liangzuo, and other scholars of the Huxiang School, however, the “feeling” of the heart-​mind is different from ordinary feelings, that is, the feelings of cold, warm, being full-​fed, and hunger, or emotions such as joy, anger, sadness, and happiness, and the two groups of feelings are different in nature. At this point, Zhu Xi is very close to Kant’s later view, whereas the ideas of Yang Shi, Xie Liangzuo, and other scholars of the Huxiang School are quite similar to that of Schiller and phenomenological ethics. With regard to the same question, Joseon Confucian I Teogye 李退溪 (Hwang 滉, 1501–​1571) proposes the distinction between the “four buddings” and “seven feelings” by putting them in the respective categories of principle (li) and material force (qi), and his view is also very close to that of Schiller and phenomenological ethics. His contemporary Gi Gobong 奇高峰 (Daeseung 大升, 1527–​1572), however, following Zhu Xi’s idea, argues against him many times, in opposition to the notion which regards the “four buddings” and “seven feelings” as being of different nature. Later on, I Yulgok 李栗谷 (I珥, 1536–​1584) extends Gi Gobong’s idea and criticizes I Toegye’s notion of distinction between the “four buddings” and “seven feelings,” while Seong Ugye 成牛溪 (Hon 渾, 1535–​1598) defends I Teogye’s stance. In this respect, the idea of Gi Gobong and I Yulgok is very close to Kant’s later view, and the viewpoint of I Teogye and Seong Ugye, on the other hand, is similar to that of Schiller and phenomenological ethics. All debates in the three different contexts focus on the same ethical question: are moral feelings different from ordinary emotions? Or in other words, is there a transcendent “feeling”? Are the “four buddings of the heart-​mind” transcendent “feelings”? As far as these questions are concerned, we might isolate the debate on “four buddings” and “seven feelings” from the context of Korean Confucianism, and

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regard it as philosophical debate with universal significance from the perspective of “decontextualization.” The fruit of my research is the book Four Buddings and Seven Feelings—​A Comparative Philosophical Study of Moral Feelings (Li 2005). This is a transcultural philosophical study which crosses the three contexts of Chinese Confucianism, Korean Confucianism, and German Ethics, and this sort of research inevitably presupposes the perspective of “decontextualization.” However, we might also explore the debate over the “four buddings” and “seven feelings” from another perspective, that is, the perspective of “contextualization.” The “context” I talk about here particularly refers to the context of classical texts, and it is the subject of the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte). The dispute on the “four buddings” and “seven feelings” did not come to an end with the debate between I Yulgok and Seong Ugye, and it continued into the nineteenth century. If the debates between I Teogye and Gi Gobong and between I Yulgok and Seong Ugye are conducted on the philosophical level, the later debates take place in the context of interpretation of the classics, characterized by what I call “the overlap of multiple texts” (Li 2006: 277f.). Let us take Jeong Sihan 丁時翰 (Udam 愚潭, 1625–​1707), a member of the Yeongnam 嶺南School with I Teogye as its leader, as an example. In his later years, Jeong Sihan wrote an article entitled “Arguments on the Four Buddings and Seven Emotions” (Sachil-​byeonjeung 四七辨證). In the article, he cites forty letters written by I Yulgok in response to Seong Ugye on the “four buddings and seven feelings,” and comments on them in the light of I Teogye’s viewpoint. Elsewhere, I provided an overview of the phenomenon of “the overlap of multiple texts” through Jeong Sihan’s case: The Cheng-​Zhu 程朱 School of Principle was introduced to Korea in the later Goryeo 高麗 era around the end of the thirteenth century, and it gained an absolutely authoritative position in the Joseon era. Therefore, the Korean Confucians engaged in the “debate on the four buddings and seven feelings” have to face the double authorities of double texts: in addition to the early Confucian classics such as Book of Rites, Mengzi, etc. and the authority represented by them, i.e., the authority of Confucius and Mencius, they must also face the texts of the Cheng-​Zhu School and the authority represented by them, i.e., the authority of Chengs and Zhu. The intellectual background formed by the double texts and double authorities itself constitutes a source for the controversies. After the death of I Teogye, because of his authoritative position in Korean Confucianism, the Korean Confucians involved in the “debate on the four buddings and seven feelings” also have to face his texts and authority. Therefore, there were triple texts and authorities at that time, and this was the situation that Jeong Sihan was confronted with. Between the different views of I Teogye and I Yulgok on the issues of the “four buddings and seven feelings,” Jeong Sihan chooses to defend the former. But he does not realize that actually I Yulgok is more steadfast than I Teogye in upholding Zhu Xi’s stance. Consequently, he is also unaware of the difference between I Teogye and Zhu Xi in fundamental ideas, and regards the two people’s ideas as one. Because of this misunderstanding, when Jeong Sihan defends I Teogye’s ideas, he often stands in between the views of Zhu Xi and

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I Teogye, and misunderstands both of them. In comparison, he misunderstands Mencius even worse. (Li 2006: 277f.) Therefore, when reading the relevant texts, we not only should clarify the complexity of the relations of these many texts due to their reciprocal reference, but also need to point out the misunderstandings and misinterpretations as inevitable results of these multiple texts. A similar phenomenon is also found in the debates on Wang Yangming’s thought in Korean studies of Confucianism. Here I would like to take Han Wonjin’s 韓 元震 (Namtang 南塘, 1682–​1751) criticism of Wang Yangming’s thought as an example to demonstrate the phenomenon of the overlap of multiple texts. In terms of intellectual heritage, Han Wonjin belongs to the Giho 畿湖 School with I Yulgok as its leader, but his criticism of Wang Yangming’s thought partially inherits I Teogye’s legacy. I Teogye wrote an essay entitled “Debate on Instructions for Practical Living” 《Jeonseumnok》Nonbyeon《傳習錄》論辯). ( In the essay he cites Wang Yangming’s words and levels fierce criticism at them. Later on, Han Wonjin also wrote an essay entitled “Commentary on Instructions for Practical Living” 《Jeonseumnok》Byeon《傳習錄》辨), ( making further comments on I Teogye’s “Debate on Instructions for Practical Living.” In this essay, Han Wonjin sometimes directly cites Wang Yangming’s words and then provides his criticism of them. At other times, he first cites Wang Yangming’s word, then I Teogye’s criticism of them in “Debate on Instructions for Practical Living,” and finally adds his own comments. This gives rise to the phenomenon of the “overlap of multiple texts.” The phenomenon of the “overlap of multiple texts” is of course not unique to Korean Confucianism, but it is particularly conspicuous in it. Confucianism is originally a traditional Chinese thought, but after being introduced to Korea, it has been gradually localized and absorbed into Korean traditional culture. It is this process of localization that makes the phenomenon of the “overlap of multiple texts” especially conspicuous in Korean Confucianism. Of course, contextualization in methodology of research by no means concerns only the context of interpretation of Confucian classics. Researchers may also focus on historical or social context, and incorporate research of Confucianism into studies of historiography and social sciences. In recent years, in the Sinophone academic world, and even in the Anglophone academic circles, there is a strong tendency to place special stress on the historical and social context in the development of Confucianism, and to expel the approach of “decontextualization.” As mentioned earlier, Yu Yingshi’s Zhu Xi’s Historical World is a typical case. I published an article commenting on the merits and shortcomings of Yu Yingshi’s book and its methodology (Li 2009), which I shall not repeat here. It is important to point out that I have no intention to deny the significance of examining the historical and social context of the development in studies of Confucianism. As far as Korean Confucianism is concerned, for instance, if we know nothing about the complex relationship between intellectual debates and political struggles in Korean history, probably it is not easy for us to interpret the texts of Korean Confucianism properly. What I am opposed to is the attitude of regarding “decontextualization”

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as a taboo and the approach of overemphasizing historical and social context in research. Chapter 12 of Zhu Xi’s Historical World discusses the “royal power” (huangquan 皇權) and the “royal ultimate” (huangji皇極), and it especially analyzes the debates on the “royal ultimate” during the three periods under the reign of Xiaozong, Guangzong, and Ningzong in the Southern Song dynasty in the context of political culture. According to Yu Yingshi’s analysis, by reinterpreting the concept of the “royal ultimate” coined in Book of Documents, the group of the Southern Song “School of Principle” aimed to support the policy of “restoration” implemented by the emperor Xiaozong. Therefore, they opposed the traditional interpretation of the “royal ultimate” as the “grand doctrine of the mean” (dazhong大中), which comes from Kong Anguo’s 孔安國Commentary on the Book of Documents, because at that time the concept “grand doctrine of the mean” had already been mistakenly interpreted as the conservative attitude of “tolerance, compromise, and no distinction between good and evil” (Yu 2003, 2: 532–​587). It is completely imaginable and true that scholars sometimes deliberately take advantage of textual interpretation to convey their political ideas and that their political stance might unconsciously affect their interpretation of texts. However, even if Yu Yingshi’s analysis here is logical and convincing, it is still impossible for us to equate all the Confucian texts of the Song and Ming as political discourses. Otherwise, it would become the case that, as Ge Zhaoguang points out in his commentary on Zhu Xi’s Historical World, “though it exposes a hidden facet of the fact, it is possible to cover up another facet with this one” (Ge 2006: 160). As discussed before, contextualization concerns not only political and social contexts, but also the contexts of classics. In comparison to historical and social contexts, a classic has its own relatively independent context. For instance, if we do not take into consideration the 1789 French Revolution and its subsequent influence on Europe’s political situation, we cannot understand Kant’s motive for publishing the book On Perpetual Peace in 1795 and some words which aim at a specific target. But this does not prevent modern scholars from separating the book from its political context at that time and discussing its significance to the contemporary world. In 1995, for example, two hundred years after its publication, when the European Union was founded, scholars from Western academic circles hosted a conference on the book in Frankfurt, Germany, exploring Kant’s concept of “world citizen.”1​ Furthermore, even in the research of historical and social contexts, not excluding research in the history of concepts, once it concerns a transcultural perspective, “decontextualization” cannot be completely avoided. Because a transcultural perspective is associated with “comparison,” “comparison” demands “abstraction,” and “abstraction” is “decontextualization.” Even the formation of any concept is the result of “abstraction,” and thus is also a result of “decontextualization.” In this sense, we can say that any method of research contains both a dimension of “contextualization” and a dimension of “decontextualization,” but with emphasis on one dimension. The debates between I Teogye and Gi Gobong and between I Yulgok and Seong Ugye on the “four buddings and seven feelings” undoubtedly concern universal questions of ethics; but isn’t it true that they are also related to the

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interpretation of classical texts? Despite the fact that the later debates on the “four buddings and seven feelings” place stress on the interpretation of classical texts, isn’t it true that they also concern philosophical questions, as exemplified by Han Wonjin’s “theory of intertexture of the four buddings and seven feelings” (siduan qiqing jinwei shuo 四端七情經緯說)(Li 2012)? To sum up, a competent researcher must be keen and adept in understanding and tackling the tension between “contextualization” and “decontextualization,” in order to highlight the multiple facets of one’s subject of research. This is an important conclusion I arrive at from my research in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy.

NOTE 1. The papers presented at the conference were later published collectively as a book. See Bohman and Lutz-​Bachmann (1997).

REFERENCES Bohman, J. and M. Lutz-​Bachmann (eds.) (1997), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Brentano, F. (1977), Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik, Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Ge, Z. G. 葛兆光 (2006), “No ‘Inside’ nor ‘Outside’ with the Barrier Demolished: between Political, Intellectual, and Social history—​Reading Yu Yingshi’s Zhu Xi’s Historical World and Its Comments (拆了門檻便無內無外：在政治、思想 與社會史之間――讀余英時《朱熹的歷史世界》及相關評論),” in History, Thought, and Religion in Ancient China (古代中國的歷史、思想與宗教), Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe. Jin, C. F. 金春峰 (2004), “(Two Faces of One Body of Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness (內聖外王的一體兩面),” Jiuzhou xuelin九州學林, 2.4: 298–​320. Lee, M. H. 李明輝 (1994), Das Problem des moralischen Gefühls in der Entwicklung der Kantischen Ethik (The Problem of Moral Feeling in the Development of Kantian Ethics), Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. Li, M. H.李明輝 [Lee, M. H.] (2001), “Another Discussion of Mou Zhongsan’s Interpretation of Mencius’s Theory of the Heart-​Mind and Human Nature (再 論牟宗三先生對孟子心性論的詮釋),” in M. H. Li, Mencius Revisited (孟子重探), Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi. Li, M. H. (2005), The Four Buddings and Seven Feelings—​A Comparative Philosophical Exploration of Moral Feelings (四端與七情―關於道德情感的比較哲學探討), Taipei: Taida chuban zhongxin. Li, M. H. (2006), “Zhu Xi’s Theory of Human Nature and Principle and Korean Confucian Jeong Sihan’s Theory of the Four Buddings and Seven Feelings (朱子性理 學與韓儒丁時翰的四端七情論),” in J. J. Huang 黃俊傑 and W. J. Lin 林維杰 (eds.), Similarities and Differences in Studies of Zhu Xi in East Asia (東亞朱子學的同調與異 趣), Taipei: Taida chuban zhongxin.

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Li, M. H. (2009), “The Issue of ‘Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness’ Revisited (「內 聖外王」問題重探),” in D. X. Zhou 周大興 (ed.), Understanding, Interpretation, and Confucian Traditions: Prospects (理解、詮釋與儒家傳統：展望篇), Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. Li, M. H. (2012), “Han Wonjin’s “Theory of Intertexture of the Four Buddings and Seven Feelings” (韓元震的「四端七情經緯說」),” in J. J. Huang 黃俊傑 (ed.), Korean Confucians’ Interpretations of Confucian Tradition (朝鮮儒者對儒家傳統的解釋), Taipei: Taida chuban zhongxin. Liu, S. X. [Liu, S. H.] 劉述先 (2003), “On Yu Yingshi’s Zhu Xi’s Historical World—​A Study of the Political Culture of the Scholar-​Officials in the Song Dynasty (評余英時 《朱熹的歷史世界――宋代士大夫政治文化的研究》),” Jiuzhou xuelin 九州學林, 1.2:  316–​334. Liu, S. X. (2004), “A Reply to Professor Yu Yingshi (對余英時教授的回應),” Jiuzhou xuelin 九州學林, 2.2: 294–​296. Mou, Z. S. [Mou, T. S.] 牟宗三 (2003a), Heart-​mind as Reality and Human Nature as Reality (心體與性體), in Complete Works of Mou Zongsan (牟宗三先生全集), vols. 5–​ 7, Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi. Mou, Z. S. (2003b), Fourteen Lectures on the Convergence of Chinese and Western Philosophy (中西哲學之會通十四講), in Complete Works of Mou Zongsan, vol. 30, Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi. Yang, R. B. 楊儒賓 (2003), “If Revolving the ‘Copernican Turn’ Once More (如果再迴轉 一次「哥白尼的迴轉」),” Dangdai 當代, 195: 125–​141. Yang, R. B. (2004), “We Need More Transition of Paradigm—​A Reply to Mr. Yu Yingshi (我們需要更多典範的轉移―敬答余英時先生),” Dangdai 當代, 198: 97–​105. Yu, Y. S. 余英時 (2003), Zhu Xi’s Historical World—​A Study of the Political Culture of the Scholar-​officials in the Song Dynasty (朱熹的歷史世界―宋代士大夫政治文化的研究), Taipei: Yunchen wenhua shiye gongsi. Yu, Y. S. (2004a), “Did I destroy Zhu Xi’s World of Values?—​A Reply to Mr. Yang Rubin (我摧毀了朱熹的價值世界嗎？―答楊儒賓先生),” Dangdai 當代, 197: 54–​73. Yu, Y. S. (2004b), “A Simple Explanation (簡單的說明),” Dangdai 當代, 198: 70–​71. Yu, Y. S. (2004c), “ ‘Extraction,’ ‘Turn,’ and ‘Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness’—​A Reply to Mr. Liu Shuxian (「抽離」、「迴轉」與「內聖外王」―答劉述先先生),” Jiuzhou xuelin 九州學林, 2.1: 301–​310. Yu, Y. S. (2004d), “A Preliminary Discussion of the Overall Scheme of Confucianism—​ After Reading Mr. Liu Shuxian’s ‘Response’ (試說儒家的整體規畫―劉述先先生「回 應」讀後),” Jiuzhou xuelin 九州學林, 2.2: 297–​312.

PART TWO

Methods from Practice

CHAPTER SIX

Gongfu Method in the Analects and its Significance Beyond PEIMIN NI

Fundamental to methodology is one’s overall perspective or approach. Modern Chinese writer Lu Xun famously said that the same novel, Dream of Red Mansions, “can manifest differently through its readers’ eyes: a classicist will see the Book of Changes, a moralist will see lust, a Romeo will see romance, a revolutionary will see anti-​Manchu sentiment, a gossiper will see inner chamber secrets . . .” The ancient Indian fable of “the blind men and the elephant,” the Chinese fable of “the neighbor suspected for stealing the ax,” the saying in the Appendix of the Book of Changes that “the benevolent sees it and calls it benevolent; the wise sees it and calls it wise”—​ these all show that people have long been aware of the fact that the perspective of an observer largely determines what he or she will observe. The duck-​rabbit picture known through Wittgenstein’s discussion about it reveals the same in a concise visual illustration:

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With no need for a complicated explanation, everyone can see that while the picture itself remains unchanged, an observer can switch back and forth between seeing a duck and seeing a rabbit. This picture provides a good entry point for us to examine the methodology of studying Chinese philosophy. From a philosophical point of view, traditional Chinese thought such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism can all be seen as philosophies (although what philosophy is and the extent to which they resemble philosophy can be discussed). Conversely, from the perspective of gongfu, these thoughts all become gongfu systems (of course, the meaning of “gongfu” is also subject to discussion). What perspective we use to look at traditional Chinese thought determines what content we will see. It is therefore of great importance that we have a clear understanding of the perspective we use.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE THOUGHT UNDER THE PERSPECTIVE OF MODERN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY Philosophy is not merely a discipline or an academic field of study; it is above all a perspective. All philosophical questions are questions seen from a philosophical point of view. It is from philosophical perspectives that there emerged various philosophical questions and theories. Of course, there is no universally agreed precise definition of “philosophy” in the world, and from this, there emerged different philosophical theories. Kant’s transcendental perspective generated his transcendental philosophy; Hegel’s dialectic perspective generated his dialectic philosophy; and the same can be said about phenomenology, analytical philosophy, hermeneutical philosophy, pragmatism, and so on. The “family resemblance” between them and the etymology of the term “philosophy” both indicate that “philosophy” at least suggests the rational pursuit of wisdom, and hence a philosophical perspective must be rational inquiry for intellectual understanding. This basic, albeit vague, concept has served as the guide for people to differentiate a philosophical perspective from other perspectives, such as the perspective of literature, of history, and of politics. When thinking about philosophical problems, people often pay no attention to the philosophical method they use. Like Wittgenstein says in his analysis of the duck-​rabbit picture, observers usually do not say “Now I am seeing it as a duck.” They simply say “I see a duck.” In other words, they do not separate the interpretation of what they see from the report of what they see. Their perspective of seeing is not an additional layer to the act of seeing; it is the way through which they see. “Seeing that duck” and “seeing as duck” is one and the same (Wittgenstein 1953: 194–​195). Similarly, seeing traditional Chinese philosophy and seeing traditional Chinese thought as philosophy are one and the same. Because the term “philosophy” was introduced into China in the late nineteenth century from the West, the “philosophical perspective” used to interpret Chinese thought was naturally derived from the mainstream Western philosophies of the time. Due to the overwhelming supremacy of the power of the West, traditional Chinese thought was forced to seek asylum under the umbrella of “philosophy.”

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Consequently the formation of the academic field of “Chinese philosophy” became largely a process of Westernizing traditional Chinese thought. Although much of the content of traditional Chinese thought hindered them from being seen as “philosophy” in the modern Western sense, those who were sympathetic to traditional Chinese thought still consciously or subconsciously came up with various explanations to cover up or ignore those “irregular” elements. This is very similar to the way that, when the duck-​rabbit figure is seen as a duck, the small crack once taken as a rabbit’s mouth becomes a negligible irregularity. On the other hand, just as those who refuse to ignore the crack would have trouble accepting the picture as a duck, those who insist on the unique characteristics of traditional Chinese thought would have problems acknowledging the “duck-​ rabbit” of traditional Chinese thought as philosophy. They would say that seeing them as philosophy is to trade the very essential characteristics of traditional Chinese thought for an unfit label! The more they are recognized as philosophy, the less they are themselves. One might argue that, as Su Shi’s famous line of poem says, “one does not see the true face of Lushan Mountain exactly because one is in it,” looking at traditional Chinese thought from the Western philosophical perspective can help us see the tradition better. Indeed, one would have blind spots in examining oneself, and stepping outside would help to eliminate these blind spots. However, just as wearing the wrong glasses will make a person’s vision more blurred, standing outside while using a wrong perspective will cause the object to be obscured rather than revealed. Borrowing the words of the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, with the right perspective one can “turn the lotus around,” but with the wrong perspective one will be “turned around by the lotus.” Many scholars have pointed out that the main feature of traditional Chinese philosophy is its emphasis on self-​cultivation and practice. However, in the eyes of mainstream Western philosophers who take their aim to be seeking propositional truths, such a feature becomes the very shortcoming that makes it un-​philosophical. The so-​called problem of the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy is mixed with nonacademic historical conditions, resulting in the perspective of mainstream Western philosophy being taken for granted as the very “legislator” of philosophy. Today, with rapid changes in historical conditions, traditional Chinese thought is gradually walking out of the shadow of having to find its legitimacy under the Western title of “philosophy,” yet the habit formed over a century of interpreting the Chinese tradition with the Western mainstream philosophical perspective will not change overnight.1 In order to turn that philosophical lens into spectacles that would allow us to see Chinese traditional resources more clearly rather than blurry, we need a perspective shift.

GONGFU PERSPECTIVE EXEMPLIFIED IN THE ANALECTS The perspective that I recommend is characterized by the term “gongfu.” Used frequently by the neo-​Confucians during the Song-​Ming periods, “gongfu” captures a major orientation of traditional Chinese thought (see Ni 2008; 2010a; 2010b).

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Although nowadays the term has been mostly used narrowly for the martial arts, a little close examination will suffice to show that it was, and still is, used much more broadly for all the arts of life that require cultivated abilities and effective skills, such as the art of cooking, of speaking, of dancing, and of dealing with human relationships. The Song-​Ming neo-​Confucians as well as the Daoists and the Buddhists all unequivocally spoke of their learning as gongfu. For them, their teachings are all about the art of life. Here I shall use the Analects of Confucius to illustrate what it means to view a text from the gongfu perspective and how such a perspective fits particularly well with such texts. For a contemporary student of philosophy, it can be puzzling and frustrating that the passages in the Analects lack clear logical order, and while many of them seem like wise aphorisms, some appear to be irrelevant, enigmatic, and even trivial. If you are deeply troubled by this, ask yourself, however, whether you have presupposed a framework of “relevance,” “intelligibility,” and “systematicity” that would exclude things that are otherwise relevant, intelligible, and systematic. The entire book of the Analects begins with the saying, “To learn and to practice what is learned repeatedly, is it not pleasant?” (Analects 1.1).2 This saying clearly indicates that for Confucius, learning is not so much about stockpiling propositional knowledge as it is about gaining embodied abilities which will result in the transformation of the person. As Henry Rosemont (2013: 36) succinctly points out in A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects, Confucius “was not so much concerned to convey factual information, or propound a theory, as he was to have his students respond in a particular way to the topic on which he was discoursing or had been asked about.” Because his students were not alike and the specific situations in which he gave instructions varied, his instruction could not be uniform and “systematic” in the way that a theory is. But this does not mean that his teaching has no system or logic of its own. While a theory starts typically from laying out premises and, through reasoning, gradually reaches the conclusion, a gongfu system starts from the existing condition of the practitioner and, through step-​by-​step guidance and practice, gradually reaches higher levels of artistic perfection. Different constituents within a theoretical discourse are linked together through their logical connections, and hence their order could only be linear; however different constituents of a gongfu system are linked together through their practical implications, which is much more dynamic. They are not so much synthesized in the mind and manifested in the space of words as they are synthesized in a person’s embodied dispositions and abilities and manifested in the space of actual life. For this reason, a gongfu system can never be “complete” in the sense that a theory can, as it has to adapt to the changing historical conditions and evolve in order to retain and renew its vitality. The gongfu perspective most distinctively reminds us to read a relevant text as a manual of life-​guiding instructions rather than as a theoretical discourse about truth. We evaluate descriptive statements according to whether they are true or false, but we judge instructions according to their effectiveness. Propositional views about reality and truth are typically presented with recourse to reasoning; instructional statements, on the other hand, are typically presented authoritatively and demonstratively, as their persuasive power ultimately lies not in accurate

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representation of reality but in the practical experience and efficacious results they generate. Propositional views are typically stated as universally true, but instructions are often situation sensitive, offered for specific purposes under specific conditions. An example of this is our view of the self. Philosophers have argued about whether human beings are ultimately autonomous choice-​ makers or relational beings inseparable from their roles within particular communities. As many scholars have pointed out, Confucians characteristically emphasize the importance of relations and roles (e.g., Analects 12.11). It makes good sense to say that Confucians hold a relational and process-​oriented metaphysics. However, one can also find acknowledgments of individual subjectivity in Confucian classics. For example, Analects 9.26 says, “The Master said, ‘The three armies may be deprived of their commander, but even a common man cannot be deprived of his resolution.’ ” Analects 15.36 says, “The Master said, ‘Faced with a matter of human-​heartedness, yield not even to your teacher.’ ” Both seem to indicate that for Confucius, one ought to have one’s own resolution and be an autonomous, independent choice-​maker. Opponents of role-​specific interpretation of the Confucian notion of the person also quote Mencius’s famous example of seeing a child on the verge of falling into a well, as it apparently says explicitly that upon seeing this, everyone would have the urge to save the child before one makes any reflections about his or her specific relationship with the child. If this is what ren or human-​heartedness means, then the role-​specific view does seem to be problematic. From the intellectualistic way of thinking, we tend to presuppose the dichotomy of either-​or, and will have difficulty reconciling these two dimensions of Confucius’s thinking. Given Confucius’s overall gongfu orientation, however, the key issue is not whether Confucius and Mencius truly believed that we are relational or autonomous; it is rather what practical results each of these views will lead to. Henry Rosemont is one of the most outspoken advocates of the view that Confucius holds a relational concept of human being and that his ethics should be characterized as role ethics, but he also acknowledges that whether we are ultimately autonomous individuals or co-​members of the human community is of course not an empirical question, and I know of no conclusive rational argument for one or the other, a priori or otherwise. Worse, these differing views are in many ways self-​prophetic; the more we believe ourselves to be essentially autonomous individuals, the more easily we become such. (2001: 91) The insistence on getting a conclusive, rational argument for a metaphysical view is itself a philosophical orientation foreign to the Confucius of the Analects. Seen as metaphysical assertions about reality, the relational person and the autonomous individual are opposites and incompatible with each other, and the question about which is true and which is false can never be settled conclusively. But from the gongfu perspective, these two views are two ways of conceiving ourselves which will lead to different and yet empirically verifiable results. The notion of the autonomous individual naturally leads one toward the pursuit of the freedom from external interference and consciousness of one’s personal rights. The relational notion of the human being, on the other hand, naturally leads one toward having a sense of

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responsibility and obligation. The former is often associated with individualism, but the latter has the liability of breeding a sense of privilege. The incompatibility of these two concepts at the conceptual level does not necessarily mean that they cannot complement each other in practical life, although in a given context, one concept may be definitely more constructive or more damaging than the other. Indeed, under the gongfu perspective the human subject becomes changeable. Just as arms and legs are indispensable parts of a martial arts master, and by extension, her sword can become part of her as well, the boundary between the self and the other becomes blurry and adjustable. Mencius’s famous saying that “All the ten thousand things are there in me” (Mencius 7A:4), a statement very difficult to make sense of in the familiar framework of metaphysics, becomes an illuminating reminder of the highest level of gongfu achievement in which the subject is able to extend itself so far that it becomes one with the entire universe. To read a text as life-​guiding instruction is not the same as taking it as teachings of moral rules. One obvious illustration of this point is the oft-​quoted passage where Confucius gave not only different but even contradictory instructions to different disciples. When Confucius was asked why he said “No” to Zilu, but answered “Yes” to Ran Qiu when they asked on separate occasions whether upon hearing what needs to be done they should just do it, the Master replied, “Ran Qiu is inclined to hold back, so I urged him forward. Zilu has the energy of two, so I reined him in” (11.22). This kind of situational and context relative way of instruction is typical in teaching all kinds of arts. Notice that this applies even to rule-​like instructions. Take the following famous statements of Confucius for example. He says that one should “not impose on others what you would not wish for yourself ” (12.2), and that one should “establish others if you want to establish yourself, and unblock others if you want to unblock yourself ” (6.30). These are usually taken as the Confucian versions of the “Golden Rule.” Yet Confucius also says that “exemplary persons are not for or against anything invariably” (4.10) and that one should ultimately aim at mastering the art of using quan 權, discretion (see 9.30). These teachings seem to contradict each other because rules are not compatible with flexibility. Notice, however, that Confucius never stated that his statements in 12.2 and 15.24 are “rules,” much less “golden.” Given his overall orientation, these statements should more plausibly be read as gongfu instructions than as inviolable moral rules. As instructions about a concrete method of cultivation, they help people become sensitive to the interests of others, but offer no guarantee that following them mechanically would lead a person to the appropriate action every single time. It is well known that, if taken as a universal and inviolable moral principle, the Golden Rule would lead to difficulties—​for instance, for a person who likes to be bribed, the Golden Rule would not only permit, but even obligate him to bribe others; for a judge who does not like to be put in jail, the Golden Rule would allow the criminal to dispute the punishment. Confucius’s “Golden Rule” is more like driving instructions—​they are meant to help people obtain embodied skills rather than to be restrictions one has to obey in all circumstances. Once a driver embodies the skills of driving, she will know when not to follow them! Not only does the point mean that Confucian teachings are not rigid rules, it also means that they are not necessarily about morality (i.e., if we understand morality

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to be about duties or obligations). Much of Book 10 of the Analects, for instance, consists of very detailed records about Confucius’s daily conduct—​the way he eats, sits, stands, walks, and so on. Most contemporary studies about Confucianism ignore this part of the text just like those who see a duck in the duck-​rabbit picture ignore the rabbit’s mouth. Not only do the detailed descriptions look trivial, they can hardly be taken as relevant to moral obligations. Seen in the light of the art of life, however, they become a vivid record of the Master’s artistic style of living. As learning an art usually begins with watching a master’s demonstration, mimicking an exemplar is a primary method of learning the intricacies which make the art real and alive. While learning detailed intricacies of a gongfu can hardly be taken as morally obligatory, not learning them can be regretted as simply being unfortunate for the learner.3 The gongfu orientation suggests that the common conception of Confucianism as a system of moral doctrines is a gross oversimplification and misinterpretation. Moral norms stipulate responsibilities, but gongfu is the art of living. Moral norms are imposed (whether by an external authority or, as in the case of Kantian ethics, by self) to constrain a person, but gongfu instructions are recommended for enabling a person to live better. Moral norms allow no exception, but gongfu instructions are more like protocols, which can allow flexibility. Norms are recognized by the mind, yet gongfu abilities must be embodied as one’s dispositions or habits. From the moral point of view the Confucian virtue of ren (human-​heartedness) is what makes a person morally good, but from the gongfu point of view, it is directly a person’s gongfu of enacting cosmic energies. No doubt Confucius is concerned about morality, but our common conception of morality today is too narrow to capture the Master’s aim, which obviously goes far beyond obligations into the realm of mastering the art of living. The gongfu perspective also implies the insight that is captured by what British philosopher J. L. Austin calls “speech acts.” Language is not only for describing reality. It can be used to perform all sorts of actions, such as promising, apologizing, acknowledging, mobilizing, setting up a stage, adjusting attitudes, and even transforming life. The ancient Chinese had a special term for it called yiming zhishi 以名制實, “using names to affect the reality.” Giving a text a gongfu reading means that one reads it with a sensitivity about the context in which it occurred and tries to find out what kind of “language game” it is playing. Confucius praised his disciple Yan Hui who was able “not to deviate from human-​heartedness for as long as three months” (Analects 6.7), and to “never make the same mistake twice” (Analects 6.3), and said that he only saw him advance and never saw him stop (9.21). Yet he also said, “I have never seen a person who loved human-​heartedness, or one who loathes the contrary to it. . . . Is anyone able, for a single day, to make efforts at human-​ heartedness?” (Analects 4.6) “I have never seen anyone who, on seeing his faults, is ready to accuse himself inwardly” (Analects 5.27). Taken literally, these statements contradict each other. However, from the gongfu perspective, the statements in 4.6 and 5.27 are obviously challenges to his students. Rather than telling them that they were all hopeless, the Master was using deliberate exaggerations, like a Chinese parent would typically do to their children, to challenge his students to prove him wrong by living a life of human-​heartedness.

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Similarly, when we read 7.23 where the Master said, “Heaven has embedded virtue in me. What can Huantui do to me?” and 9.5, where the Master said, “With King Wen being gone, is civilization not lodged here? If heaven were to let the civilization perish, we latecomers would not have gotten such a relation to that civilization. If heaven does not let the civilization perish, what can the people of Kuang do to me?” we get the impression that the Master believed that, because he embodied the mandate of heaven, no one could harm him. But then we read in the Mencius that when a man named Huantui in the state of Song attempted to kill him, he traveled in disguise to escape from the state (see Mencius 5A:8). If he truly believed that he was bulletproof, why would he bother to escape in disguise? Again, if you think the Master is self-​contradictory, you are reading his statements descriptively. When Confucius made these remarks, he and his disciples were in life-​threatening danger. Given the context, his statements were more likely the “speech acts” intended to declare his willingness and determination to be the carrier of the mandate of heaven. They encourage his disciples not to be afraid. In other words, the Master was using his words to do things or to affect his audience. Such a reading would not only resolve the apparent contradiction between his words and action, demystify the Master’s bragging about being the chosen one which is so uncharacteristic of him, but also make these passages more consistent with his partially skeptical and partially pragmatic attitude toward anything transcendental. It shows that the religiosity of Confucius is more a spirituality derived from within the human heart-​mind than a system of faith that can be reduced to a set of beliefs about some mystical reality. Last but not least, the gongfu perspective reminds us that many elements of traditional Chinese texts can only be fully appreciated through practice. A person who has never actually immersed in water cannot fully understand what it is like to swim, regardless of how much he knows about swimming. Similarly, those who have never pursued learning will have trouble understanding what makes Confucius and his disciple Yan Hui happy in their materially impoverished life (6.11 & 7.16). To them it would be enigmatic how Yan Hui could be so fascinated about learning that he was unable to stop his pursuit even if he wanted to (9.11). This explains why traditionally the Analects used to be memorized and followed first before people tried to apprehend it, because it takes practical experience and repeated rehearsals to develop the virtuosity required for true understanding and appreciation. As Song dynasty Confucian Cheng Yi says: “Nowadays people no longer know how to read. When they read the Analects, for instance, they are the same kind of people before they read the book and after they read the book. This is no different from not having read the book” (Zhu Xi 1992: 4). In a short article about how to read the Analects and Mencius, Zhu Xi (1999) says: In reading the Analects and the Mencius one should not merely aim at understanding the theory and the meanings of the texts. One should make careful reflection and put the teachings into practice . . . If a reader can relate the sages’ sayings to his own person and examine them through his own embodied practice, his effort will surely not be spent in vain. Every day will bring him the result (gong

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功) of the day. If one only takes the books as collections of sayings, it would be merely the learning of the mouth and the ears. (“Du Lunyu Mengzi Fa”: 3) Cheng and Zhu have both pointed out the difference between two approaches to reading—​one is intellectual and the other the gongfu approach. The former only requires intellectual understanding while the latter requires self-​reflection of what is learned and application of it in practice. The former leads only to bookish knowledge and the latter to embodied understanding and holistic growth. The former passively receives information from the text but the latter interacts with the text, making the text alive through one’s own engagement with it. Given the difference in orientation between the propositional and the instructional, it might not be too farfetched to say that using the intellectualist approach to read Confucius is like eating the menu instead of the food.

PROSPECTS OF GONGFU PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHY OF GONGFU Unlike the duck-​rabbit example in which the two perspectives are mutually exclusive, the gongfu perspective and the philosophical perspective can cross-​fertilize and enrich each other. Indeed, their mutual encounter promises the development of philosophy, either in the form of philosophical study of gongfu practice or in the form of applying the gongfu perspective to philosophy, or both. If we call the former philosophy of gongfu, the latter may be called gongfu philosophy. One major reason that prevented people from recognizing traditional Chinese thought as philosophy is the narrow understanding of philosophy itself. The Greek origin of the word philosophy consists of “φιληο” (phileo), meaning “to love,” and “σοφία” (sophia) meaning “(intellectual) wisdom.” While loving intellectual wisdom can manifest itself in enhancing our understanding of everything, including practical wisdom (φρόνησις, phronēsis), craftsmanship (τέχνη, techne), the transformation of the person, and the art of life, it is easy to slip into loving intellectual wisdom separated from practical life. As a result, Western philosophy developed an intellectualistic tendency that gradually alienated itself from philosophy as a way of life and became a pure theoretical discourse, as Pierre Hadot and Martha Nussbaum have both pointed out (see Hadot 1995; Nussbaum 1994). Carried away by this trend, the human subject came to be understood as a pure mind consisting of the intellect, which allows one to obtain knowledge, and the will, which makes decisions. Practice becomes “objectified” as something we do, but not who we are. As David Hall and Roger Ames point out that “the dichotomy of theory and practice has so long been presupposed in our tradition that the philosophical categories that form the inventory of our speculative notions are themselves construed with reference to this dichotomy.” Although many critics of modern philosophy have pointed out the deficiencies of this tendency and tried to overcome the problems, “it is doubtful whether the resources available within our own cultural tradition are adequate to resolve successfully the crucial dilemmas associated with attempting

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to think one’s way through to a sufficiently novel understanding of thinking” (Hall and Ames 1987: 38, 39). Whether this is true or not, it seems to me that philosophers could very well use the concept of gongfu to generate enough impact to the existing conceptual framework and, at the same time, connect to the rich constructive resources of traditional Chinese philosophy. Only with expansion of its scope to the realm nicely captured by the term gongfu can philosophy open up the areas that were unduly neglected or marginalized, such as the transformation of the person, the function of mimicking an exemplar, the role of the body and emotion in cognition and communication, the significance of family and ritual in shaping a person and in having a harmonious society, the importance of style for the quality of life, and so on, which have all been extensively discussed in classical Chinese texts such as the Analects. On the other hand, philosophical studies informed by the gongfu perspective will also change the landscape of existing areas of philosophy. Philosophers may well construct their theories purely for the sake of obtaining the truth, with no intention of affecting reality. Yet whether they realize it or not, philosophical ideas, even when purely theoretical, have always functioned as guides to human life. In this sense, all philosophical theories and ideas can be viewed as gongfu instructions and all philosophical activities can be considered gongfu practice! Because philosophical ideas deal with most fundamental questions about the world and life, their impact on human behavior is also at the most fundamental level and most prolific! Our mode of behavior and our way of thinking are shaped by philosophical ideas that look innocent enough to be taken for granted and escape our attention. Take the conception of causation for example, the dominant notion of cause since the modern era has been that of the efficient cause. According to this notion, a cause is something that affects the effect externally, forcing it to move deterministically toward a certain direction. Under this notion objects are nothing but aggregates of matter for external control and manipulation, with no intrinsic value. Such a notion can certainly be conducive to the development of technology and is proficient in leading to effective results in daily-​life activities. Yet when it becomes a universal way of dealing with nature as well as human relationships, it can lead to disastrous consequences, from devastating environmental crises to violent international confrontations. In contrast, the ancient Chinese bio-​generative concept of causality presents a way of seeing things in the universe as mutually interdependent, without clear-​cut boundaries. It accordingly conceives consequences as the result of an object’s interaction with its environment, unfolded from within. Such a notion of causality would more likely lead to behaviors that are conducive to cooperation and harmony, but would usually take more time and require holistic considerations to take effect. Under the gongfu perspective, these two very different notions of causation do not have to be mutually exclusive, one true and the other false. Their respective advantages and disadvantages in guiding human life can make them complementary, as in the case of using Western medicine for suppressing a symptom and traditional Chinese medicine for healing (see Jung 1950; Ni 2003; 2010c). From this we gain a better understanding about what we are actually doing when we argue for one theory of causation or the other.

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The gongfu perspective can practically bring new inspirations to all areas of philosophy. In epistemology, it forces us to pay attention to the function of the body, sentiments, and intuition, as their cultivation would affect not only how we observe but also what we can observe. There are perceptions simply not available to the uncultivated. It helps us explore the area of epistemology known as “knowing how,” which had surprisingly escaped philosophers’ attention until the middle of the last century. If all knowledge, even “knowing that,” involves knowing how, then epistemology would need to have a radical transformation. The gongfu method also helps us investigate the function of truths in practical life, the complexity of which has seldom received attention because knowing the truth has been simply believed to be always good. In ethics, it helps us evaluate different ethical theories as different gongfu instructions. It also opens up vast areas of life that, although irrelevant to moral obligations, can nevertheless be significant to the quality of life. Examination of these areas could allow people to realize that being moral is at the fundamental level in accord with the consummation of oneself, which is far from living a bitter and joyless altruistic life. In the field of social-​political philosophy, it inspires us to place freedom, democracy, equality, rights, and dignity into the overall process of improving the quality of life, and not simply presuppose them to be absolute values. Through this, we may thereby understand better how these values are related to a person’s maturity which J. S. Mill takes to be a necessary condition for liberty, and assess the feasibility of political models other than democracy in various historical conditions. In philosophy of language, Confucius’s teaching about rectification of names as well as his own practice of it (e.g., his way of turning the words “junzi” and “xiaoren” from names of social statuses to names of moral qualities) helps us realize that the theory about “speech acts” is not merely a description about the nature of some linguistic activity; it should force us to realize that all linguistic activities can be considered speech acts, and hence our familiar dichotomy between speech and action is challenged. This will have a profound impact on political philosophy, with regard to concepts such as the freedom of speech, as well as how we should view our philosophical theories (e.g., should Nietzsche’s philosophy be rated as “PG”—​ parental guidance suggested?).

GONGFU, PRAGMATISM, AND VIRTUE THEORIES Of course, the gongfu perspective is not entirely new to Western philosophy. There have been comparable perspectives such as Greek virtue ethics, contemporary American pragmatism, and so on.4 Precisely because of this many scholars have tried to interpret traditional Chinese philosophy from these sources. Such cross-​ references can undoubtedly fertilize mutual understanding and further development of both sides, yet the similarities do not make our proposal of the gongfu method redundant, because there are still important differences.

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Similar to the traditional Chinese gongfu perspective, pragmatism also evaluates ideas and theories according to their practical implications. Because of this, some contemporary scholars (such as Li Zehou 2005) characterized the traditional Chinese way of thinking as “pragmatic reason.” But the name “pragmatism” is derived from the Greek word πρᾶγμα (pragma), which means “deed, act,” and is therefore more apt to direct attention to actions and their consequences rather than to the agent. In the absence of the concept of gongfu, pragmatists’ conception of “practical implication” is always liable to slip into crude usefulness for whatever purpose, with little hint for the need to cultivate the agent. Even John Dewey, who lays particular emphasis on the philosophy of education, still calls his philosophy “instrumentalism.” Instruments are commonly understood to be external to the agent and merely employed by the agent for pragmatic purposes. A theory that identifies itself based on key terms like pragma and instrument puts itself at the very start in a position inadequate for addressing the subject of self-​transformation. Looking at the overall track record of American pragmatism, one would find no tolerance for irrelevancy, a spirit of being direct, efficient, and practical, a no-​nonsense attitude that contributed a lot to America’s success in the last century, but little about cultivating exemplary persons. Moreover, as the art of living, gongfu stresses not only “pragmatic” implications, but also “nonpragmatic,” artistic values. Indeed, pragmatist aesthetician Richard Shusterman already regards life itself as a realm of art, but the concept of “pragmatist aesthetics” still makes people feel that “this is a pragmatist theory about aesthetics,” and not that aesthetics is itself inherent in pragmatism. In a conceptual framework in which the “pragmatic” and the “aesthetic” are separated, the integration of the two becomes difficult from the very start. In comparison, the gongfu perspective is inherently a perspective of art. This subtle difference in its starting point leads to hugely different implications. It is much easier, for instance, for the gongfu perspective to appreciate the importance of the “style of life,” which is usually not even in a “pragmatic” person’s dictionary. The rise of “virtue ethics” and “virtue epistemology” in recent years has triggered a wave of enthusiasm in the “virtue” interpretation of Chinese philosophy. Many scholars have interpreted Confucianism as a version of virtue ethics, and from this many scholarly works have been produced. Indeed, the original Greek concept of virtue, arête, is very close to the concept of gongfu. In Aristotle’s theory of ethics, arête refers to virtuous habits that enable the agent to perform well in life, much like gongfu abilities. Aristotle’s characterization of ethical virtue as the ability to hit the “mean” between excess and deficiency also overlaps with the Confucian teaching of “zhongyong” significantly. However, here the concept of gongfu is still preferable for several important reasons. First, gongfu is an art rather than moral responsibility. In a time when the concept of virtue has been moralized and bundled together with moral obligations, the concept of gongfu helps us to regain the sense that virtues are virtuosities. Although a good deal of personal character and habits do not quite involve morality, they could nevertheless be deplorable or praiseworthy, and could affect the value and beauty of a life profoundly.

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Related to this, gongfu does not depend on any metaphysical theory for justification (although it may use metaphysical theories as gongfu instructions). If we free virtues from their metaphysical frameworks, they can be viewed as concrete efficacious good at, good in, good to, good for, and good with. Rather than a set of potentials the value of which is predetermined by a metaphysical theory of human essence, such as the Aristotelian teleology, the legitimacy of gongfu is derived from the beauty and efficacy it generates. Haunted by the Humean “is-​ought” dichotomy, all efforts that try to justify value (ought) purely on the basis of facts (is) seem doomed to failure. No account about what humans should be like can be built indisputably on facts alone. Their ultimate justification has to depend at least in part on people’s visions of excellence, which is not only historically and culturally contingent, and hence irreducibly plural, but also personal. While conflicting truth-​claims about metaphysical facts cannot all be true, competing visions of excellence may coexist like different styles of art, for which plurality and creativity is to be celebrated rather than feared. Furthermore, “gongfu” offers a holistic conceptual framework in which particular virtues are less likely to become compartmentalized. Individual virtues all come with their respective liabilities. For instance, if not accompanied by learning, human-​ heartedness is liable to the flaw of foolishness, uprightness is liable to the flaw of bluntness, and courage is liable to the flaw of being disruptive (Analects 4.7, 17.8). A very nice adolescent who has all these virtues can act wrongly all the time if he has not developed some level of maturity, that is the gongfu of recognizing appropriate application of these virtues in particular situations. Finally, although the gongfu perspective calls our attention to the cultivation of virtue, it does not thereby eclipse the importance of rule-​oriented perspectives, such as Kantian and utilitarian ethics; instead it can properly evaluate their functions as different gongfu methods for living a good life. In fact setting up rules of conduct can be an effective way of cultivating a person, especially at a young age. Confucianism, for example, is known for advocating the observance of traditional rituals, which is not without good reason described as “rules of propriety.” Traditional rituals provide the necessary guidance to people before they can become sages who are able to use “quan” or discretion. In a wider social context, they also make people’s behavior more accountable.

CONCLUDING REMARKS To sum up what I have said above, I recommend the gongfu method because it is a key to access the great resource of traditional Chinese philosophy, the engagement of which in turn promises new developments in world philosophy. Inherent in classic Chinese texts such as the Analects, the gongfu method approaches any subject from its relevance to the art of life. The method entails being sensitive to the instructional function of a text, which is very different from the descriptive function that is usually assumed as one reads a philosophy text. When a metaphysical view, for instance, is taken as a recommendation, it is no longer evaluated according to its truth value

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but according to how it affects a person’s way of life. The method also enables us to appreciate instructive statements that are not stated in the form of moral rules. Even when they are rule-​like, they may neither be intended as rigid rules nor as moral obligations, but as instructions that guide one to the direction of becoming a master of a respective art. The gongfu method further implies sensitivity toward speech acts, the consequences of which affect almost every aspect of human life, not the least of which is politics. Finally, the method enables us to realize that the intellect alone is inadequate for understanding. Practice and embodiment should be two key terms without which understanding itself cannot be fully understood. This does not entail that the gongfu method is the only valid perspective for interpreting Chinese philosophy. There can be other “fingers” that can also point to the “moon” of traditional Chinese philosophy. Furthermore, we need to realize that, as the famous Tang dynasty poet Li Bai once exclaimed that “people today have no access to seeing the ancient moon; the moon today used to cast light on ancient people.” Strictly speaking, the “ancient moon” of traditional Chinese philosophy, as it is in the minds of the great thinkers of the past, is no longer available to the people today. Facing a duck-​rabbit picture, we cannot be absolutely certain of the artist’s real intention. She may have wanted to draw a duck, yet inadvertently drew it a bit like a rabbit, or she may have wanted to draw a rabbit, but ended up drawing it a bit like a duck, or she was drawing neither a duck nor a rabbit (otherwise how come it is so indefinite?), but just drawing randomly, and purely by chance, ended up with such a picture. Some scholars try to remove layers of interpretations added to the original text from different perspectives and prove that the text we see are to a large degree “invented” by its commentators. This “perspective of having no perspective” is a strong antidote to subjectivity. But those who use it tend to ignore the fact that it is itself a perspective—​it seeks to discover the original intent of the original author(s), and state them propositionally as historical truths. Yet no one can literally have a view from nowhere. German philosopher Hans-​Georg Gadamer straightforwardly calls perspectives “prejudices,” but he points out that prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [i.e., prejudgments], constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. (Baynes, Bohman, and McCarthy 1987: 320) Without prejudice, there is no direction of interpretation; without direction of interpretation, there is no possibility of understanding! Of course we can use the fact that “people today have no access to seeing the ancient moon” as a reason to doubt every interpretation, but from the gongfu perspective, the result of such an approach is usually a complete deconstruction of the text. Observing from a certain perspective does not mean conjecturing. The object itself partly determines the reasonableness of the perspectives and the range in which it can be interpreted. Seeing the duck-​rabbit picture as either a duck or a rabbit is obviously more reasonable than seeing it as a lion or tiger. The reasonableness of seeing traditional Chinese thought from a gongfu perspective lies in the fact that it helps us grasp a major characteristic of traditional

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Chinese thought that has been eclipsed by the dominance of Western philosophy, that this characteristic reveals its profound validity in guiding our life, and that through gongfunizing philosophy, it helps philosophy break the constraints of modern Western intellectualism, enables it to gain new penetrative and constructive ideas, and prompts the development of new philosophical theories. The renewed vitality of philosophy will undoubtedly lead to the improvement of human gongfu practice. Interestingly, when incorporated into the Extended Worthy Aphorisms by scholars later, Li Bai’s above-​quoted lines somehow became thus: “Ancient people had no access to seeing the moon today; the moon today used to cast light on ancient people.”5 The inadvertently transposed words “today” and “ancient” turned a lament into a proud announcement—​ the ancient people could not have foreseen the modern significance of traditional Chinese thought. Today’s gongfu philosophy should be different from the gongfu theory of the Song-​Ming period. If the Song-​Ming neo-​Confucians, in reference to the challenges from Buddhism and Daoism, developed the pre-​ Qin classic Confucianism through their gongfu perspective, today, with the contemporary situation of having had the mutual encounters between China and the West, we should be able to turn the traditional Chinese gongfu theory into a “moon today” that can shine over the contemporary world.

NOTES 1. It is no coincidence that recently the term “guoxue 國 ​ 學,” literally [Chinese] national [culture] study, has gained popularity as an alternative for the study of traditional Chinese philosophy. See Ni (2013). 2. Translations of the Analects and other Chinese texts are my own. 3. Readers may want to read Olberding (2012) for an excellent articulation of the point. 4. It is beyond the limit allowed for this chapter to provide a complete list of all the philosophical trends that have overlaps with the gongfu approach. Here I am just bringing up its two closest allies, pragmatism and virtue ethics. 5. In Zengguang Xianwen 增廣賢文 (Extended Worthy Aphorisms), collected by anonymous editors during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

REFERENCES Baynes, K., J. Bohman, and T. McCarthy (eds.) (1987), After Philosophy, End or Transformation? Boston: MIT Press. Hadot, P. (1995), Philosophy as a Way of Life, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Hall, D. L. and R. Ames (1987), Thinking Through Confucius, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Jung, C. G. (1950), “Foreword” for the R. Wilhelm (trans.), The I Ching, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, xxiv–​xxv. Li, Z. H. (2005), Pragmatic Reason and Aesthetic Culture (實用理性與樂感文化), Beijing: Sanlian Shudian.

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Ni, P. M. (2003), “Toward a Broader Notion of Causation (and Technology),” in R. T. Ames and P. Hershock (eds.), Technology and Cultural Values on the Edge of the Third Millennium, Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press. Ni, P. M. (2008), “Gongfu—​A Vital Dimension of Confucian Teaching,” in D. Jones (ed.), Confucius Now, Contemporary Encounters with the Analects, Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Ni, P. M. (2010a), “Gongfu for Philosophers,” The New York Times forum “The Stone,” December 8, 2010. Ni, P. M. (2010b), “Philosophers for Gongfu,” The New York Times forum “The Stone,” December 21, 2010. Ni, P. M. (2010c), “On How Scientific Traditional Chinese Medicine Is and Two Senses of being ‘Scientific’ (中醫的科學性與兩種科學觀念),” Philosophical Analysis (哲學分析), I.1:  139–​146. Ni, P. M. (2013), “The Changing Status of Chinese Philosophy,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 40: 583–​600. Nussbaum, M. (1994), The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Olberding, A. (2012), Moral Exemplars in the Analects—​The Good Person Is That, New York and London: Routledge. Rosemont, H., Jr. (2001), Rationality and Religious Experience—​The Continuing Relevance of the World’s Spiritual Traditions, Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Rosemont, H., Jr. (2013), A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations, New York: Macmillan. Zhu, X. (1992), Collected Commentaries of the Analects (論語集註), in Collected Commentaries of the Four Books (四書章句集註), Shandong: Qilu Shushe. Zhu, X. (1999), On Methods of Reading the Analects and Mencius (讀論語孟子法), in Siku Quanshu 四庫全書, Wenyuange version, Classics part, Four Books section, Grand Collection of the Four Books—​Grand Collection of Commentaries of the Analects, Hong Kong: Digital Heritage Publishing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Methodological Inspiration from Teaching Chinese Philosophy SARAH MATTICE

Many of the chapters in this volume present focused examinations of methodology for and in Chinese philosophical traditions. They explore questions of how classical Chinese philosophers understood their practices, how different philosophical methodologies impact current study of and engagement with Chinese philosophical traditions, and what methodological innovations might be on the horizon. Many of the authors in this volume point out the ways in which ambient assumptions color our research, and the ways in which engagement across traditions can highlight previously hidden assumptions. In this chapter, instead of focusing on methodology in terms of research, I take methodology as the starting point for considering pedagogical assumptions about Chinese philosophy. Specifically, I argue that how Chinese philosophy was understood and when practiced in its own context, it is not only relevant to but can serve as a meaningful resource for teaching Chinese philosophy. In other words, I want to challenge the assumption that the teaching of Chinese philosophy should follow the same methodologies dominant in the teaching of primarily Western philosophies. In order to do this, I draw on my own experiences in teaching Chinese philosophy, as well as those of many colleagues in the field, hoping that this chapter may be helpful to other teachers.1 The chapter is organized into three main sections. The first part considers teaching Chinese philosophy in light of more general issues with teaching comparative or non-​ Western philosophy, or philosophy in general. The second part focuses specifically on teaching Chinese philosophy as having a distinctive set of concerns and resources for pedagogical inspiration. The last part looks at some specific examples of pedagogical practices for contemporary classrooms that are drawn out of Chinese philosophy.

PHILOSOPHY, PEDAGOGY, AND EUROCENTRISM As courses in philosophy, courses in Chinese philosophy share certain pedagogical concerns with other area or time period courses such as Greek philosophy, Continental

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philosophy, Indian philosophy, Ethics, and so on. That is to say, the category of the course is obviously so broad that one semester is but a drop in a very big bucket. Instructors have to make difficult decisions between depth and breadth of material. They have to consider staying in a single time period (Warring States, for example) or following a philosophical issue through multiple time periods (禮 li, ritual, from the Zhou to the Qing). As with most subfields, there are several excellent survey texts (e.g., Lai 2008; Liu 2006; Littlejohn 2015; Van Norden 2011), so instructors also have to decide how much, if any, secondary source material is to be included with primary sources.2 There is a set of more-​or-​less canonical texts, figures, and issues that most undergraduate Chinese philosophy courses usually involve, but there is also great variation in how those are handled, and which outliers are brought into any given course. This is just to say, not everything about teaching Chinese philosophy is special, foreign, or different from most other philosophy courses. However, there are some concerns about teaching Chinese philosophy that are specifically shared among other non-​Western or comparative philosophy courses.3 While philosophy in European languages also faces problems of translation, the translation problems faced by non-​Western texts are often increased by several magnitudes. In many cases the first or early translations for key terms and texts that became canonical were hugely influenced by and involved in Christian missionary projects, and as such have a tendency to filter the original texts in ways that complicate responsible interpretation and engagement.4 In teaching, then, one not only has to address the fact and problem of translation qua translation, but also the additional factors involved in making sure that other traditions are not read by students as simply being reflections of their own (primarily Abrahamic) assumptions. In addition, because students are often not familiar with much of the context surrounding non-​Western philosophical traditions and these contexts are important to understanding the philosophies of a given time/​place, a certain amount of the course is likely to be given over to issues of language, history, and culture in a way different from many Western philosophy courses.5 While students may not know much about Descartes, they may have heard the name, whereas (some American) students are unlikely to have heard of Xunzi or Wang Yangming, often confuse Chinese and other Asian cultures with one another, and rarely have any background in non-​Western languages. Furthermore, there are important postcolonial issues that have shaped the lenses through which we, today, often view non-​Western traditions. Considering China, for instance, we need only begin with the name of one of the most important religio-​ philosophical traditions, Confucianism. “Confucianism,” as the Western/​ English name of the tradition associated with the historical figure “Confucius,” brings us immediately to Jesuit and missionary interactions with China in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. “Confucius” is the latinization of 孔夫子 (Kongfuzi), but in Chinese it is much more common for this historical person to be referred to as 孔 子 (Kongzi) or 孔丘 (Kong Qiu).6 The term “Confucianism” comes out of Western, Christian assumptions of the time that religions have a founder and a main text, and are named after that founder. The fact that in Chinese this tradition is referred to not in terms of the name of its iconic sage, but as 儒家 (Rujia) or 儒學 (Ruxue),

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the lineage or school of the 儒 (Ru), ritual masters of early China, did not impact its “translation.” Yet, common parlance is still “Confucianism” and not “Ruisim,” although some scholars have tried to effect this shift in vocabulary. This seemingly small point is a microcosm of larger postcolonial concerns with the construction of non-​Western traditions by Western scholars for and with Western interests. When we introduce students to non-​Western traditions, one of the things we need to keep in the forefront is, whose tradition is this? How do/​have insiders understood themselves, their practices, their ideas? How has this changed over time? How is it different from ways in which insiders to Western traditions understand themselves?7 To continue with this example, the question of whether Confucianism/​Ruism is philosophy, religion, both, neither, and so on is also itself fraught with political implications (not dissimilar to many non-​Western traditions) that stretch back to the time of the first Jesuit encounters, through the Rites Controversy, and into today in terms of the PRC’s five-​fold categorization of religion in China, which does not include Confucianism by any name.8 The very introduction of this tradition in Western classrooms has already been mediated through several centuries of colonial and imperial interactions between Western powers and China, and this complicates how to frame the tradition for students. The very attempt at this categorization is based on categories that arose out of Greek and Western European cultures, and so is problematic—​and yet, these are the categories we have to work with, and those with which students are familiar. At a more sophisticated level, we as teachers can draw on indigenous categories and bring those into the discussion; but this is a difficult first move for many students who are entirely unfamiliar with these traditions. One concrete classroom practice that can help with many of these issues is foregrounding problems of interpretation in terms of the hermeneutics of faith, suspicion, and charity.9 The technical terms of “hermeneutics of faith” and “hermeneutics of suspicion” come originally from French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, and refer to different interpretive strategies for understanding a text (where “text” can be almost any meaningful/​ communicative act). The hermeneutics of faith takes the text and its tradition as the interpretive authority on any particular issue, whereas the hermeneutics of suspicion looks outside the text/​tradition to understand its particulars. The hermeneutics of charity, which is especially valuable to stress for students, puts the interpreter in a position of intellectual humility, requiring the initial assumption of meaningful intelligibility on the part of the text, and a lack of understanding to be the burden of the interpreter.10 When students see these strategies as complementary, rather than exclusive, they can start to navigate some of the complex issues posed by translation, culture, and coloniality.

PEDAGOGICAL METHODS IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY CLASSROOMS Although previous section of this chapter considered some methodological issues with pedagogy that are shared between Chinese philosophy and other non-​Western traditions, in this section I take up the particularities of Chinese philosophy as it

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relates to teaching in a contemporary setting. We should not assume that because mainstream philosophers are more and more comfortable including Chinese traditions in the category of philosophy that teachers should take Chinese philosophy as mere content to be taught like any other philosophy, without attention to method or style. This does not mean that content is not important, but rather that content, context, and methodology are intertwined in ways that are important to highlight pedagogically. I think this is true not only for Chinese philosophy, but for the particulars of any philosophical tradition. However, in the current circumstances, taking Chinese philosophy as “mere content” is a symptom of the implicit prioritization of certain traditions over others. As teachers we try our best to immerse ourselves and our students in the environment of the text, the ambient cultural, linguistic, and cosmological assumptions surrounding the ideas, arguments, and practices in question. Although this is in some sense an impossible goal, nonetheless it is an ideal of responsible engagement with any tradition. In the case of the Chinese tradition, perhaps the most salient point of entry is aesthetics.11 Although “aesthetics” is a Western category, we can use it here heuristically as an orientation toward holistic, embodied experience, where philosophical thinking and practice aim at nonalgorithmic responses, where metaphysical/​ epistemological/​ ethical questions are located in an inescapably aesthetic context, where harmony is an overarching philosophical concern and value, and where the quality and style of experience and cultivation are not only necessarily part of but are often primary to questions of content. Methodologically, this is a major shift from how contemporary Western philosophers often enter into a tradition—​metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics tend to dominate introductory approaches to most philosophers and philosophies.12 Questions of “what is real?,” “what do I know?,” and “what should I do?” are often understood as having a certain priority in Western traditions.13 In Chinese traditions, however, “how” questions generally take priority over “what” questions, and style and method are understood as intertwined. Given the importance of aesthetics in Chinese philosophy we can take our cue from the traditions themselves and frame our teaching in terms of an aesthetic approach to texts, ideas, and practices, taking seriously the role of images and the concrete in philosophical work. One way to do this that is inspired by Chinese philosophy is to focus on metaphor and the foundational role of metaphor in thinking and understanding. While coming out of Aristotle many people might think of metaphor as “improper naming” or a kind of linguistic ornamentation (simile without the “as” or “like”), in the early Chinese traditions, metaphor—​the understanding of one thing in terms of another—​is foundational.14 From the 易經 Yijing to the 孟子 Mengzi, from the 道德經 Daodejing to the 荀子 Xunzi and beyond, metaphor is crucial to Chinese philosophy in at least three ways. First, the classical Chinese language is deeply metaphoric, with vocabulary that is replete with multiple simultaneous meaning, and allusion is a common rhetorical strategy.15 Second, when we look carefully at the correlative cosmology of early China, we find a method for making sense of a processual and eventful cosmos, where the expression of wisdom is drawing together events from different realms

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in productive ways. These artful associations were later established into vast tables of correspondences, through which the world and everything in it was understood. Metaphoric activity—​understanding one thing in terms of another—​was the basic mode of understanding and engagement for early Chinese thinkers. Given the nonsubstantial ontology of the time, it is more precise to think of sets of processes being understood in terms of one another, where these processes are already related in some ways. So the metaphoric activity foregrounds certain relationships for a given purpose. Third, early Chinese philosophical conversations often proceed through metaphor. The classic example of this is Book 6A of the Mengzi, where Mengzi and Gaozi are considering 性 xing, natural human dispositions. One thinker puts forward a thick metaphoric image of xing, and the other responds by challenging some of the associations and connotations of that thick image, given the context of the discussion. The argument is about the best way to understand xing, and both thinkers conduct the argument, methodologically, in and through metaphor. So not only is metaphor in some ways built in to early Chinese language and ways of thinking, but it is also an explicit method for doing philosophy.16 Becoming attentive to metaphors in Chinese philosophy has at least two positive pedagogical benefits. First, it helps us (as teachers) and our students to see just how different the world looks from another perspective. The previous sentence, in fact, is a good example of that, as in English and many Western languages, metaphors of vision or sight for understanding are common, whereas in classical Chinese the source domain for understanding tends to be more auditory than visual. Specifically, paying attention to metaphors for doing philosophy from Chinese sources can show students how thinking, understanding, conversing, and critiquing are genuinely different. This does not necessarily imply better or worse. I see this as an antidote to the kind of thinking that looks for a certain style of argumentation, for example, and if it isn’t visible, sometimes determines that a given text is not sufficiently philosophical. When we pay attention to metaphor, we can observe thinking and conversing and arguing in different ways, and thus have a richer set of resources from which to begin to do philosophy. While early Greek philosophy, for example, tends toward metaphors of combat or war for philosophy, early Chinese philosophy tends toward metaphors of the natural and agricultural world. This shows students that philosophy, and its attendant skills and activities, can be very different in different places, and helps open the door for their engagement with the tradition on its own terms. It also shows them that the metaphors they might be most familiar with are not necessarily the best for understanding a given topic, and so it widens the scope of their thinking. When students understand that midwifery (Plato’s Theaetetus) and plant cultivation (Mengzi) are very different ways of making sense of knowing, for instance, not only is their appreciation of the Chinese material more sensitive, but their thinking about knowing is expanded. Second, it provides an explicit framework for engaging a particular text, idea, or practice, as drawing attention to metaphors makes asking “how” questions more fruitful—​how does Yan Hui become the favored disciple, how does the Daodejing open, how does Mozi argue against ritual, how is the image of the peng bird important to the Zhuangzi, and so on. This brings students to think through how

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these texts are structured, how argument works in different Chinese traditions and over time, and puts them into the mode of “how” thinking and paying attention to metaphors that is more characteristic of Chinese thinkers.17 From the perspective of a world organized through the resonances between different processes and events, articulating how one event is similar to or different from another is how metaphors are made more complex and far-​ reaching. In terms of teaching methodology, from this we can consider strategies of similarity and strategies of difference, between Chinese and other philosophies. Strategies of similarity can involve using certain non-​Chinese philosophers or ideas as bridges to Chinese philosophy (Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Aristotle have all been used by prominent philosophers in practices of similarity). Strategies of difference focus on highlighting meaningful differences between traditions. Examples of strategies of difference include choosing unfamiliar translations, foregrounding cosmological differences, and attending to cultural dissimilarities. Methodologically these should be complementary, rather than exclusive, hermeneutic strategies, as the movement between similarity and difference is dynamic and depends on the given situation.

CLASSROOM PRACTICES DRAWN FROM CHINESE PHILOSOPHY There are many specific examples of exercises with students in Chinese philosophy courses that might be helpful for making concrete the idea of taking methodological inspiration for teaching from Chinese philosophy. In addition to more common practices like close textual reading (with its analogue in the Chinese “Evidential Research” movement 考證之學) or essay writing, in what follows I discuss five classroom activities that I see as inspired from Chinese traditions: commentary writing, contemplative practice, passage memorization, finding contemporary examples of textual images/​figures, and journaling. Students who have had other philosophy courses may be familiar with certain practices of direct critique. However, confrontational or direct critique is not the most common form of critique in early Chinese traditions. Instead, what we see more often are extensive commentarial traditions, where innovation and critique are often rhetorically structured in such a way as to be powerful yet indirect. While early Confucians and Daoists give somewhat different rationales for this, they share the methodology of commentary. Having students learn to write commentaries, then, encourages them to think about both innovation and critique in a nonconfrontational manner. Exercises focused on commentaries can range from individual passages to books or chapters, and can take many different commentarial forms, including memorials and letters. It is often discussed that most Chinese traditions do not make sharp separations between mind and body, between the emotional and the intellectual, and between the spiritual and the everyday. In the vein of trying to understand this, having students actually do certain kinds of practices that are being discussed in texts can be very helpful and enjoyable for the students. This can range from basic Taiji exercises

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when reading the Daodejing, to illustrate the harmonic balance of 有 you and 無 wu, to practicing calligraphy when discussing personal cultivation and the arts of the 君子 junzi, to meditation exercises when exploring Chan Buddhism.18 These traditions stress, with different arguments but shared concerns, the holistic nature of experience, and the importance of practices that harmonize different features of that experience. Even an outing to eat Chinese food can be an opportunity for highlighting various philosophical issues, from family-​style dining to the classical texts on harmony of flavors and ingredients, from ritual propriety and 關係 guanxi to the coincidence of ideas of medicine and food. Students often hate memorization. They sometimes feel that portions of their K-​12, and even university, education has stressed memorization for test performance, and that this memorization did not lead them to genuine understanding or engagement with ideas. Given this, the Chinese emphasis on memorization of texts often can bring with it connotations of standardized tests and unpleasant educational experiences. However, given how important memorization was in the practice of Chinese philosophy, spending some time unpacking it can be useful for students—​including asking them to memorize and recite a short passage from a text under discussion. Barry C. Keenan’s book titled Neo-​Confucian Self-​Cultivation has an excellent discussion of Zhu Xi’s work on the 大學 Daxue, and extensive commentary on education practices of the time, including how Zhu Xi encouraged students to read texts, and why students should memorize. Focusing on a practice students are prepared to think poorly of can provide the opportunity for surprising engagement. In the spirit of trying to “think” with different metaphors, having students try to find examples of figures/​images from classical texts in the contemporary world can add a dimension of richness to their understanding of the text. Many Chinese philosophical traditions put great emphasis on the role of exemplars, and on the power of thick images to benefit understanding and practice. Seeing Cook Ding in the local barrista, for example, can help students to think through sophisticated ideas like spontaneity and emptiness in new ways. Looking at Mozi’s critique of ritual in light of reality TV shows like Bridezillas, or listening to hip-​hop artist Brother Ali as a modern-​day Zhuangzi, can not only illustrate the relevance of old ideas but prompt new and meaningful connections for students.19 Finally, journaling, a practice many neo-​Confucians engaged in on a daily basis, can be a way of practicing reflection on the material in a way that the authors of the material themselves might have done. If we want our students to be more reflective, they need it to become habitual, and journaling (with prompts) is one way of inculcating and encouraging that habit. Putting these activities in the context of a contemporary philosophy classroom, which is very different from the context in which Chinese philosophy was classically done, does require some alteration, but on the whole these activities benefit both the depth of student engagement with the material and their experience of a different way of thinking. Becoming more familiar with this difference can then cause them to reflect on the strangeness of what is most familiar, which is something aimed at by most philosophy courses, including Chinese philosophy.

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CONCLUSION These are exciting times, as we are seeing more and more courses that include or focus on elements of Chinese philosophy across undergraduate curricula.20 In addition to a more or less straightforward Chinese philosophy course, professors may teach a variety of courses that involve Chinese philosophy, from modules in Introduction to Philosophy or comparative courses (“Confucius and Dewey,” “Zhuangzi and Thoreau,” “Personal Identity across Cultures,” “Human Rights in the U.S. and China,” etc.) to more narrowly focused upper division seminars or graduate courses (“Confucianism,” “Daoism,” “The Yijing,” “Zhu Xi,” “Chan Buddhism,” etc.), and even study abroad programs.21 The approach I have described in this chapter—​the focus on aesthetics, metaphor, and practical inspiration from Chinese philosophy—​ can be helpful for these more specific courses as well. However, teaching Chinese philosophy in this way does require a certain element of interdisciplinarity that can be daunting for more narrowly trained specialists.22 We can here also take inspiration from the sometimes blurred and blurry disciplinary boundaries found within Chinese philosophy. While many of us may have at one time or another found ourselves in the position of defending the idea of Chinese philosophy as philosophy, pedagogically when we begin from the assumption that this is philosophy, we can relax the border policing so prevalent in certain aspects of our discipline and enjoy the opportunity that we, as faculty, have to broaden our knowledge and experience base to include other relevant disciplines such as religious studies, history, language, sociology, and so on. While we may not be experts in those fields, we can help our students to see the underdetermination of Chinese philosophy and the value of different disciplinary methodologies. We can also work together as colleagues to create a community of teacher-​scholars focused on the many different ways to teach Chinese philosophy.

NOTES 1. In what follows I limit the teaching context to what I am most familiar with, which is teaching at a state institution in the United States. When I discuss Chinese philosophy, I intend to invoke the whole of the many traditions and philosophers involved from the ancient to the present, but due to my limited expertise, many of my examples will be drawn from the Warring States period. 2. We are fortunate that the number of excellent primary source texts is quite high. From the time when Wing-​tsit Chan’s Sourcebook was one of the only English-​language options, today there are both stand-​alone translations of most major texts and readers with edited selections, from the classical to the contemporary period. Some newer translations include the Chinese, which is helpful in some cases, and others include selections from major commentaries, which is particularly valuable for giving a sense of Chinese philosophical methodology. Most include introductions and/​or notes to provide context for the reader.

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3. For more on shared pedagogical issues across non-​Western philosophical traditions, please note the Society for Teaching Comparative Philosophy website: http://​stcp. weebly.com. The STCP has regular workshops and has published a special issue of the journal ASIANetwork (forthcoming 2016). 4. For an example in Chinese philosophy, see the works of James Legge, who was a Scottish Congregationalist and a missionary on behalf of the London Missionary Society in China. While Legge’s translations were among the first to be available in English and a major scholarly accomplishment, they also have a marked tendency to Christianize the texts. For more on issues of translation in this respect, see the Introductions to Roger T. Ames’s translations of the Analects or the Daodejing. 5. This is not to suggest that students are necessarily particularly familiar with Western history, but there are some relevant shared assumptions and knowledge that are still active in the contemporary environment. For a different perspective on this concerning pedagogy, see Paul Carelli’s “Teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy as a Non-​Western Tradition” (ASIANetwork, forthcoming 2016). 6. See Jensen (1998). Although his strong thesis is controversial, the evidence presented for the way in which Western missionaries and Chinese of the time constructed the figure of Confucius in relevantly different ways from his original image is compelling. 7. For instance, many students who come from a broadly Abrahamic background (in my area, primarily Christian), their experience of the exclusivity of their traditions colors how they see China. So while it would be unusual, at the least, to find someone who identified as both Muslim and Christian, it would not be at all unusual to find persons in China who do Confucian and Buddhist activities, for example. My emphasis on practice in the Chinese context, over belief, is intentional, as the largely Protestant concern with belief as the cornerstone of membership is generally not replicated in a Chinese context. 8. The PRC recognizes Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religions, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, as the five religions in China. For an excellent discussion of this and how it relates to Confucianism in the contemporary world, see Sun (2013). 9. For a more in-​depth discussion of how these might be used in a comparative/​non-​ Western classroom, see my article, “But Do They Know It’s February in China? And Other Questions of Authority and Culture in Comparative Classrooms” in the journal ASIANetwork (forthcoming 2016) 10. For an excellent discussion of these strategies in the context of Chinese philosophy, see Van Norden (2007: 4–​9.) Van Norden describes “hermeneutics of faith” as “hermeneutics of restoration.” 11. For more on this see Mattice (2013), Hall and Ames (1995), Ames (2011), Graham (1989), Jullien (2004), Fung (1948), and so on. 12. Even a cursory survey of introductory texts reveals the absence of much attention on aesthetics. 13. While there are some exceptions to this, the rarity of these exceptions demonstrates the power of the generalization. 14. In contemporary philosophical terms, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that our conceptual frameworks are largely made up of conceptual metaphors, deep structures of association where a target domain is understood through the structure

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and content of a source domain. These are often not recognized as metaphor, as they are not novel. Examples they discuss include “happy is up,” “time is money,” and “love is a journey.” For more, see Lakoff (2003) or Lakoff and Johnson (1999). I would here follow Edward Slingerland in arguing that, on the basis of current research in cognitive linguistics, all language and thought are deeply metaphoric. However, early Chinese thinkers understood their own language to be metaphoric in a particularly conscious way that is different from other language/​culture groups, including those formative for many Western philosophers. I argue for the primacy of metaphor in terms of how we think using resources from cognitive linguistics, hermeneutics, and Chinese philosophy (Mattice 2014). See Chapter One for more detail with regards to these arguments about metaphor and early China. For example, May Sim (2014) explores metaphors of travel to consider each thinker’s position on knowledge. This is precisely the kind of attention to metaphors that can be helpful for students to attend to the text and comparisons between texts. Many of these practices fall under the current designation of Contemplative Studies. For more on this see http://​www.contemplativemind.org/​about; Barbezat and Bush (2013); for Contemplative pedagogy initiatives see http://​www.sandiego.edu/​cas/​ contemplativestudies/​workshops/​contemplative_​pedagogy.php, and  so  on. These are all real examples from students and colleagues. I would argue that the more we broaden and diversify the possible offerings, the better, both for our students and for philosophy. This means not only Chinese philosophy, but also other marginalized philosophers and traditions. A colleague and I lead a summer study abroad program titled “China in Context: Philosophy and Religious Practice.” We take fifteen to twenty students to China for four to six weeks, where the students take six credits of Chinese philosophy and religious studies, in addition to numerous site visits and field work. The students describe this experience as life-​changing and transformative. When possible, the opportunity to study Chinese philosophy in China can be particularly rewarding for both students and faculty. This move toward interdisciplinarity is also a contemporary trend in higher education, which looks to the collaborative nature of interdisciplinary work as important for problem solving in today’s complex world.

REFERENCES Ames, R. T. (2011), Confucian Role Ethics, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Barbezat, D. P. and M. Bush (2013), Contemplative Practices in Higher Education, San Francisco: Jossey-​Bass. Fung, Y. L. (1948), A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, New York: Free Press. Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao, La Salle: Open Court Hall, D. L. and R. T. Ames (1995), Anticipating China, Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Jensen, L. (1998), Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization, Durham: Duke University Press. Jullien, F. (2004), Detour and Access, New York: Zone Books Lai, K. (2008), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. (2003), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books. Littlejohn, R. (2015), Chinese Philosophy: An Introduction, Library of Modern Religion, London: I.B.Tauris. Liu, J. L. (2006), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism, Malden: Wiley-​Blackwell. Mattice, S. (2013), “Artistry as Methodology: Aesthetic Experience and Chinese Philosophy,” Philosophy Compass 8.3: 199–​209. Mattice, S. (2014), Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and Aesethetic Experience, Lexington: Lexington Books. Sim, M. (2014), “Travelling with Laozi and Plato,” in H. G. Moeller and A. Whitehead (eds.), Landscape and Travelling East and West, New York: Bloomsbury. Sun, A. (2013), Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van Norden, B. (2007), Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Norden, B. (2011), Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy, Indianapolis: Hackett.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Confucianism and Pragmatist Methods: Keeping Faith with the Confucian Moral Mission SOR-​H OON TAN

Confucius said, “There is nothing I can do for someone who is not constantly asking himself: ‘What to do? What to do?’ ” Analects 15.161

CENTRALITY OF PRACTICE AND PRAGMATIC METHODS Several contributors to this volume have observed that the importance of practice in Chinese thought or Chinese philosophy has methodological implications. Michael Nylan points out the misunderstandings that arise when contemporary philosophers overlook the fact that many texts of pre-​Han and Han China were the products of debates among court officials or aspirants to political office with the objective of persuading their audiences to adopt a particular course of action among competing alternatives—​practices very different from the activities that produce philosophical theories in past and present European cultures. Frank Perkin’s recommended method for doing Chinese metaphysics through cross-​cultural dialogue links metaphysical assumptions to practices and concrete experience. Kwong-​ loi Shun’s approach to the study of Chinese thought emphasizes practice in the stage of articulation, “moving back and forth between these past ideas and our present concerns and experiences that bear an affinity to those of the past thinkers” (59). It registers the way Chinese thought was rooted in actual experience and had practical import; contemporary relevance of its ideas must refer back to actual experience and practical consequences. Roger Ames and Ni Peimin maintain that our understanding of the canonical Chinese texts must take into account how they “do” philosophy

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to “make practices more productive and intelligent within the context of the practices themselves” (37) or offer a gongfu perspective oriented to the art of life that differs significantly from Western philosophical perspectives, especially in the supposed relationship between theory (or thought) and practice. I have elsewhere (Tan 2014) advocated reading the Analects pragmatically, with due consideration to the different historical contexts, on the basis that Confucius (Analects 1.15; 3.8; 17.9) advocated a similar pragmatic method in reading the classics in terms of their practical consequences for his times. He valued the study of ancient texts because they provided a language that was still useful for understanding the world he and his audience lived in, and ideas that were still helpful in solving their problems (Analects 16.13; 17.10). Many of the conversations recorded in the Analects are about the proper conduct of actual practices and actions to be carried out or avoided. I wish to examine more closely this very general methodological claim by clarifying what is involved in a pragmatic method, or different pragmatic methods, and the ways in which they are or can be relevant to one area of Chinese philosophy: Confucian philosophy. The context for my methodological reflections is the comparative engagement between Confucianism and American Pragmatism, a philosophical movement dating back to the late nineteenth century that also emphasizes practice and experience conceived as our “doings and undergoings.” It is no coincidence that Hu Shih was attracted to Pragmatism and moved from Cornell University to Columbia University to study with John Dewey. More recently, the resonance between American Pragmatism and Chinese philosophy—​inter alia, a perceived common rejection of abstract ideas, Absolute Truth, and indubitable dogmas in favor of concepts as instruments of inquiry, concrete experience, facts, theories as fallible hypotheses—​has inspired a growing number of comparative studies, most notably Roger Ames’s works.2 This chapter will examine some Pragmatist statements of “the pragmatic method,” henceforth referred to more specifically as “Pragmatist methods.” Efforts to find examples of actual use of such methods in ancient Confucian texts face serious obstacles and the results are at best inconclusive. However, from a Pragmatist perspective, whether or not Confucius and past Confucians endorse or use Pragmatist methods is less important than whether Confucian teachings can pass the Pragmatist test for a practical philosophy, a philosophers’ method for solving real problems today. This chapter advocates an application of Pragmatist methods in the continuation of the Confucian moral mission by subjecting Confucian ideals to Deweyan value inquiry. Although Pragmatism and Confucianism are both pragmatic in the general sense of being practice-​ oriented in their teaching/​ inquiry, some interpretations of Confucianism see significant differences in their methods that lead in different directions because they have different starting points. If by philosophy we include both Confucians’ teaching and learning and Pragmatists’ inquiries, then we need to recognize that these activities of Confucians and Pragmatists differ in some significant aspects that lead to differences in their practice-​centered methods. This chapter shall contrast the anti-​Pragmatist interpretation by Mou Zongsan with contemporary Pragmatist approaches to Confucianism. Justification of the choice of one interpretation over another will need more time and space than is available in one mere chapter. Rather, the more limited objective of the following discussion is

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to highlight one particular challenge that Pragmatist methods must address in order to do justice to Confucian philosophy: retaining the sense of commitment or faith that drives the Confucian moral mission through the darkest periods of its history.

WORDS AND PRACTICAL EFFECTS The suggestion that Confucius and Confucians living several centuries ago might employ the pragmatic method would not surprise anyone familiar with William James’s claim that Pragmatism is “a new name for some old ways of thinking”: There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume made momentous contributions to truth by its means. (1991: 25) Though he would no doubt protest against “absolutely nothing new,” Charles Peirce (1906: 269), much stricter about what Pragmatism is, and more importantly what it is not, agreed up to a point, “Any philosophical doctrine that should be completely new could hardly fail to be complete false; but the rivulets at the head of the river of pragmatism are easily traced back to almost any desired antiquity.”3 For Peirce (1906: 271), Pragmatism (or as he preferred later, Pragmaticism) is “merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts.” This method, explained in detail and justified in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” is summarized in the following rule: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (Peirce 1878: 31). For the present purpose, I leave aside the complications in the relationship between words and concepts, and simply assume that some words represent concepts, and such words may be said to exist in traditional Chinese texts in the form of Chinese written characters—​such as “仁” (ren), “義” (yi), “君子” (junzi), “政” (zheng), “天” (tian), or “命” (ming)—​which are used to compose the texts. Insofar as Confucius and many later Confucians were not primarily concerned about clarifying abstract concepts, since they were not engaged in the kind of philosophical discourse that gave rise to American Pragmatism, they cannot be said to apply any Pragmatist method, at least not explicitly. However, it is possible that implicitly they used concepts to mean the “effects that might conceivably have practical bearings” that they conceived the object of their conception to have, and actually answered questions about the meanings of key terms they used in a way resembling Peirce’s method. One might venture to start with Analects 12.20, in which Confucius asked his ambitious student Zizhang what he meant by “prominent” (da 達), when the latter enquired what a scholar official must do to become “prominent.” “One who is sure to be heard of (wen 聞) whether serving in public office or in the house of a ruling family,” answered Zizhang. “That is being heard of ” said the Master, “it is not being ‘prominent’. Those who are prominent are true in their basic dispositions, and seek after what is most appropriate (yi 義). They examine what is said, are keen observers of

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demeanor, and are more thoughtful in deferring to others. They are sure to be prominent, whether serving in public office or in the house of a ruling family. As for merely being heard of, they put on appearances to win a reputation for being authoritative (ren 仁) while their conduct belies it. They are wholly confident that they are authoritative, and sure to be heard of, whether serving in public office or in the house of a ruling family.”4 One could argue that the difference in meaning between “prominent” and “being heard of ” lies in their practical effects. One could identify other passages in the text that seem to raise questions about the meanings of various concepts (e.g., Analects 1.7; 1.11; 2.5; 6.22; 8.1; 12.3; 12.4; 12.6; 13.20), and investigate whether they can be satisfactorily interpreted as exercises in clarifying the meanings of the concepts in question with the same method. Systematically positive results of such a textual investigation would provide support for claiming that Confucius implicitly applied Peirce’s Pragmatist method, even if he did not consciously adopt it. Regardless of whether it is a method used in Confucian texts, a contemporary researcher could apply Peirce’s Pragmatist method in clarifying the meanings of various key concepts in Confucian philosophy. This has an advantage for those who wish to emphasize the contemporary meaning that a traditional text could have, though not necessarily what Confucius or any other historical Confucian author actually meant by the texts’ content. Dewey’s (1925: L2.5) explication of Peirce brings this out clearly: In order to be able to attribute a meaning to concepts, one must be able to apply them to existence. Now it is by means of action that this application is made possible. And the modification of existence which results from this application constitutes the true meaning of concepts.5 For a Pragmatist, the contemporary meaning of a traditional text lies in the practical consequences of applying its teachings to experience today—​in this way the texts’ meaning continues to grow with every generation that adds to it the new practical consequences of each application. However, one must apply the texts’ teachings, not some ideas of one’s own attributed to the text—​and this requires grasping the application of the texts’ ideas in the practical contexts of the time of its composition, which provides guidance to current applications. Kwong-​loi Shun’s “articulation” stage of his method for studying Chinese thought—​drawing out the relevance of Chinese thought to our present-​day experience that has affinities with the past experience that produced a text—​resembles the Pragmatist method in this aspect. Those who emphasize grasping what Confucius and various historical authors (insofar as they can be ascertained) thought apart from any contemporary meaning may worry that, unless there are strong enough reasons to believe that Confucius, and Confucians more generally, share the theory of meaning underlying Peirce’s method—​something that will be hard to prove—​postulating “conceivable effects” beyond those practical effects actually mentioned in the texts could lead us astray. Not only is there a probability that what we can conceive today as practical effects could be very different from the effects conceived or conceivable by the historical

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authors of or interlocutors depicted in ancient Confucian texts, the latter might not be concerned about all conceivable effects, but only with certain actual or probable effects. Employing Peirce’s Pragmatist method in the textual investigation above carries a procrustean risk: in emphasizing conceptual clarity one may be missing the point of the exchange, which is not about clarifying the meaning of hard words or abstract concepts per se. Zizhang’s question is prompted by his ambitiousness and desire for the outward trappings of success, including fame, which became evident in his response to Confucius’s query about what he meant by “prominent.” Confucius, in correcting him, aimed to influence his conduct via his thinking, not merely in clarifying the meaning of “prominent.” Some other students with different characters asking the same question with different motivations and interests are likely to elicit different answers from Confucius. We see this happening in passages (6.22; 6.30; 12.3) where Confucius answered questions about authoritative conduct (ren 仁). The variation in answers to the same question is not best explained by changes in meaning (a là Peirce), that is, in the practical effects Confucius could conceive the object of the conception of ren having in experience; what clearly did change was the particular realistic practical effect (influence on the action of the questioner) Confucius was aiming to bring about in each specific situation. Some might protest that Confucians are philosophers precisely because (or only insofar as) they were also concerned about conceptual clarity, regardless of the topic and purpose of discussion, and employed the rules of logic and reasoning so that they make sense to readers of different times and places. I agree up to a point, but such a general concern for clarity is a different matter from applying Peirce’s Pragmatist method of making ideas clear. In understanding traditional Chinese thought, even when one’s interest is philosophical, relative emphases and focuses can make a difference to the outcome of inquiry. The principle of charity would insist that Confucians past or present do not exalt muddled thinking, but the kind and degree of clarity they believe to be possible and desirable in communication and whether conceptual clarity is the focus of their attention are serious philosophical and methodological questions open to debate. What is important for the present discussion is that the conversations of the Analects do not aim to make concepts clear as a conscious objective, but rather clarify concepts (when this seems to be happening) in the course of answering ethical questions about virtuous conduct and appropriate social relationships with the intent of influencing actions. Discussions that seem to be about the meanings of words and concepts in the Analects need to be understood within the complex relationship between language and ethics implied by the text, a relationship that must be reconstructed carefully (Loy 2014), and any reconstruction will remain open to debate. Although Peirce’s attention sometimes seems to be focused narrowly on logic, making ideas clear had a more general aim for him: it is a vital step in all scientific inquiries, and significantly he classified philosophy as a “theoretical science of discovery” (1903: 66). The difference in the purposes for which one makes ideas clear becomes more significant, and the key activities of traditional Confucian learning/​ teaching and modern Pragmatist inquiry become more divergent, if we recall Peirce’s

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(1905: 252) association of his method with the experimental sciences: “obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon the conduct of life, if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it” (original italics). Dewey (1939: L13.250) looked “forward to the day when the conclusions of impersonal nonhumanistic science are employed in guiding the course of distinctively human behavior, that, namely, which is influenced by emotion and desire in the framing of means and ends.” Before critics jump on the bandwagon of accusing Pragmatists, following Peirce and Dewey, of scientism, we should take note that Dewey’s approval of science and optimistic expectations of its contribution to inquiries into individual and collective human action is balanced by an awareness of the imperfect state of current science and its need for improvement in order to achieve methodological unification of all inquiries, in particular by integrating warranted ideas about the nonhuman world with emotion and valuation, “the characteristic that marks off human from nonhuman behavior,” before science can be put to distinctively human use (Dewey 1939: L13.250).6 Some naturalistic trends in contemporary philosophy encourage applying experimental methods (or results from such methods) borrowed from the sciences in contemporary Chinese philosophy research, including the study of Confucian philosophy (see last two chapters in this volume). However, we shall see that the influential modern neo-​ Confucian Mou Zongsan would view such science-​oriented approaches as at most complementary rather than sufficient for understanding Confucianism.

THE TRUTH OF THE WAY (DAO 道) AND THE WAY OF TRUTHS Perhaps Peirce’s Pragmatist method is too narrow, and we could do better turning to William James’s more capacious, if somewhat ambiguous, elaboration of it. James’s (1991: 23) lecture on “What Pragmatism Means” explains that “the pragmatic method is primarily a method for settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable,” through interpreting each disputed metaphysical notion “by tracing its respective practical consequences,” and asking “What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true?”7 Apart from clarifying the meaning of concepts, clarifying the meaning of any philosophical claims or theories as hypotheses, to determine what identifies each hypothesis, distinguishes it from others, or reveals it as spurious or meaningless, James’s Pragmatist method extends to the determination of whether an idea, belief, or theory treated as hypothesis is in fact true—​this is done on the basis of a distinctive view of what truth means (as determined by the method), and hence the understanding of Pragmatism as a theory of truth. This follows from James’s refusal to make any principled distinction between the meaning and the criteria of truth. Despite Peirce’s own insistence on a very specific and fairly narrow understanding of Pragmatism, this epistemological extension of the Pragmatist method can be found

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in Peirce’s recommended method of inquiry to settle the question of whether an opinion is true. As Nicholas Rescher (1998: 1) remarks in his discussion of the differences between Peirce and James (between Right and Left Pragmatism), Peirce insisted on assessing the merits of cognitive products (ideas, theories, methods) by investigating how they perform as “instrumentalities of effective praxis.” Truths for Pragmatists do not consist of a static description of a given reality separated from human experience. According to James (1991: 28), truth means “nothing but this, that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just insofar as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience.” There is not one Truth but many truths. Truth becomes “a class-​name for all sorts of definite working-​values in experience” (James 1991: 33). It is not a timeless property of beliefs, which are rules for action, to be judged in terms of their effectiveness in solving problems. There is no purely “theoretical” truth with no conceivable practical consequences; every meaningful concept, idea, or theory could be put to work. When put to work in some actual situation, a true idea, concept, or theory changes the world for the better. James’s Pragmatist method brings out “the practical cash-​value” of any concept, proposition, or theory: set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed. (James 1991: 26, original italics) Dewey (1910: M6.5–​ 6) sees the pursuit of truth, inquiry, beginning not with concepts, ideas, and theories, but a problematic situation in actual experience that calls forth thinking; concepts, ideas, and theories are tools which, when put to work in experience through experimentation, produce consequences; an idea or theory is true when its practical consequences reorganize experience satisfactorily.8 Furthermore, once human want, purpose, and realization in the making and testing of judgments are recognized, as urged by Dewey (1910: M6.10), “the believer must accept the full consequences of his beliefs, and that his beliefs must be tried out, through acting upon them, to discover what is their meaning or consequence.” For Dewey (1929: L1.128), knowledge is “not just instrumentalities, but instrumentalities at work in effecting modifications of existence in behalf of conclusions that are reflectively preferred.” A theory of truth might seem irrelevant to Chinese philosophy in view of the popular contrast between Western philosophers’ interest in “What is the Truth?” and Chinese thinkers of the Classical period asking, “Where is the Way?” (Graham 1989: 3; see also Hall and Ames 1998: 103–​111). A similar contrast exists between the gongfu perspective Peimin Ni proposes for reading Confucian texts and the philosophical perspective of “mainstream Western philosophers who take their aims to be propositional truths” (129). Though historically “Western,” Pragmatist methods of seeking truth do not endorse that “theoretical discourse” about accurate representation of reality separate from effectiveness in practical experience. Rather than requiring a “duck-​rabbit” gestalt switch between the philosophical and gongfu perspectives, Pragmatists could connect the perspectives of the truth-​seekers and the

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way-​seekers as their theory of truth renders truth into a way of interacting with the world that one is seeking to know. For them, any way that conceivably has practical consequences enhancing the value of experience and making the world a better place, in other words, any way that works is itself a truth. Confucians seeking the “way” through learning and thinking also emphasize practical effects in the process. The Analects (1.1) begins with a remark about the pleasure of putting into practice what one has learned. Confucius (Analects 13.5) recommended that his students study the Odes so that they could perform their official responsibilities effectively, and “when sent to distant quarters, they are able to act on their own initiative.” His student Zixia judged whether a person had learned by their conduct (Analects 1.7). Contemporary Confucians reading their canonical texts to find the “way” of Confucius and the sage-​kings would be expected to understand the texts by putting them into practice; Pragmatists assessing these canonical texts would look for the practical consequences of putting their ideas to work in contemporary life. They have a common interest in how the way (dao) taught by Confucian texts could change the world. To the extent that the “pattern of inquiry” Dewey identified is common to all human thinking, the process of learning (xue 學) and thinking (si 思) to arrive at knowledge or wisdom (zhi 知) depicted in the Analects and other Confucian texts would fit that pattern. Inquiry begins with real problems (indeterminate, unsettled, questionable situations), and proceeds to understand the problem by identifying through observation the determinate elements, “the facts of the case,” that must be taken into account when proposing possible solutions, which are suggested by the factual conditions of the problem. A possible solution first takes the form of ideas, which are examined for their capacity in solving the problem through reasoning, to arrive at recommended actions that can test the possible solution. The consequences of those actions when carried out must be observed and additional facts relevant to the inquiry taken into account to interact with other facts and ideas in the inquiry; the interaction of facts and ideas produce mutual modifications to carry the process forward. Some observed facts point to an idea that stands for a possible solution. This idea evokes more observations. Some of the newly observed facts link up with those previously observed and are such as to rule out other observed things with respect to their evidential function. The new order of facts suggests a modified idea (or hypothesis) which occasions new observations whose results again determines a new order of facts, and so on until the existing order is both unified and complete. (Dewey 1938: L12.117) Inquiry for Dewey is experimental in the serial connection between observed facts and ideas. This contrasts with haphazard trial and error processes which could also hit upon effective ideas by chance, with no connection between one trial to the next before one gets lucky. In experiments, failures are only temporary setbacks, to be studied and used to improve on the initial hypothesis being tested, or in some cases, to guide the replacement of one hypothesis with another judged to have a better chance of solving the problem that initiated the experiment.

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Would it be illuminating to study the Confucian texts to see how far Confucians engage in inquiry in the Deweyan sense, and therefore could be said to employ Dewey’s Pragmatist (not just generally pragmatic) method? Deweyan inquiry is not the only way to acquire knowledge in the Analects (16.9), even though Confucius believed that people should learn from problematic situations. Even if we treat the conversations in the Analects as instances of inquiry, with students or others seeking Confucius’s advice on what to do upon encountering a problematic situation, fitting the exchanges into the pattern of inquiry set out by Dewey would prove challenging. This is partly because of what is left out by the texts, including what Dewey would call “facts of the case.” Furthermore, the texts employ ideas and concepts embedded in analogies with contexts very different from those of today’s “common sense and science.” While it is highly plausible that any problem solving at any time must involve relating ideas and concepts to facts (in stating the problem, forming solutions, and anticipating consequences), there are serious difficulties in grasping how these relationships were articulated in the situations depicted in Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius, because what were taken to be “facts” (determinate elements in the situation) and the ideas employed were very different from those at work in modern readers’ thinking. It is entirely possible that the texts simply do not present instances of Deweyan inquiry because the fundamental assumptions that guide Confucian thinking were vastly different.

REJECTING PRAGMATIST METHODS: CONFUCIANISM AS MORAL METAPHYSICS It is no accident that both Peirce and Dewey emphasized the achievement of modern experimental sciences. If Dewey’s pattern of inquiry is characteristic of common sense, it is the common sense of a human being viewed from the perspective of modern science. For Dewey, the human species is the product of evolution. Human abilities of thinking evolve in the interaction of humans with their environment both natural and social. According to Dewey (1917: M10.39), “Pragmatism is content to take its stand with science” on the question of reality, which is meaningful only insofar as it refers to “specific events in all their diversity and thatness”: all human experiences and their products, including “lies, dreams, insanities, deceptions, myths, theories,” rank with natural events, “stars, fossils, mosquitoes and malaria, circulation and vision,” as subject matter of description and inquiry, knowable by science. This view of reality and human nature is unacceptable to modern neo-​ Confucianism, as represented in the works of Mou Zongsan (1909–​1995), one of the most important Confucian philosophers of the twentieth century. For all his willingness to accommodate science, together with democracy, in order to modernize Confucianism, Mou’s Confucian perspective rejects any claim that what is knowable by science fully constitutes reality. From his perspective, Dewey’s Pragmatist method is suited only to scientific knowledge, that is, empirical knowledge, which has its use, but amounts only to what the Song-​Ming Confucians called “knowledge of seeing and hearing” (jianwen zhizhi 見聞之知); Pragmatist methods cannot give us

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“knowledge of moral nature” (dexing zhi zhi 德性之知), which is more important from a Confucian perspective.9 For Mou, Confucian philosophy is not merely ethics; it must be approached primarily as metaphysics—​not just any metaphysics, but moral metaphysics, a metaphysics that takes moral practice as its starting and end point, in contrast to a metaphysics of morals, an account of the metaphysical conditions that make morality possible (Mou 1968: 5.10–​13, 140–​141). This distinction and many other concepts in Mou’s works refer to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–​1804), which Mou considered the acme of Western philosophy despite some limitations that Confucianism could rectify. Among the many concepts Mou borrowed from Kant and modified for his own purpose is the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. In Kant’s philosophy, this distinction arises because human knowledge requires both intuitions and concepts. Appearances, insofar as they are thought as objects according to the unity of the categories, are called phenomena. But if I assume things that are objects merely of the understanding and that, as such, can nonetheless be given to an intuition—​ even if not to sensible intuition (but hence coram intuit intellectuali)—​then such things would be called noumena (intelligibilia). (1996: A249) Noumena are things-​in-​themselves in contrast to things as they appear to us. Sensible intuitions depend on the contingent existence of objects as actual particulars, and arise only because contingently existing objects affect our senses, that is, appear to us. They are therefore derivative rather than original (Kant 1996: B72). Only an intellectual intuition (which is also intuitive understanding) is original, giving itself its own objects of knowledge, which are necessary and actual, a thing-​in-​itself (Kant 1996: A249). According to Kant (1996: B72), intellectual intuition can belong only to “the original being,” that is, God as Creator. Without intellectual intuition, human knowledge is therefore limited to phenomena; although we necessarily suppose that something we know exists in-​itself, we can know it only as it appears to us. Mou blamed Kant’s denial of human intellectual intuition on the Christian tradition’s separation of the human from the divine. In the Chinese tradition, the divine is understood in terms of the moral-​spiritual goals of sagehood, Buddhahood, or the Daoist authentic person (zhenren 真人), all of which could be achieved by human beings—​ in Mou’s view, such achievements bear testimony to human intellectual intuition, which Mou describes as a “principle of ontological (creative) actualization” (Mou 1971: 20. 237). If we do not accord to Man, this finite being, the faculty of intellectual intuition, then, according to the meaning and usage ascribed by Kant to this concept, not only does all of Chinese philosophy become impossible but the entire moral philosophy discussed by Kant is emptied of meaning as well. (Mou 1971: 20.5) Denial of human intellectual intuition renders unknowable things-​in-​themselves, thereby establishing only the formal possibility of knowledge, but not the existence of the objective world, and therefore not the actual possibility of knowledge (Mou 1956: 18.123–​124). Furthermore this denial reduces autonomy to a mere

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postulate of practical reason, whose objective existence remains forever in doubt. Mou maintained that Confucian moral metaphysics gives human beings access to noumena, things-​ in-​ themselves, and establishes the absolute objectivity of autonomy—​understood by Mou in Confucian terms of the endowment of heaven’s principle (tianli 天理) in humans—​as manifested immediately in moral practice. Mou contrasted phenomenon and noumenon as two aspects of any essent (i.e., existent outside and independent of any knowing subject)10: the phenomenon is that aspect of an essent in relation to sensible subjects, of appearing as an object in space and time; the noumenon is that aspect of an essent not in relation with any sensible subjects, but is instead an e-​ject that subsists in-​itself and as such can be known only by the infinite intellectual intuition (Mou 1971: 20.123). Though not knowable to sensible subjects, noumenon is accessible to human beings in whom finitude and infinitude, that is, the immanent and the transcendent, are both present in the one mind that can “open two gates” (yixin kai ermen 一心開 二門): the samsaric “gate of arising and perishing” (shengmiemen 生滅門), which relates to the realm of causal determination and therefore to phenomena, and the “gate of true suchness” (zhenrumen 真如門), which relates to ultimate reality free from causal determination, that is, to noumena. This formula, borrowed from the teachings of the Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna, provides Mou (1983: 29.283–​ 311) with a general structure for his philosophy.11 Mou also borrowed the Buddhist concept of “grasping” (zhi 執)—​which drives the process of co-​dependent arising perpetuating samsara, and obstructs enlightenment or attainment of nirvāna—​to explain the arising of phenomena and its difference from the noumenon, which is nongrasping. Within this framework, Mou’s moral metaphysics comprises two different ontologies: the ontology of grasping pertaining to phenomena and the ontology of nongrasping (wuzhi 無執) pertaining to noumena (Mou 1975: 41). For Mou (1983: 29.395), Kant’s failure to establish absolutely objective reality is a failure of method resulting from taking the “epistemological path,” a failure which could have been avoided if more attention had been paid to the method of practical reason, freed from the model of speculative reason. By erroneously imposing the standards of empirical knowledge and discursive reason on practical philosophy, despite acknowledging the primacy of pure practical reason when it is united with pure speculative reason in one cognition (Kant 1997: 101), Kant missed the link between the noumenon and phenomenon in moral practice. In Mou’s moral metaphysics, noumena relate to three elements in moral experience: original heart-​mind (benxin 本心) or moral knowing (liangzhi 良知) considered in itself; the heart-​mind considered through its activity that can be manifested through pure intentions or “ontological moral feelings”; things or events encountered and with which one interacts—​ these acquire value in the course of interaction.12 For Mou, an adequate method for practical reason—​”the way in which one can provide the laws of pure practical reason access to the human mind and influence on its maxims” (Kant 1997: 125), or in Confucian terms, the way to “preserve heaven’s principles” in the human mind and realize it in actions—​has to start with self-​cultivation, what the Song and Ming dynasty Confucians called gongfu, a philosophy of life centered in moral

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practice. Such a method offers a practical access to the metaphysical dimension of the cosmos by actualizing the ultimate (absolute) reality in our daily life through the functioning of what Mencius (6A:10) called the “original heart-​ mind” (benxin 本心), which is also good human nature (xing 性) in the form of the four sprouts of humaneness (ren 仁), appropriateness (yi 義), ritual propriety (li 禮) and wisdom (zhi 知). Mou (1983: 29.399–​400) followed the Lu-​Wang school of neo-​Confucianism in identifying this xin with principle (li 理) and not material force (qi 氣), maintaining that it is “above form,” that is, metaphysical and not material. It is not the “psychological mind” (studied by psychologists) that belongs to phenomena. As the original endowment by heaven, xin is the constitutive heart-​mind (xinti 心體), the ultimate reality of mind, which is also the constitutive way (daoti 道體).13 Mou understood the neo-​Confucian teaching of “oneness of heaven and human” in terms of the ultimate reality of the heart-​ mind and the way being one. As ultimate reality, the constitutive heart-​mind and the constitutive way belong to the noumenon, and cannot be known by the same method (combining sensible intuitions and concepts of finite understanding) that yields empirical knowledge of phenomena. Hence, Mou (1983: 29.441) insisted that human intellectual intuition does not extend knowledge and therefore does not contradict Kant’s epistemology; instead it is primarily a “principle of creativity.” Instead of the Christian God’s creatio ex nihilo bringing the world into being, in the Chinese tradition, the cosmos, heaven-​and-​earth (tiandi 天 地), is an unceasing process of generation and change—​and the constitutive way refers to the ultimate reality of this process. In its union with the constitutive way, the constitutive heart-​mind participates in this creative process through its functioning in moral practice. The different understandings of the heart-​mind and human nature, in relation to principle and material force, leads to different self-​cultivation practices (gongfu 工 夫) being advocated by the different schools of Song and Ming dynasty Confucians. Mou rejected Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–​1200) association of the heart-​mind with material force which based self-​cultivation on empirical knowledge, according to Zhu Xi’s explication of “the investigation of things” (gewu 格物).14 Instead of this “outward-​ oriented” method, the proper method of Confucian self-​cultivation is one of “personal verification by reflexive enlightenment” (nijue tizheng 逆覺體證), which Mou traced to Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 (1139–​1193) and Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–​1529), and the lineage beginning with Cheng Mingdao 程明道 (1032–​1085), continued by Hu Wufeng 胡五峰 (1105–​1161) and Liu Jishan 劉蕺山 (1578–​1645). These methods of self-​cultivation differ in whether they lead to constitutive experience of the noumenal. Reflexive enlightenment is Mou’s (1971: 20.252) conception of the orthodox Confucian self-​cultivation practice in which the constitutive heart-​mind, as the “constitutive humaneness of the original heart-​mind” (benxin renti 本心仁 體), is active, and in its activity of luminous awareness (mingjue 明覺), the heart-​ mind turns back (fan 反) to cognize and verify itself, as a heart-​mind-​in-​itself.15 Mou suggested that “this kind of reflexive enlightenment corresponds with intellectual intuition because this is purely the activity of luminous awareness of the constitutive humaneness of the original heart-​mind itself, not what Kant called the self-​affection

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stemming from sensibility.” This method opens the “second gate” to ultimate reality and differs from the empirical methods leading to only knowledge of phenomena. Although Mou did not consider Pragmatism worth much of his attention, there is no doubt that, from his perspective, Pragmatist methods limit themselves to empirical knowledge and are therefore inadequate because they are premised on a view of reality that excludes the noumenon—​and thus excludes “reality that is objective absolutely” (Kant 1996: A249)—​and renders any quest for the absolute not only impossible but also meaningless.16 Kant’s transcendentalism at least gestures toward that ultimate reality, even though it proves inadequate in the end; any form of empiricism does not even have an inkling of that higher reality. Mou (1983: 29.446) dismissed Hu Shih’s demand for “evidence”—​and all other similar empirical inquiries—​as “intellectualism.” Moral problems for Mou (1983: 29.447) have nothing to do with empirical inquiry and evidence: one can only “verify it personally.” To ask “Why?” is to show a lack of moral consciousness and humanity. Mou understood moral consciousness to have a transcendent source, and personal verification in Mou’s understanding of Confucianism is very different from empirical investigation (including Pragmatist inquiries). Confucian moral teachings are not hypotheses to be tested in inquiries before one can affirm their truths; personal verification means that one’s moral knowing (liangzhi) manifests them immediately and clearly as the absolute indubitable truth. One consequence of the kind of experience Mou described as the immediate manifestation of moral knowing is an indefeasible conviction that seems to have no place in a fallibilistic philosophy such as Pragmatism that denies any absolute Truth. While Pragmatists might reject Mou’s moral metaphysics for purveying what Dewey (1917: M10.39) called “the notion of a Reality feudally superior to the events of everyday occurrence,” any modern Confucian employing Pragmatist methods nevertheless needs to retain the Confucian sense of moral mission that is critical to Confucian moral practice.

KNOWING THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN In Analects 14.38, the morning gate keeper at Stone Gate asked Zilu whether Confucius was “the one who keeps trying although he knows that it is in vain” (知其不可而為之者). Other translations of “不可 (buke)” include “impossible” (Leys 1997), “no use” (Waley 1996), and “hopeless” (Lau 1979). This brings out most poignantly the kind of conviction and perseverance against all odds with which Confucius and other prominent figures in the tradition have pursued their moral mission. Confucius’s teachings would seem hugely successful measured by its acknowledged influence on Chinese society through the ages, and the way the Confucian classics dominated scholarship and learning, as well as politics (at least its rhetoric if not actual practice) in China for centuries; but it also has been blamed for China’s troubles and backwardness, and accused of being the main obstruction to its modernization since the nineteenth century. If we measure the success of Confucianism by the cultivation of exemplary persons (junzi 君子) with the qualities of humaneness, appropriateness, ritual propriety, wisdom, and various other

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desirable qualities that enable them to relate well to their family members, neighbors and friends, encompassing all social encounters in various kinds of situations, and consequent achievement of social order and harmony in families and other domains, including the professional and political, then the Confucian “way” may seem as “impossible” or “hopeless” (buke 不可) today as it was during Confucius’s time. If it is a hypothesis, has it not been sufficiently tested and do the results not indicate the need for different hypotheses with better chances of success? Does the Confucian refusal to give up hope of fulfilling their moral mission indicate that they draw inspiration and strength from something very different from the warranted product of Pragmatist inquiries? Confucius’s way demands a commitment that defies even death (Analects 15.9). It requires a firmness of purpose that can resist the temptation of “excess when wealthy and honored, of straying when poor and obscure, and of bowing before superior force” (Mencius 3B:2). The real difficulties and dangers, sometimes life-​threatening, encountered by Confucians through the ages provide the context for reflections such as Song dynasty Confucian Cheng Mingdao’s discussion of “stabilizing human nature” (dingxing 定性) to resist temptations and overcome obstacles to personal cultivation and realizing the way (de Bary and Bloom 1999: 692–​693). A similar idea can be found in Mencius’s (2A:2) “unmoving heart-​mind” (budong xin 不 動心) which he claimed to have attained at forty. For Mou (1968: 6.196), such “great stabilization” cannot be achieved by “cultivation” (xiu 修) practices limited to empirical experience—​these affect only the habitual mind (xixin 習心), when what is needed is the manifestation of the metaphysical original mind, a “sudden enlightenment” (dunwu 頓悟) that occurs in the form of luminous awareness of the ultimate reality of transcendent noumena as immanent. Wang Yangming’s “enlightenment at Longchang” in the year 1508 during his exile, a famous event in the history of Confucianism, illustrates what Mou has in mind. This pivotal event resulted in Wang’s most important teachings of “extending moral knowing” (zhi liangzhi 致良知) and the “unity of knowledge and action” that directly challenged the orthodoxy based on Zhu Xi’s interpretation of the classics. According to Wang’s (1935: 32.446a) biography, “in the middle of the night, he became greatly enlightened about the meaning of ‘rectifying things and extending knowledge’ (gewu zhizhi 格物致知) . . . then he knew the way of the sages: ‘my own nature itself is sufficient (wuxing zizu 吾性自足) [for the attainment of sagehood], those who pursue it by seeking principles in events and things are mistaken.’ ” Mou (1979: 8.181–​ 182) maintained that Wang was able to continue Mencius’s (7A:15) teachings of moral knowing—​“knowing without having to reflect is moral knowing”—​not just through studying the Mencius, but through a life-​changing “enlightenment on his own” (duwu 獨悟) in which heaven’s principle manifested itself in moral knowing. Wang (1935: 2.69a) himself described moral knowing (liangzhi 良知) as “heaven’s principle revealed in spontaneous luminous awareness (ziran mingjue 自然明覺), its original constitution (benti 本體) is merely authentic commiseration.”17 For Mou, Wang’s enlightenment is an example of the intellectual intuition shared by all sages that gives them access to transcendent ultimate reality. From Mou’s perspective, Confucius’s “knowing heaven’s mandate (tianming 天命) at fifty” (Analects 2.4) also

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imply intellectual intuition, access to things-​in-​themselves, that is, the immanent realization of transcendence. The idea of “heaven’s mandate” expresses itself in terms of transcendence—​there is a standard which is eternal and immutable. Under its dominion, we feel that in our actions we should not transgress or falter. If there is a feeling of “heaven’s mandate,” then there must first be a sense of transcendence, recognition of transcendent being. (1963: 28.17) It is this sense of transcendence in “knowing heaven’s mandate” that gave Confucius that unshakable sense of purpose, the faith in his own moral mission (Analects 7.23; 9.5). However steadfast one’s moral purpose, blind faith alone does not guarantee the success of one’s moral mission. Confucius himself seemed to doubt that heaven was always on the side of the virtuous (Analects 6.10; 11.9), and to deny the efficacy of human interference in realizing the way, “If the way is to prevail in the world, it is because circumstances (ming 命) would have it so; if it is not going to prevail, it is also because of circumstances” (Analects 14.36). Xu Fuguan (2005: 53–​57) and other scholars (Cheng 1990: 74; Lau 1979: 27–​30) distinguish tian and ming, with only the former having ethical meaning. Some also distinguish between ethical and nonethical meanings of both tian and ming in their attempts to arrive at some consistent and defensible views that could be attributed to Confucius regarding the efficacy of human actions in the actualization of ethical ideals.18 In the same vein as Analects 14.36, Zixia and Mencius also used ming to refer to circumstances beyond a person’s control. Life and death are a matter of one’s lot (ming); wealth and honor depend on heaven (tian). (Analects 12.5) When a thing is done though by no one, then it is the work of Heaven (tian); when a thing comes about though no one brings it about, then it is decreed (ming). (Mencius 5A6) A chapter in the Mozi, “Against Ming” (feiming 非命), attacks such fatalistic sounding statements for discouraging hardwork and encouraging passivism (Perkins 2008). However, there are passages in the Analects (11.19; 14.12) indicating that one could change one’s ming. Many scholars have denied that the Chinese concept of ming means unchangeable fate or implies fatalism in the sense that human actions have no effect on the course of events which are predetermined; it refers more to circumstances, contingent sequences of events that conduce to good or bad fortune depending on timing. According to Hall and Ames (1987: 209), “Ming is a possible future negotiated within the limitations of sponsoring circumstances.”19 Lisa Raphals (2003: 537) distinguishes the belief in fate from fatalism, with the former often closely connected to divination, “which is based on the premise that fate can be controlled or at least influenced by conscious entities available to human contact.” Even when a final outcome could not be changed, it matters to Confucians how one arrives at it. Though nothing happens that is not due to ming, one accepts willingly only what is one’s proper ming. That is why he who understands ming does not stand under a wall on the verge of collapse. He who dies after having done his best in

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following the way dies according to his proper ming. It is never anyone’s proper ming to die in fetters. (Mencius 7A:2) More than passive resignation to failure, and certainly not disclaiming human responsibility to act well as opposed to badly, understanding one’s ming in the Confucian context has more to do with finding comfort in having tried one’s best so that failure to achieve one’s goals could only be attributed to something not within one’s control. Robert Eno (1990: 92) sees the descriptive sense of tianming, as an impersonal force outside human control, in the Analects as a form of “defensive political fatalism that protects [Confucius] from compromising his ideals and engaging in political intrigue. . . . the decree that determines the failure of the Ruist political mission almost frees the Ruist, extricating him from the toils of political responsibilities and allowing him to retire, at least partially, into the pure ritual practice of the Ruist community.” While also preferring a descriptive reading of ming, Ted Slingerland discerns a very different motivation. The motivation informing these texts is the desire to change people’s views of what is and what is not important, to redirect people’s energy and efforts from the external realm (position, wealth, physical concerns) to the internal realm of self-​cultivation. The conception of ming is employed to mark off, in effect, the outer boundaries of one’s proper realm of action. (1996: 576) When invoking ming to refer to forces beyond one’s control, Confucians invariably also emphasize what is within one’s control, the most important of which is the dedicated pursuit of dao beginning with self-​cultivation. Seek and you will get it; let go and you will lose it. If this is the case, then seeking is of use to getting and what is sought is within yourself. But there is a proper way to seek it and whether you get it or not depends on ming, then seeking is of no use to getting and what is sought lies outside yourself. (Mencius 7A:3) The suggestion of escapism in Eno’s picture of Confucius and his followers does not fit the political activism that has characterized Confucian ethical teachings and practice. Starting with Confucius’s travels through the various states in his time to find a ruler willing to put his views about good government into practice, an active concern for the world’s welfare is very much part of Confucianism, which has never been a philosophy of the ivory tower but a moral mission. In treating fortunes and misfortunes, worldly success and failure in terms of materialistic gains, fame, or power, as matters of ming, Confucians label them as ill-​advised goals because one’s efforts might be in vain. The contrast between self-​cultivation as something to be sought within oneself and matters of ming (such as satisfaction of one’s physical appetites, fame, and wealth) depending on external circumstances suggests that, their ethical values aside, the former is preferable because efforts are assured of success, which is not the case with the latter. As a strategy to strengthen their moral commitment, it insulates their moral mission from the temptations and distractions of those worldly goals, and from the vagaries of fortune and chance. However, as long as self-​cultivation is not purely “internal” and must deal with independent

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“external” reality that may defeat any human purpose, and moreover, when self-​ cultivation extends to external achievements of ordering the family and governing the state, the Confucian moral mission can and must be assessed in terms of success and failure in the world.

“SELF-​RESTRICTION OF MORAL KNOWING” AND PRAGMATIST HOPE The best efforts of Confucius and Mencius could not make their way prevail in the world. Their efforts were not limited to merely “internal” self-​cultivation, but included actions that engaged the world around them to put their way into practice. After his “enlightenment,” Wang Yangming did not withdraw from the world but continued to contribute to his society in very practical ways, and could be considered the most successful Confucian of all times in his official accomplishments, even though he too could not make the way prevail entirely, and suffered “a hundred deaths and a thousand calamities.”20 In order not to fall victim to escapism, even unintentionally, by withdrawing into one’s inner self isolated from the rest of the world, the teaching-​ learning about inner self-​ cultivation must be accompanied by knowledge of the external world (whether one defines it in idealist or realist terms) that could increase the chances of success of Confucian ethical quests. While self-​consciously continuing the philosophical lineage of what he considered the Confucian “transmission of the way (daotong 道統),” Mou is not merely preserving an ancient philosophy, but transforming it so that it will continue to be relevant in contemporary life. The crux of this transformation is to accommodate science and democracy that the May Fourth generation Chinese intellectuals accepted as definitive of modernity. Mou explicitly acknowledged that even sages need scientific knowledge of the world of phenomena to solve specific problems of finite human existence. Without cognition of phenomena, obstructions in daily life cannot be overcome and the moral mind would retreat and wither due to lack of actual practice (Mou 1975: 126). To meet this need for cognition or scientific knowledge arising from human finitude, the original mind or moral knowing must negate (in the Hegelian sense) or restrict itself as “nongrasping” intellectual intuition of noumena, to make room for the “grasping” of phenomena by the human mind. Mou (1975: 127) describes this process of deliberately falling into the trap or confinement of “grasping” existence, moving from infinitude to finitude, as the “self-​restriction of moral knowing” (liangzhi zhi ziwo kanxian 良知之自我坎 陷), which is necessary for moral knowing to operate in the world of existents, in other words to realize ethical values in the actual existence of phenomena. Does Mou’s accommodation of science, recognizing the need for scientific knowledge in modern life, provide an avenue for reconciliation with Pragmatist methods, despite the latter’s blindness with regard to transcendent noumena? Such reconciliation would be acceptable neither to Mou and his followers nor to Pragmatists, because their methodological disagreements turn out to be a radical difference in philosophical orientations. Among the consequences of Mou’s methodology is the removal of values (ethical and spiritual) from the grasp of science, which is assigned

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only a subordinate and external instrumental role in realizing the Confucian moral mission. Although Dewey calls his philosophy “instrumentalism,” inquiry is not instrumental in the sense of serving goals set outside itself, goals that can never become subjects of Deweyan inquiry. Instead, all inquiries in Dewey’s (1918: M11.7) view, qua practical inquiries, concern ends and goods, which enter deliberation as ends-​in-​ view (to be distinguished from actual accomplished ends)—​these are determined and constituted by means that can bring them about (Dewey 1939: L13.213–​217). Ends-​ in-​view themselves are the means to direct inquiry and to guide actions to realize them. The denial of this continuum of means and ends is at the root of the inadequacies of many ethical theories. Dewey saw a pressing need for inquiry into values, including ethical ideals: the experimental method is as relevant to our choice of values as it is to knowledge of the natural world. The method is not to be employed, however, to discover values that are already there, as Dewey (1918: M11.9) rejected the prevailing view that “goods, ends, ‘values’ are all given, given in the sense of being completely there for knowledge, provided only we could get at them.” This includes any theory of “ends-​in-​themselves” which, according to Dewey (1939: L13.241), cannot avoid absolutism, as it “confers the simulation of final and complete authority upon certain interests of certain persons or groups at the expense of all others.” The consequences of such absolutism undermine any attempt to control desires and direct human actions with intelligence which, in Dewey’s ethics, is itself a moral obligation.21 From Dewey’s Pragmatist perspective, any moral mission is meaningful insofar as it begins in the experience of being troubled by the status quo of the world in which a person is living. This involves both prizing and appraising the situation negatively—​the former emphasizes the emotional quality of a personal reaction while the latter is primarily concerned with “relational properties”—​the “serviceability or needfulness”—​of that which is appraised (Dewey 1939: L13.195, 211). Both these aspects of valuation—​Dewey’s choice of term to emphasize the dynamic character of values arising in human activities—​are present in Confucius’s reaction to his times, and the experience of many Confucians since then. This evaluation of the Confucian’s existential situation would be accompanied by a prospective possible situation judged to be satisfactory (ideal by Confucian standards). However, the foreseen situation as ideal remains only a wish or a fantasy until one transforms it into an end-​in-​view by formulating specifiable, testable relations between it and certain activities as means for accomplishing it (Dewey 1939: L13.202). Insofar as the problematic situations faced by Confucians of different times (and cultures) differ and the means available to solve the problems also differ, the meanings of Confucian ideals and moral mission also change over time. A Deweyan Pragmatist would, among other things, further require those ideals to be reconciled with current scientific knowledge of relevant human biological impulses and psychology, as well as prevailing understanding of the cultural constitution of human activities. Dewey’s Pragmatist inquiry—​evaluating or judging values—​is a (re)constructive process: To judge value is to engage in instituting a determinate value where none is given. It is not necessary that antecedently given values should be the data of valuation;

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and where they are given data they are only terms in the determination of a not yet existing value. (1915: M8.35) Dewey’s Pragmatist inquiry requires Confucians to reevaluate and reconstitute their ideals as ends-​in-​view in terms of the currently available means for their actualization. Previous attempts to put Confucian ideals into practice are among the “facts of the case” to be considered in the current inquiry. The fact that Confucian ideals, despite ample opportunities offered in China’s long history, have not been completely actualized, will not itself lead a Pragmatist to reject them. Given that the problem is no less than the imperfect human condition, or at least the troubles of an entire civilization, there is no reason to expect success in the sense of eliminating “the problem” completely. However, experimental thinking in Dewey’s sense does require reevaluating and reconstituting the ideals as ends-​in-​view so that they can serve as realistic means of improving contemporary life. The Pragmatist method of improving the world in which the Confucian way has not prevailed would not be a matter of talking in general terms of self-​ cultivation and good government to make the world a better place; it would begin with specific concrete problems on a scale much less than the whole world, or even a whole country or culture. Its approach is necessarily piecemeal. One would begin with a particular person’s self-​cultivation, or more ambitiously, the self-​cultivation of a group of students with whom one could interact and provide specific guidance. Or one would begin with some specific political institutions or policies, and evaluate their practical consequences in terms of contributions to self-​cultivation, that is, their effects on people’s character, and what kind of specific practical changes might bring about better outcomes that benefit the people. This application of Dewey’s Pragmatist method renders the actualization of the Confucian moral mission an intelligent response to objective problems of the current age. The project remains Confucian insofar as the ideas of key Confucian texts are significant factors in the inquiry into problems, in their statement and possible solutions; it does not require that one affirms wholesale the content of Confucian texts. In Dewey’s value inquiry, ends-​in-​view are not absolute ideals, but provisional and subject to criticism, revision, or even total rejection, as we understand better what their actualization demands in specific terms. Does this Pragmatist fallibilism preclude the previously discussed “knowing heaven’s mandate” sense of commitment that has distinguished Confucians’ pursuit of their moral mission? Must Pragmatism accommodate religious transcendence in order to reconcile Pragmatist methods with Confucian moral commitment?22 In my view, religious transcendence is unnecessary to Pragmatist methods that nevertheless could match the “knowing heaven’s mandate” kind of commitment to the Confucian moral mission that has sustained the tradition for more than two millennia. Confucian moral commitment has contributed to continued efforts at realizing Confucian ideals. When carried out with an acknowledgment that earlier efforts have always been limited in success or have even resulted in stark failures, these continued efforts can no longer be considered a mere habitual following of

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tradition. They are saved from being obstinate folly or naïve optimism only when accompanied by appropriate reflection on earlier attempts and failures, in other words experimental learning, using the information provided by those attempts and failures to reconstitute one’s understanding of the ideals that is at the same time a search for new means to actualize them. In such a process of experimental learning, failures contribute to the continuation of the experiment, and if intelligently conducted, progress is possible though not guaranteed. Pragmatist inquiry, by reconstituting Confucian ideals to yield what Dewey called “judgments of practice” that are the bases of intelligent actions to actualize ideals, should strengthen rather than weaken one’s moral commitment. As long as one still finds the Confucian vocabulary useful for articulating problematic situations, or that certain traditional Confucian practices, once modified for current contexts, offer possible solutions for contemporary problems, one remains committed to the Confucian moral mission. The strength and value of moral commitment is to be found in the kinds of action and practice it brings forward and their consequences; they do not depend on the certainty that the ideals one is committed to are eternal truths or standards. Confucius’s “knowing heaven’s mandate” at fifty need not have laid to rest all his doubts about the viability of his ideals, or saved them from the discouraging setbacks of his experience by relocating them to some transcendent realm of eternal values. “Knowing heaven’s mandate” could mean a more realistic assessment of what he could possibly accomplish in his own life time that was accompanied, not by despair at the limited success or even likely failure, but by a new understanding of the ideals in a broader horizon: viewing any individual’s contribution as only a small phase in an open process, one trusts that one’s own efforts have contributed to the continuation, and hopefully progress, of the process. Instead of the certainty of ideals, a modern Confucian employing Pragmatist method can find courage in the hope that directing actions more intelligently through experimental thinking will have a better chance of realizing Confucian ideals and bringing about a better world.23 Thus interpreted, “knowing heaven’s mandate” does not suggest a religious faith in Confucius’s moral mission that implies belief in some transcendent realm beyond daily occurrences. Instead, it is a faith that is totally embedded in finite human experience, of the kind that Dewey (1934: L9.57–​58) described as the implicit “common faith” of human kind: The ideal ends to which we attach our faith are not shadowy and wavering. They assume concrete form in our understanding of our relations to one another and the values contained in these relations. We who now live are parts of a humanity that extends into the remote past, a humanity that has interacted with nature. The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it.

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NOTES 1. Translations of the Analects from Ames and Rosemont (1998), unless otherwise stated. 2. Other examples include Grange (2004), and Neville (2008) and other works, Frisina (2002), and my own works. 3. Citations from the works of Charles S. Peirce give year of original publication, with pagination from Buchler (1955). 4. Translation by Ames and Rosemont (1998) modified by replacing “being known” with “being heard of ” for “wen 聞.” 5. Citations of Dewey’s works give original year of publication, with pagination and volume no. in Early Works (E); Middle Works (M), and Later Works (L), edited by Boydston (1976–​1991). 6. See also discussions in Tan (2008: 102) and Manicas (2008: ­chapter 1). 7. Dewey (1908: M4.103–​104) distinguished three different meanings of the “practical” in James’s account: “the attitudes and conduct exacted of us by objects; or the capacity and tendency of an idea to effect changes in prior existences; or desirable and undesirable quality of certain ends.” 8. The meaning of satisfaction is one key issue dividing the Right and Left Pragmatists: the former group (beginning with Peirce) emphasizes objective standards to give stability, cognitive security, and substance to knowledge while the latter (led by James) the subjective in preferring flexibility, cognitive relativity, and pluralism (Rescher 1998: 2). I believe Dewey (1910: M6.10) occupies a middle position in insisting that “the human factor must work itself out in cooperation with the environmental factor, and that their coadaptation is both ‘correspondence’ and ‘satisfaction.’ ” 9. This discussion will not present the full complexity of Mou’s methodology, only the aspects relevant to the rejection of Pragmatist methods. Recent books published in English on Mou’s philosophy include Clower (2010), Chan (2011), and Billioud (2012). Clower (2014) has translated some of Mou’s later works. Citations from Mou’s publications give the year each is first published, with volume and page numbers in his (Mou 2003) Complete Works. 10. The term “essent” is borrowed from translation of Heidegger’s (1962: 12) “des Seiende” or “on ē on.” 11. See Clower (2010) and Kantor (2006) for more detailed discussions of Mou’s relation to Buddhism. 12. Sébastien Billioud (2012: 103–​104, 109) emphasizes that these different dimensions of noumena all point to the way human beings cope with the world when engaged in a process of self-​transformation. 13. I follow Billioud’s (2012: 30) translation of ti, which in neo-​Confucian usage is contrasted with function (yong). Mou (1968: 5.62) also equates constitutive mind with constitutive human nature (xingti), and constitutive humaneness (renti)—​they all refer to the transcendent source of both the moral life and the cosmos. 14. Mou’s interpretation of Zhu Xi has been challenged by Guo (2007), among others.

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15. Cf. Billioud’s (2012: 205) translation; I replace his “retrospective verification” with “reflexive verification” as the temporal connotations of “retrospective” does not fit the meaning of “turning back” (fan) in the cited passage. In the same page (also cited in Billioud 2012: 206), Mou talks about describing “the constitutive humaneness of original mind” as both subject and object of the intuition only as a matter of linguistic convenience, without “ ‘real meaning’ (shiyi 實義)” because the subject-​ object relationship is dissolved in itself as the manifestation of one constitutive reality (ti). In the light of this discussion, “reflexive” (where subject is also object) seems more appropriate. 16. Dewey (1910: M6.4) attacked the concept of transcendence in “a doctrine supposedly dead: the doctrine of unexperienceable, unknowable ‘Things in Themselves.’ ” 17. Author’s translation; cf. Wing Tsit Chan’s (1963: 176) translation. 18. See Ning Chen’s (1997: 335) discussion of these more complex interpretations. 19. See also Nylan’s chapter in this volume, as well as Tang (1962), Li (1998: 20). Cf. Chen (1997: 341–​342) argues that the Analects contains views of amoral spiritualism, moral rewardism, and amoral fatalism, all of which existed during Confucius’s times. 20. All studies of Wang Yangming’s philosophy also take note (at least in passing) of his remarkable career, full of dramatic twists and turns, as an official. For a recent study of his political career, see Israel (2014). 21. “If there is a central theme in Dewey’s ethics, it is that the application of intelligence to moral problems is itself a moral obligation” (Putnam 2006: 271). 22. Robert Neville (2008) and others have explored the affiliations between Confucianism and Christianity, and religion more broadly understood within Pragmatist frameworks. See also Sami Pihlström’s (2009) transcendental interpretation of Pragmatism and his philosophy of religion based on Pragmatic Pluralism (Pihlström 2013). 23. Cf. Rorty’s (1999: 34) discussion of how Dewey’s rejection of the “quest for certainty” replaces knowledge with hope: “one should stop worrying about whether what one believes is well grounded and start worrying about whether one has been imaginative enough to think up interesting alternatives to one’s present beliefs.” Rorty’s interpretation makes Dewey sound iconoclastic, whereas I believe Deweyan Pragmatists need not reject tradition totally, although imagination is also important in inquiry when reconstituting values.

REFERENCES Ames, R. T. and H. Rosemont, Jr. (1998), The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine. Billioud, S. (2012), Thinking Through Confucian Modernity: A Study of Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics, Leiden: Brill. Boydston, J. A. (ed.) (1976–​1991), John Dewey: The Early Works, The Middle Works, The Later Works, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

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Buchler, J. (ed.) (1955), Philosophical Writings of Peirce, New York: Dover. Chan, N. Serina (2011), The Thought of Mou Zongsan, Leiden: Brill. Chan, W. T. (1963), Instructions for Practical Living and other Neo-​Confucian Writings by Wang Yangming, New York: Columbia University Press. Chen, N. (1997), “Confucius’ View of Fate (Ming),” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 24:  323-​359. Cheng, S. D. 程树德 (1990), Collected Commentaries on the Analects (论语集释), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Clower, J. (2010), The Unlikely Buddhologist: Tiantai Buddhism in Mou Zongsan’s New Confucianism, Leiden: Brill. Clower, J. (2014), Late Works of Mou Zongsan, Leiden: Brill. de Bary, Wm. T. and I. Bloom (1999), Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 1, New York: Columbia University Press. Dewey, J. (1908), “What Pragmatism Means by Practical,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 5: 85–​99, Middle Works, vol. 4, pp. 98–​115. Dewey, J. (1910), “A Short Catechism Concerning Truth,” The Influence of Darwin in Philosophy, New York: Henry Holt and Co., pp. 154–​168, Middle Works, vol. 6. Dewey, J. (1915), “The Logic of Judgments of Practice,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 12: 505–​523, 533–​543, Middle Works, vol. 8. Dewey, J. (1918), “The Objects of Valuation,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 15: 253–​258, Middle Works, vol. 11. Dewey, J. (1925), “The Development of American Pragmatism,” in Department of Philosophy, Columbia University (ed.), Studies in the History of Ideas, New York: Columbia University Press, Later Works, vol. 2. Dewey, J. (1929), Experience and Nature, 2nd ed., La Salle: Open Court, Later Works, vol. 1. Dewey, J. (1934), A Common Faith, New Haven: Yale University Press, Later Works, vol. 9. Dewey, J. (1939), “Theory of Valuation,” in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Chicago: Chicago University Press, Later Works, vol. 13. Eno, R. (1990), The Confucian Creation of Heaven, Albany: State University of New York Press. Frisina, W. (2002), Unity of Knowledge and Action, Albany: State University of New York Press. Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao, La Salle: Open Court. Grange, J. (2004), John Dewey, Confucius, and Global Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press. Guo, Q. Y. (2007), “Mou Zongsan’s view of interpreting Confucianism by ‘moral autonomy,’ ” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2.3: 345–​362. Translated from Philosophical Research (哲學研究), 6 (2005): 33–​39. Hall, D. L. and R. T. Ames (1998), Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press. Heidegger, M. (1962), Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James S. Churchill, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Israel, G. L. (2014), Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming, Leiden: Brill.

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James, W. (1991), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Amherst: Prometheus Books. Kant, I. (1996), Critique of Pure Reason, Werner S. Pluhar (trans.), Indianapolis: Hackett. Kant, I. (1997), Critique of Practical Reason, Mary Gregor (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kantor, R. (2006), “Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan’s (1909–​1995) Interpretation of Zhi Yi’s (538–​597) Tiantai Buddhism.” Philosophy East & West, 56.1: 16–​68. Lau, D. C. (1979), Confucius: The Analects, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Leys, S. (1997), The Analects of Confucius, New York: Norton & Co. Li, Z. H. 李澤厚 (1998), Analects: Contemporary Readings (論語今讀), Hong Kong: Heaven & Earth Press. Loy, H. C. (2014), “Language and Ethics in the Analects,” in A. Olberding (ed.), Dao Companion to the Analects, Dordrecht: Springer. Manicas, P. (2008), Rescuing Dewey: Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism, Lanham: Lexington Books. Mou, Z. S. 牟宗三 (1956), Critique of Cognitive Mind (認識心之批判), Hongkong: Youlian, Complete Works, vol. 18. Mou, Z. S. (1963), Distinctive Characteristics of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學的特質), Taipei: Student Bookstore. Mou, Z. S. (1968–​1969), Constitutive Mind and Constitutive Nature (心體與性體), Taipei: Zheng Zhong Book Stores, Complete Works, vols. 5–​7. Mou, Z. S. (1971), Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (智的直覺與中國哲學), Taipei: Commercial Press, Complete Works, vol. 20. Mou, Z. S. (1975), Phenomena and Noumena (現象與物自身), Taipei: Student Bookstore, Complete Works, vol. 21. Mou, Z. S. (1979), From Lu Xiangshan to Liu Jishan (從陸象山到劉蕺山), Taipei: Student Bookstore, Complete Works, vol. 8. Mou, Z. S. (1983), Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學十九講), Taipei: Student Bookstore, Complete Works, vol. 29. Mou, Z. S. (2003), Mou Zongsan’s Complete Works (牟宗三先生全集), Taipei: Lianjing. Neville, R. C. (2008), Ritual and Deference, Albany: State University of New York Press. Peirce, C. S. (1878), “How to Make our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly. Peirce, C. S. (1903), “Philosophy and the Sciences: A Classification,” in A Certain Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic, Boston: Alfred Mudge & Sons. Peirce, C. S. (1905), “What Pragmatism Is,” The Monist. Peirce, C. S. (1906), “Pragmatism in Retrospect: A Last Formulation,” manuscripts. Perkins, F. (2008), “The Moist Criticism of the Confucian Use of Fate,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 35.3: 421–​436. Pihlström, S. (2009), Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology, London: Continuum. Pihlström, S. (2013), Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God, Baltimore: Fordham University Press. Putnam, H. (2006), “Intelligence and Ethics,” in J. R. Shook and J. Margolis (eds.), A Companion to Pragmatism, Malden: Blackwell.

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Raphals, L. (2003), “Fate, Fortune, Chance, and Luck in Chinese and Greek: A Comparative Semantic History,” Philosophy East and West, 53.4: 537–​574. Rescher, N. (1998), “Perspectives on Pragmatism,” in K. R. Westphal (ed.), Pragmatism, Reason, & Norms: A Realistic Assessment, New York: Fordham University Press. Rorty, R. (1999), Philosophy and Social Hope, London: Penguin Books. Slingerland, E. (1996), “The Conception of Ming in Early Confucian Thought,” Philosophy East and West, 46.4: 567–​581. Tan, S. H. (2008), “Democracy and Science in Education: Lacuna in China’s Modernization,” in R. T. Ames and P. Hershock (eds.), Educations and Their Purposes, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Tan, S. H. (2014), “Balancing Conservatism and Innovation: the Pragmatic Analects,” in A. Olberding (ed.), Dao Companion to the Analects, Dordrecht: Springer. Tang, C. I. (1962), “The T’ien Ming [Heavenly Ordinance] in Pre-​Ch’in China,” Philosophy East and West, 11.4: 195–​218. Waley, A. (1996), Confucius—​The Analects, Ware: Wordsworth Editions. Wang, Y. M. 王陽明 (1935), Complete Works of Wang Yangming (陽明全書), Sibu Beiyao 四部備要, Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju. Xu, F. G. 徐復觀 (2005), History of Chinese Theories of Human Nature (中國人性論史), Shanghai: East China Universities Press.

PART THREE

Adapting Borrowed Methodologies

CHAPTER NINE

Metaphysics and Methodology in a Cross-​Cultural Context FRANKLIN PERKINS

IS THERE CHINESE “METAPHYSICS”? Looking at the questions philosophers consider, it makes some sense to designate a domain of inquiry that asks: what is the nature of existence? What that domain would include is vague and depends on the answer to the question. If everything is changing and interconnected, then concern with the nature of being would include questions about change, interaction, and causality. It would include analysis of the basic types or modalities of being—​potential and actual, mind and body, finite and infinite, yin 陰 and yang 陽, qi 氣 (vital energy), and li 理 (coherent patterning), the five aggregates, and so on. Discussion of these topics naturally leads to the question of origins—​how do things arise in the first place? The answer will partly be implicit in answers about being—​does being exist by its nature? Does being itself imply dynamism and order, or are these somehow added to it? One might also work out the consequences of the conception of being. That might lead to questions of teleology, whether time is linear or cyclical, whether anything is constant or all is flux, and so on. Given that human beings are beings, another area of inquiry would be around the status of the human—​how are human actions caused, what is the ontological status of human values and human concepts, how different are human beings from other kinds of being, and so on. These questions are intertwined enough to be taken together as an area of philosophical investigation, even if it would be impossible to set the boundaries of that area in any predetermined way. No one familiar with Chinese thought could deny that Chinese philosophers discussed many of the questions falling within this domain and that they argued for particular answers and against others. It is just as obvious that European (and Greek and Indian) philosophers debated issues within this domain as well. I see no way to deny either of these claims, and if both Chinese and European philosophers addressed questions within this common area, then it is

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difficult to imagine an argument against creating some kind of dialogue among them. Someone might object that the basic assumptions about the nature of reality in the two traditions are too fundamentally different. That would certainly make dialogue difficult, but it would be the best reason for such dialogue—​if the traditions are formulated in a way that makes certain alternatives almost unthinkable, then they surely are inadequate on their own. One might instead say that the traditions ask different questions, and that is true. Questions and answers are mutually implicated. Questions about the nature and existence of God arise only when prior questions have been answered with “God.” Questions about the relationship between free will and mechanistic causality are possible only when one has introduced these to explain change. Broader questions might come closer to defining the domain itself. How do things arise in the first place? What makes things change? Even these questions, though, are not entirely neutral, as, for example, a model in which there are things that then change is different from one of constant flux (something Mādhyamikas would point out). The fact that different traditions raise different questions, though, leads to the same conclusion as the previous point. It means that cultural dialogue within this domain will be difficult, but also crucial. After all, if there are key philosophical questions that our tradition has ignored, don’t we need to discover them? What kind of philosopher would instead say that we should avoid those other questions, since they are not “ours”? As these points make clear, there are profound challenges to creating cross-​ cultural dialogue around issues within a domain broadly concerned with the nature of existence. The second section of this chapter will address why such dialogue is so difficult and will suggest what kind of method we might use. The third and fourth sections will consider two specific examples: gender hierarchy and mind-​ body dualism. Before turning to those challenges, we must now address the more fundamental question—​is there Chinese metaphysics? I have deliberately avoided the term as a way of illustrating the nature of the question, because it is not really a question about facts. There is little room for reasonable people to disagree on the facts of the matter. The area of European philosophy concerned with the above questions is reasonably labeled as “metaphysics,” and even if one would prefer a narrower definition, in practice, a course or textbook on metaphysics would include issues like those listed above. The question is, should we use the label “metaphysics” to include all philosophical reflection that falls within the above domain, thus including Chinese and European (and Indian) philosophers, or should we restrict the label to a specifically European approach? Another way to put the issue is, should “metaphysics” label the domain of questions or should it be restricted to positions that share certain basic answers? Given dominant trends over the history of European philosophy, the most obvious candidates for a more restricted definition would be to take metaphysics as the study of the eternal and unchanging or the study of what is transcendent and beyond appearances.1 One problem with restricting “metaphysics” to a specifically European approach is the diversity of European philosophy itself. Any definition that is not explicitly Eurocentric will either fail to include European philosophers commonly considered to be doing metaphysics (like Spinoza or Heraclitus) or it will fail to exclude all

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Chinese philosophers. It hardly matters, though, because the question is most of all about power and rhetoric. The primary factor is the power of exclusion. Using “metaphysics” in the broader sense invites cross-​cultural dialogue; using it in the narrower sense discourages it. More concretely, if we identify metaphysics with the broader domain sketched above, then anyone who offers a course or compiles a textbook on metaphysics that includes only materials from Europe and the ancient Mediterranean must explain and justify why they have taken such a partial and limited approach, giving only an incomplete account of the topic. If we use the label “metaphysics” only for a specifically European approach, then, on the contrary, it would be improper to include Chinese philosophy in these courses and textbooks. In fact, the incompleteness of the latter approach remains however we label it. Unless we are just doing intellectual history, the proper focus for philosophical discussion should be the broader domain. If we define “metaphysics” as something specifically European, it would be only a subset of that broader domain, incomplete in itself. While those who would restrict the term “metaphysics” to European philosophy are generally motivated by the desire to exclude other cultures, the same claim can come from a respect for diversity. The use of the term not only expresses the power of exclusion but also the power of assimilation. Granted that both Chinese and European philosophers considered issues in the above domain, there is clearly a difference between saying that the Chinese have metaphysics and saying that Europeans have xing er shang xue 形而上學. Even that is inadequate, since Chinese philosophers would not have picked out xing er shang (literally, what is above concrete forms) as a distinct area of inquiry except in reaction to the European term “metaphysics.” Conceding the name of the domain to Europe inevitably centers dialogue on the specific questions and positions that emerged in Europe, but as noted, even the questions are implicated in culturally specific positions. Using the familiar label “metaphysics” disguises the radicality of the work that would have to be done to create a genuine and fair cross-​cultural dialogue. Without that work, applying a European metaphysical framework to Chinese materials gives only a false sense of inclusiveness, one that both misses what we might learn through dialogue and generally presents the Chinese philosophers as less competent. It should be noted that those who emphasize the commonality of human nature tend to deny the dangers of assimilation, precisely because they see the framework of European philosophy as human rather than European. A critique of that position—​which historically has been at the core of European cultural imperialism—​would run too far beyond the scope of this chapter. It suffices to note that the questions asked in Europe and China regarding the nature of existence varied considerably and that there is hardly a single metaphysical term that would translate unproblematically between classical Chinese and any Western language. We can now plot out responses to the question—​do the Chinese have metaphysics? Those who oppose cross-​ cultural dialogue can confidently answer, “no.” They thereby avoid the danger of assimilation. Those who favor such dialogue but do not see cultures as significantly different will confidently say, “yes.” For the rest of us, the difficulty lies in the tension between exclusion and assimilation. The same tensions and the same configuration of positions apply to most questions about the

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cross-​cultural application of European categories (e.g., virtue ethics, deconstruction, humanism), even the more fundamental question—​is there Chinese philosophy? Those opposed to creating dialogue will say, no. Those who support dialogue and minimize cultural differences will say, yes. Most of us will be stuck between the danger of excluding Chinese thought from university curriculums (if we answer no) and the danger of obscuring the differences between what Mengzi and Zhuangzi were doing and what now characterizes the academic discipline of philosophy (if we answer yes).2 In fact, this dilemma reflects a problem facing any group that has been historically excluded—​does inclusion require assimilation to the dominant paradigms? Where does that leave us on the question of metaphysics in China? It depends on our estimation of the greater danger. Given the almost entire absence of Chinese materials from the discipline of philosophy, I think the greater danger is exclusion (and I will thus use “metaphysics” in the more inclusive sense). Whatever the intentions behind it, denying that the Chinese have metaphysics too easily supports the dominant view that philosophers have no reason to consider Chinese thought. Moreover, as Leibniz argued in relation to China several centuries ago, a hermeneutic mistake that encourages further dialogue is better than a mistake that cuts it off. The recognition of differences will tend to emerge through continued dialogue, and such dialogue has the potential of disrupting its own initial terms. At the same time, once we recognize that the choice about the application of the term is primarily about rhetorical power, we can admit that context matters. We might take our lead from Kongzi (Confucius). When asked if one should immediately put what they have learned into practice, he answers “yes” to his disciple Ran Qiu, but “no” to Zilu, saying that he should defer to his father and older brothers. When a third disciple asks about the contradiction, Kongzi explains: “Ran Qiu holds himself back, so I push him forward; Zilu is daring, so I hold him back” (Liu 1990: 11.22). So, to a philosopher wondering if there is anything worth considering in the Chinese tradition, we might say that they have metaphysics, virtue ethics, philosophy, and so on (worrying more about exclusion). To someone already committed to cross-​cultural dialogue, we might say just the opposite (worrying more about assimilation). To someone who points out the contradiction, we might explain the flawed nature of the question itself.

METAPHYSICS, EXPERIENCE, AND THE BASIS FOR DIALOGUE I hope to have shown the importance of cross-​ cultural dialogue around issues concerning the nature of existence, whether we label that domain as “metaphysics” or take “metaphysics” as one part of it. We can now turn to the challenges of such a dialogue. The fundamental difficulty with metaphysics in a cross-​cultural context is that metaphysical concepts and theories are only loosely linked to the concrete world of experience. Yet cross-​cultural understanding, and thus the possibility of comparative philosophy, must ultimately pass through experience. Dialogue begins by pinpointing some element of experience that we are all talking about. From there,

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we can compare how those experiences are interpreted and theorized in different cultural contexts. So it would be fairly easy to compare how trees are thought of in different cultures. We know what trees are, we find the words they use to refer to trees, and then we compare what we say and what they say about them. In the realm of ethics and epistemology, things are not so simple. We cannot just launch a comparison of “benevolence” and “ren 仁” or of “reason” and whatever Chinese equivalent we might hope for, but we can still ground such comparisons in concrete human actions and capacities. So we can start with cases where someone puts the interests of another over their own, or the differences between how people treat their parents and how they treat strangers, or we can begin with the ability to draw consequences from premises or with the effects of contradictions on claims. We can then compare how attitudes toward these elements vary, the different ways they are grouped and distinguished, the foundations they are given, and so on. When it comes to metaphysics, the path from concepts to experience is difficult—​ if not impossible—​to trace. We are talking about concepts like substance, ziran 自 然, God, causality, or emptiness. We cannot bring these into dialogue by going back to trees or acts of kindness. This difficulty is built into the very definition of metaphysics: if it is concerned with existence in general, then the differences between things given in experience will shed little light on metaphysics. This difficulty is a common charge made against metaphysics. We can consider a statement from a paradigmatic metaphysician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1996: IV, 2, 371): What has made it easier to reason demonstratively in mathematics is largely that experience can vouch for each step in reasoning, as also happens with the figures of the syllogism. But in metaphysics and ethics there is no longer this parallel between reasoning and experience, and in natural science experiments require labour and expense. Now, the moment men are deprived of that faithful guide, experience, which aids and sustains their steps like the little wheeled device which keeps toddlers from falling down, they at once allow their attention to waver and as a result they go astray. Leibniz’s worry is that since we cannot confirm or deny metaphysical claims through empirical evidence, it is too easy to drift off into fantasy. If the metaphysician is largely cut loose from the demands of everyday life, then we cannot use those experiences as a path into cross-​cultural dialogue. Although Leibniz may be right about the difficulties in determining the truth of ethical claims, their expression in concrete behaviors provides more of a basis for cross-​cultural comparisons. This insight is at the foundation of Quine’s discussion of radical translation. The issue is how one would begin to translate an entirely unfamiliar language. Quine’s famous example is connecting the foreign claim “Gavagai!” with the claim “Rabbit!” Quine explains the complex process through which we could learn to say “Gavagai!” in all of the appropriate circumstances and to effectively translate it as “Rabbit!” Even so, something would be left undetermined. Quine (2013 [1960]: 46–​47) explains: For, consider “gavagai.” Who knows but what the objects to which this term applies are not rabbits after all, but mere stages, or brief temporal segments, of

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rabbits? In either event the stimulus situations that prompt assent to “Gavagai” would be the same as for “Rabbit.” Or perhaps the objects to which “gavagai” applies are all and sundry undetached parts of rabbits; again the stimulus meaning would register no difference. . . . A further alternative likewise compatible with the same old stimulus meaning is to take “gavagai” as a singular term naming the fusion, in Goodman’s sense, of all rabbits: that single though discontinuous portion of the spatiotemporal world that consists of rabbits . . . And a still further alternative in the case of “gavagai” is to take it as a singular term naming a recurring universal, rabbithood. There are no concrete experiences in which use of the term would disambiguate between these different views. Practices like hunting, raising, and eating rabbits would never reveal these differences in ontologies, and the different ontologies would have no impact on our ability to work together. The loose connection between metaphysical assumptions and discussions of concrete phenomena make it extremely difficult to find textual evidence that would decisively establish that metaphysics. It is thus easy enough to assume that the other shares one’s own metaphysics, or to fill in their metaphysics with fantasies of otherness. Quine is probably right that we could go through our whole lives cooperating with other people without ever realizing that they took “rabbit” as a label for coordinated rabbit parts while we took it as referring to a unitary substance. Consider, though, if instead of Gavagai or rabbit we were talking about the self or atman. Different people might take the self as an independent substance, a provisional name for a gathering of parts (as “chariot” names a conjunction of wheels, axles, etc.), a label for a continuous succession of ontologically distinct moments, or a certain quantity of universal soul. People with different views might spend their whole lives together without saying something that would reveal those differences. It is hard to see how one could do philosophy, though, without such differences becoming manifest. Metaphysics is part of the very process of theorizing experience. A theory about responsibility will have to make some assumption about the unity and continuity of the self, precisely because different ontologies of the self justify different views of responsibility. Theorizing change and succession requires forming some conception of causality or influence. This metaphysics may not be considered explicitly, but it provides what amount to unarticulated premises employed in our philosophical arguments. This is one reason why a hermeneutic principle of charity requires considering such metaphysical views, and why ignoring differences on this level makes one side or the other look incompetent. Metaphysical assumptions guide our questions as well. If we see the world as made up of individuated substances, then individual responsibility will be easy to justify, while the ways the world shapes our behavior will be difficult. If one sees the world as composed of interconnected processes or events, then education will be easy to deal with, but individual autonomy will be harder to explain. Thus I have elsewhere generalized a contrast between European and Chinese philosophy by saying that European philosophers were mainly concerned with problems of reconciliation while Chinese philosophers were concerned with problems of distinction (Perkins

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2014: 15; 2015b). It isn’t as simple as saying the problems are reversed, though. If one begins with belief in an anthropomorphic God who issues moral commands, the nature of morality will be taken for granted. The problems will be how to reconcile such a God with the existence of this world—​how to explain the existence of evil, how an infinite being can avoid being everything, why such a being would create in the first place, and so on. A different set of questions will appear if one begins with the view that the world arises spontaneously in a way that is not at all anthropomorphic or anthropocentric. Then there will be questions about the very status of morality, about how human purposes align with and depart from the patterns of nature, and so on. Consider also how the way one theorizes causality impacts the kinds of questions one asks about nature. If one focuses on teleology, then the questions will be about purposes and about the designer. If the focus is on mechanistic causality, then one gets something like modern science. If one conceives of causality in terms of resonance and response, that gives yet another shape to the examination of nature. Since many of these metaphysical assumptions remain implicit, without a cross-​cultural approach it is almost impossible to recognize that the questions in one’s own tradition are not the perennial questions of philosophy. This is another level on which awareness of differences in metaphysical assumptions is required for hermeneutic charity. The only charitable way to explain the fact that proofs for the existence of God or the existence of free will were so central through most of European philosophy but barely register in other traditions is to recognize that the questions themselves follow from different metaphysical presuppositions. Otherwise, Europeans look foolish for obsessing over nonissues, or Chinese and Indians look dumb for missing the most obvious philosophical problems. Of course metaphysics can become an explicit topic and perhaps it does in any philosophical tradition. The more explicit those discussions are, the more restricted the space for our own projections. Nonetheless, the basic difficulty arising from the distance between metaphysics and experience is unavoidable. Neo-​Confucians wrote plenty about lǐ 理, but there remain fundamental disagreements on its nature, reflected in translating it as “principle,” “patterns,” or “coherence,” each of which implies different metaphysical views. Almost everything the neo-​Confucians say can be read in any of these ways. Similarly, almost every use of the terms you 有 and wu 無 in the Classical Period can be interpreted as making a distinction between being and nothingness or between the differentiated and the undifferentiated. We might address the difficulty by locating these terms in a web of other terms, but we find the same ambiguity in those terms as well. As a result, the choice of interpretation usually falls back on broad generalizations about Chinese thought. If there were no connection between metaphysics and the demands of everyday life, then we could give up speculating on Chinese metaphysics, but there remains some link. Changes on the level of metaphysical theory can bring about changes in practices. The explosive development of science in early modern Europe cannot be separated from the rejection of an Aristotelian metaphysics based on final causality and the distinction between potential and actual being. Ontological analysis leads Buddhists to claim that there is no self as a lasting individuated being, and this leads to reducing attachment and to universal compassion. One might also think of the

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ethical implications that follow from loss of the belief in God. In the other direction, practices and empirical evidence impact metaphysical assumptions. The dominance of theism and the sophistication of its articulation in European philosophy reflect the fact that, for more than a millennium, one would have been killed for deviating from it. The theory of evolution weakened the explanatory need for design and so belief in deliberate design and in God as that designer declined. These examples already suggest the limits of this influence as well. Metaphysical views are surprisingly resilient. In the face of overwhelming evidence, many people still deny the theory of evolution. More interesting are the ways in which metaphysics adapts around empirical evidence. Some simply make God responsible for evolution. Others try to replace the teleology that came from a designer with a teleology based on evolution itself. In the other direction, practices have a momentum that resists metaphysical critique. The “Death of God” made remarkably little difference in the moral codes that philosophers hold (even if it has changed how those codes are justified). Buddhists allow that their doctrines can be read on many levels, including a basic level in which one seeks for a good rebirth or even success in business. Here we might seek help from Michel Foucault, who has one of the most sophisticated accounts of the complex interaction between practices and how they are theorized. Foucault distinguishes concrete practices and rules from what he refers to as the “archeological dimension” of thought. In the second volume of the History of Sexuality, after describing continuities on the level of moral codes, Foucault (1985: 21–​22) explains: From the few similarities I have managed to point out, it should not be concluded that the Christian morality of sex was somehow “pre-​ formed” in ancient thought; one ought to imagine instead that very early in the moral thought of antiquity, a thematic complex—​a “quadri-​thematics” of sexual austerity—​formed around and apropos of the life of the body, the institution of marriage, relations between men, and the existence of wisdom. And, crossing through institutions, sets of precepts, extremely diverse theoretical references, and in spite of many alterations, this thematic maintained a certain constancy as time went by: as if starting with antiquity, there were four points of problematization on the basis of which—​and according to schemas that were often very different—​the concern with sexual austerity was endlessly reformulated. Foucault’s underlying point is that similar practices can be theorized in radically different ways. Comparative study must go beyond practices to look at the way these are theorized, including different ontologies. Foucault is particularly attuned to the complex interactions between the various levels. On the one hand, discontinuities on one level can go along with continuities on the other. Just as practices could remain in place while being conceptualized in radically different ways, practices could fundamentally change while remaining within the same metaphysical assumptions and power relations. That is the heart of Foucault’s critique of so-​called sexual liberation: while what was permissible opened up radically, the extension of a certain discursive power over sexuality actually increased. On the other hand, ontologies emerge through the ways in which experience itself is problematized,

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expressing the movement of power in the world (Foucault 1985: 11). How practices are theorized leads to differences not just in how actions are conceived but in how one behaves. So while worries about abstinence, monogamy, and the dangers of homosexual relationships persist whether conceived through Greek mastery of the self or Christian purity, Greek practice was much more flexible. There were no absolute rules, and one who failed to restrain himself was seen as more or less unmanly, not as evil. We can now attempt to project a method for cross-​cultural dialogue around metaphysical issues. Determining metaphysical views will be difficult. On one level, we rely on a hermeneutic principle of charity. Given the differences in the positions and questions asked in Chinese and European philosophy, we must speculate on the metaphysical assumptions that would explain these differences. Chad Hansen, influenced by the work of Quine, has one of the best accounts of how one would do this (1992: 1–​26). On another level, we can follow Foucault. Foucault attempts to reconstruct differences on the archeological level through close attention to differences in discourses and vocabularies and to subtle variations in practices and social forms. These elements of methodology point toward recognition of cultural differences, but these differences are still grounded in commonalities on the more pragmatic level, the level of hunting rabbits. One does indeed find many such commonalities between China and Europe on this level, whether those are rooted in human universals or similarities in human environments (such as centralized political authority or the division of labor). Dialogue can begin from things like personal identity, individuation, the effects of education, the use of punishments, and the division of labor.3 We can then ask how these are theorized in radically different philosophical contexts, using such concrete experiences as a way to create dialogue on a metaphysical level. This method would ground metaphysical comparisons on a commonality of function rather than similarities between concepts or theories. We look to the metaphysical resources that explain the transformative effects of education or that enable the recognition of someone as the same person. That might bring quite different metaphysical assumptions into dialogue, as one might, for example, compare the function of teleology in European philosophy with that of correlative cosmology in China. The following sections will apply this method to two examples—​gender hierarchy and the relation between mind and body.

“DEEP CRITIQUE” AND LEARNING FROM CHINESE METAPHYSICS One lesson commonly taken from Foucault is that critique must address not just practices and rules but also the broader metaphysical assumptions that theorize them. I will call this “Deep Critique,” borrowing from the term “Deep Ecology.” What makes Deep Ecology deep is the claim that a suitable stance toward nature requires not just changes in behavior but a radical overturning of the individualistic and anthropocentric foundations of Western metaphysics. Similar forms of Deep Critique have extended across various lines of political resistance, where forms of

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oppression are seen as rooted in fundamental aspects of Western metaphysics, such as dualism, rationalism, and anthropocentrism, aspects sometimes grouped under Jacques Derrida’s label “phallogocentrism.” As an example we can take Judith Butler (2006 [1990]: 32–​33), who argues that oppression along gender lines depends on an ontology of substances: But once we dispense with the priority of “man” and “woman” as abiding substances, then it is no longer possible to subordinate dissonant gendered features as so many secondary and accidental characteristics of a gender ontology that is fundamentally intact. If the notion of an abiding substance is a fictive construction produced through the compulsory ordering of attributes into coherent gender sequences, then it seems that gender as substance, the viability of man and woman as nouns, is called into question by the dissonant play of attributes that fail to conform to sequential or causal models of intelligibility. Butler’s point is that the dissonant play of gender attributes one finds in actual human beings can be tamed only if they are seen as accidental properties of substances defined in terms of gender. This is what makes it possible to be a man who is effeminate or a woman who is butch. Disrupting that ontology necessarily undermines that binary conception of gender. Similar claims have been made in relation to race, class, and colonialism. We might note that the basic insight of Deep Critique—​that political change requires a new metaphysics—​was realized much earlier throughout the areas colonized by Europe. The May Fourth Movement in China expressed the view that in order to modernize, China needed not just political and economic change but an entirely new way of thinking.4 Given that different cultures hold different metaphysical assumptions, it makes sense that Deep Critique would turn to comparative philosophy. That was certainly the case in China, where the critique of Chinese thought went along with attempts to learn from the West. In the other direction, explicit calls for help from Asian philosophies are most common in the ecology movement, although there are various attempts to use Chinese resources to reconceive gender as well.5 This turn makes sense, since Chinese philosophers avoid almost every point on which Deep Critique in Europe centers—​it is nondualistic, there is no privileging of reason, human beings are seen as just one of the myriad things, everything is interconnected, and so on.6 It is striking how often descriptions of what is needed sound like descriptions of Chinese philosophy. Butler’s critique of the self obviously resembles Buddhist views of no-​self, just as her claim that the self does not precede social roles (Butler 2006 [1990]: 22) sounds Confucian. The problem with appealing to Chinese philosophy in these contexts is obvious—​practices in China were generally no better than in the West. Chinese society has been as sexist as Europe, and class hierarchies were no more permeable. China might do better on other issues. China lacked the peculiar idea of “race” that took hold of Europe in the eighteenth century, and the idea that human beings differ by culture and education rather than by nature is fundamental in most Chinese philosophies. That did not necessarily translate into favorable treatment of China’s cultural others, though. Chinese people never did quite the damage to the natural environment as did the Europeans, and there is a long tradition of concerns

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with sustainability, but these differences may be explained as much by circumstances as by deep philosophical roots. The exploitation of nature certainly took off as soon as the means for doing so appeared. One could respond by saying that the West needs a new metaphysics, but that the metaphysics developed in China is not the one. Nonetheless, the particular assumptions blamed for oppression in the West are missing in China, so we cannot avoid the conclusion that eliminating these assumptions does not eliminate the specific forms of oppression. This comparison suggests rather that oppressive practices have a kind of force of their own and that metaphysical assumptions lack the power to overturn them. If people rely on eating rabbits, they will find a way to hunt them regardless of whether they theorize that as eliminating a substance, detaching formerly undetached parts, or ending a series of temporal stages. In the same way, where there are forces in favor of gender inequality, that can be theorized even through a metaphysics based on the mutual dependence of masculine and feminine qualities (Chinese yinyang thinking) or a metaphysics that denies the existence of discreet individuals (Buddhism). These conclusions do not mean that Deep Critique is irrelevant or that comparative philosophy has no role in it. Even though experience and metaphysics have no decisive impact on each other, there is still some mutual influence. While one might cite Taiwan, Japan, and Korea as counter-​examples to early twentieth-​century Chinese claims that modernity required the elimination of Confucianism, it also is likely that, on the one side, Confucian assumptions shape the specific forms taken by capitalism and democracy in those places, and, on the other side, capitalism and democracy are slowly leading to more individualistic conceptions of the self. Gender inequality may have been just as strong in China, but it was inflected differently, missing, for example, certain worries about effeminacy (given that men and women both include yin and yang forces). While not exactly positive, Chinese views toward “barbarians” worked out differently from European racism. Alternate metaphysics will have some different consequences, and might open up different routes toward liberation. Moreover, a critique of practices would still be supported by a critique of the metaphysics that rationalizes them. Chinese metaphysical assumptions might be disruptive of certain hierarchies in the West, even if the same hierarchies could have been rationalized in Chinese terms as well. The same act of disruption in China might involve appeals to Western individualism. The greater value of comparative work on metaphysics, though, may be in showing that metaphysical reform will not save us. Given the force of oppressive structures in practice, no metaphysics is safe from playing a role in rationalizing them.7 Aside from looking to alternate worldviews for help, we might analyze the ways in which structures of oppression draw support even from metaphysical systems that are fundamentally different. This would be an application of the method discussed in the previous section—​rather than focus on broad contrasts between immanence and transcendence or substance and process, we might begin with something concrete like gender inequality. We could then look at how that is theorized in different cultural contexts, investigating the metaphysical bases for gender difference, gender hierarchy, and so on. That would allow us to see the oppressive and the emancipatory

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potential in various kinds of metaphysics, as well as the pitfalls that must be avoided. One might also start from metaphysical differences in order to be more attentive to subtle variations in how practices work out (as Foucault does so well), which might in turn shed light on the ways different metaphysical assumptions render different elements of practice unstable and open to change.

MIND-​BODY DUALISM IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY We can now apply a similar method to a very different issue—​mind-​body dualism in Chinese philosophy. The consensus that Chinese philosophers avoided ontological dualisms is so strong that it is rarely questioned. Coupled with the now common view that dualism is bad, this has drawn attention away from the kinds of tensions in experience that would lead to such dualisms in the first place. Paul Rakita Goldin and Edward Slingerland have both recently published essays meant to disrupt this consensus. Their arguments are helpful for suggesting that the absence of mind-​ dualism in Chinese philosophy may not be all there is to say on the subject, but they are also deeply problematic. While ultimately taking different positions, Goldin and Slingerland base their arguments on the same kind of evidence. Goldin’s evidence can be divided according to three points.8 The first are statements that the health of the body may decline without disturbing the heart/​mind (xin 心) or its ability to think. These examples suggest that this xin has some independence from the rest of the body. The second are beliefs that the dead maintain some kind of personal identity after their bodies are gone. The third is a passage from the Xunzi stating that the mind can think of distant things even though the body is in one place. Slingerland adds passages that distinguish the heart from the rest of the body or from other bodily organs, particularly passages associating the heart with self-​ control and with cognitive functions.9 These examples show the ways in which the heart/​mind differs from the other organs. Neither Goldin nor Slingerland offer any evidence that any Chinese philosopher articulated an ontology that consisted of two types of being, that they analyzed the radical differences between existing in space and being immaterial (as around the issue of divisibility), or that they explained how two things as different as mind and body can interact. Their evidence falls entirely on the side of concrete issues and pragmatic concerns, that is, on the level of hunting rabbits, rules about homosexual activity, or distinctions between men and women. Both explain this unarticulated mind-​ body dualism as expressing universal aspects of “folk psychology” (Goldin 2003: 236; Slingerland 2013: 30–​40). This would seem to contrast European philosophers, who were able to recognize the metaphysical roots of this folk psychology and then either explicitly defend or reject it.10 Slingerland thus tends to compare Chinese philosophers not with other philosophers but rather other “folk” (2013: 38–​40). Although they use similar textual and psychological evidence, Goldin and Slingerland end up with significantly different interpretations. Goldin seems to deny that the same phenomena and practical distinctions could be theorized in different

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ways, assuming that they can only be made through a kind of Cartesian dualism. So after quoting the passage from the Xunzi that says that one might sit in a chamber and see to the four seas, or live in the present moment but discuss the distant past, Goldin concludes: “When a philosopher declares that one might sit inside one’s chamber and still ‘see’ everything within the Four Seas, there cannot be much doubt that he conceives of the mind with an actively theatrical imagination, with entire worlds and fantasies parading before a disembodied mental ‘viewer’ ” (Goldin 2003: 235).11 He applies the same reasoning to life after death and the possibility that the mind might not decline along with the body, taking them all as implying a metaphysical dualism between mind and body. Thus Goldin does not allow that the same pragmatic distinctions and claims could be theorized in different ways. This view is false even within a European context—​if materialism required one to deny the possibility of thinking of things that are not physically present, or that one’s body might weaken with old age while one’s mind remained alert, materialism would have been decisively rejected long ago. The greater problem is that if one assumes that they were metaphysical dualists, then Zhuangzi and Xunzi end up totally incompetent as philosophers, particularly in comparison to their Western counterparts. That is not accidental but expresses the danger of assimilation. In contrast, Slingerland claims that on the metaphysical level, Chinese are indeed more holistic than most European philosophers. In spite of its distinctive functions, Slingerland admits that the xin 心 (heart/​mind) is conceived of as a physical organ fully capable of interacting with the other organs (2013: 36–​37). He also notes that “neither the mind nor the postmortem spirit is completely immaterial,” so that they remain continuous with the material world (Slingerland 2013: 37). He takes this holism as providing a helpful counterbalance to some dominant European approaches. Ultimately, Slingerland’s interpretation of Chinese metaphysics differs little from those he criticizes. His argument is rhetorical, which turns us back to the issue of motivation. The willingness to label Chinese philosophers as “mind-​body dualists” while claiming that they believe everything that exists is physical suggests an underlying disinterest in metaphysics, but Slingerland’s main concern is clear—​to support cross-​cultural dialogue and understanding by emphasizing commonalities. Here is where both Slingerland and Goldin raise an important point, but one that is clearer if we distinguish pragmatic distinctions and functions from the metaphysics used to theorize them. If we begin with generalizing contrasts between Chinese philosophers as holding a metaphysical holism and European philosophers as dualistic, we lose any commonality and dialogue starts to seem impossible. That is not the case if we turn our attention to concrete distinctions and practices that appear in both China and Europe. Both draw some distinction between reason and emotion, both see the organ that thinks as different from the other organs, and at least some philosophers on both sides believed that one could lose their body but continue to exist in the afterlife. The blanket assumption that the Chinese lack mind-​body dualism draws our attention away from such issues and thus away from points that might anchor a dialogue around metaphysical issues. To move from this observation to the view that the ontologies explaining these distinctions is the same, though, is exactly the wrong response, as it misses everything

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that would be valuable about such a dialogue in the first place. The most interesting point is that Chinese philosophers made these distinctions without metaphysical dualism. That provides alternatives to dominant European models, although we must of course still ask if Chinese philosophers were able to do this successfully. Focusing on such issues suggests an interesting approach to Chinese philosophy, as it prompts us to look at how they explained those very things that most run against the grain of their metaphysics. Of course, one should challenge European philosophy using the same tactic, but most of twentieth-​ century philosophy in the West has done just that, problematizing the metaphysics that went before it. To not apply the same critical lens toward China is a bit condescending. It also tends to miss the subtlety of Chinese philosophy and the fact that, as in the West, philosophers were concerned with problems rather than general worldviews.12 More importantly, if we are to take seriously the possibility of displacing certain aspects of traditional European metaphysics—​overcoming dualism, ontological individualism, “phallogocentrism”—​then we must take seriously the problems that would arise in an alternate metaphysics. While that metaphysics will not be Chinese, understanding Chinese metaphysics and its applications is a key resource in preparing for that future.

NOTES 1. My argument in this section builds on arguments first made in Li and Perkins (2015) and Perkins (2015b). 2. For a more detailed discussion of this problem, see Perkins (2014: 4–​6). 3. For an application of this method to the problem of individuation in early Chinese philosophy, see Perkins (2015a). 4. While critical of this reaction against Chinese culture, Liang Shuming 梁漱冥 gives a perceptive account of its roots. At first, Chinese people thought they could just import Western science and technology, but they had little success and realized that scientific progress depended on a Western style constitutional government. When that failed, they realized that it would only be possible to have a Western style of government if they fully absorbed Western culture and thought (Liang Shuming 1999: 12–​17). 5. For discussions of this, see the essays collected in Li (2000). 6. Unfortunately, even the most radical critics of the Western tradition tend to ignore any resources outside of it. If it weren’t for that bias, we would surely find many more philosophers looking to the metaphysical assumptions of other traditions. 7. My discussion here is very much influenced by the analysis of immanentist philosophies in Özbey (2015). 8. The following discussion is based on Goldin (2003). 9. For Slingerland’s position, I focus on Slingerland (2013). A briefer version of the arguments appears in Slingerland and Chudek (2011a). See also the criticisms of their methodology in Klein and Klein (2011) and the response in Slingerland and Chudek (2011b).

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10. Not all of Slingerland’s examples of philosophers reaching views in tension with “sloppy” folk’s intuitions are European. In addition to Descartes’s mind-​body dualism, he also mentions “a completely transcendent immaterial God, Calvinistic predestination, or Buddhist ‘no-​self ’ doctrines” (Slingerland 2013: 41). 11. The Xunzi passage is in the “Jie bi” (解蔽) chapter (Wang 1988: 397). 12. This point is made most forcefully by Michael Puett (2001; 2002).

REFERENCES Butler, J. (2006 [1990]), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1985), The History of Sexuality Volume II: The Use of Pleasure, R. Hurley (trans.), New York: Random House. Goldin, P. R. (2003), “A Mind-​Body Problem in the Zhuangzi?” in S. Cook (ed.), Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, Albany: State University of New York Press. Hansen, C. (1992), A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klein, E. and C. Klein (2011), “Did the Chinese Have a Change of Heart?” Cognitive Science, 35: 179–​182. Leibniz, G. W. (1996), New Essays on the Human Understanding, P. Remnant and J. Bennet (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, C. Y. (ed.) (2000), The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender, Chicago: Open Court. Li, C. Y. and F. Perkins (2015), “Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems: An Introduction,” in C. Y. Li and F. Perkins (eds.), Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liang, S. M. 梁漱溟 (1999), Eastern and Western Philosophies and Their Cultures (東西文 化及其哲學), Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan. Liu, Baonan劉寶楠 (1990), The Analects: Its Proper Meanings (論語正義), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Özbey, S. N. (2015), Discontinuities in Immanent Worlds: The Human-​Nonhuman Animal Split in Spinoza and the Zhuāngzĭ, dissertation (DePaul University). Perkins, F. (2014), Heaven and Earth are not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Perkins, F. (2015a), “What Is a Thing (wu 物)?: The Problem of Individuation in Early Chinese Metaphysics,” in C. Y. Li and F. Perkins (eds.), Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perkins, F. (2015b), “Metaphysics in Chinese Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Puett, M. (2001), The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Puett, M. (2002), To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-​Divinization in Early China, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.

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Quine, W. V. O. (2013 [1960]), Word & Object (new ed.), Cambridge: MIT Press. Slingerland, E. (2013), “Body and Mind in Early China: An Integrated Humanities—​ Science Approach,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 81.1: 6–​55. Slingerland, E. and M. Chudek (2011a), “The Prevalence of Mind-​Body Dualism in Early China,” Cognitive Science, 35: 997–​1007. Slingerland, E. and M. Chudek (2011b), “The Challenge of Qualitatively Coding Ancient Texts,” Cognitive Science, 35: 183–​186. Wang, X. Q. 王先謙 (1988), Xunzi: Collected Explanations (荀子集解), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju.

CHAPTER TEN

On Constructive-​ Engagement Strategy in Studies of Chinese Philosophy BO MOU

The purpose of this chapter is to give a more or less systematic account of one strategic methodology and goal (“constructive-​ engagement strategy” for short) in studies of Chinese philosophy.1 I will first highlight the characteristic features and methodological emphases of the constructive-​engagement strategy in studies of Chinese philosophy and in philosophical exploration in general; then I explain how the constructive-​engagement strategy is possible through introducing some explanatory resources and conceptual distinctions in need, further elaborating some crucial methodological features, and exploring the adequacy conditions for methodological guiding principles in studies of Chinese philosophy; in so doing, I will suggest a meta-​methodological framework of how to look at the relationship of distinct approaches to jointly concerned issues. Finally, I will briefly show how the constructive-​engagement reflective practice bears on recent studies of Chinese philosophy for two purposes: to illustrate the foregoing theoretic characterization of the constructive-​engagement strategy, and to identify and explain some constructive morals that might have general significance for doing philosophy comparatively.

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES AND EMPHASES OF CONSTRUCTIVE-​ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY The constructive-​ engagement strategy as one general strategic methodology in doing philosophy comparatively is not limited to studies of Chinese philosophy. Generally but briefly speaking, it is to inquire into how, by way of reflective criticism (including self-​ criticism) and argumentation, distinct approaches from different philosophical traditions (whether distinguished culturally or by styles and orientations) can learn from each other and jointly contribute to the contemporary

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development of philosophy on a range of philosophical issues or topics, which can be approached through appropriate philosophical interpretation and/​or from a broader philosophical vantage point. Specifically, the constructive-​engagement strategy in studies of Chinese philosophy is to implement the foregoing general constructive-​ engagement strategy in doing philosophy with the focus on the constructive engagement of distinct approaches within the Chinese philosophical tradition as well as between the Chinese tradition and other culture-​associated philosophical traditions (including the Western and other non-​Western traditions, though comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy is often talked about or focused on for the sake of its representative way in method as well as in its substantial scholarship). The constructive-​engagement strategy has five related methodological emphases (as highlighted in italics) in a coordinated way: (1) it emphasizes critical engagement; (2) it emphasizes constructive contribution of each of the parties in critical engagement through learning from each other and joint contribution to jointly concerned issues; (3) it emphasizes philosophical interpretation of the addressed thinkers’ texts instead of mere historical description; (4) it emphasizes the philosophical-​issue-​engagement orientation aiming at contribution to the contemporary development of philosophy on a range of philosophical issues that can be jointly concerned and approached through philosophical interpretation; and (5) it thus has the character of comparative philosophy as understood in one fundamental engaging way of doing philosophy (or, doing Chinese philosophy comparatively). In the next section, I explore the issue of how the constructive-​engagement strategy is possible in studies of Chinese philosophy.

HOW THE CONSTRUCTIVE-​ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY IS POSSIBLE To characterize more clearly and accurately some related methodological points of the constructive-​engagement strategy, I must briefly introduce some explanatory resources and conceptual distinctions (for more details, see Mou 2001b). The term “method” or “methodological approach” means a variety of ways that respond to the question of how to approach an object of study. There are three distinct but related ways in which one can approach an object of study, which together constitute three distinct dimensions of a methodological approach as a whole. (1) A methodological perspective is a way of approaching an object of study2 and is intended to point to or focus on a certain aspect of the object and capture or explain that aspect in terms of the characteristics of that aspect, together with the minimal metaphysical commitment that there is that aspect of the object. There are two important distinctions concerning methodological perspectives. First, there is the distinction between eligible and ineligible methodological perspectives. An eligible methodological perspective points to and captures a certain aspect that is really possessed by the object, while an ineligible one

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does otherwise. Second, there is the distinction between a methodological-​ perspective simplex and a methodological-​perspective complex. A simplex is a single discernible methodological perspective, and a complex is either a combination of simplexes (“multiple perspective complex”) or an association of one perspective (simplex) with a certain methodological guiding principle (“guiding-​principle-​associated perspective complex”).3 All subsequent uses of “perspective” refer to a methodological-​perspective simplex unless otherwise indicated. (2) A methodological instrument is a way in which to implement, or give tools to realize, a certain methodological perspective. Methodological instruments are largely neutral in the sense that they can serve to implement different methodological perspectives, though there is still the distinction between more and less effective methodological instruments in regard to a given methodological perspective. (3) A methodological guiding principle regulates and guides a certain methodological perspective (or perspectives) in regard to an object of study. Presupposed by the agent, it implicitly guides and regulates how the perspective should be evaluated and used and contributes to the establishment of its desiderata (especially, the purpose and focus that it is to serve). There are adequate and inadequate methodological guiding principles. In a section below, I will explore a range of adequacy conditions for methodological guiding principles; for the sake of illustration, and due to its being presupposed by a range of other adequacy conditions, one primary adequacy condition, which may be called the “the perspective-​eligibility-​recognizing condition,” is worthy being first identified here as follows: in looking at the relation between the agent’s current perspective in treating an object of study and other eligible perspectives (if any), a methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in regard to recognizing perspective eligibility) when it allows in other eligible perspectives to complement the application of the current perspective and thus has the agent realize that these eligible perspectives do separately capture distinct aspects of the object and thus can jointly make complementary contributions to capturing the way the object is. It is considered inadequate if otherwise. On the one hand, the merit, status, and function of a methodological perspective per se can be evaluated independently of certain methodological guiding principles that the agent might presuppose in her actual application of the perspective, and taking a certain methodological perspective as a working perspective (this reflective practice per se) implies neither that one loses sight of other genuine aspects of the object nor that one ignores or rejects other eligible perspectives in one’s background thinking. On the other hand, it does matter whether one’s taking a certain methodological perspective is regulated by an adequate or inadequate guiding principle, especially for the sake of constructive engagement of seemingly competing approaches, for an inadequate guiding principle will shut out certain eligible perspectives.

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The following “method house” metaphor illustrates the relevant points. Suppose that a person intends to approach her destination, say, a house (the object of study), which has several entrances—​say, a front door, a side door, and an upper story window (various aspects of the object of study)—​and several paths, each of which is difficult to discern. If a path really leads to an entrance of the house, the path is called an eligible one. She chooses a path (methodological perspective) to approach the house, believing that the path leads to an entrance (say, the front door). In order to proceed on the difficult to discern path, she wields a certain tool (a methodological instrument) to clear her path—​say, a machete if the path is overgrown with brambles or a snow shovel if the path is heavily covered with snow. She also has a certain idea in her mind (a methodological guiding principle) that explains why she takes that path, instead of another, and guides her to the house. Such a guiding idea can be adequate or inadequate. For example, if the guiding idea allows her to recognize that other eligible paths are compatible with her current path (i.e., they all lead to the house), then her guiding idea is adequate; in contrast, if she fails to recognize this and thus understands her current path as exclusively eligible (the only path leading to the house), then her guiding idea is inadequate—​even though her current path is, itself, eligible.

TWO METHODOLOGICAL EMPHASES OF CONSTRUCTIVE-​ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY Using the methodological resources introduced above, I give further explanation of two prominent methodological emphases of the constructive-​ engagement strategy among others, that is, the philosophical-​interpretation emphasis and the philosophical-​ issue-​ orientation emphasis; in so doing, I also intend to consider and evaluate several possible or actual worries or objections, some of which are indiscriminately taken for granted (at least by some) or widely circulated.

Philosophical Interpretation One of the major methodological emphases in the constructive-​engagement strategy is on (appropriate) philosophical interpretation of a thinker’s texts under examination instead of mere historical description.4 It is noted that, generally speaking, the primary purpose of this methodological orientation is to enhance our understanding of a thinker’s texts and elaborate their due implications of philosophical significance for the sake of philosophical exploration (say, their contribution to the contemporary development of philosophy on a certain philosophical issue) via relevant effective conceptual and explanatory resources, whether or not those resources were actually used by the thinker herself. It is clear that a purely historical approach does not fit here: to elaborate and understand the thought of the thinker’s texts does not amount to figuring out exactly what resources the thinker actually used and exactly what explicit ideas she actually thought of; instead, such interpretation and understanding might include the interpreter’s elaboration of the thinker’s points (more accurately speaking, the points of the thinker’s texts) including their subtle implications,

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which might not have been explicitly considered by the thinker herself, and/​or the interpreter’s representation of the thinker’s point in clearer and more coherent terms or in a more philosophically interesting way, which the thinker herself might have not actually adopted.5 In both cases, given a thinker’s ideas (in one tradition or account) under interpretation, some effective conceptual and explanatory resources well developed in another tradition or account can be consciously used to enhance our understanding of, and to elaborate, the thinker’s ideas.6 In this way, the use of external resources might really enhance our understanding of a thinker’s ideas or clarify some original unclear or confusing expression of her ideas. Consequently, the endeavor per se of using external resources in this orientation is not automatically inappropriate and thus is not doomed to be a sin, as it would be in the merely historical orientation. Note that when those explanatory and conceptual resources are used, they are not intended to assign the same degree of articulated systematization and of mastery of some conceptual and explanatory resources to an ancient thinker, but to enhance our understanding of her ideas delivered in the text. For this interpretative purpose, it is not merely legitimate but beneficial to employ more explicit or clearer conceptual resources to elaborate some otherwise implicit and hidden aspect (say, coherence and connectedness) of a thinker’s ideas that sometimes may be less clearly delivered or expressed in a paradoxical way for lack of those contemporary explanatory and conceptual resources that were unavailable to the ancient but are now available to us.7 It is also noted that, when a thinker’s line of thought and her ideas lack articulated systematicity in their language expressions, this does not amount to saying that the thinker’s line of thought and her ideas per se lack (implicit and hidden) coherence and connectedness. Consequently, we cannot judge that the thinker’s text delivering her reflective ideas is not a philosophical work on the basis of this lack of articulated systematicity in language expression. At this point, with the previous and current methodological considerations, some further elaborations of the thinker’s line of thought and her surrounding reflective ideas via adequate conceptual and explanatory resources available to us are genuinely needed, instead of being a mere issue of preference, for the sake of enhancing our understanding of the thinker’s ideas including their due implications.8 It is also important to note that an interpreter in a project studying Chinese philosophy with the interpretation-​ concerned orientation, instead of a mere historical-​description orientation can, or rather tends to, focus on a certain aspect, layer, or dimension of a thinker’s ideas based on the purpose of the project, the reflective interest of the interpreter, and so on. Indeed, instead of a comprehensive coverage of all aspects or dimensions of the object of study, focusing on one aspect or dimension is a kind of simplification. Now the question is this: is any simplification per se doomed to be indiscriminately a sin of oversimplification? Surely, when a project aims at accurately describing relevant historical facts and pursue what the thinker under description actually thought, and what resources were actually used (by her), simplification is always oversimplification; any simplification is guilty of being negatively excessive and thus identical with falsification. Nevertheless, it should be clear that if the purpose of a project is to focus on interpreting or elaborating one aspect or dimension instead of attempting to give a comprehensive historical

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description, charging the practitioner of this project with oversimplification or doing something excessive in simplifying the coverage into one aspect or dimension would be both unfair and miss the point. Let us agree that a project in studying Chinese philosophy should be guided by a comprehensive understanding. But a reflective project in philosophy (including those studies of Chinese philosophy) that takes a certain methodological perspective through focusing on one aspect of the object of study is not incompatible with a comprehensive understanding. At this point, what needs to be recognized is an important distinction between a methodological perspective as a current working perspective and a methodological guiding principle that an agent presupposes when taking the methodological perspective and that would be used by the agent to guide or regulate how the current perspective would be applied and evaluated in view of some other eligible perspectives. As already emphasized before, one’s reflective practice per se of taking a certain methodological perspective amounts to neither reflectively rejecting some other eligible methodological perspectives nor presupposing an inadequate methodological guiding principle which would render ineligible other eligible methodological perspectives (if any). What is at issue is whether the interpreter has assumed an adequate methodological guiding principle to guide and regulate how to look at the relation between the current methodological perspective used as a working perspective and other eligible methodological perspectives that would point to other aspects of the object of study. Consequently, when one evaluates a project in studies of Chinese philosophy, what really matters is for one to look at and understand what kind of methodological guiding principle is presupposed behind the working perspective.

Philosophical Issue Engagement Another methodological emphasis of the constructive-​engagement strategy is on the relevance and significance of the thinkers’ ideas and their related movements of thought to the common philosophical enterprise and contemporary development of philosophy. This emphasis is intrinsically related to one significant methodological orientation in studies of Chinese philosophy, that is, the philosophical-​ issue-​ engagement orientation aiming at contribution to common philosophical concerns and issues. The primary purpose of this orientation in studies of ancient thinkers is to see how, through reflective criticism and self-​criticism, ancient thinkers under examination could constructively contribute to the common philosophical enterprise and/​or a range of jointly concerned issues of philosophical significance,9 rather than to focus on providing a merely historical or descriptive account or on interpreting some ideas historically developed in a certain tradition or account. Typically, with a certain jointly concerned issue of philosophy being addressed, some substantial ideas historically developed in distinct philosophical traditions or accounts are explicitly and directly compared in order to figure out and understand how they could jointly and complementarily contribute to the jointly concerned issue in philosophically interesting ways. Insofar as constructive engagement in dealing with various jointly concerned issues of philosophical significance is most philosophically interesting,

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this philosophical-​ issue-​ engagement orientation and its methodological strategy directly, explicitly, and constructively promote philosophical engagement and are thus considered to be most philosophically interesting. To highlight the characteristic features of a reflective project with this as its primary orientation or emphasis, let us examine the appropriateness of three sorts of worries or charges that have been sometime (explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly) brought against projects with this orientation in studies of Chinese philosophy: the worry about oversimplification, the worry about excessive use of external resources, and the worry about blurring assimilation. Indeed, these objects of worries have been sometimes considered to be by-​default “sins” in studies of Chinese philosophy. A typical procedure for conducting philosophical engagement in such projects could be both conceptually and practically divided into three phases: (1) the pre-​ engagement phase in which certain ideas from distinct accounts or from different traditions that are relevant to the jointly concerned issue under examination and thus to the purpose of the project are identified and focused on; (2) the engagement phase in which those ideas internally engage with each other in view of that jointly concerned issue and the purpose to be served; and (3) the post-​engagement phase in which those distinct ideas from different sources are absorbed or assimilated into a new approach to the jointly concerned issue under examination. The three aforementioned worries may be considered to be typically associated respectively with the three phases. The “oversimplification” regarding a certain idea identified from a certain account or tradition may be typically associated with reflective efforts in the pre-​ engagement phase; the “excessive use of external resources” regarding elaboration of a certain idea from a certain account or tradition may be typically associated with reflective efforts in the engagement phase; and the “blurring assimilation” may be typically associated with reflective efforts in the post-​ engagement phase. Now let me briefly evaluate the appropriateness of the three charges respectively in the corresponding three phases; looking at them in this way will help to highlight features of projects in studies of Chinese philosophy primarily with the philosophical-​issue-​engagement orientation. (1) In the pre-​engagement phase, it might be not only legitimate but also adequate or even necessary to have simplification and abstraction of some ideas in one account or tradition into such a perspective: this perspective per se is presented in terms most relevant to the joint concern addressed and the purpose served in a philosophical-​issue-​engagement concerned project, without involving those irrelevant elements in the account or tradition from which such a perspective originates, though the latter might be relevant to figuring out the point of those ideas. The reasons are as follows. First, the primary concern of the project is not with how such an idea is related to the other elements in the source account or tradition but with how it is relevant to approaching the jointly concerned philosophical issue. Second, while one needs to understand the point of an idea in the context in which it was raised, once one understands the point (either through employing data provided

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by projects with the historical-​description-​concerned orientation and/​or the interpretation-​concerned orientation or through one’s own background project with one of the these two orientations), there would be no present purpose served by discussing background. Third, it is clear that such an approach per se does not imply denying the social and historical integrity of the idea in the source account or tradition; the point is that the existence of such integrity cannot automatically guarantee an indiscriminate priority or even relevance of expressly addressing it in any projects in studies of Chinese philosophy without regard to their orientations and purposes. (2) In the engagement phase, relevant (eligible) perspectives from different source accounts or different traditions would constructively engage each other. From each party’s point of view, the other party is something external without; but, from a more broadly philosophical vantage point and in view of the jointly concerned issue, the distinct views may be complementary within. In this context, the term “external” would miss the point in regard to the purpose here: the pivotal point is not this or that distinct perspective but the issue (and its comprehensive approach) to whose various aspects those perspectives point; in view of the issue, all those perspectives become internal in the sense that they would be complementary and indispensable to a comprehensive understanding and treatment of the current philosophical issue. (3) In the post-​engagement phase, some sort of assimilation typically results from the preceding reflective engagement; that is, such assimilation would adjust, blur, and absorb different perspectives into one new approach as a whole; this would be what is really expected in this kind of reflective engagement in studies of Chinese philosophy, instead of a sin. It should be noted that, if a project of studies of Chinese philosophy explicitly with a single orientation (the interpretation-​ concerned orientation, the philosophical-​ issue-​ engagement orientation, or the historical-​ description-​ concerned orientation) is considered as a project-​ simplex in studies of Chinese philosophy, a project in reflective practice concerning Chinese philosophy might be a complex that goes with a combination of two or more orientations. A comprehensive project concerned with a historical figure often consists of such a combination. Recognition of the characteristic features of the aforementioned three distinct orientations/​purposes and their respective methodological approaches would help us discriminatively treat, and evaluate, different stages or parts of a project-​complex of studies of Chinese philosophy. Traditionally, to my knowledge, projects primarily with the foregoing philosophical-​issue-​engagement orientation and the interpretation-​concerned orientation (especially when resorting to the contemporary development and resources of philosophy) have not been paid sufficient attention; consequently, there is serious need to emphasize projects primarily with the philosophical-​issue-​engagement orientation and the interpretation-​concerned orientation, though this emphasis certainly would not deny the legitimacy and due value of the historical-​description-​concerned orientation as one effective approach but rather, stress the conceptual compatibility, constructive complementarity, and mutual enhancement of these distinct methodological orientations as complementary

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methodological perspectives when they are taken under the guidance of adequate methodological guiding principles. It is also important to note that the identities of jointly concerned issues of philosophy are not the same as the identity of the existing issue domain of inquiry: for their identities, the constructive-​engagement strategy resorts to neither the current agents’ subjective preferences nor the identity of the existing domain of inquiry; rather, through some resources on adequacy conditions for methodological guiding principles to be introduced in the next section, it has made positive suggestions of some “objective” criterion for the identities of such issues that can be jointly concerned through philosophical interpretation. I will further explain this point at the end of the next section.

ADEQUACY CONDITIONS OF METHODOLOGICAL GUIDING PRINCIPLES To address the issue of how to look at the relationship of distinct approaches to jointly concerned issues with adequate methodological guiding principles, in this section, I explain how it is possible to maintain adequate methodological guiding principles in carrying out the constructive-​engagement strategy by suggesting a set of adequacy conditions. Given that the term “methodological approach” means a way responding to how to approach an object of study, the term is a generic one to mean a number of methodological ways. As explained above, in the context of philosophical inquiries, generally speaking, the notion of methodological approach can, and needs to, be refined into three distinct but related notions of methodological ways for the sake of adequately characterizing three distinct but somehow related methodological ways in philosophical inquiries, that is, those of methodological perspective (or perspective method), methodological instrument (or instrumental method), and methodological guiding principle (or guiding-​principle method). As indicated before, for the constructive-​engagement purpose, it is especially philosophically interesting, relevant, or even crucial to have an adequate methodological guiding principle, which the agent is expected to hold in evaluating the status and nature of the eligible methodological perspectives, applying her own methodological perspective, and looking at the relationship between her current working perspective and other methodological perspectives. In the following, to explore how it is possible to have adequate methodological guiding principles in carrying out the constructive-​ engagement strategy in studying Chinese philosophy and, more generally speaking, doing philosophy comparatively, I suggest a set of eight conditions for adequate methodological guiding principles (“adequacy conditions” for short).10 This set of adequacy conditions does not pretend to be exhaustive, exclusive, or dogmatic; the conditions are open to criticism for their validity and explanatory force. (1) The same-​object-​recognizing condition (against the “anything-​goes” orientation). A methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in

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this connection) if, given an object of study,11 it enables the agent to recognize that there is a way that the object objectively is such that it is not the case that “anything goes,” and we can all talk about that same object even though we may say different things (concerning distinct aspects of the object) about it. In contrast, it is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. This adequacy condition may be called a “minimal” truth-​pursuing condition in the sense that it is presupposed by the remaining kinds of adequacy conditions for the sake of capturing the way the object is if the truth pursuit is one strategic goal. For this adequacy condition, let me further explain and illustrate its point by briefly addressing the case of how it is possible for Quine’s naturalism and Zhuang Zi’s naturalism to constructively engage each other. The same-​object-​recognizing condition can be met by realizing that there are two basic norms shared by Quine’s naturalism and Zhuang Zi’s naturalism, which thus would provide two related bases on which the two can constructively engage each other; these two norms can be called the “same-​nature norm” and “the truth-​pursuit norm.” The same-​nature norm can be got at by observing that both Quine and Zhuang Zi talk about the same natural world in which we live instead of something else. How is it possible for them to talk about the same nature but have such distinct understandings of it? A double-​reference account of reference can provide a reasonable explanation; the basic point relevant to the current subject does not need any elaborate theoretic resources for understanding, but resorts instead to our pre-​theoretic understanding on this. As such, each of the two types of naturalism under examination here makes a distinct double reference (semantic-​ whole reference and specific-​part reference in a perspective focus): as far as the semantic-​whole reference is concerned, the two types talk about the minimally same thing as their minimally common semantic-​whole referent to the extent that it is this natural environment around us which is not created by any supernatural entity (such as a god or spirit) but which is shared by us (including Quine and Zhuang Zi) and in which we live. As far as the specific-​part reference is concerned, Quine and Zhuang Zi focus respectively on distinct aspects (i.e., distinct specific-​ part referents) of nature via distinct perspectives that are (whether or not the advocates themselves realize) sensitive to their distinct contextual purposes and focuses. The term “nature” (“natural world”) and its Chinese counterpart(s) under their respective uses thus have their distinct double-​referential meanings. What seem to be different meanings of their uses of “nature” (“natural world”) and its Chinese counterpart(s) lie basically in their distinct specific-​part references, which constitute distinct dimensions of the meaning of the term “nature” (or its Chinese counterpart) in their uses. In this way, we can see that the disagreement between the two types of naturalism is merely verbal on the one hand (they both point to the minimally same semantic-​whole reference) but also substantial on the other (their specific-​part references are quite distinct). This norm is closely related to the aforementioned other norm (in these terms, a “minimal” truth-​ pursuing condition) shared by both.12

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(2) The perspective-​eligibility-​recognizing condition. A methodological guiding principle that is held or presupposed by the agent who uses some eligible methodological perspective concerning an object of study as her current working perspective is considered adequate (in this connection) when this guiding principle renders other eligible methodological perspectives (if any) also eligible and somehow compatible with the application of the current working perspective. In contrast, it is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. This adequacy condition may be called a “minimal” multiple-​perspectives-​treating condition in the sense that it is presupposed by the remaining kinds of adequacy conditions for viewing the relationship between distinct perspectives. (3) The agent-​purpose-​sensitivity condition. A methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in this connection) if it enables the agent to have her choice of a certain working perspective among eligible methodological perspectives concerning an object of study, and is sensitive to the agent’s purpose in rendering the most applicable or appropriate (the best relative to that purpose) the perspective that (best) serves that purpose. The principle is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. (4) The equality-​status-​granting condition. A methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in this connection) if it renders all the eligible methodological perspectives (perspective simplexes) concerning an object of study equal in the following two senses: being equally necessary for the sake of a complete account of the object and being equally local from the global point of view that transcends any local and finite methodological perspectives, although one eligible perspective can be deemed more (or even the most) suitable relative to its associated purpose and the aspect of the object to which it points; thus none of the eligible perspectives are absolutely superior (or inferior) to the others in the above senses. The principle is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. (5) The new-​eligible-​perspective-​possibility-​recognizing condition. A methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in this connection) if it enables the agent to have an open-​minded attitude toward the possibility of a new eligible perspective concerning an object of study that points to some genuine aspect of the object, which has yet to be realized by the agent because of the “unknown-​identity” status of that aspect. The methodological guiding principle is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. (6) The complementarity-​seeking condition. Given that there are multiple, seemingly competing eligible methodological perspectives concerning an object of study, whose identity can result from dynamic development if any, turn out to be complementary (in the sense that they point to and capture distinct aspects or layers of the object, which jointly contribute to the identity of the object in a mutually supportive and supplementary way, and thus are indispensable for a complete understanding of the object), a methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in this connection) if it captures the complementary character of the involved aspects of the object and thus

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seeks the complementary connection and harmonious balance between those perspectives for the sake of capturing the way the object is in this connection. The principle is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. (7) The sublation-​seeking condition. Given that there are two seemingly competing guiding-​principle-​associated perspective complexes concerning an object of study whose perspective parts are eligible (i.e., capturing distinct aspects of the object) but whose respectively associated methodological guiding principles are genuinely competing or incompatible (either because one of them is inadequate or because both are inadequate in other connections addressed above), such a methodological guiding principle would be considered adequate (in this connection) if it seeks a due solution through a Hegelian synthetic balance via sublation that keeps what are reasonable or appropriate from both guiding-​principle-​associated perspective complexes (i.e., their eligible perspectives, maybe plus some adequate guiding principle from one perspective complex if any) while disregarding what are not, that is, the inadequate guiding principle (or principles) in one (or both) of the perspective complexes. The principle is considered inadequate (in this connection) if otherwise. (8) The dynamic-​development-​sensitivity condition. A methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in this connection) if it guides the agent to be sensitive to the dynamic development (if any) of an object of study for the sake of realizing and understanding which aspects are still genuinely possessed by the object (thus which methodological perspectives are still eligible) and which ones are not (thus which perspectives not eligible anymore). The principle is considered inadequate in this connection if otherwise. This adequacy condition calls the agent’s attention and sensitivity to this: during the process of the dynamic development (if any) of an object of study, the object might develop some new aspect(s) while losing some of its previous aspect(s); consequently, the methodological perspective with regard to the previous aspect of the object might be not absolutely or permanently eligible, and a previously ineligible perspective might become eligible because of its pointing to the new aspect. This adequacy condition highlights the need for the agent’s sensitivity to the dynamic development (if any) of the object of study, one important front which can be easily ignored by an agent who is guided by an inadequate methodological guiding principle in this connection. Several notes are due. First, condition (1), given an object of study, is presupposed by the remaining adequacy conditions as the truth pursuit (capturing the way the object is) is taken to be one strategic goal against the radical “anything-​goes” relativism. Second, condition (2) is presupposed by conditions (3) through (7). Third, if the relation between eligible methodological perspectives under consideration is really complementary, then one needs to resort to condition (6); if they appear to be not complementary, then we really need to have further examination of whether any of these perspectives would be a perspective simplex or a perspective complex (i.e., a combination of one perspective simplex plus a methodological guiding principle,

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resulting in a “guiding-​principle-​associated perspective complex” as indicated in the above characterization of a methodological perspective); if it is the latter, one needs to resort to condition (7). Fourth, however, to thoroughly fulfill conditions (1) and (2), condition (8) needs to be met if the object has a dynamic-​development dimension. As emphasized at the outset, this set of adequacy conditions is suggested to serve two purposes here: first, it is to explain how it is possible to have adequate methodological guiding principles in cross-​tradition philosophical inquiries; second, it is to provide readers with an engaging starting point or an effective stepping stone, which per se is not intended to be dogmatically imposed on readers but expected to be a target of critical examination in their own engaging exploration of the issue. The forgoing adequacy conditions have also contributed to suggesting an “objective” criterion for the identities of such issues that can be jointly concerned (through philosophical interpretation). As highlighted at the end of the previous section, it is important to note that the identities of jointly concerned issues of philosophy is not the same as the identity of the existing issue domain of inquiry: for their identities, the constructive-​engagement strategy resorts to neither the current agents’ subjective preferences nor the identity of the existing domain of inquiry; rather, through the adequacy conditions explained above, it makes positively suggestions of some “objective” criterion for the identities of such issues that can be jointly concerned through philosophical interpretation. Let me further explain the point by commenting on Amy Olberding’s (2015: 14–​15) interesting and engaging challenge in her recent article which begins with the following thoughtful observation and evaluative remarks: There has of late been increasing attention in professional philosophy to the need to better include non-​western philosophies in our discourse . . . At least some of the difficulty in incorporating non-​western philosophy into western-​dominated discourses results from a kind of double bind. To gain inclusion, non-​western philosophies need effectively to hook in to existing issues, interests, or paradigms in the dominant discourse; non-​western philosophies need to offer something that addresses the concerns and preoccupations western-​trained philosophers find compelling and significant. However, where these philosophies do successfully hook in, this alone is rarely sufficient. Those scholars, for example, seeking to draw Buddhist no-​self doctrines into contemporary discourses may be enjoined to explain just what Buddhist sources offer that Hume or Parfit do not already afford. Scholars working on virtue ethical interpretations of Confucian sources will need to demonstrate what the Confucians can philosophically accomplish that Aristotle cannot. Such is to say that even where non-​western philosophical sources share common ground with western philosophies, that ground may yet be treated as fully occupied without them. They will simply seem surplus to requirements . . . Failure to hook in to existing domains of inquiry or doing so in an unfamiliar style may awaken suspicion that here is something other than philosophy proper. The double bind for scholars who would promote interest in non-​ western traditions, then, can register as an importunate, impossible

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demand: Show us something we have not seen before, but be sure it looks well and truly familiar to us too. (emphasis added) It is known that the constructive-​ engagement strategy emphasizes the need to constructively engage jointly concerned issues in philosophy; but does this strategy not presuppose the “existing” identities of the issues? Actually, the constructive-​ engagement strategy already has an explicit answer to such a question, as indicated in the foregoing new-​eligible-​perspective-​possibility-​recognizing condition. Clearly, from the vantage point of the constructive-​engagement strategy, the identity of a joint-​concerned issue in philosophy is not determined by their “existing domain of inquiry” in philosophical studies: it does not take for granted the “existing” identity of what count as the jointly concerned issues in philosophy; it resorts to neither the current agents’ subjective preferences nor the identity of “existing domain of inquiry”; rather, as highlighted in the preceding “new-​ eligible-​ perspective-​ possibility-​ recognizing” condition for the adequacy of methodological guiding principles in this connection, it has made positive suggestion of some “objective” criterion for the identities of such issues that can be jointly concerned (through philosophical interpretation).13 In this connection, the constructive-​engagement strategy is even more inclusive in explicitly covering those newly developed aspect(s) of an object of study during the process of its dynamic development, as highlighted by the foregoing dynamic-​ development-​sensitivity condition. In this way, on the one hand, the constructive-​ engagement strategy does share the author’s sentiment in this connection: what counts as a jointly concerned issue in philosophy is not determined by “[being] seen before . . . [their] look[ing] well and truly familiar to us too”; on the other hand, it seems to me that the author’s foregoing cited remarks do include some sayings that could be more refined. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with the reflective practice per se (as one single “perspective” approach in philosophical exploration) of engaging some issues in the “existing” domain of inquiry; such a “perspective” approach per se constitutes one single constructive and promising connection of engagement. Rather, what is “possibly” wrong lies essentially in its agents’ (explicitly or implicitly) assumed “inadequate” methodological guiding principles (if any) that would treat this “perspective” approach as solely exclusive or absolutely superior. To this extent and in this sense, the “need” is in due place when the agent aims to focus on the aspect of an object of study that such a “perspective” is to point to and capture, and thus takes it to be her current working perspective. It is unclear how to understand the term “need” in the author’s phrase “to gain inclusion, non-​western philosophies need effectively to hook in to existing issues, interests, or paradigms in the dominant discourse”: would it mean that one needs to indiscriminately hook in to existing issues (thus involving some “inadequate” methodological guiding principle) or that one needs to do this (as one “perspective” approach which per se does not exclude any other eligible perspectives) when one sets out to focus on such an issue? Indeed, whether or not such a need is justified really depends on the purpose of a project. I think the author could further refine her remarks here to have a more distinctive treatment of those scholars who are holding the foregoing “engagement”

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perspective but might have distinct methodological guiding principles, some of which are adequate while others are not.

RECENT TREND OF SYSTEMATIC CONSTRUCTIVE-​ ENGAGEMENT PRACTICE It is important to note that the constructive-​engagement strategy in studies of Chinese philosophy is not merely armchair speculation but has already been systematically implemented in—​and, indeed, has impacted—​studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy. The reflective practice that more or less, explicitly or implicitly, implements the constructive-​engagement strategy in studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy is not new. Remarkably, however, since the beginning of this century, some systematic collective efforts together with a systematic reflection on a range of meta-​ philosophical and meta-​methodological issues have been made explicitly in that direction; they are illustrated and evidenced by some collective anthologies; they are actively implemented by some academic organizational efforts; they are further enhanced and channeled by some recently established peer-​reviewed international journal. I shall give a brief reflective examination of how the constructive-​engagement strategy effectively bears on studies of Chinese and comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy14 especially in the past decade for three purposes: (1) to illustrate the foregoing theoretic characterizations of the constructive-​ engagement strategy; (2) to show how the constructive-​engagement approach has effectively enhanced and promoted studies of Chinese and comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy; (3) to illustrate how the constructive engagement in the reflective practice in studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy can provide constructive morals and methodological templates that can be applied to other comparative studies in philosophy. In contemporary studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative Chinese-​ Western philosophy, the label “the constructive-​ engagement trend/​ movement”15 can be understood in a weak sense and in a strong sense. In its weak sense, the phrase means a more or less collective trend in studies of Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy in the past few decades toward the direction of the foregoing constructive-​ engagement strategy, whether or not its involved meta-​ philosophical and methodological issues have been consciously and systematically examined, whether or not the movement has its explicit systematic agenda in print, and whether or not it has been explicitly promoted by a certain academic organization with its articulated constructive-​engagement purpose. Nevertheless, in its stronger sense, the term refers to a trend/​movement that has emerged especially since the early twenty-​first century with an explicitly specified research agenda, some related academic organizations or institutions as a collective driving force, various coordinated systematic efforts toward the constructive-​engagement strategy, and some other distinct features to be addressed below. Such systematic efforts have produced some major collective research programs and resulted in substantial

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outcomes. The nature and methodological features of the constructive-​engagement trend/​movement in the foregoing strong sense can be briefly characterized in the following ten connections.16 (1) Generally speaking, the constructive-​engagement trend as a whole has moved beyond some previous individual efforts, each of which typically featured this or that specific perspective in comparative studies, and has been guided under a broad vision or methodological guiding principle concerning how to look at the relation between various eligible but seemingly competing methodological perspectives in comparative studies of Chinese and Western philosophy: essentially it renders complementary those eligible perspectives that respectively capture some distinct aspects, layers, or dimensions of objects of study, instead of indiscriminately subscribing to one single finite perspective or rendering it exclusively eligible without doing justice to other eligible perspectives. The constructive-​engagement movement as a whole is not limited to that between Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy17 (or Chinese philosophy and “Continental” philosophy) but that between Chinese philosophy and any movement of thought in the Western philosophical tradition (or any movement of thought in other philosophical traditions) in a global context.18 (2) As far as the methodological dimension of the trend is concerned, a systematic, in-​depth meta-​philosophical discussion of the relation between the Western (especially analytic) philosophical tradition and Chinese philosophical tradition concerning philosophical methodology and the nature of philosophical inquiry has provided a necessary, theoretical and meta-​philosophical preparation for a comprehensive, systematic constructive-​ engagement enterprise.19 (3) As far as its subject coverage of the trend is concerned, the constructive-​ engagement trend or movement in the contemporary study of Chinese philosophy is comprehensive, including the engaging examination of a range of fundamental or significant issues and concerns in central areas of philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and so on, instead of focusing merely on the issues in ethics, and social and political philosophy.20 (4) As far as its engagement mode is concerned, the constructive-​engagement trend or movement emphasizes the direct and critical but constructive dialogue between the engaging parties (whenever situations allow) for the sake of effectively carrying out reflective criticism and self-​criticism and jointly making contributions to the common enterprise of philosophy. Indeed, this is one of the meanings of the phrase “constructive engagement” that captures a crucial characteristic of philosophical inquiry, that is, critical engagement for the sake of making joint contributions to the understanding and treatment of jointly concerned issues. This characteristic, instead of a mere celebration, has effectively motivated relevant engaging parties to participate in constructive-​ engagement projects.21

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(5) As far as its collective and systematic character is concerned, the constructive-​ engagement trend in contemporary studies of Chinese philosophy is not some individual scholar’s personal project but has already developed into a collective enterprise with a systematic character and extensive joint efforts. This shows the degree of its matureness, as a result of its in-​depth theoretical preparation, and helps to bring about an academic community that can provide decent critical examination of the works in the constructive-​engagement scholarship. The movement is now well implemented through some effective academic organizational forces. One prominent contributing force to the movement is The International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP), established in 2002.22 Such systematic collective efforts are further enhanced and channeled by a recently established peer-​reviewed international journal expressly for the constructive-​engagement purpose in philosophy, Comparative Philosophy: An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches toward World Philosophy, though its coverage is more inclusive and not limited to comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy.23 (6) Participants in the movement are limited to neither those who major in traditional Chinese philosophy nor those who are native Chinese philosophers, but also include scholars from other philosophical communities around the world, including Donald Davidson, Michael Krausz, Ernie Lepore, A. P. Martinich, Adam Morton, John Searle, Avrum Stroll, and Samuel C. Wheeler. In this respect and to this extent, the constructive-​engagement movement in contemporary studies of Chinese philosophy has already become an international enterprise (as one significant part of the constructive-​ engagement-​oriented comparative philosophy worldwide or thus oriented world philosophy); it provides an effective channel through which scholars from different traditions and/​or with distinct styles/​orientations of doing philosophy carry out international collaboration, constructive dialogue, and comparative engagement in studying Chinese philosophy, moving toward world philosophy or doing philosophy in a global context. (7) As far as its research outcomes are concerned, the constructive-​engagement trend or movement, with the aforementioned systematic efforts, has already produced substantial results in research on a range of philosophical issues, neither merely stopping at some sort of armchair speculation of the sheer possibility, nor merely remaining at the level of purely meta-​philosophical discussion of how such constructive engagement is possible, though the latter discussion is necessary and has provided indispensable theoretic and methodological preparation for its healthy development.24 (8) As far as its relation to contemporary philosophy is concerned, the movement is especially sensitive to various resources of the post-​Kantian stage of modern philosophy, sometimes labeled “contemporary philosophy” in its broad sense, especially those of twentieth-​century philosophy, in both the analytic and “Continental” traditions. The reason is this: one primary purpose of the constructive-​engagement strategy in studying Chinese and comparative

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philosophy is to inquire into how to make contributions to the jointly concerned issues in the common enterprise of philosophy; for this purpose, the movement as a whole has paid much attention to, and has been especially concerned with, two things:  distinct approaches to those issues that have been suggested from other traditions (especially those in contemporary analytic philosophy and “Continental” philosophy in the Western tradition), and new developments of philosophy as explored in various areas of contemporary philosophy. Concern renders the movement comparative in character, while concern renders the movement sensitive to the most current developments in philosophy and the conceptual-​explanatory resources in contemporary philosophy; both concerns render the movement especially active in comparative engagement with various distinct approaches from other traditions, styles, or orientations in contemporary philosophy and in the adoption of various relevant conceptual-​explanatory resources developed in contemporary philosophy.25 (9) As far as its own standard for philosophical scholarship is concerned, the constructive-​engagement agenda and fruitful research results of the movement with the preceding characteristics have set a higher standard for the philosophical scholarship of studying Chinese philosophy and comparative (Chinese-​Western) philosophy to this extent: the philosophical (instead of merely historical) studies of Chinese philosophy needs in-​depth understanding and command (not merely introductory-​level knowledge) of the developments of contemporary philosophy in various closely related central areas together with their conceptual and explanatory resources, instead of treating them as irrelevant or alien. It has been realized that such understanding is not a mere preference but a must for the constructive-​ engagement purpose and agenda. In other words, when carrying out studies of Chinese philosophy for the sake of constructive-​engagement, one needs to have an updated, in-​depth understanding of them, including a careful reading of the relevant literature of contemporary philosophy and being sensitive to its new developments on relevant fronts. (10) As far as its fundamental nature and direction is concerned, the movement is part of world philosophy (or part of comparative philosophy in general, understood as doing philosophy comparatively in a global context), instead of a mere local one associated with Chinese philosophy alone or comparative studies of only Chinese and Western philosophies, in the following two senses or connections:  as far as its basic direction is concerned, the movement is fundamentally guided by a general constructive-​engagement strategy, as highlighted before, and thus the issues and concerns under its reflective examination have their cross-​tradition general character instead of idiosyncratically holding for Chinese philosophy alone; as far as its basic methodological strategy is concerned, in view of its foregoing fundamental agenda, the constructive-​engagement movement in contemporary studies of Chinese philosophy is not limited to its constructive engagement with Western philosophy but also with other philosophical

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traditions, as well as constructive engagement between distinct movements within Chinese philosophy. To this extent, constructive engagement between Chinese and Western philosophy can serve as a methodological template for the constructive engagement between any two (or more than two) seemingly competing approaches in philosophical inquiries toward world philosophy, say, between the Chinese tradition and other non-​Western philosophical traditions. I contend that the foregoing ten characteristic features shown in the recent prominent constructive-​engagement trend or movement in contemporary studies of Chinese and comparative Chinese-​ Western philosophy have their general philosophical implications and valuable lessons for our colleagues whose primary expertise lies in other traditions, styles, or orientations of doing philosophy, but who share the same fundamental constructive-​engagement goal in their philosophical inquiries. It is hoped that this chapter has illustrated how, through the reflective practice of constructive-​ engagement, those whose primary research areas lie in one tradition (in this case, Chinese philosophy) or whose primary methodological approach focuses on one style or orientation (in this case, some representative style in Chinese philosophy) can learn from other traditions or orientations of philosophy and thus enhance the philosophical scholarship of their home area and/​or their primary approach and contribute to the common philosophical enterprise. The same lessons can be learned by engaging a philosopher from another tradition (e.g., contributors engage John Searle’s philosophy in Mou 2008a).

NOTES 1. By “Chinese philosophy” I primarily mean various movements of philosophical thought in China from the Zhou Dynasty (roughly eleventh century to 256 bc) through the early Qing Dynasty (1644 –​mid-​nineteenth century) and their contemporary developments and studies. 2. The identity of a (genuine) object of study in philosophy is understood broadly: as a naturally produced object in physical reality, a constructed object in social reality, a “linguistic” object (such as a word), an abstract object in philosophical theory, or an “issue” object in philosophy (such as the philosophical issue of truth with its distinct but related dimensions), referentially accessible and critically communicable among participants in philosophical dialogue. Also see Note 11 below. 3. For the relevance of perspective complexes, see the discussion of the adequacy condition (7) in the section on “adequacy conditions of methodological guiding principles.” 4. Here I use the term “interpretation” in a neutral and straightforward sense as specified here (in terms of elaborating and understanding with a certain focus and a certain reflective purpose other than mere historical description), rather than in some philosophical-​doctrine-​loaded sense as often delivered by the term “hermeneutics” (and its cognate “hermeneutic”), which is taken to primarily refer to Hans-​Georg Gadamer’s doctrine in the literature; for this consideration, I intentionally avoid using

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the term “hermeneutic” to express what is meant by “interpretation.” Here I do not pretend to give a complete account of the issue of philosophical interpretation, which deserves much more in-​depth examination than what is given here, but only address some relevant aspects of the issue to studies of Chinese philosophy. 5. Then, can these implications be said to belong to the thinker’s ideas in the text (and thus fall into what the thinker truly means/​meant or what the thinker’s ideas truly has/​had)? In an important sense, the answer would be yes; for these implications are truly implied by the ideas delivered by the thinker, although one can surely say that these implications were not actually expressed by the thinker, and one thus might say that they are not what the thinker actually (or truly?) means/​meant. (At this point, one can see that such expressions as “what a certain thinker truly means/​ meant” or “what she truly has/​had” tend to be ambiguous and vague and thus deserve a clarification, especially when one intends to make claims about what a thinker truly means/​meant or what her ideas truly has/​had.) 6. From the point of view of comparative engagement, those conceptual and explanatory resources used are thus tacitly and implicitly, but constructively, in comparison and contrast to those original resources by means of which the insight or vision was somehow delivered, insofar as such comparison of the two distinct sorts of resources is not expressly and directly conducted. The term “constructively” here means such tacit comparative approach intrinsically involves how the interpreter of the thinker’s ideas could learn from another tradition or account regarding resources to enhance the interpreter’s understanding of the thinker’s ideas; therefore, some constructive philosophical engagement between distinct resources respectively from different traditions or accounts is tacitly involved in this orientation and its corresponding methodological approach. 7. It is another matter when a thinker intentionally uses some seemingly paradoxical remarks to make her point. However, such occasions imply neither that the ideas delivered by these remarks per se are actually incoherent nor that the points in question could not be delivered effectively in clearer terms without paradoxical appearance. 8. The “blurring” assimilation might result from “over”-​use of external resources when interpreting one or both parties under comparative examination, especially when the external resources used to characterize one party come from the other party. But, for the purpose of interpretation, the resulting assimilation is not necessarily inappropriate but might illuminate the essential connection and common points between the assimilated ideas at the fundamental level so as to enhance our understanding of those ideas. 9. It is arguably right that many issues that were traditionally identified as some “unique” issues in different traditions have turned to be concerned primarily with different aspects, layers, or dimensions of some jointly concerned, more general issues of philosophy, especially from a more broadly philosophical vantage point. This is one point that I have endeavored to make and illustrate in my several writings mentioned above. 10. An earlier version of the adequacy conditions is presented with elaboration and illustrations in Mou (2010); I make some substantial modifications of them here. 11. As indicated in Note 2, the identity of a (genuine) object of study in philosophy is understood broadly: an object of study can be a naturally produced object in physical

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

reality, a constructed object in social reality, an abstract object in philosophical theory, a “linguistic” object (such as a word), a thinker’s text, or an “issue” object in philosophical inquiry. For a sample case concerning various aspects of an object of study in philosophy as a philosophical issue, and an illustration of how such an object of philosophical studies can be treated, see the way in which various aspects of the philosophical issue of truth are treated in Mou (2009d). Also note that the account of an object of study as addressed here is not merely compatible with an account of pseudo issues in philosophy, but also suggests one way to distinguish genuine issues from pseudo ones in philosophy to the following extent: on the one hand, if an object of study, whether it is an object in a straightforward sense (like a house, a human being, etc.) or an object of philosophical inquiries as an issue or topic (like the issue of truth, etc.) is a genuine one in philosophy, it should be referentially accessible and communicable and open to reflective criticism; on the other hand, pseudo issues in philosophy do not really possess genuine aspects that are referentially accessible and critically communicable among participants in philosophical dialogue; in this sense, a pseudo issue cannot be really “given” as an object of study or justifiably assumed in philosophical inquiry, whether or not it can be assumed as an legitimate object of study in some other kinds of inquiry (say, in religion or in social psychology). For a detailed discussion of this, see Mou (2015, section 2.1). Indeed, to my knowledge and my first-​hand research in this area, many “transparently novel” issues turn out to be distinct aspects of either “old” issues or newly identified “jointly concerned issues” through due philosophical interpretation. Without the implication that one is superior to the other, the phrase “comparative Chinese-​Western philosophy,” instead of “comparative Western-​Chinese philosophy,” is used in view of the following historical fact: such studies have been carried out primarily by scholars whose principal areas of research include Chinese philosophy and through their studies of Chinese philosophy. Exactly how to label the methodological strategy and its associated trend or movement is a relatively unimportant thing; one can label it in some other ways one would reasonably prefer. The point is this: the methodological strategy together with its associated movement is not merely an armchair strategy on paper; rather, it has already substantially implemented and through a variety of collective reflective practice that has resulted in solid scholarship. The methodological strategy and its associated movement are characterized in terms of “constructive engagement” here with two major considerations, especially in view of the trend/​movement in the mentioned strong sense. First, the phrase does literally capture some of their crucial features. Second, the label has been historically associated with them both in some relevant documents in print and in some prominent academic events and projects that have been guided by the methodological strategy. It is arguably correct that some of those indicated features are also applicable to characterizing the constructive-​engagement movement in the weaker sense, whether they are shown in some explicit or implicit, manifest or obscure, ways. By “Western analytic philosophy” or “Western philosophy in the analytic tradition” I mean a Western mainstream philosophical tradition from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Descartes, British empiricism, and Kant to the contemporary analytic movement. Note that, besides indicating a historical connection between Western

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philosophy in such a tradition and analytic methodological approach taken in this tradition, such phrases as “Western analytic philosophy” used here are not intended to imply that analytic methodology is, intrinsically or conceptually, exclusively connected with Western philosophy. See Mou (2013). 18. It is important to note that, in this connection, it is neither to reform the studies of Chinese philosophy exclusively in virtue of an analytic approach, nor to reformulate studies of Chinese philosophy exclusively by the resources of “Continental” philosophy. 19. For example, as analytic philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy have been considered by many to be less relevant or even alien to each other, some recent systematic and in-​depth meta-​philosophical discussions of how their constructive engagement is possible, especially in view of their respective methodologies, have provided an indispensable methodological preparation for subsequent in-​depth investigations on how they can jointly make a contribution to our understanding and treatment of a range of concrete issues. One of such systematic methodological examinations is presented in Mou (2001a). 20. In the past, there has been one quite widespread stereotypical understanding of the nature and scope of traditional Chinese philosophy that renders it philosophically valuable only in regard to its thoughts on moral and social-​political issues. Though also emphasizing the necessity of Western and Chinese philosophers learning from each other, some scholars consider such mutual beneficial engagement valuable and valid only or largely in regard to limited areas like ethics and social & political philosophy. But this view has turned out to be incorrect. 21. For example, two “constructive engagement” projects, namely, Davidson’s philosophy and Chinese philosophy, and Searle’s philosophy and Chinese philosophy, have well adopted such an approach to critical engagement. See Mou (2006a) and Mou (2008a). 22. For more information, see ISCWP website at http://​www.iscwp.org/​. 23. For more details, see the journal website http://​www.comparativephilosophy.org 24. For example, Mou (2006a), Shun and Wong (2006), Mou (2008a), and Bruya (2015). 25. ISCWP’s Beijing Roundtable on Contemporary Philosophy series of workshops, which has been held almost every summer since 2005, directly and explicitly address the two concerns.

REFERENCES Note: As for the constructive-​engagement scholarship in print, the entries listed here are not pretended to be comprehensive and exhaustive but limited to some relevant sample publications for the sake of illustration and citation. Allinson, R. E. (2003), “Hegelian, Yi-​Jing, and Buddhist Transformational Models for Comparative Philosophy,” in Mou 2003: 60–​85. Allinson, R. E. (2008), “The Philosopher and the Sage: Searle and the Sixth Patriarch on Consciousness and the Brain” in Mou 2008a: 131–​167 (Searle’s “Reply,” 168). Ames, R. T. and D. L. Hall (1995), Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Ames, R. T. and D. L. Hall (1998), Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture, Albany: SUNY Press. Angle, S. (2002), Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-​Cultural Inquiry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Angle, S. (2006), “Making Room for Comparative Philosophy: Davidson, Brandom, and Conceptual Distance,” in Mou 2006a: 73–​100. Brons, L. (2015), “Wang Chong, Truth, and Quasi-Pluralism,” Comparative Philosophy, 6.1: 129–148. http://www.comparativephilosophy.org. Bruya, B. (2015), Philosophical Challenges from China, Boston: MIT Press. Chang, T. L. (2015), “Personal Identity, Moral Agency and Liang-zhi: A Comparative Study of Korsgaard and Wang Yangming,” Comparative Philosophy, 6.1: 3–23. http:// www.comparativephilosophy.org. Cheng, C. Y. (2006), “From Donald Davidson’s Use of ‘Convention T’ to Meaning and Truth in Chinese Language,” in Mou 2006a: 271–​308. Cheng, C. Y. (2008), “Searle’s Philosophy of Mind: From a Neo-​Confucian Point of View,” Mou 2008a: 33–​56 (Searle’s “Reply,” 57–​62). Chong, K. C. (2006), “Metaphorical Use versus Metaphorical Essence: Examples from Chinese Philosophy,” in Mou 2006a: 229–​246. Chong, K. C. (2008), “Xun Zi on Capacity, Ability and Constitutive Rules,” in Mou 2008a: 295–​310 (Searle’s “Reply,” 311–​312). Chu, Z. H. (2014), “On the Constitution and the True Aim of “The Joy of Heaven” and “Non-​Speech”: A Reinterpretation of the Debate at the Dam over the Hao River,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 9.4: 555–​569. Cua, A. S. (ed.) (2003), Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, New York: Routledge. Cua, A. S. (2009), “The Emergence of History of Chinese Philosophy,” in Mou 2009:  43–​68. Davidson, D. (2001), “Forwards” [on analytic methodology and cross-​tradition understanding] written for Mou 2001: v–​vi. Fan, R. P. (2003), “Social Justice: Rawlsian or Confucian?” in Mou 2003a: 144–​168. Fraser, C. (2008), “Wu-​Wei, the Background, and Intentionality,” in Mou 2008a: 63–​92 (Searle’s “Reply,” 93–​95). Fung, Y. L. (1948), “Chinese Philosophy and a Future World Philosophy,” The Philosophical Review, 57: 539–​549. Fung, Y. M. (2006), “Davidson’s Charity in the Context of Chinese Philosophy,” in Mou 2006a:  117–​162. Fung, Y. M. (2008), “How to Do Zen (Chan) with Words?—​A Searlean Approach,” in Mou 2008a: 229–​242 (Searle’s “Reply,” 243–​246). Goldin, P. (1999), Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi, Chicago: Open Court. Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, LaSalle: Open Court. Graham, A. C. (1992), Unreason with Reason, LaSalle: Open Court. Hall, D. L. (2001), “The Import of Analysis in Classical China—​A Pragmatic Appraisal,” in Mou 2001: 153–​167. Han, L. H. 韓林合 (2000), “Chuang Tzu Compared with the Early Wittgenstein,” Grazer Philosophische Studien,  58/​59.

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Hansen, C. (1983), Language and Logic in Ancient China, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hansen, C. (1992), A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation, New York: Oxford University Press. Hongladarom, S. (2008), “Searle’s Theory of Mind and the Buddhist Conception of the Non-​Self,” in Mou 2008a: 169–​188 (Searle’s “Reply,” 189–​193). Huang, J. D. 黃見德 (2007), Introducing and Studying Western Philosophy (西方哲學的傳 入與研究), Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Publishing House. Ivanhoe, P. J. (ed.) (1996), Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics, Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Jiang, X. Y. (2002), The Examined Life—​Chinese Perspective, Binghamton: Global Publications. Jin, Y. L. 金岳霖 (1940), On Dao (論道), Changsha: Commercial Press (reprinted in 1987). Krausz, M. (2006), “Relativism and Its Scheme,” in Mou 2006a: 37–​53. Krueger, J. (2008), “Wu Wei-​ing the Alternatives: A Daoist Critique of Searle on Mind and Action,” in Mou 2008a: 97–​123 (Searle’s “Reply,” 124–​129). Kupperman, J. (1999), Learning from Asian Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. Lao, Sze-​kwang 勞思光 (1982), “On Methods of Studying History of Chinese Philosophy” (論中國哲學史之方法), Preface for A New Account of History of Chinese Philosophy (新編中國哲學史), Taipei: San-​Min. Li, C. Y. (1999), The Tao Encounters the West, Albany: SUNY Press. Li, C. Y. (2013), The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony, London: Routledge. Li, Y. Z. 李幼蒸 (1997), The Archetype of Chinese Ethics and Academic Ideology: A Hermeneutico-​Semiotic Study, two volumes, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lin, C. I. (2013), “Mohist Approach to the Rule-Following Problem,” Comparative Philosophy, 4.1: 41–66. http://www.comparativephilosophy.org. Liu, C. (2003), “Ming-​Jia (the Logicians) and Zeno: A Comparative Study,” in Mou 2003a:  297–​306. Liu, J. L. (2006), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Liu, S. H. 劉述先 (2001), Global Ethics and Religious Dialogue (全球倫理與宗教對話), Taipei: Lixu wenhua. Liu, X. G. (2007), “Reverse Analogical Interpretation and the Predicament of Studies of Chinese Philosophy (反向格義與中國哲學研究的困境),” Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture (中國哲學與文化), 1: 10–​36. McLeod, A. (2016), Theories of Truth in Chinese Philosophy, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Martinich, A. P. (2006), “On Two Kinds of Meaning and Interpretation,” in Mou 2006a:  207–​227. Martinich, A. P. (2008), “Reference, Truth, and Fiction,” in Mou 2008a: 197–​220 (Searle’s “Reply,” 221–​227). Mou, Bo牟博 (1999), “The Structure of Chinese Language and Ontological Insights: A Collective-​Noun Hypothesis,” Philosophy East and West, 49.1: 45–​62.

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Mou, B. (ed.) (2001a), Two Roads to Wisdom?—​Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions, Chicago: Open Court. Mou, B. (2001b), “An Analysis of the Structure of Philosophical Methodology—​in View of Comparative Philosophy,” in Mou 2001a: 337–​364. Mou, B. (2002a), “Three Orientations and Four ‘Sins’ in Comparative Studies,” in C. Y. Li (ed.), the APA Newsletters, 2.2: 42–​45. Mou, B. (ed.) (2002b), Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy: Contributions by Recent Chinese Ph.D. Recipients in Philosophy in North America (中西哲學比較研究：留美哲學博士文選(卷二), vol. 2, Beijing: the Commercial Press. Mou, B. (ed.) (2003), Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Mou, B. (2006a), Davidson’s Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Mou, B. (2006b), “Truth Pursuit and Dao Pursuit: From Davidson’s Approach to Classical Daoist Approach in View of the Thesis of Truth as Strategic Normative Goal,” in Mou 2006a:  309–​349. Mou, B. (2006c), “Chinese Philosophy: Language and Logic,” in D. M. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., Chicago, IL: Thomson-​Gale/​Macmillan Reference USA. Mou, B. (2007), “A Double-​Reference Account of Gongsun Long’s ‘White-​Horse-​Not-​ Horse’ Argument,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 34.4: 493–​513. Mou, B. (ed.) (2008a), Searle’s Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Mou, B. (2008b), “Searle, Zhuang Zi, and Transcendental Perspectivism,” in Mou 2008a: 405–​430 (Searle’s “Reply,” 431–​435). Mou, B. (ed.) (2009a), History of Chinese Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge. Mou, B. (2009b), “On Some Methodological Issues Concerning Chinese Philosophy,” in Mou 2009a: 1–​39. Mou, B. (2009c), “Constructive Engagement of Chinese and Western Philosophy: A Contemporary Trend Towards World Philosophy,” in Mou 2009a: 571–​608. Mou, B. (2009d), Substantive Perspectivism: An Essay on Philosophical Concern with Truth, “Synthese Library” monograph series 344, Netherlands: Springer. Mou, B. (2010), “On Constructive-​Engagement Strategy of Comparative Philosophy,” Comparative Philosophy, 1: 1–​32. http://​www.comparativephilosophy.org. Mou, B. (2013), “On Daoist Approach to the Issue of Being in Engaging Quinean and Heideggerian Approaches,” in B. Mou and R. Tieszen (eds.), Constructive Engagement of Analytic and Continental Approaches in Philosophy: From the Vantage Point of Comparative Philosophy, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Mou, B. (2014), “On the Double-​Reference Character of ‘Hexagram’ Names in the Yijing: Engaging Fregean and Kripkean Approaches to the Issue of How Reference Is Possible,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 9.4: 523–​537. Mou, B. (2015), “Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology and Zhuangzi’s Daoist Naturalism: How Their Constructive Engagement Is Possible,” in Bruya 2015: 303–​337.

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Munro, D. (1977), The Concept of Man in Contemporary China, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Neville, R. C. (2000), Boston Confucianism, Albany: State University of New York Press. Nivison, D. S. (1996), The Ways of Confucianism, B. W. Van Norden (ed.), Chicago: Open Court. Nuyen, A. T. (2008), “Confucianism and the Is-​Ought Question,” in Mou 2008a:  273–​289 (Searle’s “Reply,” 290–​293). Olberding, A. (2015), “It’s Not Them, It’s You: A Case Study Concerning the Exclusion of Non-​Western Philosophy,” Comparative Philosophy, 6: 14–​34. http://​www. comparativephilosophy.org. Rosemont, H., Jr. (ed.) (1991), Chinese Texts and Philosophical Context: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, LaSalle: Open Court. Searle, J. (2008), “The Globalization of Philosophy,” in Mou 2008a: 17–​29. Shankman, S. and S. W. Durrant (eds.) (2002), Early China /​Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons, Albany: State University of New York Press. Shen, V. (1994), Confucianism, Taoism and Constructive Realism, Vienna: UP. Shun, K. L. (1997), Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Shun, K. L. and D. Wong (eds.) (2006), Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy and Community, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singh, D. K. (2015), “Health as Human Nature and Critique of Culture in Nietzsche and Zhuang Zi,” Comparative Philosophy, 6.1: 91–110. http://www. comparativephilosophy.org. Stroll, A. (2008), “Searle on Knowledge, Certainty and Skepticism: In View of Cases in Western and Chinese Traditions,” in Mou 2008a: 339–​351 (Searle’s “Reply,” 352–​354). Tan, S. H. (2004), Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction, Albany: State University of New York Press. Tan, S. H. (2009), “Contemporary Neo-​Confucianism,” in Mou 2009: 539–​570. Tian, C. S. (2005), Chinese Dialectics: From Yijing to Marxism, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Tiwald, J. (2010), “Confucianism and Virtue Ethics: Still a Fledgling in Chinese and Comparative Philosophy,” Comparative Philosophy, 1.2: 55–63. http://www. comparativephilosophy.org. Tu, W. M. (1985), Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation, Albany: SUNY Press. Van Norden, B. (2003), “Virtue Ethics and Confucianism,” in Mou 2003a: 99–​121. Walsh, S. D. (2013), “Mencius’ Jun-zi, Aristotle’s Megalopsuchos, & Moral Demands to Help the Global Poor,” Comparative Philosophy, 4.1: 90–103. http://www. comparativephilosophy.org. Wang, Q. J. 王慶節 (2004), Heidegger and a Hermeneutical Interpretation of Confucianism and Daoism (解释学，海德格尔与儒道今释), Beijing: Chinese Renmin University Press. Wang, R. (2003), “The Principled Benevolence: A Synthesis of Kantian and Confucian Moral Judgment,” in Mou 2003a: 122–​143.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Issues and Methods of Analytic Philosophy YIU-​M ING FUNG

INTRODUCTION In the field of Chinese philosophy, some of the scholars in Chinese communities and the Western world think that analytic philosophy is essentially different from Chinese philosophy not only in the sense that their philosophies are different in content and problematic, but also that the Chinese mode of thinking and the Western mode of thinking are incommensurable. So, there is an issue whether it is appropriate to apply the Western philosophical method, especially the method of analytic philosophy (hereafter simplified as “MAP”), to Chinese philosophy. Some other scholars in the field of Chinese intellectual history (or history of ideas) believe that Chinese philosophy as thought appeared in Chinese history cannot be understood without historical evidence and philological ground. On the one hand, philosophical explanations, especially those based on metaphysical or transcendental speculation, are nothing but intellectual play. On the other hand, logical analysis is a method without empirical evidence and conceptual analysis in philosophy can be replaced by linguistic analysis in philology. So, they reject philosophical methods, including metaphysical and analytic ones which are regarded as outside historical context, when dealing with ideas in Chinese history. I think there are at least three reasons for the scholars mentioned above to reject using methods and theories in analytic philosophy to deal with problems and ideas in Chinese philosophy. These reasons are as follows: (A) From the viewpoint of transcendentalism, such as Mou Zongsan’s 牟宗三 and Tang Junyi’s唐君毅viewpoint, the core of Chinese philosophy should be understood as a kind of moral metaphysics and a learning of life that can be grasped by the mind only after long-​term moral practice and ascertained by a special kind of inner and transcendental experience. So, using MAP would explain away the wisdom and truth which can only be entertained by a transcendental or nonsensible intuition through moral practice. (Hereafter, I call this kind of scholars “transcendentalists.”)

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(B) From an approach of intellectual history, such as Hu Shi 胡適 and Fu Sinian’s 傅斯年approach, MAP is out of historical context, just like clear water without fish inside, and thus cannot be used to analyze the complicated ideas in Chinese history. To understand Chinese thought, they think that the historical cum philological method is scientific and thus is the only reliable tool. (Hereafter, I call this kind of scholars “pan-​scientific historians.”) (C) From a perspective of comparative philosophy, scholars who stress the incommensurability between different philosophical traditions, such as A. C. Graham, David Hall and Roger Ames, believe that the gap between the correlative or associative mode of thinking in ancient Chinese philosophy and the analytical or causal mode of thinking in the Western tradition cannot be bridged at the root level of conceptual scheme or that the former’s language cannot be translated into the latter’s in an analytical or discursive way. (Hereafter, I call this kind of scholars “comparatists.”) I do not think the above reasons for rejecting the application of the methods and theories of analytic philosophy to Chinese philosophy are well-​ argued or well-​grounded. If there are theories in the history of Chinese philosophy which include views and problems, to use the method of conceptual analysis and the method of logical analysis embedded in Western philosophical theories is a necessity in understanding and interpreting Chinese philosophy. I think to claim that these methods are inappropriate and ineffective in dealing with the views and problems of Chinese philosophy is either self-​refuting or misguided. In this chapter, I will try to answer the question of whether the Western philosophical method, especially the method of analytic philosophy (MAP), is appropriate or effective when applied to Chinese philosophy and to demonstrate that MAP is necessary, if not sufficient, for doing philosophy, including, Chinese philosophy.

IS THE TRANSCENDENTALIST’S REASONS FOR REJECTING MAP ACCEPTABLE? For contemporary Confucians as well as traditional Song-​ Ming Confucians, Confucianism is more than Confucian studies. They believe that Confucian teaching is a kind of practical wisdom and transcendental truth which cannot be understood by any empirical, logical, or other objective method. They stress that there is a kind of essential difference between Chinese philosophy (including the three teachings: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) and Western philosophy in the sense that they are incomparable or incommensurable to each other. It is obvious that this thesis of incommensurability is similar to that about Zen (禪Chan) experience, Daoist enlightenment, or that about mystical experience in other religious traditions. It is also obvious that this kind of thesis cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical evidence and cannot be justified by logical argument as correct or incorrect. Some historians identify this transcendentalist viewpoint as speculative without objective grounds; but Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi,

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and their followers disagree with this accusation and think that the external approach of historians cannot help in reaching the ultimate reality or their ultimate concern. They also assert that the spiritual essence of Chinese philosophy can be approached only by a special kind of moral metaphysics which is essentially different from the Western speculative one, and that the wisdom or truth of the spiritual essence can be obtained only by a special kind of intellectual intuition as described by their moral metaphysics. So they think that this nonrational wisdom or transcendental truth cannot be obtained by the positivistic mind of a historian or the analytical mind of a philosopher. Why do contemporary Confucians reject the use of MAP in Chinese philosophy? I think there are at least three reasons: First, their ultimate reality or concern is not the object of empirical investigation or logical analysis. So, it cannot be known by the cognitive mind; it is only obtained by a transcendental mind (in a nonsensible and noncognitive sense) which can be described as intellectual intuition (for Mou Zongsan), absolute consciousness (for Tang Junyi), or liangzhi 良知 (as explained by contemporary Confucians). Second, through a long-​term moral practice or gongfu工 夫, this ultimate reality or concern can be grasped by people as both transcendent (not transcendental in Kantian sense) and immanent. In terms of its transcendence, it is the dao of tian天道 (the daoti 道體 [as an ontological entity] of the heaven) or the li of tian天理 (the liti 理體 [as an ontological entity] of the heaven); in terms of its immanence, it is the transcendental or nonempirical benxin本心 (original mind) or tianming zhi xing天命之性 (nature endowed from the heaven). To use Mou Zongsan’s slogan, it is: “the unity [in terms of token-​identity] of the dao of tian (the transcendent dao of the heaven) and xingming (the moral order or decree in human nature) (tiandao xingming xiangguantong 天道性命相貫通).” To use Cheng Hao’s 程顥words (1992: 17): “Only xin is (token-​identical with) tian; to exhaust xin is to know xing; and to know xing is to know (the dao of) tian. It is not suggested to search it from outside (只心便是天，盡之便知性，知性便知天，更不可外求).” Since nothing known by the empirical and analytical mind is both transcendent and immanent, this ultimate reality or concern must be understood as going beyond our rational or analytical thinking. Third, when we use language to express the ultimate reality or concern, all expressions may be helpful to approach it to some extent but never attain it in itself. It is because its truth or wisdom is ineffable. It goes beyond all languages. The transcendentalist’s first reason is an appeal to the first-​person authority in terms of the private access to the ultimate reality or truth. The so-​called nonsensible or transcendental experience of an absolute subjectivity (for Tang Junyi) or infinite mind (for Mou Zongsan), which is without the opposition of the knower and the known or without the opposition of subject and object, is claimed to be a knowing power that can provide a real justification of attaining the ultimate reality or truth. To use Mou Zongsan’s teacher Xiong Shili’s 熊十力 words, it is a kind of “tizheng” 體證 (justification by bodily experience). To use Mou’s student Tu Wei-​ming’s 杜維明 words, it is a kind of “tizhi” 體知 (knowing by bodily experience). However, this kind of knowing is not knowing-​how in the Rylean sense which is still empirical and cognitive. Most important, this kind of experience is not a patent

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right of contemporary Confucianism; we can find a similar approach in Daoism, Zen Buddhism, Brahmanism, and some theories of Western mysticism. If all these moral and religious traditions claim that their first-​person authority is the only way to access their unique ultimate reality or truth, my question is: which one is the best choice? Quite apart from the historical fact that the basic form of this approach in Song-​Ming Confucianism was borrowed from Buddhism and Daoism. The transcendentalist’s second and third reasons can be summarized as “paradoxical” and “ineffable.” To claim that the ultimate reality or benti 本體 (original substance) is both transcendent and immanent is paradoxical. This kind of paradoxical expression is also used by Baruch Spinoza to describe the dual character of the God. Even in Christianity, the ideas of incarnation and trinity are described as both transcendent and immanent. As mentioned by William James and Walter Stace, these are two main theoretical (in contrast with other aesthetic) characteristics of mysticism. These are also not the privileged ideas of contemporary Confucianism. We can find these characteristics in other religious traditions, including Brahmanism and Buddhism. Actually, Song-​Ming Confucianism and contemporary Confucianism borrow the metaphors or analogies of “the moon in the sky and all the moons in rivers are one and the same (token)” and “the great sea and all its waves are not the same but also not different.” Not to mention the mismatching point and inaccurate explanation in the use of these metaphors or analogies. The idea of “ineffability” seems to be a way for the transcendentalist to escape from rationality. Nevertheless, as Donald Davidson argues, all the theses claimed to be without rational norms or standards are not irrational, but rationality on holiday. Irrational thinking is false; but thinking (if we could call it “thinking”) in a nonrational way is not qualified to be false. In other words, it is not a thought in our rational space. If, for the sake of argument, we regard it as a thought, this ineffable thought must be self-​refuting. Suppose any sentence “A” of the kind in favor of the thesis of ineffability has the form “K is ineffable” (e.g., “dao is ineffable” or “Zen is unsayable”), we have the following self-​refuting but valid argument: (1) “A” is true.

Assumption

(2) “A” is true if and only if A.

Disquotational Principle

(3) A.

(1), (2), MP

(4) If A, then K cannot be described by any predicate.

Explanation of “A”

(5) K cannot be described by any predicate.

(3), (4) MP

(6) K cannot be described by the predicate “is ineffable.”

(5), Instance

(7) If K cannot be described by the predicate “is ineffable,” then “A” is not true.

(6), Explanation

(8) “A” is not true.

(6), (7), MP

If the above analysis is right, any thesis of ineffability is doomed to fail. So, I think, the transcendentalist program is unworkable.

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IS THE PAN-​S CIENTIFIC HISTORIAN’S REASONS FOR REJECTING MAP ACCEPTABLE? If the transcendentalist program is not an option, what about the pan-​scientific project of historians? Is it a good way to study Chinese philosophy? In comparison with the transcendentalist’s internal and transcendental approach, most intellectual historians and sinologists of Chinese thought, such as Hu Shi, Fu Sinian and their followers, do have a kind of “pan-​historic mentality” or “pan-​scientific mentality.” As we know, Hu Shi was one of the powerful leaders of the May Fourth New Cultural Movement in modern China. He radically criticized the traditional Chinese culture and passionately embraced the Western scientific civilization. Hu Shi adopted a pan-​scientific approach to humanities which is very different from most Western intellectual historians’ approach. Since Hu Shi was not only an academic authority, but also an administrator with great power in his time, his historical cum philological approach to humanities, with a very strong positivistic mentality, dominated Chinese academia for more than half a century and has a significant influence on sinological studies in the West. This bias or prejudice not only stopped Hu Shi from writing the second volume of his book on the history of Chinese philosophy after publishing his unsuccessful first volume, it also pushed him to a dead-​end of dephilosophizing. Based on this bias or prejudice, unfortunately, Hu Shi and his followers have built up a powerful stream of Chinese studies which seems by definition to reject any other kinds of approach, especially the philosophical one. Although they claim that their approach is intellectual-​oriented, based on objective evidence and equipped with the scientific method, they rarely realize that evidence is theory-​laden and philosophical analysis cannot be replaced by socio-​historical explanation. They think that a solid study of Chinese thought should not be an intellectual play of nonempirical problems or transcendental issues and all problems or issues should be investigated on empirical grounds. In other words, the only significant research is to define and elaborate a problem in a historical context and then to investigate its sociopolitical meaning. In this regard, while the contemporary Confucians mystify philosophy on the one hand, the historical sinologists of positivistic mentality, like Hu Shi and his followers, nullify philosophy on the other. They are two extremes of thinking, but doing the same thing, that is, both lead to the same consequence: giving the Western philosophers an impression that the main streams of Chinese thought, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, cannot be understood as philosophy in the Western sense.1 Why can the philosophical approach not be replaced by the historical approach? One of the reasons can be seen from Searle’s (2006b: 83–​84) argument: Furthermore, as I am construing the notion of collective intentionality and the other conceptual apparatuses that I use, such as the assignment of function and deontic powers, these concepts do not “erase real history by assuming that institutions are simply created on the spot.” I make no such assumption. But I am struck by the fact that institutions with entirely different histories can have similar logical structures. For example, the history of money in the United States is quite different from its history in other parts of the world. All the same, when

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I go into a bank in a foreign country I can exchange our money for their money. When I go to remote countries I can buy things with money and sell things for money. There appears to be a common logical structure that can be described independently of the peculiarities of the individual histories in question. In response to Friedman’s criticism of his erasing “real history” by “assuming that institutions are simply created on the spot,” Searle demonstrates clearly that the historical approach and the philosophical one are complementary to each other and, most importantly, that the priority of understanding is given to conceptual analysis: Friedman here raises a question that comes up elsewhere in these discussions, and that is that I seem to be neglecting the historical component. I intend no such neglect. I think that, for example, to understand slavery in the United States you have to understand its peculiar history. But I am trying to provide us with the tools within which that history can be intelligibly described. There is no opposition between the historical approach and the analytical approach. They are complementary to each other and, indeed, unless we have our analytic categories right to begin with, we cannot hope to give an intelligent account of the histories in question. I think Hu Shi not only does not know that the analytical approach in philosophy and the historical approach in Chinese Studies are mutually complementary and thus each cannot be replaced by the other, he also does not know that his historical approach is not really scientific. As Isaiah Berlin (1960: 24), a great historian of ideas, points out: History, and other accounts of human life, are at times spoken of as being akin to art. What is usually meant is that writing about human life depends to a large extent on descriptive skill, style, lucidity, choice of examples, distribution of emphasis, vividness of characterisation, and the like. But there is a profounder sense in which the historian’s activity is an artistic one. Historical explanation is to a large degree arrangement of the discovered facts in patterns which satisfy us because they accord with life—​the variety of human experience and activity—​ as we know it and can imagine it. That is the difference that distinguishes the humane studies—​Geisteswissenschaften—​from those of nature. I think R. G. Collingwood’s idea of history can be understood in a similar way. He warns us that “historians knew how to do their own work in their own way, and no longer ran much risk of being misled by the attempted assimilation of historical method to scientific” (Collingwood 1993: 130). The so-​called scientific method in humanities led by positivism, Comtean Sociology, and the Rankean source-​based history cannot really be applied to historical study. According to Collingwood, historians do not employ laws in deducing from a reconstruction that certain evidence would support or weaken it; and, unlike a scientific observation report, a piece of historical evidence is not a datum, for it has value only when interpreted, and any interpretation may be challenged (Donagan 1956: 196). G. E. R. Lloyd (2013: 44) is right to say that: “In the wake of challenges, both philosophical and scientific, to the old positivist conception of scientific methodology, it is nowadays generally accepted that the dichotomy between observation and

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theory has to be radically revised.” He concludes thus: “There is no such thing, then, as a pure observation statement. Of course some statements are more theory-​laden, as the jargon goes, than others. But while the researcher can retreat from the more to the less theory-​laden statements, he or she can never arrive at statements where the theoretical load is zero.” So, I think Hu Shi and his followers’ pan-​scientific program in Chinese studies, including the discipline of Chinese thought, is nothing but a fantasy which is not a healthy way to go.

IS FUNG YU-​LAN’S APPROACH REALLY LOGICAL? In the midst of these two extremes, there is an approach to Chinese philosophy which can be fully understood by Western philosophers as a philosophical or logical approach—​Fung Yu-​lan’s 馮友蘭 approach. Fung identifies his method in dealing with Chinese philosophy as “logical analysis” and almost all Chinese and Western scholars in the field agree with this labeling. I think Fung’s book on the history of Chinese philosophy is similar in methodology to the writings in the field of the history of ideas in the West, because, in addition to historical explanation, he uses conceptual analysis to deal with philosophical problems. However, his analysis of the Song-​Ming Confucianism and his construction of a new system of Confucianism (A New Learning of Principle or xin lixue新理學) seem to use the method of logical analysis, but, as a matter of fact, it is not logical analysis in its proper sense. As far as I know, almost all scholars in the Chinese communities and the West agree to view this seemingly logical analysis as really logical, and they believe that this is a successful case of applying the Western logical method to Chinese philosophy. Nevertheless, I think, the Platonic realistic presupposition asserted by Fung Yu-​lan is not accepted by any nonrealist or nominalist. They do not agree that the existence of a phenomenal thing or physical object is metaphysically grounded on a kind of transcendental or transcendent object, such as li 理 (metaphysical form/​principle/​ reason) which is above form (xing er shang形而上). For example, his thesis of “youwu bi youli 有物必有理” (the existence of a thing necessitates the existence of a metaphysical form/​principle/​reason as a Platonic universal) can be regarded as an unconvincing argument for a nominalist. I think what Fung Yu-​lan has proved is not a logical analysis with soundness, but an analysis based on some kind of transcendental argument, just like the Kantian transcendental deduction. In this regard, we can conclude that his approach is not logical but metaphysical or speculative.2 Transcendental argument or transcendental deduction with transcendental presupposition (i.e., with the presupposition of a transcendent/​ transcendental entity) usually has the following form:3 (1) P. (P is a statement of empirical evidence.) But how is P possible? It is because: (2) P presupposes Q. (Q is a statement about the existence of a transcendent or transcendental entity.) (3) Therefore, Q.

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In Fung Yu-​lan’s thesis, Q is about the existence of a Platonic Idea of li. In Christian theology, Q is about the existence of the transcendent God. In Kant’s First Critique, Q is about the transcendental categories or a priori concepts. But based on this kind of transcendental presupposition, we cannot obtain any sound arguments, though some may be valid. Hu Shi and his followers complain that the transcendentalist approach is mystical and nonempirical. But the transcendentalist replies that the Confucian enlightenment is not rationally or analytically recognizable, and that the inner wisdom or transcendental truth can be obtained only from a nonsensible intuition or transcendental experience through a long-​term hard and serious working on moral practice and mental transformation. Nevertheless, they think that theoretical analysis is helpful as a skillful strategy of preliminary understanding for entrance to the transcendental realm. As a matter of fact, although they often claim that their ultimate concern is not rationally analyzable, more than ninety-​nine percent of their writings are theoretical works. Even though they talk about nonsensible intuition and transcendental experience, sometimes they have to use Western metaphysical concepts to explicate the “un-​ explicable” and analyze the “un-​ analyzable.” For example, Tang Junyi claims that his method of “transcendental reflection” for explaining the concept of “absolute consciousness” or “pure consciousness” of moral subjectivity is basically similar to Descartes’s or Kant’s transcendental deduction. Although Mou Zongsan stresses that liangzhi is not some kind of hypothesis, as Fung Yu-​lan claims, but a self-​presenting (ziwo chengxian自我呈現) entity, he cannot but demonstrate the self-​presenting entity by a kind of transcendental deduction, which is similar to what he says about the Kantian idea of practical necessity. I think his ideas of “transcendental embodiment-​justification” (chaoyue tizheng超越體證) and “inner embodiment-​justification” (neizai tizheng內在體證) cannot be understood as justification by any intuition, but only as transcendental deduction. Moreover, since Mou Zongsan’s and Tang Junyi’s appeal to nonsensible intuition or transcendental experience is not different from other religious traditions’ appeal to the private experience of the first-​person authority, and their theory-​constructions are mainly based on transcendental argument, I can conclude that their approach to Chinese philosophy is still in the category of metaphysical speculation in the Western sense. If I am right at this point, I can also conclude that although Fung Yu-​lan claims that his approach is logical and conceptual while Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi believe that their approach is nonanalytical and intuitionistic, it is very interesting that they both use transcendental arguments to build up their speculative philosophy or transcendental metaphysics.4 Although Fung Yu-​lan claims to use MAP and both Mou Zongsan and Hu Shi reject MAP, it seems to me that they all misunderstand what MAP is. It is interesting that both the transcendentalist and the pan-​scientific historian are not satisfied with MAP. For the former, it is because MAP is a method based on positivistic verification, while, for the latter, MAP is a method without grounding on positivist evidence. It seems that both do not know what the analytic method is. In comparison, the main fallacy of the positivistic historians and sinologists is that, though they are right to reject the first-​ person authority in transcendental experience, they are

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wrong to reject it based on the requirement of verification, a viewpoint of their “pan-​scientific mentality.” They misconceive that the historical cum philological explanation is sufficient and can be used to replace other kinds of explanation and analysis, including philosophical analysis, explanation, and justification. They do not know that, in understanding ancient Chinese thought, the analysis of logical argumentations embedded in the text cannot be replaced by the explanation of historical origins of the content of the text.

IS THE COMPARATIVIST PROJECT FEASIBLE? Can the comparativist approach escape the predicaments mentioned above? Is it a good alternative? In regard to the incommensurability thesis either claimed by some transcendentalists, such as contemporary Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, or claimed by some Western comparatists, such as A. C. Graham, David Hall, and Roger Ames, I think they are going on the wrong track. As argued convincingly by Davidson against Thomas Kuhn, this is a self-​refuting thesis. According to the principle of charity, it is logically impossible to have another conceptual scheme or language which, in principle, cannot be interpreted with or translated into our home language with our conceptual implements. As far as I know, in the West, the viewpoint on the essential difference between the Chinese mode of thinking and the Western mode of thinking is first claimed by Marcel Granet. He uses the special term “correlative thinking” to distinguish the Chinese mode of thinking from the Western analytical mode of thinking. Granet thinks that the function of classical Chinese is mainly figurative or poetic and thus nonabstract and nonanalytical. Using that language the ancient Chinese thinkers could express the idea of causality, and could not even have the logical idea about the rule of noncontradiction. He also thinks that the Chinese sentences are often used in the pattern of correlation and expressed in the form of parallelism. Granet’s view on the linguistic and conceptual difference pushes him to commit a kind of conceptual relativism which is similar to that of Thomas Kuhn and also suffers the attack from the principle of charity. Granet’s nonlogical, illogical, or translogical view of classical Chinese is criticized by Janusz Chmielewski, one of the pioneers in the study of Chinese logic. He argues that classical Chinese is more similar to the symbolic language of modern logic than any tongue of the Indo-​European type can claim to be, though Chinese is mono-​syllabic in forming lexical units, lacks inflections, and does not have clearly delimited grammatical word-​ classes. The implicit logical reasoning embedded in the text of later Mohism and the Gongsun Longzi indicates that classical Chinese is not a language which is unable to express abstract ideas and analytical reasoning (Chmielewski 1965: 103). Following Granet, Joseph Needham (1956: 286) thinks that the scheme of yinyang 陰陽and wuxing五行 (five agents) in the correlative cosmology of the Han dynasty is a kind of “associate or coordinative thinking” which is “essentially something different from that of European causal and ‘legal’ or nomothetic thinking.” I think if the yinyang and wuxing scheme provides only a pattern for describing the order

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or regularity of the world, it would have functioned as a model and there would be no principle derived from this scheme. On the other hand, even if there are derived principles as mentioned by Needham, it is definitely not the kind of scientific laws. It may be one of the reasons why Needham (1956: 290) claims that “the [Western] mechanical and the quantitative, the forced and the externally imposed, were all absent” in Chinese correlative thinking and “the notion of Order excluded the notion of Law.” I agree that the mode of thinking based on the yinyang and wuxing scheme is not scientific in a modern sense, but it is not because it is an alternative thinking which is essentially different from the Western analytical and causal thinking. The difference is not in the sense that one side is analytical and the other side nonanalytical, or one side causal and the other side noncausal. The theses expressed with this scheme is not scientific in a full-​fledged sense, because it is not grounded on objectively quantificational evidence and the theses are trivial, which are not confirmable in Rudolf Carnap’s sense or falsifiable in Karl Popper’s sense. This is because they are issued from speculation and imagination. But, it does not suggest that they are nonabstract or nonanalytical. Speculation and imagination are also inside the rational space; they are not absence of rationality. Borrowing the linguistic structuralist Roman Jakobson’s ideas of “paradigm/​ syntagm” and “metaphor/​ metonym,” Graham (1992: 62) argues that, at the bottom of each language or thinking, there is some kind of prelogical patterning of names that is “a stock of paradigms already grouping syntagmatically in chains of oppositions which at their simplest are binary.” He thought that we can find the beginning of a conceptual scheme in these chains of oppositions. He called the thinking in these chains “correlative” in contrast with “analytical” in the sense that the former is conceived as spontaneous, prelogical, and operating at the level of the nonsentential combinations of words, while the latter is recognized as discursive, logical, and operating at the level of propositions. Graham’s arguments, if valid, assume that there are two levels of thinking (analytical and correlative) and, most importantly, that the latter, in contrast with the former, is spontaneous, prelogical, and even prelinguistic though it is presented as a pattern of oppositions. Besides the mystical characteristic of the so-​called prelogical and prelinguistic thinking, he also assumes that the meaning of a sentence is dependent on the meaning of the words in the sentence though the truth of the sentence is independent of its component words. In this regard, Graham seems to adopt an atomistic or building-​block theory of meaning which is opposite to the idea of holism held by Davidson and many other contemporary philosophers of language. Here, I think Graham’s view is inaccurate both in the sense that his mystical idea of prelogical thinking is not well argued and also in the sense that his explanation of Chinese concepts in contrast with Western ones is not well grounded on Chinese texts. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, his idea of the two levels of thinking, his explanation of the differences between Chinese and Western conceptual schemes is more consistent with the situation explained by virtue of the principle of charity than the situation explained by his idea of bilingual but distinct understanding.5 In contrast to Graham’s theoretical or structuralist interpretation, Hall and Ames (1995: 141) claim that nonanalytical correlative or nonrationalized analogical

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thinking “cannot be formalized or overly rationalized without violating the very premise of embedded aesthetic relatedness.” Graham did not think that there was no logical thinking other than correlative thinking in ancient China, but Hall and Ames do think that ancient Chinese thinking is dominated by this prelogical or illogical characteristic. Their distinctive idea is that the rational or logical thinking and correlative or analogical thinking are essentially different in the sense that the former is related to physical causation, substance, and logical order while the latter to meaningful disposition, process, and aesthetic order. They think that the analogies of the latter lie at the basis of both analytical and dialectical thinking of the former. They stress that “concepts based upon correlative thinking are image clusters in which complex semantic associations are allowed to reflect into one another in such a way as to provide rich, indefinitely ‘vague’ meaning. Univocity is, therefore, impossible. Aesthetic associations dominate. Submerged by analysis and dialectic, metaphor and analogy persist as the ground of the language.” Besides, they believe that “one may justifiably claim that correlative thinking persists as the root of causal thought since, as seems to be the case, metaphors ground literal, scientific language” (Hall and Ames 1995: 136). In other words, they share with Graham’s view that the informal stage or prelogical level of thinking is the ground or root of analytical or rational thinking. So, Hall and Ames (1998: 4) conclude thus: “In contradistinction to the rational mode of thinking which privileges univocity, correlative thinking involves the association of significances into clustered images which are treated as meaning complexes ultimately unanalyzable into any more basic components.” It seems to them that the images and metaphors (or the analogies before being analyzed) associated with correlative thinking cannot be further analyzed and thus do not presuppose or entail any other linguistic or semantic entities. Nevertheless, as analyzed by Graham’s hero, Gilbert Ryle, this is not the case. Instead, Ryle (1970: 251) said, “To picture, image, or fancy one sees or hears also ‘entails thinking’ in a ‘strained sense’; and that “Imaging, being one among many ways of utilizing knowledge, requires that the relevant knowledge has been got and not lost” (Ryle 1970: 257). I think there is no such kind of semantic entities at this root level if we accept the current thesis of holism of the mental. This is because this idea excludes its semantic entities from the context of propositional attitude. Without propositional attitudes or beliefs in rational and analytical thinking, how is it possible for people to learn or know the imaginative or figurative language such as metaphors and analogies in Hall and Ames’s “root sense”? Besides, it seems that they do not know the current fruitful studies of metaphors and analogies either in speech act theory or in cognitive linguistics, all of which are expressed in rational and analytical language. It seems to me that people who assert there is an essential difference between analytical and correlative thinking have never given any evidence to prove it is the case except to take it as a primary fact. I think, according to the principle of charity, if there is any difference between the Western analytical thinking and the so-​called Chinese correlative thinking, we cannot explain the difference without a common ground between them.6 I think that thinking in correlation or association is not thinking other than that of the analytical kind; it is still thinking in the rational

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space. Thinking analytically, discursively, or rationally does not mean that someone always thinks on the basis of empirical evidence or with causal explanation; it means only that she thinks in the rational space and thus cannot think beyond logic. If someone thinks in the rational space, she cannot make an assertion by expressing a sentence of contradiction though, as mentioned by Davidson, based on the idea of compartmentalization of the mind, she could simultaneously make two sentences mutually contradictory. If the comparatist still thinks that, in ancient China, there was a kind of correlative thinking which could not be understood in analytical language, they should explain why and how they can make this view in their preferred nonanalytical language. But they have not done that. So, I think, without the coordinate in the rational space, it seems impossible to identify any difference between two seemingly incomparable languages or conceptual schemes. My conclusion: this comparatist project is also unworkable.

WHY IS MAP NECESSARY? The method of analytic philosophy (MAP) is mainly made up of two components: conceptual analysis and logical analysis. Although logical analysis is basically formal, it is not separated from conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis deals with the meaning of words or the semantic content of concepts. But to understand the meaning of a word or concept is not to understand what it means or refers to only by itself and thus is not involved in a propositional attitude or is without some propositional attitudes as its background. The understanding of the meaning of a single word or concept depends on the understanding of the meanings of its related words or concepts. Since to identify a concept requires a relevant set of propositional attitudes, there is no concept without propositional attitude.7 For example, to know the meaning of the word “cat” requires us to know a lot of other things, such as its differences from a mouse, a tiger, any other animals, or any other concrete or abstract objects. In other words, we have to know its features, which are described by some other concepts. To know all these things, we have to form a series of beliefs or judgments about them which must be more or less coherent. That is, they are related to each other with a logical structure. Without putting a concept into a coherent set of beliefs or without relating a concept to other concepts in a logical network, it is impossible to form a concept. So, in this regard, conceptual analysis is inseparable from logical analysis. Sometimes, just like the case in Bertrand Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, they are even interwoven with each other. The historians with the pan-​scientific mentality mentioned above were not aware that philosophical thought has to be understood in a logical context if it is a theory in philosophy; they only believed that it has to be understood in a historical context. I think this historical-​oriented belief is true if our study only aims at searching for factual evidence to explain the causal relation of the generation and development of the thought. However, if we do not know in advance the real or intelligible meaning of the words or concepts of the thought, which are logically related to other words

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or concepts, in the text or historical record, how can we start the work of causal explanation? In this regard, Searle has pointed out that some historians and social scientists have two misunderstandings about the social reality. The first one is as follows: When I say human society has a logical structure, I am not using “logical” as opposed to “illogical.” Rather, I am pointing out that human society has a structure which contains propositional contents with logical relations. I am not saying that human beings are logical as opposed to illogical, rational as opposed to irrational. We know perfectly well that we humans are capable of all sorts of illogical and irrational behavior. But rather, illogicality and irrationality can only operate within a domain of logical structures, and part of our task in stating the foundations of social reality is to lay bare the logical structures. The second one is as follows: When I say that language is partly constitutive of social reality, I do not mean that one of the elements in social reality is language. That is too obvious. Everybody agrees that language is a social phenomenon. I am making a much more ambitious claim. All institutional reality, without exception, requires a linguistic or symbolic component. Language is not a component of social reality, so to speak, on all fours with money, property, marriage, or government. But rather, you cannot have money, property, marriage, or government without a linguistic component. (Searle 2006a: 41) This is an example about misunderstandings in studying social reality, including money, property, marriage, and government. Searle’s point is that you cannot start to make a historical or social explanation for these institutions and their institutional facts without knowing in advance the logical structure embedded in them. Another example provided by Searle is about economists’ misunderstanding of philosophical analysis and explanation through thought experiments. It deserves to be explained with a long quote: Economists, in my experience, typically confuse thought experiments with empirical hypotheses. Here is an example that has come up over and over. I point out that there are desire independent reasons for action. A classic case of this is promising; when I make a promise to do something, I have a reason for doing it which is independent of my desires. When I point this out, economists often say, “yes, but you have all sorts of prudential reasons why you would keep your promise: if you did not, people would not trust you, etc.” These are familiar arguments in philosophy, but they miss the point. One way to see that they miss the point is to construct a thought experiment. Subtract the prudential reasons, and ask yourself whether I still have a reason for keeping the promise. The answer is not an empirical hypothesis about how I would behave in a particular situation, rather it is a thought experiment designed to show the conceptual distinction between my prudential reasons for acting and the desire independent obligation that I recognize when I recognize something as a promise that I have made. The point is that I am not making an empirical prediction about how I would actually

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behave under certain circumstances, rather, I am giving a conceptual analysis where the concept of a prudential reason is a different concept from the concept of a desire independent reason. The concept of promising, by its very definition, contains the concept of a desire independent reason. To recognize something as a valid promise is to recognize it as creating an obligation, and such obligations are desire independent reasons for acting. (Searle 2005: 20–​21) From this passage, it is clear that conceptual analysis is necessary in action theory which is not an empirical study though sometimes empirical facts may be useful for understanding the theory. Some empirical facts of the actual world are also the facts of a possible world that can be considered as a case for studying people’s reason for action. If the study of philosophical thought is understood by the historians with the pan-​scientific mentality or the social scientists with the positivist mentality as a subject mainly about historical or social facts, I think it is definitely a prejudice. If the study of philosophical thought is understood by the transcendentalist as a subject mainly about transcendent or transcendental entities, I think it can be recognized as a fantasy. Again, it is because we cannot have thought outside the rational space. As Davidson (2005: 169–​170) points out, suppose someone’s conceptual scheme or language departs radically from our rational norms or standards, her saying cannot be identified as expressing any thought. But why can that not be reckoned as thought? It is because we cannot have a common ground or coordinate to identify or locate the person’s words as meaning or saying anything. So, Davidson (2001a: 137) argues thus: The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our own standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything. From Davidson’s point of view, nonrational thinking just does not make sense. The transcendentalist idea of mind or absolute subjectivity, either in the form of Zen Buddhism, mystic Daoism, or contemporary Confucianism, can be described by Davidson as “featureless self.” (That is, their absolute subjectivity only has the feature of no empirical features, or the feature without categories or concepts.) There is the idea that any language distorts reality, which implies that it is only wordlessly if at all that the mind comes to grips with things as they really are . . . Yet if the mind can grapple without distortion with the real, the mind itself must be without categories and concepts. This featureless self is familiar from theories in quite different parts of the philosophical landscape. (Davidson 2001a: 185) The thesis based on the idea of “featureless self ” in general, or the idea of Zen Buddhism’s “no-​ self ” in particular, is unintelligible for Davidson, because the mind is divorced from the traits that constitute it. However, Davidson’s reason for rejecting this idea is still based on rational norms or standards, including the basic principle of logic, the principle of total evidence for inductive reasoning. He thinks

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that these are principles shared by all creatures that have propositional attitudes or act intentionally and that it is a condition of having thoughts, judgments, and intentions that the basic standards of rationality have application. So, for Davidson, the unconceptualized truth of Zen Buddhism, as described by D. T. Suzuki, or the paradoxical or dialectical expression of Confucian wisdom, as maintained by Mou Zongsan, cannot be identified or located in the rational space. So, he (Davidson 2001b: 40) points out thus: We do not understand the idea of such a really foreign scheme. We know what states of mind are like, and how they are correctly identified; they are just those states whose contents can be discovered in well-​known ways. If other people or creatures are in states not discoverable by these methods, it cannot be because our methods fail us, but because those states are not correctly called states of mind—​ they are not beliefs, desires, wishes, or intentions. The meaninglessness of the idea of a conceptual scheme forever beyond our grasp is due not to our inability to understand such a scheme, nor to our other human limitations; it is due simply to what we mean by a system of concepts. I think Suzuki’s Zen Buddhism, Mou Zongsan’s Confucian moral metaphysics, or other theories which are skeptical of the rational norms and standards would respond to Davidson’s request of identification of their inner state in this way: “Yes, this is not a usual or ordinary mental state. You have to be trained or to practice by yourself (in a special religious or moral way of practice or gongfu) in order to transform your ‘self ’ from the state of illusion to enlightenment.” And Davidson might answer in this way: “As I said, if it cannot be discovered and identified by rational methods, I don’t know what it is. I only know that it is not what we call ‘mental state’ in our rational language.” Nevertheless, I don’t think Suzuki and his comrades would be satisfied with Davidson’s answer at this point. In this regard, I prefer a strategy of putting aside the locating problem and asking them another question: “We agree, for the sake of argument, that you can be enlightened without rational or analytical thinking, but, how can you transform your ‘self ’ and know that you are crossing the gap after you have been trained or practiced in your peculiar way and then enter into a vision with your ‘inner experience’ of enlightenment? How can you know, without any ordinary concept, that the very secular concepts we use are all wrong in grasping your ultimate concern? You only say that your ‘inner world’ cannot be expressed in discursive language (i.e., paradoxicality thesis) or even in any language (i.e., ineffability thesis), and sometimes say that your transcendent or transcendental entity (i.e., absolute subjectivity or original mind) is not an ordinary object, such as a table, tree, apple, or an event in the physical world; but that is not enough for us and even for yourself to understand what it is.” I think this is not to ask for an answer to the locating problem, but to ask for an answer to the landing problem. This is not a question about what it is; it is a question about the relation of the assumed entity with our ordinary objects or about the function of the assumed entity on our ordinary life. Without any relation or function explained, even though the assumed entity might be possible, it is definitely irrelevant to us. In other words, metaphorically speaking, I am not sure whether there is really a “transcendent

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plane” up there in the sky. But I am sure that this something must be landing on the earth. Otherwise, it is nothing for us. The problem of locating or identifying asks the question of how to locate the position of an entity under investigation in the rational or public space. If we consider the idea of Zen or dao as having this problem, it would be a question about the location of a Zen Buddhist’s no-​self or transcendental self or the location of a Confucian’s daoxin 道心 or absolute subjectivity. However, as mentioned above, Suzuki and Mou Zongsan do not take this problem seriously, because they reject the rational or analytical account of their ultimate concern. Here, although we may regard Suzuki’s idea of Zen or no-​self and Mou Zongsan’s idea of dao or benxin as transcending the locating problem, they still have to contend with the landing problem. This is the problem about “bridging” the Zen master’s or the Confucian sage’s transcendental inner world with the secular world, or about “landing” their transcendent or transcendental self into empirical life. More specifically, it is the problem of how to transform from the illusive or polluted life of attachment to the secular world into the enlightened or ideal life of freedom from such attachment. I think the transcendentalist will find it difficult, if not impossible, to answer this question. This is because any explanation for bridging the gap between the transcendent realm and the secular realm offered by them is not based on a common ground. In other words, if they use our rational or analytical language of our secular world as a bridging language, there would be no reason to criticize or even discard the rational norms or standards; if they use their private or mystic language of their transcendent world, it would be irrelevant to our secular world. This is a dilemma! The idea that the “unanalyzable” cannot be analyzed is self-​refuting. For example, Suzuki (1996: 84) believes that: “Satori 空 (emptiness) may be defined as an intuitive looking into the nature of things in contradistinction to the analytical or logical understanding of it.” In other words, people with the wisdom of satori are not only able to transform from a dualistic vision into a new horizon without duality, but also able to intuitively know the dualistic nature of ordinary people who do not have this transformation, and even to criticize what is wrong with them. But, I think, this is self-​defeating. Let’s look at an example which is often mentioned by Suzuki. One of the Zen master’s dialogues (mondo問答) with their disciples can be used to illustrate Suzuki’s idea of giving up the duality of logic. That is: Wei Kuan 惟寬, a Zen master in the Tang dynasty, was asked by a disciple the question: “Where is dao?” The dialogue goes as follows (Suzuki 1996: 209): Kuan: Right before us. Monk: Why don’t I see it? Kuan: Because of your egoism you cannot see it. Monk: If I cannot see it because of my egoism, does your Reverence see it? Kuan: As long as there is “I and thou,” this complicates the situation and there is no seeing dao. Monk: When there is neither “I” nor “thou” is it seen? Kuan: When there is neither “I” nor “thou,” who is here to see it?

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It seems to me that Wei Kuan’s mind is just like Robinson Crusoe’s mind. Here, the mental state of the Zen master is absolutely isolated from other minds. We can call this state “an isolated mental state of Robinson Crusoe”: the person entering into a mental state which is impossible to communicate with others. The terms “I” and “thou” mentioned above may have two alternative interpretations: one is the conventional use in ordinary language; the other a special use in Zen language. If it is the first option, that is, Wei Kuan uses the term “I” to refer to I and “thou” to refer to thou, no different from his disciple’s ordinary use, then he is still in the complicated situation where “there is no seeing dao” as mentioned by himself. In other words, the requirement he states for seeing dao is self-​defeating, and his dialogue cannot help his disciple’s enlightenment. If it is the second option, that is, Wei Kuan uses the terms “I” and “thou” not in the conventional way, but in Zen’s way, it is clear that his speaking is not really against the conventional use of “I” and “thou,” and thus not against the duality of the rational discourse, though we do not know what they really mean. In this case, we can say his mind falls into a lonely place. However, although we agree that, for the sake of argument, he reaches the level of enlightenment, it is logically impossible for him to communicate with others. Furthermore, it is also logically impossible for him to explain how he could transform himself from the state of puzzlement to enlightenment, because he would not know what is wrong with the conventional thinking for attaining enlightenment without an analysis of the conventional thinking.

NOTES 1. Detailed arguments against Hu Shi’s idea of nullifying philosophy can be found in Fung (2010). 2. Detailed arguments on Fung Yu-​lan’s approach can be found in Fung (1994). 3. I have made a distinction between two kinds of transcendental argument (Fung 2006). 4. Detailed arguments on contemporary Confucians’ approach can be found in Fung (2003). 5. Detailed examples and arguments about this point can be found in Fung (2006). 6. Detailed arguments for this point can be found in Fung (2006). 7. According to Davidson, there is no distinction to be made between having concepts and having propositional attitudes. It is because: “to have a concept is to class things under it. This is not just a matter of being natively disposed, or having learned, to react in some specific way to items that fall under a concept; it is to judge or believe that certain items fall under the concept” (Davidson 2004: 137, original italics).

REFERENCES Berlin, I. (1960), “The Concept of Scientific History,” History and Theory, 1.1. Cheng, H. 程 顥 and Cheng, Y. 程 頤 (1992), The Written Record of Cheng Brothers (二 程 語 錄), Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House 上海古籍出版社.

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Chmielewski, J. (1965), “Notes on Early Chinese Logic,” Rocznik Orientaistyczny (Warsaw), part IV, 26.2. Collingwood, R. G. (1993), The Idea of History, revised ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. (2001a), Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. (2001b), Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. (2004), Problems of Rationality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. (2005), Truth, Language and History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donagan, A. (1956), “The Verification of Historical Theses,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 6.24. Fung, Y. M. (1994), “Fung Yu-​lan’s Neo-​Confucianism and Transcendental Analysis” (馮 友蘭的新理學與超越分析), Tsing-​hua Journal of Chinese Studies (清華學報), Taiwan, 24.2:  217–​240. Fung, Y. M. (2003), The Myth of “Transcendent Immanence”: A Perspective of Analytic Philosophy on Contemporary Neo-​Confucianism (超越內在」的迷思：從分析哲學觀 點看當代新儒學), Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Fung, Y. M. (2006), “Davidson’s Charity in the Context of Chinese Philosophy,” in B. Mou (ed.), Davidson’s Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Fung, Y. M. (2010), “Beyond Pride and Prejudice: An Approach out of Metaphysical Enlightenment and Historical cum Philological Investigation (超越傲慢與偏見：在形 上體證與史語考據之外),” in K. Y. Lau et al. (eds.), A Festschrift for Lao Sze-​Kwang in Honour of His Eightieth Birthday (萬戶千門任卷舒：勞思光先生八十華誕祝壽論文 集),’ Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Graham, A. C. (1992), Unreason within Reason: Essays on the Outskirts of Rationality, La Salle: Open Court. Hall, D. L. and R. T. Ames (1995), Anticipating China: Thinking through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press. Hall, D. L. and R. T. Ames (1998), “Chinese Philosophy,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in E. Craig (ed.), London: Routledge. Lloyd, G. E. R. (2013), “Notes on the Framework for Comparing Science and Philosophy across Civilizations,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 40. Needham, J. (1956), Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryle, G. (1970), The Concept of Mind, London: Penguin. Searle, J. (2005), “What Is an Institution,” Journal of Institutional Economics, 1.1. Searle, J. (2006a), “Culture and Fusion: Reply to D’Andrade,” Anthropological Theory, 6.1. Searle, J. (2006b), “Reality and Social Construction: Reply to Friedman,” Anthropological Theory, 6.1. Suzuki, D. T. (1996), Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki, W. Barrett (ed.), New York: Doubleday.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Traveling Around the Threshold: Continental Philosophy and the Comparative Project DAVID JONES

Now, by two-​headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. —​Merchant of Venice Act 1, Scene 1

A BEGINNING The face of Janus was two sided—​it looked in the directions of opposites. Opposites can only exist with their other. Janus, the god of two heads with their two faces, originally signified a careful attentiveness to the now. He held a vigilant guard on the present state of affairs. But this was the gaze from only one of his directions. The other gaze was toward the yet to arrive, the new beginning of that which was still on its way, along its way, that which was coming along. The attached heads of Janus, fused from birth as one, were placed as the bidirectional indicators of the meeting of the future with the present. As such, Janus was a god of thresholds, those places we cross over as we move from the exterior into the interior or egress after we have made our ingresses. This god sees both directions because we cannot, or because we will ourselves not to see bidirectionally, or even more decisively multidirectionally. When we cross a threshold from the outside we arrive to an inside place, and this interior is a place of dwelling; it’s a place where others dwell, those who are not “me” or “us.” This is the place where our communities can be built, where even a global community can become a possibility. In philosophy, the open region of this place is a true thinking place because it is where new dialogues may occur and where the possibility of new beginnings become manifest. Our pathways of thinking always take us to this threshold—​this is the call of philosophy, especially in our new century. But the cautionary word from the guide of experienced travelers is that one

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must cross the threshold of the interior to the exterior first for there to be any path found at all. This is Nietzsche’s call to live dangerously or Confucius’s warning that no community can ever be built unless we make the clearing where dwelling can occur, where dwelling may evolve, and where possibility of dwelling flourishes. The possibility of dwelling dwells at the step of the threshold and this entrance is “the gate to all mysteries.” As a Roman god, Janus was involved in war, but the counterpoint to war is also its absence, that is, peace—​he presided at the beginnings and ends of war. Always in tension, the threshold between war and its aftermath of peace, he became a god of transitions and the processual nature of the unfolding elemental natural. A god of comings and goings, he was a god of traveling. For comparative philosophy, he is the ancient god to be invoked in the preparation of leaving and arriving, of leaving the interior comfort of one’s tradition and wayfaring to the uncertain exterior of another. His other face and its inward look is the face of only staying within and never crossing the doorsill of one’s own threshold and this monocular directionality (or dimensionality) harkens to the violence perpetuated against the other and the call to the responsibility of rectifying the names of its pugnaciousness dismissal. In 2003, C. G. Prado in his A House Divided believed that the “heart of the analytic/​Continental opposition is most evident in methodology, that is, in a focus on analysis or on synthesis” and that “Analytic philosophers typically try to solve fairly delineated philosophical problems by reducing them to their parts and to the relations in which these parts stand.” On the other hand, “Continental philosophers typically address large questions in a synthetic or integrative way, and consider particular issues to be ‘parts of the larger unities’ and as properly understood and dealt with only when fitted into those unities” (Prado 2003: 10). A generalization of this sort might appear to some as a bit too rudimentary or to others as even dangerous, but there is an awareness in Prado’s consideration that can do us some service in ascertaining the worth of the Continental philosophical project when hermeneutically applied to understanding, communicating, and thinking with Chinese philosophers, as well with other Asian traditions. At the outset, it should be noted that the Analytic/​Continental Divide that has in so many ways decimated professional philosophy (one only need to glance at John McCumber’s On Philosophy: Notes from a Crisis to sense the depth of this division and what it’s done to philosophy) is not the topic of the discussion that follows. Both philosophical approaches of “analysis” and “synthesis” are not only necessary, but valuable to and meaningful for the philosophical enterprise. We should consider them in a yin/​yang relation with each yin having yang and each yang with its yin. The real question has always been one of balance and meaningful interaction. To think of Continental philosophy as being without analysis only reveals not having seriously read Kant, Husserl, or Heidegger and to think analytic philosophy to be without synthesis fails to take seriously Quine’s rejection of the analytic-​synthetic distinction and the late Wittgenstein’s critique of analysis and the very distinction of the two terms from the outset of traditional philosophy.

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APPROACHING More than any other philosophical approach in the West, phenomenology has focused its attention on experience and a multilayered analysis of that experience. This focus is also found in hermeneutics where the experience the reader brings to a text is taken into serious consideration, that is, what she or he is bringing forward in the reading of a text “alters the text.” From the hermeneutical perspective, there is no escaping this because an open mind will have no understanding whatsoever. In fact, the idea of an “open mind” beyond our colloquial expressions of “being open-​ minded” is a fantasy, an impossible reality. In general, Continental philosophy has always questioned the possibility (or at times even the worth) of objectivity. In the process of interpretation, the reader will begin trying to avoid what Gadamer calls “arbitrary fancies” in his Philosophical Hermeneutics (266), that is, biases. But the encounter with a text is a difficult one for we are to focus on the text at hand and what it means; we begin with attempting to be objective and treat the text in and of itself. In spite of our trying, even with good will and training, not to have our preconceptions and understandings crossing over the threshold of our consciousness into the text via our projections onto to it, we come to realize that they have transgressed our sincere efforts and intentions. The text has been shaped by our own assumptions, biases, and prejudices.1 We have fallen into the “hermeneutical circle,” but this falling, however, is still only in a singular direction. The other direction is in our willingness to climb out. As we read we become increasingly aware that we have been projecting our meanings onto to the text instead of plumbing its meanings. Gadamer calls this process “projects of meaning.” In Truth and Method he writes that the reader “projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. [T]‌he initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning” (Gadamer 1984: 267). At some point along the way we become aware—​or should become aware—​that our projections of meaning are conflicting with each other to such an extent that the text may even begin appearing inconsistent with itself, that is, with its own meanings. For Gadamer, this is the call back to the text, to reenter it once again. The “hermeneutical circle” is about crossing over, and again over, between what we bring to a text and the text itself and moving back again from the text to check our own assumptions and understandings. And as we travel this ground, we often discover the nature of our own assumptions of which we were unaware. As Gadamer writes in Truth and Method: Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [pre-​judgment], constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are our biases of our openness to the world. They are simply the conditions whereby we experience something—​ whereby what we encounter says something to us. This formulation certainly does not mean that we are enclosed within a wall of prejudices and only let

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through the narrow portals those things that can produce a pass saying, “Nothing new will be said here.” (1984: 9) Without prejudices in this positive sense of the prior time of judgment, there can be no experience at all—​there is no such thing in the process of hermeneutics as the objective open mind. In discussing Aristotle’s concerns about experience and how experience contributes to the formation of concepts, Gadamer further maintains that if we look at experience in terms of its result, its real character as a process is overlooked. This process is, in fact, an essentially negative one. It cannot be described simply as the unbroken development of typical universals. This development takes place, rather, by continually false generalisations being refuted by experience and what was regarded as typical being shown not to be so. This is seen linguistically in the fact that we use the word “experience” in two different senses: to refer to the experiences that fit in with our expectation and confirm it, and to the experience that we have. This latter, “experience” in the real sense, is always negative. If we have an experience of an object, this means that we have not seen the thing correctly hitherto and now know it better. Thus the negativity of experience has a curiously productive meaning. It is not simply a deception that we see through and hence make a correction, but a comprehensive knowledge that we acquire. It cannot, therefore, be an object at random in regard to which we have an experience, but it must be of such a nature that we gain through it better knowledge, not only of itself, but of what we thought we knew before, ie of a universal. The negation by means of which it achieves this is a determinate negation. We call this kind of experience dialectical. (Gadamer 1984: 317) In the analysis of philosophical texts, this productive meaning of the negativity of experience must be kept in mind because we are the beings with language, and there are many different languages that attempt to capture our various experience in the world, our conceptual formations of those experiences we have in the world, and our thinking of and through the world by which we are constituted. In this regard, almost all Continental philosophers take the issue of language as being foundational. Again following Aristotle, Gadamer states that “human language takes place in signs that are not rigid, as animal’s expressive signs are, but remain variable, not only in the sense that there are different languages, but also in the sense that within the same language the same expression can designate different things and different expressions [of] the same thing” (Gadamer 1976: 60). Since Kant, the primary concern of philosophy has been with language—​and this is the case in both analytic and Continental circles. On the Continental side, this sensitivity to language and its processes are found from Saussure to Kristeva and Irigaray, including especially Levi-​Strauss, Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida. Various names have been given to this investigation of language, such as dialectics (Hegel and Kant), will to power (Nietzsche), Being (Heidegger), and the list is even longer. Continental philosophers are at home with issues concerning the temporality of language and surplus of meanings. Because of these issues and concerns, the willingness of Continental

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philosophers to be open to other traditions, no matter what their epoch or their exotic stripe, is a natural undertaking that comes easily without prejudice in the negative sense.2 Heidegger directly engaged philosophers from Japan and had an abiding interest in Daoist philosophy—​some argue to the point of ripping their ideas from them and using them in innovative ways from the confines of his own tradition.3 Notwithstanding what some might find as a transgression of academic integrity, the point being made here is that the German philosophical tradition has always found itself naturally open, at least in numerous respects, to an engagement with the other. It is the tradition that laid the foundation for contemporary postmodernism, actively engaged British empiricism, and wholeheartedly adopted ancient Greek thought through its hermeneutical lens.

ENGAGING The attention to and engagement with language and its relation to thinking are not only vital to Continental philosophy, they are instrumental in the comparative philosophical project from the outset. How might we begin to consider the encounter with the other if it is to be something more lasting than a temporary tryst, an exchange without any real commitments on both parties’ part except to one’s own interest, one’s own side of the threshold, and not the other’s? In this encounter, the presencing of the alterity of each tradition in comparative philosophy becomes palpable in its difference—​a profound divergence in language, custom, and culture appears. This divergence dominates the encounter of the face-​to-​face region of being together, and brings its utter difference to light. What does the encounter with the other ultimately mean to Western philosophy? Or, to Chinese philosophy for that matter? Building upon Gadamer’s insights on hermeneutics, let me suggest this encounter with the other is the encounter with our own authentic and ethical selves. The encounter with the other breaks through the dialogue of the silence of our solipsistic being and shows us our own face; the encounter with the other reveals our true face for it exposes the face that is ours initially in its face, that is, in the face of the other is our face. The face of the other is the elementum, the archē, the first principle that is the ground of interpersonal contact and the ground for which nonhuman contact is made possible. This ground of the other indicates an immediacy with other persons (and even other species) and this is what Levinas calls “proximity.” In Ethics and Infinity, Levinas (1982: 97) writes that “the proximity of the Other is not simply close to me in space, or close like a parent, but he approaches me essentially insofar as I feel myself—​insofar as I am—​responsible for him.” For Levinas, proximity is felt as immediate contact because proximity demands a response from us—​a responsibility—​that is made a possibility by the encounter itself and our ability to be able to respond to that encounter. Just as we learn to develop a responsiveness to the text in our hermeneutical understanding of meaning, this proximity is a weight that comes from the outside; the self as subject is subjected to the other—the other who comes upon us to engage us in self-​conversation, a conversation that interrupts

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the solipsistic silences of our ego-​sophic dialogues, which we can now come to know through this encounter as our own set of philosophic monologues. Beyond philosophy, we have simply become comfortable calling this monologue our lives—​ the life of “our” lives—​the life of “my” life—​and we have become accustomed to those silent utterances and have find them comforting. We find them comforting in a similar vein as how the Church Fathers found Plato, Aristotle, and their successors in post-​Platonic philosophy, post-​Aristotelian philosophy, and Roman philosophy. However, without this encounter, we are not authentic persons. And the “I” of this being to which I refer as me is not a person. Without this encounter there is nothing resembling comparative philosophy. As Martin Buber suggests in I and Thou, “Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons” (Buber 1970: 112). We see something quite similar in the Chinese ideal of ren 仁, or consummate conduct, that guided Herbert Fingarette (1983: 217) to say, “For Confucius, unless there are at least two human beings, there are no human beings.” Chinese philosophy has reminded us that we are, as Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont (1998) remind us, “irreducibly social.” The comparative encounter, if we could call it that, demands that we need to authentically pay attention to others and stop “just caring for our own souls.”4 Facing this other as a reflection of our existential alterity is the challenge Levinas proposes. And this challenge can be seen as his contribution to comparative philosophy from the Continental side of Western philosophy. This “facing toward the other” can be a joyous event for those daring enough to give up their heroic and Transcendental egos—​those who affirm the interruption of their solipsistic philosophical monologues. What is being suggested is that we all ultimately desire the interruption of this solipsistic monologue, and that the other is needed so we can have conversation, a dialogue—​a going through language—​to discover ourselves. Levinas finds the possibility of responsibility, even the possibility of ethics, in the moment of the encounter with the other. For Levinas, we must allow the other to enter our horizon. A calling into question of the same—​ which cannot occur within the egoist spontaneity of the same—​is brought about by the other. We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other ethics. The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to the I, to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplished as a calling into question of my spontaneity, as ethics. Metaphysics, transcendence, the welcoming of the other by the same, of the Other by me, is concretely produced as the calling into question of the same by the other, that is, as the ethics that accomplishes the critical essence of knowledge. And as critique precedes dogmatism, metaphysics precedes ontology. (Levinas 1991: 43) The self takes on a new direction and dimension in this encounter by crossing over the threshold that demarcates self and other; this new aspect of the self is a new subjectivity. This encounter is a self that is discovering itself to be a self: a Westerner who is not pretending to be non-​Western, but a Westerner who begins to discover her own tradition by realizing the meaning of what Confucius says when he proclaims

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of the consummate person, “in wanting to establish himself, he establishes others; in wanting to succeed himself, he helps others to succeed” (Analects 6.30). Through Levinas’s analysis of this encounter between the respective horizons of these others arising in the moment to be responsible for the otherness of each is the emergent possibility of responsibility; it is the place for an ethics to emerge. As has been the case with other non-​Western philosophies, Chinese philosophy—​ the philosophy of the longest continuous civilization on the planet—​ has been either completely ignored or reduced to some kind of wisdom tradition. And we know these wisdom traditions are unsystematic, lack rigor, and are quaint in their old-​fashioned-​ness—​in these senses they are irrelevant for the serious projects of contemporary society, science, and philosophy. From this perspective (this side of the threshold), Chinese philosophy, in other words, is not really philosophy at all and at best it is something that might resemble a religion, and a religion without God at that! At the most pedestrian level, China’s “First Sage” has been exiled into the realm of bad joking in the West: Confucius say, “Man who sit on tack get point”! Or, “Wise man make sure his wife’s birthday cake is always short one candle.”5 Removing jokes about ethnicity are easily enough accomplished at the institutional level, but changing attitudes about philosophy and what constitutes philosophy is a completely different matter and serious concern. The encounter with the other for Levinas brings responsibility to the foreground. Our encountering shows us in particular ways that we are responsible for the neglect we have imposed on the rich and robust tradition of Chinese thinking. But even further, we are called to rectify the subjugation of this subject, that is, the “subject” we know as Chinese philosophy. We are responsible for giving back the faces of the anonymous, not only to restore Chinese philosophy’s face, but to establish our own in the process. Trying to take Chinese philosophy on its own terms is to resist what Roger T. Ames calls “interpretive asymmetry,” that is, not trying to shoehorn it into Western philosophical categories of understanding and not to make its encounter with the West its defining moment. Stephen Goldberg has referred to this process as “the hardening of the categories.” The Continental tradition, with its long history of dealing with different languages and multiple cultures throughout its history, has learned to open its thinking to allow the other to enter in. We clearly see this in the encounter between German-​and French-​speaking philosophers, and in this interfacing with each other, the features of their faces grow even more resplendent.

DWELLING As I have been suggesting, Levinas is instructive for our purposes in comparative philosophy. His far-​reaching idea that Western philosophy has been a repression of the other and this other is in need of protection from the aggressions of the same, of this self, this self-​same-​self introduced into our discourse by Plato, is not news to us. But through his close readings of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas realizes their failures in maintaining a responsible and rewarding encounter with the other, because every encounter with the other always entails a return for them

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to the self as a “solitary ego which has no relationship with the other qua other, for whom the other is another me, an alter ego known by sympathy, that is, by a return to oneself ” (Levinas 1988: 85). In his earlier work, Levinas largely ignores the issue of solipsism in Husserl, but his later philosophy is at odds with this possible conclusion of Husserl’s project, which even Husserl himself was aware of in his fifth “Cartesian Meditation.” Levinas also wishes to move beyond Heidegger because he correctly sees Heidegger as being more concerned with modes of Being rather than the encounter between beings. Even though Heidegger clearly avoids the solipsistic tendencies we might encounter in Husserl with his Mitsein (Being-​with) and Mitwelt (with-​world) where Dasein always shares a world with others, Levinas realizes this Dasein to be a solitary being that does not necessarily promote any real encounter with the other. Although there is no Transcendental Ego for Heidegger seeking a vicarious “empathy” with other Transcendental Egos through the bodies and behavior of others, Heidegger still falls into some metaphysical trap of the same (self) for Levinas. As Heidegger writes, Dasein as Being-​with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world. Being-​with is in every case a characteristic of one’s own Dasein; Dasein-​with characterizes the Dasein of Others to the extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-​with. Only so far as one’s own Dasein has the essential structure of Being-​ with, is it Dasein-​with as encounterable for Others. (1962: 157). Both Husserl’s empathy and Heidegger’s Being-​with fail for Levinas. Our encounter with the other needs to be more authentic, more responsive, and even more intimate to reach the level toward which the tradition has been moving. The other must remain in its otherness, that is, maintain its integrity and dignity as other. I have been suggesting that our response to the other is most meaningful in understanding our own texts and tradition in this encounter when we are not being just empathetic and solitary (as Levinas sees Husserl) and concerned with Being at the expense of beings (as Levinas sees Heidegger). Our encounter, as does Levinas’s, however, needs to avoid the intimate seduction of Being as found in Heidegger because the other is constituted by its absolute alterity and is ultimately unknowable. We cannot possess it, own it, or even appropriate it; we must continually face our shortcomings in being able to treat it with dignity, respect, and goodness. The Asian traditions are not to be suppressed, possessed, or perhaps even appropriated in the sense of being adopted. They remain in their otherness to Western philosophers. As Levinas (1987: 75) says in Time and the Other that “the relationship with the other is a relationship with a Mystery.” This mystery must be preserved in our encounters even if there is utility in our approaching these “others.” In other words, we must come to terms with this unknowability, make it our home, and learn to dwell within this mystery. If we are incapable of this approach, we fall victim to our own ills in the West: Western philosophy coincides with the unveiling of the other in which the Other, by manifesting itself as a being, loses its alterity. Philosophy is afflicted, from its childhood, with an insurmountable allergy: a horror of the Other which remains

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Other. It is for this reason that Philosophy is essentially the philosophy of Being; the comprehension is its final word and the fundamental structure of man. (Levinas 1974: 188)6 In seeking the ground of Being, Western philosophy has left the other without ground and in this ground-​less state there can be no standpoint, for the other is reduced to a non-​being, a nothing—​crossing over the threshold is then a falling off, or out, of our world into nothingness. To restore this ground to the other is Levinas’s project of the ethical, as well as ours. The task for comparative philosophers is to develop ways that preserve the independence of the Chinese and other traditions without bringing them into the sphere of the familiar. To accomplish this task, we must not allow other philosophical traditions to be the mere objects of our knowing or experiencing because their alterity will be lost to our knowing, our experiencing, and this encounter will be for us and our world only. I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his affair. It is precisely insofar as the relation between the Other and me is not reciprocal that I am subjection to the Other; and I am “subject” essentially in this sense. It is I who support all. . . . The I always has one responsibility more than all the others. (Levinas 1985: 98) We may wish to eradicate this other as Hegel attempts to eliminate the “so-​called Oriental” in his History of Philosophy, but as Hegel could not, we should not.7 The other remains resolute. Our face-​to-​face relation with this other, with the Chinese philosophical tradition, does not afford us contentment or intimacy, or anything like that. Our face-​to-​face relation discloses a world outside of ourselves, outside of our tradition, a world of innumerable others and fills us with an absolute obligation to and a responsibility for this other. And we will never be able to fulfill this obligation and responsibility in our roles as comparative philosophers, or as human beings, even in our post-​solipsistic being in the shadow of the other, for it remains an ongoing encounter, an affair of the heart. Unlike other approaches in Western philosophy, Continental philosophy has been open to and even amenable to subjectivity and understanding the subject. Understanding subjectivity is also to recognize the significance of experience. In Being and Time, Heidegger replaces the term perception with circumspection. By doing so, he places an emphasis on what it informs us that is present in any given situation, that is, he underscores the fact that we tend only to take in what makes contextual sense to us. This idea is played out in his discussion of ready-​ to-​hand and presence-​at-​hand and Dasein’s practical engagement with a world already understood with its projects that are ongoing in the world. Sometimes this is referred to as pre-​scientific ways of experiencing and interpreting the domain of Being in which subject matter is confined. In other words, Heidegger absolutely rejects any theoretical view that we encounter objects as being “out there,” that reality is a given, and all we need to do is find the correct language to replicate it in intelligible terms. For Heidegger, to do so would be to somehow abridge objects in the subjectivity of consciousness (Husserl’s problem) through some kind of

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perceptual neutrality (a problem inherited from Modern philosophy). In Division 1 of Being and Time, Heidegger discusses this existential analytic of Dasein in terms of everydayness and being-​in-​the-​world. This penchant for the everyday and being-​in-​ the-​world that we’ve seen displayed in the philosophies of Levinas and Heidegger clearly has its counterparts in Confucian and Daoists thinkers, as well as in the later development of Chan. With Chinese philosophies’ reach of influence beyond its boundaries, especially into Korea and Japan, we can also see this in Dōgen’s philosophy, throughout Zen, and later in the Kyoto School. Through Gadamer, Heidegger, and Levinas a new lens of interpretation can fittingly be applied in bridging the boundaries of understanding between the two major schools of Chinese philosophy. It is only through some kind of hermeneutical lens that such a spanning of different ways of being-​in-​the-​world can even be approached, crossed over, and begin again.

NOTES Some of this chapter was published in “Alterior Reflections from Asian Philosophies: Levinas and the Comparative Way,” Journal of International Communication of Chinese Culture 2.2 (July 2015). 1. In their translation of the Analects, Rosemont and Ames make explicit the assumptions, and so on that they bring forward. Hence, we have a certain kind of translation of a seminal Chinese text. 2. Such organizations as the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle are prime examples of this openness. Often, some of the best known contemporary Continental philosophers such as John Sallis, David Farrell Krell, Walter Brogan, Graham Parkes, and James Risser have been drawn into comparative philosophy at various stages along their career paths. Of the group above, only Parkes was an early comer to the project. 3. For a good source on the issue of Heidegger’s borrowing see Reinhard May’s Heidegger’s Hidden Sources, translated from the German with a complementary essay by Graham Parkes (London: Routledge, 1996). 4. One of the occasions when one of the foremost Confucian philosophers of our times in the West, Henry Rosemont, was visiting, I arranged a series of lectures at other universities for him. At one of these lectures he spoke to a non-​Continental oriented group. A graduate student who was present and studied ethics was so excited to learn of this “exotic” philosophy called “Confucianism” because it represented a new vista for her thinking. She wondered where she might be able to find something similar in Western ethics. Oddly, at least from my perspective, no one brought up Levinas. Later, I asked her in private if she had ever read Levinas. Her reply was somewhat alarming. She had never heard of him. Not having read Levinas is certainly forgivable—​we simply cannot read everyone—​but not to have even heard of him was a completely different matter. Given the divide in contemporary philosophy, especially in the Anglosphere, this encounter with Confucius not only opened a new thinking vista for her, but likely opened more Western thinking for her and made a contribution to her life and how she would now live it.

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5. See http://​www.just-​one-​liners.com/​category/​confucius-​say-​wordplay, accessed August 10, 2015. 6. As cited in Davis (1996: 32). 7. Hegel’s dismissal of Confucius is embarrassing: “He is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom—​one with whom there is no speculative philosophy. We may conclude from his original works that for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated.” And on Laozi, it is not better: “. . . to the Chinese what is highest and the origin of things is nothing, emptiness, the altogether undetermined, the abstract universal, and this is also called Tao or reason. When the Greeks say that the absolute is one, or when men in modern times say that it is the highest existence, all determinations are abolished, and by the merely abstract Being nothing has been expressed excepting this same negation, only in an affirmative form. But if Philosophy has got no further than to such expression, it still stands on its most elementary stage. What is there to be found in all this learning?” See Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, “Oriental Philosophy,” https://​www.marxists.org/​reference/​archive/​hegel/​works/​hp/​hporiental.htm#confucius, accessed August 11, 2015.

REFERENCES Ames, R. and H. Rosemont (1998), The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine Books. Buber, M. (1970), I and Thou, Walter Kaufmann (trans.), New York: Touchstone. Davis, C. (1996), Levinas: An Introduction, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Fingarette, H. (1983), “The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Confucius,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 10. Gadamer, H. (1976), Philosophical Hermeneutics, David E. Linge (ed. and trans.), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gadamer, H. (1984), Truth and Method, New York: Crossword Publishing Company. Heidegger, M. (1962), Being and Time, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (trans.), New York: Harper and Row. Levinas, E. (1991), Totality and Infinity, Alphonso Lingis (trans.), Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Levinas, E. (1974), En decouvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, Vrin, Paris. Levinas, E. (1982), Ethics and Infinity, Richard A. Cohen (trans.), Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (1987), Time and the Other, Richard A. Cohen (trans.), Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (1988), Existence and Existents, Alphonso Lingis (trans.), Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Prado, C. (2003), A House Divided, New York: Humanity Books.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics: Methodologies and Practices EVA KIT WAH MAN

In the fields of gender studies, body theories, and aesthetics, comparative studies that involve both Western feminist and Chinese philosophical discourses deserve greater attention. My work addresses the meaningful revelations that have come through these comparative studies which provide methodological innovations and advances in Chinese philosophy. Most Western philosophical paradigms are based directly or indirectly on the binary oppositions of the rational/​irrational, subject/​object, nature/​culture, form/​ matter, mind/​body, active/​passive or presence/​absence that were proposed by ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle. Naturally, these presumed binary oppositions have had profound implications for the issues of gender, body, and mind. Western feminists commonly feel that these oppositions have been foundational to the establishment of masculine and rational cultures in the West. Most philosophical debates and criticisms concerning these paradigms hardly look beyond the West. I feel it is meaningful, therefore, to reflect on how these discussions relate to Chinese philosophy. The questions I seek to address include the following: Does Confucianism rule out the capacity of women as moral subjects, and hence as aesthetic subjects? Do other forms of Chinese philosophy in any way contribute or correspond to the patriarchal Confucian culture? In terms of patriarchal values, is the situation in Chinese philosophy fundamentally different from that of the West, and if so, how? Can Chinese philosophy act as a source or a frame of reference for the development of the alternative perspectives sought by Western feminist scholars? I also aim to address, demonstrate, and offer perspectives that may help to provide alternative models in some of the key debates concerning gender, body, and aesthetics. I find a lot of wisdom in a range of feminist philosophies on the body, but I also see their limitations. These discourses commonly begin with critiques of Plato, who proposed the dualisms of form-​matter and mind-​body. Plato asserted that the body

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interferes with and is a danger to the operations of reason. He believed that man is a spiritual or noncorporeal being trapped in the body, or soma. His discourse on the hypodoche (or original matter) is considered to define the essential qualities of materiality. According to Platonic philosophy, when Nature receives form as a sensible object, her proper function is to receive, take, accept, welcome, include, and even comprehend (Butler 1993: 40–​53). She has no proper shape and is not a body unless she receives form and direction from an external formative principle. This “receptacle principle” of matter, which is held to apply universally, is then associated with the female. Femaleness is constructed as a nonthematizable materiality that never resembles either the formative principle or what it creates. This image of a sensuous, passionate, receptive corporeality enables philosophers to uphold the essential neutrality and superiority of the mind (Gatens 1996: 49–​50). Most of the new conceptual models that feminist scholars propose seek to displace Platonic dualism and to emancipate our concepts of the body from Cartesian mechanistic models or metaphors. I consider these theoretical and philosophical proposals by Western thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, or Spinoza in terms of their views on the body and mind, and I wish to explore how the Chinese philosophical ideas offered by Confucians and Daoists may provide an alternative body ontology for the critical practices of feminists. My research on female aesthetical representations considers classical Chinese works such as The Books of Songs, women’s embroidery, social attitudes regarding sexuality, and contemporary body art. These representations demonstrate an intertwining relationship between the body, sexuality, aesthetics, and gendered roles in their social environments. The concepts of yin, yang, and qi apply to studies of the body, gendered roles, arts, and aesthetics. This discussion takes the bodily experience of the subject and the interaction between the subject and her environment as the core sources of aesthetic experience. I follow the suggestions of feminist philosophers who question the notion of abstract impartiality and who relate their philosophical discussions to concrete case studies. I (Man 2013) examine female bodily representations as seen in the literary fantasies from late Ming times, in the iron girls of Communist China, and in the hoopla surrounding the Beijing Olympics. I (Man 2011b) also consider the first application of Freudian psychoanalysis in China (in the 1920s), in which the pioneer therapist Pan Guangdan tried to assess the female literati Feng Xiaoqing 馮小青 (1595–​1612). My empirical work also investigates the transformation of women’s fashion in Hong Kong during the 1960s, after the political riots of 1967 under British colonial rule (Man 2012a). The subject of sex and emotion in the ethical discourse among Chinese female sex workers at the turn of the nineteenth century is another aspect of this ongoing debate that has seldom been examined (Man 2007). The methodologies adopted throughout these studies offer a coherent attempt to explore Chinese thinking on the body themes including gendered bodies, which are what I want to share, review, and conclude in this chapter. The discussion begins with a basic view from the Yijing and extends to the Confucian discourses on the body and mind, which are well articulated by Mencius. I note that numerous feminist

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philosophers and biologists have tried to destabilize the notion of “biological sex” (Butler 1993: 29–​ 30). These thinkers strongly contest any return to biological essentialism. They argue that “physical experiences” alone do not make gender, but rather the specific social and regulatory ideals by which female bodies are trained and formed. I trace and examine the Western philosophical concepts of corporeality starting with Plato and Descartes, and then discuss how the works of Spinoza and Merleau-​Ponty may offer alternative understandings of the body and mind that challenge the Cartesian body-​ mind dualism. As informed by Elizabeth Grosz’s (1994: 21–​22) critique, I indicate how new concepts of corporeality that go beyond the regime of dualism still need to be developed. In view of this development in Western thought, I propose to look at Confucian philosophy, especially Mencius’s ideas of the body and mind, to see if this tradition can offer a form of ontology and metaphysics to complement the efforts of Western feminist philosophers. This investigation is followed by a comparative analysis of both Western and Chinese philosophical traditions. I conclude by arguing that Mencius’s ideas of the mind and the body can initiate a radical rethinking of the connections between reason, the body, and a range of ethical-​political issues. Such rethinking enables feminists to develop an alternative model of corporeality. In investigating whether Mencius’s ideas constitute an ontology of the body that is useful for critical feminist practices, my answer is only partly affirmative. A certain ambiguity appears because it is difficult to tell whether the body, as Mencius considers it, is gendered. If we examine his work in its historical and cultural contexts, taking the Confucian patriarchal society into account, the discussions of the sage, the “great man,” or the “superior man” seem to refer to men only. As women in the Confucian tradition are viewed as feeble in terms of their moral capabilities, it is commonly said that they need to be educated and controlled, otherwise they would upset the patriarchal social order. Female bodies are dangerous and threatening because they can be seductive, leading men to excessive sexual desires or socially deviant behavior. However, women’s behavior can also be beneficial to men under Confucian regulations. The way that Mencius is translated or commented upon concerning his usage of “man” and “he” to indicate “human” suggests that Mencius regards the body as gendered, and as male. In an ideological sense, an identification of women with materiality can also be detected in Mencius’s work. Certain components of Mencius’s teaching could be interpreted as indicating a material and ontological base for the “female side” of human existence. These components imply a “receiving” principle—​of waiting passively for the form-​giving process and for guidance from moral imperatives, both of which are provided by the mind (Man 2000a). The Western binary of passion-​reason seems to correspond to a polarity of vital force–​moral will in Mencius’s teaching. In both traditions it is implied that vital force or passion should follow reason and moral will for the attainment of a harmonious humanity. I find that despite any associations we make concerning the social, historical and ideological contexts of Mencius’s teaching, the nature of this binary structure is the main question that remains. Are Mencius’s ideas of the body and mind the same as

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the mind-​body binary that Western feminists criticize? The Confucian cosmological model differs from Western philosophy, yet the Confucian texts seem to separate vital force (ming命) from will (xing性), while emphasizing the superiority of the will in every respect. In considering the Chinese understanding of this duality, I turn for reference to the Yijing, which is the basic articulation of Confucian cosmology with its concepts of yin and yang. The revelation proposed in the Yijing is that the yin (the female principle, or force representing the receptive and the potential) and the yang (the male principle, or force representing the creative and the actual) do not exhibit any real opposition or antagonism in Chinese philosophy. These principles are presented as coexisting and interacting within all things. They are only opposite in so far as they are complementary. There is neither tension nor hostility between these principles (Cheng 1991: 188–​195). I concur that according to the Chinese cosmological paradigm illustrated in the Yijing, the world is a process of change and development that is moving toward unity and a state of holistic harmonization (Cheng 188–​195). The appearance of discrepancy, imperfection, conflict, contradiction, or struggle is seen to result from an incomplete subprocess in the interaction of polarities. Conflicts can be avoided if one strives to conform to human nature (xing) by cultivating one’s understanding and adjusting one’s action properly. This adjustment is a process of harmonization. Therefore, according to the metaphysics of harmony and conflict in the Yijing, antagonism calls for a moral and practical transformation of human life. I am drawn to wonder whether this belief can lead toward a relaxation of Chinese traditions involving the patriarchal suppression of women. Might the view presented in the Yijing and the early Confucian texts indicate that the condition of gender inequality is an artificial, contextual, and political practice that Confucian spirituality and moral philosophy can help to transcend? Western feminists might find the yinyang polarities useful. They might include the mutually generative and destructive modes described in the Yijing, with their contrary and complementary qualities, as a useful basis for viewing the dualities of body, mind, and gender. The principles of holistic unity and organic balance are meaningful ideas that offer real alternatives to the mechanical-​atomistic model that the feminists oppose. In this sense, Mencius’s ideas of the mind and body can initiate a radical rethinking of the connections between reason, the body, and society’s ethical-​political issues. The issues of aesthetics would also help in laying the ground for a comparative study of matters related to the body. One of my studies, “Chinese Philosophy and the Suggestion of a Matriarchal Aesthetics,” deals with the critique of binary oppositions in Western philosophy. In this study, I introduce a model of matriarchal aesthetics that is suggested by Heide Gottner-​Abendroth (1985: 81–​94), and discuss this model in the light of Chinese philosophy. Gottner-​Abendroth sets out several principles of a matriarchal aesthetics that might provide us with a new paradigm of feminist aesthetics. Her writing summarizes the principles that matriarchal art is a form of magic that expresses diversity in unity. Such art is like mythology, which exists as a fundamental category of human understanding. Gottner-​Abendroth argues that the universal nature and objective structure of the matriarchal artworks she discusses prevent the viewer’s identification with the art from becoming a matter of subjective

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sentimentality. Such art cannot be simply objectified, as it represents the complexity of a whole process. The interesting thing is that as matriarchal art involves the possibility of communicating with Nature by means of symbolic acts, it suggests that we should learn to adapt ourselves to Nature in a relationship that includes our bodies and our immediate environment. Gottner-​Abendroth stresses that the joy and delight thereby released can be traced back to the harmonious correlation between changes in Nature and spiritual changes within ourselves, which can give rise to new forms of living. When viewed in such terms, matriarchal aesthetics offers a worldview that can be compared in useful dialogue with Chinese aesthetics. It is commonly held that Confucian and Daoist philosophies have no systematic approach to aesthetics. However, some neo-​ Confucian scholars such as Mou Zongsan and Tang Junyi have reconstructed theories of primal human experience according to traditional Confucianism and Daoism, and these theories allude to aesthetic experience. I have often turned to some of the key notions suggested by these two neo-​Confucian masters for sources of comparison. Mou (1974: 208–​211), the translator and critic of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, presents and recommends the Daoist theory of “intellectual intuition.” First, he emphasizes the subjective Daoist principle of wuwei (no action), which refers to the human mind’s effort to transcend all kinds of epistemological functions and to move toward a more inclusive, metaphysical experience of the Dao. Daoist philosophy promotes the annulment of human activity and knowledge. It seeks to recover the direct perception of Nature in itself, which has been hidden and distorted by human understandings, perceptions, and interpretations. According to Daoism, to know is to be not knowing, to be wise is to be ignorant, and only the so-​called fools are able to grasp the truth of Nature (Mou 1974: 208–​211). Tang Junyi introduces his key notion of the “host and guest” relation to describe the relationship between things and the mind in the human primal experience. This view contrasts with the subject-​object relation expressed in Western theories of knowledge, in which subjects are dominant and objects are subordinate (Tang 1987: 187). According to Tang, objectification of the mind takes place only after the primal experience, which he describes as “the totality of intuition.” His understanding of this experience is actually quite similar to that of Mou (Tang 1987: 187). My suggestion is that we can find many similarities of theoretical modality between the suggestions of feminist scholars (such as those concerning matriarchal aesthetics) and the suggestions of Chinese philosophy. There are several points of comparison that we might pursue further. One such point is that the aesthetic experiences described by both Western feminists and Chinese philosophers take place in a fundamental, principal process that perceives a “preexisting inner structure” prior to the objectification process. This principal process demands that we should adapt ourselves to Nature (which includes both our bodies and our immediate environment) in an interaction that leads to the harmonious correlation of change in Nature with spiritual change in ourselves. The comparison of feminist aesthetics with Chinese aesthetics outlined above shows that this area of cross-​cultural philosophical dialogue might present scholars working in aesthetics, be they Western or Chinese, with promising directions for

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further research. One area that clearly needs more exploration is the metaphysical and experiential comparison between the types of archaic myth/​ritual complexes to which the feminist paradigm refers and the myths or rituals we find in the Daoist texts. This approach to Chinese philosophy does not deny that there are patriarchal forms and institutions in Chinese tradition, but it begins to look at that tradition for resources that might deconstruct patriarchal attitudes and provide us with new directions in considering cross-​cultural aesthetics. In the West, there has been a recent call for reclaiming the body and repositioning its locus and nature in terms of both academic and artistic expression. Body theories and body art have drawn considerable attention and inspired new philosophical discussions. I look at this issue from a comparative perspective, focusing on representative cases of Chinese and Western portrait paintings as a source of empirical evidence. I also examine Francis Bacon’s works on human bodies to identify the philosophical and psychological loci involved (Man 2004). I then outline the Confucian discourse on the body and its related metaphysical grounds, showing how these understandings influence traditional Chinese portrait painting. I introduce a representative discussion on Chinese portrait making by Gu Kaizhi and compare his approach with the body portraits presented by Bacon. In this comparison, the following questions are addressed: How are body discourses related to different bodily expressions? In what ways do Confucian ideas of the body shed light on the recent discussions of the reclaiming the body in the West? Are the problems of dichotomy between the mind and body resolved in the Confucian tradition? Can active engagement via the process of reworking art create new possibilities of bodily expression? From the summary of Gu’s artistic practice, one can see that most human expressions in Gu’s work are restrained and delicate. There are few extremes of either emotion or gesture, and the figures seem to combine humanness with a certain ethereal quality. The depictions of human subjects convey both a certain naiveté and a humanistic spirit. I recap Mencius’s theory that the mind is the noblest and greatest component of the body. The mind, for Mencius, is more than simply physical because of its moral consciousness and its innate knowledge of goodness. This understanding explains why Gu’s portraits emphasize the subjects’ heads and faces, particularly the eyes or the pupils, which he believes can speak for the subject’s soul or spirit (Man 2004). In contrast, Bacon’s subjects are associated with an “exhilarated despair” involving sexuality and violence, which seems to violate the moral norms of his times. His figures present the “shattering of the subject,” or the replacement of a unified self by a fragmented self, which has been read as a “loss of self,” with various psychoanalytic implications. Gu’s subjects assert a moral self, conveyed through his delicate and linear style. I point out that the works of Bacon and Gu belong to different cultures in different times. In our time, however, I wonder if we can go further in asking how Confucian theories of the body might inform the recovery of the body in contemporary Western discourse (Man 2004). Confucians discuss the body as something ontological and natural, as do some theorists in the Western tradition. However, contemporary discourses stress that the differences in bodies do not have to do with biological “facts” so much as the

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manner in which culture marks bodies and creates specific conditions in which they live and recreate themselves. This marking of bodies happens through the operation of various forms of power relations involving language or signifying practices. In this discussion, I have revisited a point made by Moira Gatens (1999: 228): what is crucial in our current context is the thorough interrogation of the means by which bodies become invested with differences. The findings of my previous studies confirm a model of construction whereby the social acts upon the natural, so that there is no reference to a pure body that is not at the same time a further formation of the body (Gatens 1999: 228). For my revisitation of theory and a survey of the Chinese bodies manifested in arts and aesthetics, I focus on both traditional and contemporary Chinese artwork or writing. These sources include the representations of the female body in the Book of Songs, the images in traditional Chinese embroidery, various discourses on sexuality, and the contemporary practice of body art in China. I have great fun in examining the pre-​Qin Confucian text The Book of Songs, which is an important source for the early discussion of feminine ideals in Chinese women’s history (Man 2012b). I first review the discussion on feminine ideals by referring to representative cases or stories described in this source. Then I classify the kinds and modalities of female bodily ideals into gendered narratives, social and political representations, or perceptions concerning the common excellence of human qualities. I seek to investigate the relations among these recommended ideals in terms of situational ethics, gendered notions of “inner beauty” and “outer beauty,” love and marriage, or eros and sexuality. I summarize the multiple modalities of female bodily ideals suggested by this early Confucian source. Among the lines of the The Book of Songs, one can see that the classical Chinese descriptions of female beauty (meiren) referred to femaleness in terms of skin color, erotic qualities, and bodily beauty, including the shape of the limbs, the style of makeup, and the color of clothing. These descriptions specified qualities relating to all of the five senses, yet it was the vitality of the body that counted most, and the sensations related to heterosexual appeal. These conceptions of femaleness were grounded in male desires and fantasies. Over time, however, the notions of female beauty went beyond physiological and sexual considerations and increasingly involved cultural and normative constraints. The reading of The Book of Songs interestingly reveals that moral discourses did not necessarily have a higher priority than daring emotional and erotic expressions in this ancient text. Various views are there to be explored in the text, and they act as valuable sources for the discussion of Chinese female ideals. Through textual analysis, I find that these descriptions of women form the map of a lost female horizon (Man 2012b: 130). Following this ancient source of female depiction, I consider a form of women’s handicraft art that has long shaped Chinese women’s physical and emotional lives. I chose embroidery as a subject of study, as this art is often associated with women and identified as a feminine practice across the history of China (Man 2003). I examine how practices of embroidery enable women to become subjects of their own artistic expression and how this art helps to construct women’s social identities and value systems. This survey begins with a brief historical survey of women’s

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embroidery in China, followed by an examination of the intertwined relationship between this form of handicraft and women’s lives. The creation of embroidery has represented and fulfilled the Confucian gender and hierarchical roles of women as wives, mothers of sons, and teachers of daughters. I discuss the extent to which embroidery practices are mediums of expression and how the creation of this artwork has given Chinese women value as talented subjects. I argue that in imperial China, embroidery as women’s art was equivalent to reputable elite male cultural practices such as painting, calligraphy, and composition (Man 2003). In contemporary China, however, different meanings have emerged regarding women’s embroidery skills, which have revived as a new form of high-​ quality production. The popular work of Vivienne Tam is my favorite example of how Chinese embroidery has become a sought-​ after fashion symbol. By creatively developing new aesthetic styles, I argue that the self-​ Orientalizing technique of modern fashion designers has succeeded in battling the negative stereotypes commonly associated with “Oriental Others” (Man 2003). Tam’s East-​meets-​West designs appropriate exotic, traditional, and mysterious Chinese elements with new and modern edges. Her work is also significantly gendered. Tam often mixes brocade and embroidery with experimental modern elements such as leather and fake fur, producing what she describes as an “eccentric approach of Orientalism” and an innovative development of femininity (Man 2003). On the one hand, the Orient itself is an other that passively receives the West’s gaze. On the other hand, the Orient now gazes back. Tam’s fashion work brings out a new femininity in traditional Chinese women’s embroidery work, which not only creates a successful market space, but also reconstructs cultural and gender expressions in terms of aesthetics. Her art is a notable contemporary attempt to present a traditional ornamental art in the process of evolution. In this new expression, political and commercial meanings are more important than expressions of specifically female forms of creativity, life experiences, or physical constraints (Man 2003). Beyond literary depictions and handicrafts, matters of the body are manifested even more explicitly in sexuality norms. I therefore explore the subject of kissing in China—​a theme that has not been commonly investigated. Kissing in different cultural contexts may signify respect, social ritual, friendship, romantic feeling, passionate love, sexual temptation, or happiness that may be momentary or even eternal. Kissing in China, however, has traditionally been taken as a specifically sexual behavior. In this tradition, the act of kissing has been restricted to the private space of the bedchamber, and this explains why Western visitors to eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century China provided no records of Chinese people kissing each other in public. I show that for a long time in China there was no specific word for kissing. There were very few public discussions of the practice, except in certain Daoist discourses related to the art of the bedchamber (Man 1998). By examining kissing in China as a form of eroticism and by examining traditional points of view on this activity, especially the functional concepts of female bodies in the terms of the benefits their sexual postures can bring to the males, I have also laid a foundation for looking at kissing in its contemporary social context and investigate how it is further constructed.

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Chinese landscape design should be an extension of philosophical reflection on bodily experience. My previous study (Man 2014) compares Arnold Berleant’s recent work on the nature and experience of a Chinese garden with Confucian descriptions of landscapes and gardens. I review Berleant’s notes on the subject in terms of the object relations, bodily reactions, and aesthetic feelings experienced in the environment of a Chinese garden. I compare Berleant’s writing about his experience in a Chinese garden with the comparable reflections of Tang Junyi. In his influential work Zongkuo Wenhua de Jinshen Jiaji (The Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture), Tang (1987) proposes a metaphysical manifestation in the design of traditional Chinese architecture and gardening, with an interactive relation between man and Nature. This view expands on Berleant’s (2004: 95–​98) observations, as is suggested by Tang’s bodily notions of “hiding,” “maintaining,” “resting,” or “traveling” in a Chinese garden. The parallel observations of the two writers invite a comparison of aesthetics and critical responses. Berleant claims that Daoism is the key to understanding the Chinese scholar’s garden and that Daoist philosophy functions as a pervasive perceptual presence, providing a cognitive undertone. Berleant also considers the Chinese garden as a landscape that represents the Daoist ideal of wuwei, or no action, which is one of the key notions suggested throughout his book. Tang (1987), however, regards the Daoist idea of traveling as the basis for the aesthetics of these gardens. This view integrates the physical freedom of the body and the metaphysical transcendence of the mind. I use Geyuan Garden in Yangzhou, China, which I have visited as a case study that perfectly demonstrates Berleant’s (2012: 136) observation that all of the elements and parts of the garden are designed to blend gently together and show the harmonious forces of the Nature. In Tang’s (1987: 305) words, to experience landscape aesthetics is “to (let the body) follow the Dao of Nature, getting oneself in tune with the underlying rhythms of the seasons, the plants, the very universe, so that there was no discrepancy between inner being and outer reality.” I can see a lot of correspondence between Berleant’s landscape aesthetics and Chinese aesthetics. These different views supplement and enrich each other, showing the potential for mutual benefit in such dialogue. The presentation of women’s body art is informative and extremely revealing to the subject I am exploring. I have chosen the body work by the Chinese female artist He Chengyao as an exemplary study. This artist provides a series of very interesting and explicit subversions of traditional notions concerning meiren and of various globalized female beauty myths (Man 2011a). Her extreme body art and her performances also depict the political agendas underlying the Chinese contemporary historical context. I focus on this artist’s works since the early 2000s, including more than twenty representative body artworks that reference real family histories and national political affairs in contemporary China. My approach to this study is based on both cultural and cross-​cultural perspectives. I (Man 2011a) aim to demonstrate the artistic functions and political agendas expressed by the extreme displays of pain and emotional “scars” in these works. I explore the gendered accusations and resistances implied in He’s works, and relate these observations to the issues of global feminism and the female beauty industry within the contemporary Chinese economic context. This survey of female body art in China echoes Amelia Jones’s

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(1998: 5) observations that body art is one of the most dramatic and radical types of culture production. Her work incorporates socialist, family, and gender peculiarities into a series of subversive and accusative gestures. The boldness, roughness, and violence projected onto the female body is a demonstration of body politics. The juxtaposed nude bodies of her mother and her son present powerful messages about political history. The liberation of Chinese bodies and their public showing in this artist’s work conveys contrasting notions of freedom and captivity (Man 2011a). I have focused my study on Chinese female body aesthetics, and relate political developments to changes in the notion of female beauty (meiren) in China. I divide this survey into two parts, in which I address these two overlapping issues: How can the related discourses and developments concerning the female body be understood within the particular historical and cultural context of China? How can these discourses be related to various other factors such as economic and political developments? My questions also concern the treatment of males as the speaking subjects in the Chinese patriarchal system. How do male imaginations (especially those represented by the literati) construct the ideal and the aesthetic quality of women’s bodies through the projection of their own wishes, regrets, or fantasies? (Man 2000b). My findings from the review of the philosophical discussion of female beauty in the Chinese tradition are followed by those of a contextual study of the development and construction of the feminine ideals in the courtesan culture of late Imperial China. I illustrate how the notion of female beauty has been represented and redefined by male literati at certain points of political and economic change in China. I then extend this study to the contemporary notion of female beauty in Communist China, which has departed from older traditions to follow the capitalist West (Man 2013). The global economy obviously has a major effect on the perceptions of female beauty in China today. A series of multicultural and historical factors have set in motion a process of rapid formation and construction, resulting in monolithic fad-​ like trends in women’s fashion and appearance in PRC. However, when discussing the issue of contemporary female beauty in China, its contestation within the turbulent history of modern China deserves serious consideration. This subject requires examination of the policies, promotions, and regulations imposed by China’s state apparatus (Man 2013). I suggest that certain factors have been constant in the contemporary discourses of Chinese female beauty, but also that the discourses on female beauty have passed through three cultural phases during the twentieth century. As commonly set by Chinese historians, these phases are the “enlightening period” (from 1919 to 1949), the “degradation period” (from 1949 to 1978), and the “awakening period” (from 1978 to 2000). I review the related female beauty discourses and the built-​in political burdens and social implications as they appeared in these phases. I also discuss how the themes emerging in each of these periods have been developed through related cultural, political, and economic discourses. The study process involves collecting historical images of Chinese women and studying their representations, which covers the “jianmei women” of the 1930s, the “iron ladies” of the socialist regime, and the “Olympic girls” during the 2008 Beijing Games as subjects for contrast and reflective discourse (Man 2013).

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The findings conclude with a discussion on the making of the Olympics female receptionists. The 2008 Beijing Olympics hoopla had already produced new forms of female beauty. Female students who dreamed of being Olympic volunteers frequented English training centers, gyms, and body beauty parlors. The stories of these young girls and their harsh self-​discipline were reported in the media with reference to the emergence of a new self that was not only historically and culturally specific, but also tailor-​made as an object of national pride (Man 2013). I conclude that although the “Olympic girl” image has been yet another process of normalization in the history of China, one may query the origins of the ideas involved and the reasons they have become the new standards of female beauty for representing China today. It is obvious that certain traditional bodily appearances have been appropriated and incorporated, yet the new images have also been seriously reduced and designed to fit international and global imaginations concerning “Chinese beauties” (Man 2013). The making of Olympic girls can also be read as an updated “domestication of cosmopolitanism,” with implications like those previously stated. Through tailor-​made female bodily construction, this new development involves renegotiating China’s place in the world. The promotion of a new image is motivated by desire for global recognition of the country’s wealth, resources, and greatness (Man 2013). Psychoanalysis and the diagnosis of women’s psychopathology in feudal China is definitely another vital issue for understanding Chinese women’s lives, physically and mentally. I review the first application of modern psychoanalysis to the case study of a female literati from the seventeenth century. This study (Man 2011b), drafted in 1922, was conducted by Pan Guangdan 潘光旦 (1899–​1967) and it analyzed the writer Feng Xiaoqing 馮小青 (1595–​1612). The study first gives Pan’s diagnosis of the woman’s mental illness and his appropriation of the concepts of psychoanalysis, which were new to China at the time. The study also gives Pan’s understanding of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical model and his theory of narcissism; Pan then goes on to review the application of that theory to the historical context of China in the 1920s. In that era, Western modernization was seen as an obvious model for China’s national progress. The study also provides Pan’s observations on the conditions of life for women in feudal China and the implications for sex education in Pan’s own era (Man 2011b). My evaluation of this study concludes with a reassessment of Pan’s views in light of recent feminist critiques, particularly of Freud’s narcissistic theory, and more generally of psychoanalysis as a whole in relation to the gender issues raised by contemporary feminist psychotherapy. The most important observations Pan makes concern the psychopathological situation of numerous late Ming-​era female literati. A diagnosis is offered that these women, as a result of working and living in a repressive feudal and patriarchal social situation, commonly suffered from mental illness. They are also diagnosed as commonly suffering from tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases (Man 2011b). Pan’s psychoanalytical reading is that these problems resulted from sexual repression, resulting in mental imbalance and physical weakness. Pan sees a connection between tuberculosis, depression, and other psychological disorders. Pan’s meticulous case

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study of Xiaoqing was the first of its kind in China, and it paved the way for further gender studies, women’s histories, and reflections on the sexual history and psychology of women in China. As contextual studies are generally regarded as vital and revealing by feminist scholars, I conduct research based on my own existential experience, which should be an important component and point of departure in terms of methodology in feminist theories. The 1960s was a restless period in many Western countries, and in Hong Kong this era saw tremendous political, economic, and cultural change. The importance of fashion in women’s lives calls for more attention than is usually given in feminist critiques of consumerism and the subordination of women. Fashion should also be regarded as a locus of struggle for identity. In Hong Kong during the 1960s, many women were searching for a new female identity via fashion. The resulting modernist trend in East Asia can be read as a response to several kinds of social friction: the friction between Western colonizers and the Eastern colonized, between traditional and modern, and between the backwardness of China and the advancement of Hong Kong in both political and cultural dimensions. I therefore conduct a parallel reading of the tensions surrounding Hong Kong’s female fashions and the social or political tensions of the city in the 1960s (Man 2012a). At that time, women attempted to integrate all of these forces by eclectically combining traditional Chinese styles with current Western trends, while remaining rather conservative in their ways of thinking. The conditions of life before and during the 1960s in Hong Kong are recounted, and women’s ways of dressing are reviewed and compared with the contemporary European fashions. Women in the British colony projected their self-​images and fantasies onto fashion models, who might appear fast, carefree, naughty, sharp, discriminating, balanced, easygoing, sophisticated, coquettish, serious, or ingenuous. At a time when the majority of women in the city were still housewives, students, factory workers, or social and family dependents, they began to receive the better levels of education and job opportunities they needed to gain financial independence. They enjoyed more social activities and therefore demanded fashions to cope with their new identities (Man 2012a). Roland Barthes (1983: 243) suggests that the multiplication of personalities in a single being is considered an index of power. This sense of power can be considered one of the reasons for the popularity of new and eclectic fashions in Hong Kong during the1960s. Women in the colony were building their power via body representations at a time when fashion virtually ceased to exist in Communist China and little was developed in Taiwan or other overseas Chinese communities. The study refers to the sayings of Homi Bhabha (1993), who explains that in the postcolonial period women can utilize their own peripheral position to challenge the ideologies in the center. The behavior of Hong Kong women in the 1960s demonstrates that fashion can facilitate this kind of challenge. These women discarded the feudal Chinese constraints on females through the liberation of fashionable dress. They responded to the prospect of Hong Kong’s return to a backward Communist China by portraying modern Western designs. They rejected submissive attitudes toward the British government by choosing rebellious ways of dressing and acting in the colonial city (Man 2012a).

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These various investigations and their findings serve as useful resources for comparative studies and cross-​references on the subject of Chinese female bodies. These studies provide materials for expanded reading on this subject and for a review of theoretical frameworks. As a body of research, these studies illustrate the core philosophical questions that appear to be basic for comparative research and dialogue among Chinese philosophies, feminist critiques, and contextual studies. The interdisciplinary approach is recommended and practiced as it integrates philosophical enquiries with contextual methodology and empirical studies, and this integration echoes the main agenda of both the feminist and the Confucian philosophies in their aims for the inclusive ethical concerns and the betterment of human life. I find these efforts in critical research useful and beneficial. Case studies in my research experience offer a lot of fun and reflection, which are especially helpful for enlivening the dry, abstract, and isolated practice of philosophical enquiry as traditionally known in the West.

REFERENCES Barthes, R. (1983), The Fashion System, Ward and Howard (trans.), New York: Hill and Wang. Berleant, A. (2004), Rethinking Aesthetics, Aldershot: Ashgate. Berleant, A. (2012), Aesthetics Beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays, Aldershot: Ashgate. Bhabha, H. (1993), “The World and the Home,” Social Text, 31/​32:  141–​153. Butler, J. (1993), Bodies That Matter, New York and London: Routledge. Cheng, C. Y. (1991), New Dimensions of Confucian & Neo-​Confucian Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press. Gatens, M. (1996), Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality, London and New York: Routledge. Gatens, M. (1999), “Power, Bodies and Difference,” in J. Price and M. Shildrick (eds.), Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gottner-​Abendroth, H. (1985), “Nine Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic,” in G. Ecker (ed.), Feminist Aesthetics, H. Anderson (trans.), Boston: Beacon Press. Grosz, E. (1994), Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Jones, A. (1998), Body Art/​Performing the Subject, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Man, E. K. W. (1998), “Kissing in China,” presented at the 56th American Society for Aesthetics (ASA) Annual Meeting, at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, US, on November 7, 1998. Man, E. K. W. (2000a), “Contemporary Feminist Body Theories and Mencius’s Ideas of Body and Mind,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 27.2: 155–​169. Man, E. K. W. (2000b), “Female Bodily Aesthetics, Politics, and Feminine Ideals of Beauty in China,” in P. Z. Brand (ed.), Beauty Matters, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

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Man, E. K. W. (2003), “Reflections on Traditional Chinese Women Embroidery: The Subject of Expression, Gender Identity and Fashion,” presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in San Francisco, US on October 2, 2003. Man, E. K. W. (2004), “Reclaiming the Body: Francis Bacon’s Fugitive Bodies and Confucian Aesthetics on Bodily Expression,” Contemporary Aesthetics, 2: 621–​631, http://​www.contempaesthetics.org. Man, E. K. W. (2007), “Sex and Emotion: Change of the Related Discourses Among Chinese Female Sex Workers in Hong Kong and Its Representations in the Cosmopolitan Context,” presented at the Conference on Chinese Gender/​Sexuality in the 21st Century, organized by the Department of Law and Business, HK Shue Yan University & the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, at Hong Kong Shue yan University, Hong Kong, on December 14, 2007. Man, E. K. W. (2011a), “Expression Extreme and History Trauma in Female Bodily Art in China: The Case of He Cheng Yao,” in M. B. Wiseman and Y. D. Liu (eds.), Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art, Leiden: Brill Academic. Man, E. K. W. (2011b), “Writing Women’s Psychopathology: A Case Study by Pan Guangdan,” presented at the Association for Asian Studies 2011 Conference, in Honolulu, Hawaii, on March 31, 2011. Man, E. K. W. (2012a), “Fashion, Female Body Aesthetics and the Colonial City of Hong Kong in the 1960s,” presented at the Nature and the City International Conference at University of Bologna, in Bologna, Italy, on June 30, 2012. Man, E. K. W. (2012b), “Female Bodily Aesthetics and Their Early Revelations in the Book of Songs,” in C. Ho (ed.), Overt and Covert Treasures: Essays on the Sources for Chinese Women’s History, Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong. Man, E. K. W. (2013), “Beauty and the State: Female Bodies as State Apparatus and Recent Beauty Discourses in China,” in P. Brand (ed.), Beauty Unlimited, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Man, E. K. W. (2014), “Notes on a Chinese Garden: A Comparative Response to Berleant’s Environmental Aesthetics,” presented at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, in San Antonio, Texas, US, on October 31, 2014. Mou, Z. S. (1974), Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (智的直覺與中國哲學), Taipei: Commercial Press. Tang, J. Y. (1987), The Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture (中國文化的精神價值), Taipei: Zheng Zhong Book Stores.

PART FOUR

Critiques and Future Possibilities

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Methods from Within the Chinese Tradition LEIGH JENCO

INTRODUCTION The preceding chapters of this handbook have each made good cases for the methodological approaches they advance, and many have argued that the ideas found within Chinese philosophy must necessarily open the very concept of “philosophy” to new challenges. In this chapter I try to ask some further and more radical questions to interrogate just how far this openness should go. I consider specifically the extent to which methodological discussions and techniques generated within Chinese bodies of thought in their respective searches for knowledge may themselves be of contemporary value, in the academic discipline of philosophy and elsewhere. These methodologies might appear in obvious places, such as arguments for specific kinds of textual analysis and use of evidence associated with various forms of Chinese classicism (jingxue 經學), or more recent debates over the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” which consider the implications of applying the term “philosophy” (zhexue哲學) to what might more generally be called Chinese “thought” (sixiang思 想). But methods for applying evidence, generating and identifying knowledge, and evaluating claims are also found in a variety of other, less obvious places. In my own work I have examined debates in China dating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about how and what Chinese elites and people may learn from Western nations; these debates extended even to include how the very definitions of learning and knowledge themselves must change in order to accommodate new ideas and practices circulating elsewhere. By engaging these methodologies, and others like them which emerged historically among largely Sinophone communities of argument, we are inviting them to transform not only the content of our knowledge but also our approaches to it. The radical implications of this claim is that these methodologies may constitute new forms and audiences of knowledge, such that the terms of the original inquiry (“philosophy,” “methodology,” “comparison,” etc.) may be refigured or displaced entirely. In making this case in this chapter, I draw examples from my own past work as well as that of others to illustrate how this approach works and what it may look like. In reviewing these examples, I also try to make a more general case for why such an internal methodological investigation—​ what I have elsewhere

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called a “methods-​ based approach to cross-​ cultural engagement”—​ might be necessary and important (Jenco 2007). I also review some of the arguments about why this approach may not work, or should not be attempted. Throughout I try to urge awareness of the power relationships within which these methodologies are excavated and constructed. These include not only those power relationships which governed the emergence of these methods in their particular places and times, but also those which shape our own connection to those methodologies, as researchers working in a largely Anglophone academic environment whose terms of discourse remain persistently Eurocentric. These two relationships are often related, because the terms of the latter often govern how and why we engage the former.

WHY METHODS FROM “WITHIN” THE CHINESE TRADITION? Why should we consider methods from “within” the Chinese tradition? Before going further, I should clarify that my use of terms such as “within” or “inside” a tradition are not meant to indicate that boundaries around traditions are rigid or unchanging. Traditions are not discovered so much as created through ongoing interactions between existing discourses, new ideas, and individual agents of change. This means they do not exist outside of the political and historical circumstances which render them meaningful. These circumstances are constantly changing, and as such so too are the identities of the members and the content of what they take to be part of the tradition. Sometimes, traditions are even created in retrospect, as when contemporary thinkers organize historical precedents in modern terms that past thinkers may never have known about or accepted. We find evidence of this in attempts by Hu Shi, Liu Shipei and others to “organize the national heritage” in the early twentieth century, by corralling a diverse range of Chinese thinkers into an idea of the Chinese tradition for nationalist purposes (Eber 1968). Something similar happens to other historical figures such as John Locke, who is often placed by modern thinkers into an imaginary lineage of “liberalism” or a “social contract tradition” of which he himself could never have been aware. When I refer to the idea of working “within” Chinese tradition(s), then, I do not aim to reify the content of such traditions nor do I claim that they offer clear and unambiguous boundaries that articulate some uniquely “Chinese” identity. Rather, I use such terms to invite the exploration of intellectual conversations whose origins, developments, and potential deployments in discourse lie outside established streams of Western thought, recognizing that the terms and conditions of such explorations will always remain contestable. I also mean to draw attention to the ways in which historically situated conversations often remained internally self-​referential, such that the meaning of any given claim cannot be considered outside of the historical precedents it either assumes or invokes. I hold that such explorations are valuable even if the content or historical career of what we want to call a “tradition” intersects with other ideas or practices circulating in places seen to be “outside” it. In fact, all traditions are composed of such heterogenous elements, which may form

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a new hybrid or may be sustained by a tradition in parallel or contradictory ways. This heterogeneity is an important part of the argument of contemporary Chinese intellectuals such as Xu Jilin, who hope to combat the rising nativism in intellectual circles in China by showing how Chinese thought can and should be open to foreign influences. It has always-​already been cosmopolitan; there is no such thing as a “pure” Chinese tradition. In any case it would be intellectually irresponsible, if not dangerous, to ignore knowledge simply because it was produced by people who are not perceived to be “like” you ethnically or culturally (Xu 2009). In invoking the possibility of working “within” a tradition, however, I want to move beyond simply marking the inevitably hybrid character of certain given traditions; often the historical stories about hybridization and cross-​fertilization detract attention from the substantive claims made by self-​conscious participants in that tradition, and it is my goal in this chapter to explore precisely such claims. Now that the messiness of what constitutes a tradition, as well as its constantly shifting and permeable borders, has been established, I will drop the scare quotes around terms such as “inside” and “outside,” but the reader should keep in mind that these refer to relative and historically specific judgments about how certain ideas have been made to hang together, and their political stakes in doing so. As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, the modern discipline of philosophy has made huge strides in expanding its terms and content to include bodies of thought in the rest of the world. Why then should we bother excavating methods of textual interpretation or evidence-​giving that are (in the Chinese case) usually both temporally and geographically distant from the historical centers of philosophical practice? What do we hope to gain, and how will our practices change as we do so? I argue that these historical and ongoing Chinese conversations potentially embody or explicitly formulate methods of argument, goals of inquiry, and criteria of evidence whose insights and standards may be generalizable (distinct from “universalizable”) to other places and times. Elsewhere, I have explained that this process lies at the heart of what we call “theory,” but it applies to philosophy as well. When using any idea or insight, we necessarily put forward a comparative claim about the extent to which one situation is similar enough to that of others, such that its ideas can be applied (or “deterritorialized”) to those other contexts (Jenco 2016: 4–​11). In what follows I suggest five reasons for attending to methods within and not only outside Chinese traditions, and offer examples (drawn from my own research as well as that of others) of how these methods may operate. Not all of these reasons are necessarily compatible with each other, but any one of them makes an argument for why we should work from within rather than only from without. Indeed, although for the purposes of this handbook most of my examples use “Chinese” methods, many of these arguments can apply more generally to the examination of methods from within any body of thought that has historically been, or continues to be, marginalized within the contemporary academic practice of philosophy. One final note: I am not arguing that any and every Chinese conversation necessarily offers something of value to us, or that it will have any beneficial transformative effect. This is the case with any “tradition” or body of work. I am simply trying to show that some of these Chinese conversations do have something to offer our

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methodological discussions, and that often part of what is they offer is a challenge to our very standards of value. (1)  We may find new and unexpected solutions to old problems. This is perhaps the most straightforward of reasons for pursuing methods from within the Chinese (or any other typically marginalized) body of traditions. By understanding the methodological context within which ideas or solutions in Sinophone discourse were posed, we are better able to comprehend their novelty or difference with the kinds of questions and answers we find within our own community of discourse (wherever or whenever that community may be located). This is related to, but slightly different from, the argument made by Quentin Skinner that we should contextualize the ideas from the past within their own historically specific patterns of discourse in order to understand them “on their own terms” (Skinner 1969; 1974). For Skinner, the point of such an exercise was to understand the past in a historical way, not to use its ideas or innovations for philosophical purposes in our own place and time. What I am suggesting here, rather, is that we attend carefully to the modes of discourse within which past thinkers may have posed their solutions to political, social, and other kinds of problems, as a means of better grappling with our own. This involves the same kind of deliberate distancing—​the refusal to read other thought only in terms of our own existing categories—​advocated by Skinner, but it also includes, crucially, a willingness to transform our own discourse in order to make sense of what we find in these sources. We learn from difference, but not by assimilating it; rather, attending to the methods through which ideas are made legible and credible, we come to transform our terms of discourse through which we operate today and in the future. One example of how Chinese methods, here understood loosely as a mode of analyzing the social world in ways that offer evidence intelligible to a given audience, may open new fields of inquiry can be found in a series of debates over the efficacy of personal virtue versus institutional capacity (Jenco 2010a; 2010b). Throughout Chinese history, there existed a persistent dichotomy between what classical thinkers called renzhi人治 (which we may provisionally translate as “rule by persons,” sometimes also associated with dezhi 德治, “rule by virtue”) and fazhi 法治 (which we may call “rule by law or institution”). This binary continues to animate contemporary Chinese legal discussion, and forms the terms through which ideas such as “socialist rule of law” in the PRC are debated (Zhang and Zeng 1981). Many contemporary legal scholars have understood fazhi within the discourse of modern, Weberian-​style “rule-​of-​law” regimes, in which law (in the form of constitutions or statutes) governs the personal conduct of everyone in society, including particularly the rulers and leaders (e.g., Peerenboom 2002; Shen 2000). However, when such “rule of law” notions were entering Chinese discourse in the early twentieth century, they were not assimilated so easily into these existing indigenous terms “renzhi” and “fazhi.” A careful reading of the debates in which these terms played a prominent role shows that fazhi does not mean rule of law in a contemporary legal sense, but rather limns the anxiety of Chinese thinkers and leaders about the extent to which institutions (fa 法) as opposed to virtuous individuals (de 德, ren 人) might be efficacious in transforming

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social and legal environments. This way of understanding fazhi corresponds much more closely to indigenous modes of discourse, and in fact explains contemporary invocations of the term in contemporary PRC debates more lucidly and accurately than does the reductivist binary of “rule of man” versus “rule of law.” This can be seen in a well-​known debate dating from the early 1910s, when Zhang Shizhao disputed Liang Qichao’s support for Yuan Shikai, first president of the Chinese republic, on the grounds that Yuan was not (as he claimed to be) a sagely ruler capable of transforming Chinese society through his own virtue (Liang 1915; Zhang Shizhao 2000). Zhang was not expressing support for a Weberian-​style rule of law, as was often supposed, but rather pointing out the multiple sources of social change in society, and calling for greater attention to the ways in which human conduct is necessarily shaped, enhanced, and constrained by institutions. Applying this indigenous way of reading the debate to contemporary questions about rule of law in China, we discover that when Jiang Zemin and other leaders emphasize the need for “rule by virtue,” they are not necessarily only trying to justify their own personalized authoritarian control over Chinese society, or dismissing the importance of rule of law; they are also expressing a genuine concern that personal behavior makes a difference to political outcomes in a way irreducible to reforms of institutions (Jenco 2010b). Armed with these insights, we are now in a better position to understand certain Chinese debates over law or virtue. Just as importantly, we arrive with a new set of tools with which to analyze our own contemporary situation, and specifically to consider the extent to which personal virtue (including inclinations to certain forms of political behavior, such as treating other persons in egalitarian ways) does influence political outcomes in specific ways that are more than merely epiphenomena. Developing these terms, including delving further into their use and contestability in older Chinese discussions, may enhance ongoing research in a number of different areas of political and social science. Some of these areas already recognize the importance of personal virtue but lack a strong vocabulary for defending and articulating its importance. In this way fazhi and renzhi debates may help to refine analysis of political behavior, citizenship, and values. Many scholars in China and elsewhere have also begun to show how indigenous Chinese ideas may offer new modes for interpreting existing problems. One very prominent example has been Zhao Tingyang’s insistence that the idea of “all under Heaven” (tian xia 天下) found in traditional Chinese thought offers a way of truly thinking “of and for the world” or from the world’s perspective, rather than simply about the world from the perspective of individual nation-​states, as found in much contemporary international relations theory (Zhao 2005; 2006). Although Zhao has been criticized for failing to ground his theory in a coherent philosophy (Callahan 2008), he follows earlier thinkers throughout the twentieth century who hoped to create new space for Chinese thought to make contributions to globally shared problems (e.g., Du 1916). This space can be further widened, I argue, if we also remain open to the possibility that Chinese thought may lead us in totally unanticipated directions. This leads me to the next reason for studying methods within Chinese bodies of thought.

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(2) We may find new ways of asking questions, even questions that would never otherwise have occurred to us. Studying indigenous methodologies is valuable not only for providing new answers to our existing questions. This practice may also help us pose new questions in totally different ways. Consider the very methods for practicing cross-​cultural engagement itself. For germinal works in this field of academic inquiry, such as Roxanne Euben’s Enemy in the Mirror and Fred Dallmayr’s books and articles, this practice of engagement relies crucially on the historical and cultural background conditions which makes all production of knowledge—​including cross-​cultural knowledge—​ possible (Dallmayr 1996; 1999; Euben 1999). Drawing on hermeneutical analyses by Charles Taylor, Hans-​Georg Gadamer, and others, these theorists argue that we cannot transcend the background conditions which situate us in one place and time rather than another. Given this “embeddedness” in social, historical, and cultural contexts beyond our immediate control, many philosophers and theorists have analogized the task of learning across cultures to a dialogue, in which our encounter with a situated other enables awareness of our own positioning and limitations. We expand our own language to accommodate the particularity of the other and to acknowledge his or her difference with us. In contrast, when Chinese thinkers encountered European and American ideas in the mid-​to late-​nineteenth century, they pursued cross-​cultural engagement in very different ways from these contemporary scholars, motivated by different reasons and on the basis of different premises. Although their conversation stretched across many decades, evoking a variety of terms, standards, and perspectives, its participants largely coalesced around a set of shared questions about what and how to learn from the “West” (xiyang 西洋). Their goal was not to inaugurate a self-​reflexive conversation, as Euben, Dallmayr, and others urge, but to produce knowledge as the Westerners do. For these Chinese reformers, such production implied not the simple reproduction of Western ideas, technology, or practices, but the more sophisticated alignment of Chinese knowledge-​production with Western precedents so as to spur innovation along one line rather than another. This approach does not imply that Chinese thinkers during this period somehow believed we could be autonomous, unencumbered individuals, with total control over our pasts and futures. Rather, they simply interpreted the possibilities of what “cultural embeddedness” is in a different way. During the 1898 reform movement, radicals such as Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei formulated a concept of bianfa 變法 (“change of models”) to urge the Emperor to install constitutionalism and parliamentarism. In the context of these debates, bianfa can be more precisely read as “changing of referents,” in that Chinese thinkers urged not just the hybridization or translation of Western ideas (or ways) into Chinese contexts, but the total realignment of Chinese institutions and ways of life to accord with what they believed to be “Western” models. The fact of embeddedness, for these thinkers, did not circumscribe what we can learn so much as it invited deeper, political interventions: that means that rather than simply see the exchange of knowledge as something happening on an epistemological level within individual

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minds, they urged collective transformation of the communities that underwrite our existing criteria for knowledge, to refurbish the institutions, social conventions, histories, and languages that shape the contours of shared knowledge and make its production possible. As Liang Qichao notes, this political shift is possible not because of a universal or shared set of values between East and West, but because the capacity to change exists everywhere, in both China and the West: What I am calling “new referents” (xinfa 新法) are not what Westerners had all along, but things they constructed. There is absolutely no doubt that changing [referents] and implementing them in the West is not so different from the circumstances of changing [referents] and implementing them in the East. Besides, for an example of this taking place brilliantly on Eastern soil, can’t you look to Japan, which grew supremely strong because they undertook change? (Liang 1994: 6) In arguing that such dramatic change is possible, Liang, Kang, and their fellow reformers draw attention to the extent to which incommensurability may not necessarily figure in, or be paradigmatic for, all instances of cross-​ cultural engagement. This is because incommensurability is only a synchronic rather than diachronic phenomenon: over time, the conditions under which two beliefs or ideas are seen to be incommensurable are themselves negotiable, largely through the ways in which the people who adhere to such beliefs change their minds, come together in new communities, or reinterpret the past. These Chinese reformers do not, then, characterize the cross-​cultural encounter as an epistemological dilemma about how to register the claims of differently situated others. Rather, they pose East-​West cultural differences to show how knowledge is always produced within some community of argument that judges the adequacy of what we learn, as well as the intelligibility—​and legitimacy—​of our innovations. Cross-​cultural learning therefore becomes a political task that acts to name and transform the communities that legitimate knowledge. The historical and social embeddedness that on other views of culture circumscribe, or at least importantly condition, the mobility of knowledge from one community or moment to another is here refigured as a target of transformation over time. These conversations, which I can only gesture toward in the space I have here, invite a range of different questions. Rather than focus on how discrete entities across time might be compared, we might follow them to ask: how does the passage of time (such as from past to future) form constraints or possibilities for our present inquiry, including inquiry about comparison, parochialism, and the production of knowledge? And how might that past itself be subject to reappraisal or resituating, given the long-​and short-​term tractability of collective bases for the production of knowledge? These questions strike at the heart of cross-​cultural engagement because they do not see what we are capable of thinking as tied so ineluctably to the specific culture or background into which we were born. They rather ask how we might collectively and individually act to transform the foundations of knowledge, for example by inaugurating institutions or societies, rather than assume those foundations as “given” or inherent in our culture.

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By recognizing that methods from within the Chinese tradition may pose questions that were heretofore unasked by our existing communities of argument, we are in a better position to recognize the third reason why examining such methods may be important. (3) We recognize and act upon the ambitions to generality or universality present in certain claims and traditions, rather than reduce them merely to particularist versions of some already existing universalism. Most claims or ideas put forward by thinkers and philosophers are meant to be general lessons, or at least contain knowledge with applicability beyond its immediate context, however much that context may influence the nature and extent of that knowledge. Indeed, this is precisely how most thinkers within the Western tradition are treated. Most philosophers and theorists do not, for example, say that Max Weber’s insights into the nature of bureaucracy, or Karl Marx’s arguments about the workings of the capitalist system, have relevance only in the time and place they were first formulated. Unfortunately the same is often not true for non-​ Western thinkers, with some exceptions. As this handbook shows, certain Chinese thinkers such as Mencius have become hugely influential in comparative philosophy. But in general, this kind of treatment is reserved only for germinal or unusually influential non-​Western thinkers, and the rich methodologies developed later on to interpret those thinkers within given bodies of non-​Western traditions are often given short shrift. For example, although Confucius is hugely popular as an object of philosophical inquiry, the hugely diverse traditions of ru 儒 learning associated with “Confucianism” are rarely studied by philosophers. If these later bodies of thought are considered at all, their contributions are typically reduced to museumized artifacts, perceived to be of interest primarily to historians rather than philosophers. Oddly enough, however, these later thinkers probably shared Confucius’s goal to provide insight into politics, society, and human life more generally—​insights that were not just intended for people who self-​identify as “Chinese” or “East Asian,” or who happened to be alive and in their location when they were writing and thinking. This means that the recent turn to “particularize” those claims by situating them within their given historical or cultural context—​whether by Quentin Skinner, who insists on historicizing ideas, or by many recent comparative political theorists, who read the claims of differently situated others as applicable to their specific context but not to the nature of knowledge-​production as “we” currently practice it—​often violates the intentions of non-​Western thinkers to make broader claims about, say, political or social life more generally. Indeed, this very potential undergirds my own claims in the previous two sections that what Chinese thinkers have to offer can apply to our own context. That does not mean that their ideas can apply automatically, or that those ideas will always-​already appear as transparent and meaningful to us in our time and place. But it does mean that we can transform ourselves by recognizing the extent to which these ideas of differently situated thinkers may be offering more general lessons about social and political life. Evidence of these possibilities may be found in the practice of classical Sinology by European, American, and Japanese scholars. Sinology is an international academic

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field of inquiry aggregated from various traditional Chinese models of text-​criticism (jingxue經學). Although many Sinologists now self-​identify as linguists or historians, their modes of inquiry remain at least partly constituted by modes of analysis laid down by earlier Chinese scholars, many of whom associated with the turn to critical textual analysis (kaozheng 考證) in the Qing dynasty (Honey 2001; Jenco 2011). In addition to the examples I explored above, this possibility of practicing Chinese knowledge elsewhere, and developing its potential in an international academic arena, demonstrates that it is not only Western knowledge which contains potential generalizability. One excellent recent example of this usage is by Michael Puett, who has argued that certain classical Chinese theories of ritual, such as those found in the Li yun 禮運 chapter of the Book of Rites, show how “human ritual domesticates an otherwise capricious and dangerous world” which “creates continuities among disparate phenomena” (Puett 2010: 366). In doing so, it articulates the ways in which routinized actions postulate ““as if ”” worlds, which call into being more ideal conditions in shared everyday practice (Seligman et al. 2008). Indeed, by assuming that only Western ideas can shape our practices, we are unavoidably particularizing non-​Western thought as “other” and reproducing the very Eurocentrism we are attempting to critique. This brings me to the next reason for attending to Chinese methods. (4) We avoid reproducing the very Eurocentrism that a turn to Chinese or other philosophies is meant to overcome. This is one of the most important, but overlooked, reasons for turning to Chinese methods of inquiry. One of the reasons philosophers and theorists are interested in Chinese thought in general is precisely that they hope to learn something from it; and if they hope to learn something from it, then it stands to reason that they do not believe that only Western ideas are valid ones. In other words, they are trying to fight a view of knowledge that is Eurocentric. However, it is ironic that many of these same scholars often engage ideas from Chinese or other bodies of thought in very Eurocentric ways: the method, if not the content, of their thought is Eurocentric, which means that the very criteria through which they judge knowledge as “knowledge” per se is Eurocentric. Many thinkers in China and elsewhere, beginning in the early to mid-​twentieth century, did precisely this when they attempted to demonstrate the value of Chinese traditional thought by showing how it could be translated into the terms of Anglo-​American analytic philosophy. In his germinal set of translations and commentary compiled in A Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy, for example, the philosopher Wing-​Tsit Chan identified the two branches of neo-​Confucianism as they developed in the Song dynasty, lixue 理學 and xinxue 心學, with the philosophical schools of rationalism and idealism, respectively (Chan 1963). He was following the precedent of earlier attempts by Hu Shi and Feng Youlan to write a proper history of Chinese philosophy, in which the large body of traditional Chinese thought was organized using Western philosophical terms (such as “metaphysics” or “ethics”), despite the fact that these terms were alien to how the historical figures of this tradition thought about what they were doing (Feng 1937). In addition, many of the terms that the Chinese thinkers did use were translated in

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ways that made them appear more familiar and similar to existing Western ideas than they actually may be: for example, Hu Shi translates the neo-​Confucian idea of tianli 天理 (pattern of Heaven) as “natural law,” assimilating it to understandings of natural order influenced by Christianity (Hu 1953). These moves were not entirely uncontroversial at the time, but more recently Chinese scholars have identified specific problems with this analytic approach. These scholars have started a debate over what they call “the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” (Zhongguo zhexue de hefaxing 中國哲學的合法性). The debate raises the questions of how, if at all, the categories of traditional Chinese thought are done epistemic violence by reading and valuing them only through the lenses of contemporary academic philosophy (Zheng 2001; see the excellent discussion in Defoort 2001). Some scholars have also raised the possibility of using traditional Chinese categories as themselves the basis for new modes of inquiry, and that is in part what I also advocate here (Fang 2002; Wei 2004). In my own work, I have suggested the possibility of using different forms of Chinese classicism (jingxue) to advance alternative forms of textual interpretation (including cross-​ cultural interpretation) constituted by personal relationships to philosophically or religiously significant texts and their present and/​or historical community of interpreters (Jenco 2007). I contrast these jingxue approaches to those employed by many contemporary philosophers and theorists, who tend to use texts to stage a dialogue between situated interlocutors embedded in specific historical and cultural contexts (Godrej 2009; Taylor 1985). This dialogic approach to cross-​cultural engagement privileges encounters which are egalitarian and vocalized, whereas jingxue approaches recognize that vocalization and clear articulation are not always important or relevant to how a text should be understood; many of its most significant ideas may be sublimated or obscure, such that finding those meanings via engaging the historical community of interpretation gives rise to the reader’s self-​transformation (these obscure yet significant meanings are described by many jingxue practitioners as weiyan dayi 微 言大義: small words, great meaning). When we encounter culturally or historically distant texts, then, we may not necessarily want to engage in dialogue with them as isolated interlocutors who can clearly “speak” to us on equal footing. Rather, jingxue suggests we should first exercise the humility to become acquainted with the body of knowledge produced by its generations of interpreters. It is of course true that not all methods used by Chinese people can or will be relevant, useful, or illuminating. But that does not mean they are all without value. More importantly, without using or at least becoming open to Chinese methods, we cannot avoid reproducing the power relationships that dictate only Western forms of knowledge as legitimate, “real” knowledge. This is true even if we attempt to incorporate the content of Chinese philosophy into our fields of knowledge. By using Chinese methods, however, we get a bit closer to understanding—​and practicing—​Chinese philosophy on its own terms. This brings me to the last and final reason for engaging Chinese methods. (5) By using Chinese methods, we perform rather than merely speculate about the kinds of changes we need to enact in order to comprehend knowledge situated

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in different places and times. This opens our inquiry to new ways of exploring our world, which may displace or shatter existing practices. Much current research on the turn to “comparative” or “non-​Western” thought tends to be speculative in nature: that is, it considers what it might be like to open ourselves to the radically different, or what kinds of ethical dispositions we might cultivate in order to do so. In a series of books and articles, the philosopher Fred Dallmayr has urged us to engage in mutually transformative, comparative encounters in the “global village” to interrogate our own parochialism (Dallmayr 1996; 1998; 1999). This is of course a noble and important goal. It is surely the case that self-​reflexivity is hugely important in enabling the kind of transformative effects that make the use of Chinese methods possible. Because comparison enables one to be aware of how particular discourses are situated in time and space, we are able to recognize with greater lucidity the limitations of Eurocentric discourse, particularly as it may or may not apply to different times and places. Yet, it is notable that Dallmayr derives his vision for how such inquiry should proceed entirely from well-​established positions in continental and analytic Euro-​American philosophy. Nowhere does he draw upon the actual content, methodologies, or expectations of the differently situated thought he hopes to engage with such dialogue. He even suggests that engaging cultural others and inaugurating “comparative political theory” will enable a more genuine universalism by ““rekindle[ing] the critical élan endemic to political philosophy since the time of Socrates and Plato”” (Dallmayr 2004: 254). He calls for a philosophy that engages with the diverse ways of thinking in the world, yet typically does not “perform” the act of using those ways of thinking to think himself. Why is this important? If we are concerned about Eurocentrism or at least motivated by awareness that other forms of knowledge from outside of Euro-​America can be prima facie legitimate, then enhancing self-​reflexivity through comparison or dialogue addresses only one part of the phenomenon of Eurocentrism: it offers a powerful way to particularize given ideas or discourses, such as those associated with Euro-​American academic theory, but it fails to consider how, if at all other, differently situated discourses (or traditions or concepts or . . .) might come to have general relevance for us in the here and now. This means that our inquiry simply cannot be detached from those differently situated discourses which Euro-​American knowledge-​ production has historically marginalized. We cannot proceed simply by using Europhone and Eurocentric discourses to speculate about how our own parochialism might be critiqued. On pain of irrelevance and self-​contradiction, we must perform and not simply gesture toward the very self-​displacements that the critique calls for. We must engage directly the diversity of historically and culturally situated discourses, and must allow for the possibility that their terms may challenge or displace our own. We might better understand why this is important by “performing” just such an approach, using it to inform even the cross-​cultural arguments I am making here. One of the very earliest discussions about cross-​cultural learning which arose in China after the Opium Wars surrounded the popular claim that Western knowledge

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all had a Chinese origin (xixue zhongyuan 西學中原). Many reformers at court and in the broader public claimed that everything from the alarm clock to Christian love originally appeared or was invented in China (Quan 1956). This claim is often dismissed as cultural chauvinism, but if we analyze it from the perspective I have been trying to develop here (i.e., if we remain sympathetically open to the possibility that these premises of inquiry should be taken seriously) then we can see that the claim might be performing much more subtle work: those who invoke it effectively present the “cultural” differences presented by foreign knowledge as identical to those “historical” differences already authorizing innovation within their existing activities of knowledge-​production. In doing so, these debates reveal the contingency of how otherness is identified and organized (Jenco 2014). That is, they show not only that otherness is necessarily defined by relational terms rather than ontological essences, but also that differences which support one kind of otherness—​ say, cultural—​may also be reorganized to support another kind—​say, historical. It is commonplace in political and social theory, as well as philosophy, to learn from past thinkers taken to be “our own”—​Immanuel Kant may not be speaking English and living in twenty-​first-​century New York, but we can still overcome these historical differences to comprehend and learn from what he was trying to say. Those who advocated the “China-​origins” thesis were indicating that we might see culturally foreign knowledge as part of our own past, situating that knowledge as no more distant from us as Kant (or, in their case, Confucius). In this way, we might learn from thinkers taken to be culturally different from us. In fact, we must broach something like a China-​origins claim if we are to see typically marginalized (“non-​Western”) thought as part of what disciplines our thought, rather than serves simply as its target of inclusion. Doing so, we blur self/​foreign as well as history/​culture binaries and enable future innovation of thought on radically new terms (Jenco 2014).

PROBLEMS WITH THIS APPROACH AND SOME RESPONSES One of the strongest and most significant objections to my approach here comes from postcolonial studies, a field which carefully examines the kinds of power relationships, forms of knowledge, and information flows emerging from the phenomenon of European imperialism. Many scholars of postcolonial studies believe that the pervasion of Eurocentric categories in the modern world makes the kind of approach I am advocating here virtually impossible. As Dipesh Chakrabarty has claimed, “It is impossible to think of anywhere in the world without invoking certain categories and concepts, the genealogies of which go deep into the intellectual and even theological traditions of Europe” (2000: 4). Chakrabarty’s point is that the modern world as we know it now has been so remade by European imperialism—​ including its epistemic as well as its political and economic hegemony—​that it can only be comprehended through Europeanized concepts, which themselves constitute the basis of all thought as such. Experiences and ideas outside of European thought are effectively “subaltern,” that is, impossible to incorporate into our existing

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(Europeanized) discourse on its own terms. If it is incorporated at all, it is usually in terms of its historical or cultural significance rather than in terms of its disciplinary contribution to knowledge. We lack the ability to truly “see” it, at best remaining able only to translate these ideas into our own idioms of knowledge. This postcolonial critique is important in drawing attention to the fact that knowledge never exists outside of the power relationships that make it possible. There is no such thing as “pure thought”; there is only thought at specific places and times which is subject to institutionalized influence, linguistic dominance, cultural privilege, and other forms of social life seemingly unrelated to knowledge per se. This aspect of knowledge is often ignored in philosophy, which focuses primarily on rather abstract ideas. But it is important to remember that those ideas cannot make sense outside of specific communities with their own vocabularies, interests, and institutional power dynamics. However, I disagree with Chakrabarty that recognizing this fact necessarily means we cannot think outside of Europeanized categories. The examples of Chinese methods I offered above are meant to counteract such pessimism, by suggesting that through certain processes of self-​ transformation—​which includes not only individual rethinking of our categories but also collective reworking of the institutions and communities which support knowledge-​production—​we are able to begin thinking outside of our existing lines of thought. We need not assume that existing modes of knowledge-​production need to persist, especially given our collective motivation to find greater space for Chinese thought in the discipline of philosophy.

FURTHER PROJECTS AND IMPLICATIONS One question which emerges out of the claims I have advanced in this chapter is: to what extent do these methods exert what Foucault has called “disciplinary effects”—​ that is, how do they shape inquiry (including comparative inquiry, which takes into account historically marginalized, “non-​Western” philosophies) in one way rather than another? Put more concretely, how might my own arguments in this chapter, about the possibility of using Chinese methods, themselves be shaped by the Chinese discourses which form not only my archive, but my theoretical resources? And how might our (shared?) inquiry be transformed when many different scholars, with perspectives constituted by many historically and culturally diverse experiences, develop their own ideas about the comparative or cross-​cultural project of including greater numbers of marginalized bodies of thought into our inquiry? This question is particularly salient, given that so much of the discussion of Eurocentrism has been guided by the colonial experiences of South Asia. The subaltern and postcolonial perspectives which have informed more general critiques of the parochialism of knowledge-​production are powerful and indispensable. But, as I have tried to show here, they do not exhaust all of the possibilities for engaging non-​Western (including Chinese) philosophy, and we cannot remain blind to the ways in which differently situated perspectives may shatter even the assumptions which motivate our examination of them in the first place (Jenco 2011: 30). The kinds of

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experiences and scholarly perspectives which seem to reinforce the Heideggerian or Gadamerian view of the “prejudices” we bring to knowledge-​production are simply not salient within, and arguably not even applicable to, the Chinese conversations I examine. Applying such views to Chinese philosophy, particularly in ways which ignore the methodological contributions and insights of Chinese bodies of thought, may obscure both the questions and answers that Chinese philosophies have historically and continue today to pose. It is my hope that books like this one will encourage more research to bring those possibilities to light.

REFERENCES Callahan, W. A. (2008), “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-​Hegemonic or a New Hegemony?” International Studies Review, 10.4: 749–​761. Chakrabarty, D. (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chan, W. (1963), A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dallmayr, F. (1996), Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-​Cultural Encounter, Albany: State University of New York Press. Dallmayr, F. (1998), Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village, New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Dallmayr, F. (1999), Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Dallmayr, F. (2004), “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics, 2.2: 124–​144. Defoort, C. (2001), “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate,” Philosophy East and West, 51.3: 393–​413. Du, Y. (1916), “Passive Civilizations and Active Civilizations (靜的文明與動的文明),” Eastern Miscellany 東方雜誌, 13.10. Eber, I. (1968), “Hu Shih and Chinese History: The Problem of Cheng-​li Kuo-​Ku,” Monumenta Serica, 27: 169–​207. Euben, R. L. (1999), Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fang, Z. (2002), “A Critical Reflection on the Systematics of Traditional Chinese Learning,” Philosophy East and West, 52.1: 36–​49. Feng, Y. (1937), A History of Chinese Philosophy, London: Allen & Unwin. Godrej, F. (2009), “Towards a Cosmopolitan Political Thought: The Hermeneutics of Interpreting the Other,” Polity, 41.2: 135–​165. Honey, D. B. (2001), Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology, New Haven: American Oriental Society. Hu, S. (1953), “The Natural Law in the Chinese Tradition,” Natural Law Institute Proceedings, 5: 119–​153.

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Jenco, L. (2007), “ ‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methods-​centered Approach to Cross-​cultural Engagement,” The American Political Science Review, 101.4: 741–​755. Jenco, L. (2010a), Making the Political: Founding and Action in the Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Jenco, L. (2010b), “ ‘Rule by Man’ and ‘Rule by Law’ in Early Republican China: Contributions to a Theoretical Debate,” Journal of Asian Studies, 69.1: 181–​203. Jenco, L. (2011), “Recentering Political Theory: The Promise of Mobile Locality,” Cultural Critique, 79: 27–​59. Jenco, L. (2014), “Histories of Thought and Comparative Political Theory: The Curious Thesis of ‘Chinese Origins for Western Knowledge,’ 1860–​1895,” Political Theory, 42.6:  658–​681. Jenco, L. (2016), “On the Possibility of Chinese Thought as Global Theory,” Chinese Thought as Global Theory: Deparochializing Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences and Humanities, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Liang, Q. C. 梁啟超 (1915), “The Foundations of Politics, With a Directive for Public Opinion Leaders (政治之基礎與言論家之指針),” in Da Zhonghua zazhi 大眾化雜誌, Taibei: Wenhua chubanshe, pp. 233–​255. Liang, Q. C. (1994), “General Discussion on Reform (變法通義),” in Yinbingshi heji-​wenji 飲冰室合集文集. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Peerenboom, R. (2002), China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Puett, M. (2010), “Ritualization as Domestication: Ritual Theory from Classical China,” in A. Michaels, A. Mishra, L. Dolce, G. Raz, and K. Triplett (eds.), Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Quan, H. S. (1956), “The Late Qing Claim that ‘Western knowledge originated in China’ (清末的’西學原出中國’說),” in Z. P. Bao (ed.), Chinese Modern History series 中國 近代史論叢, Taibei: Zhongzheng. Seligman, A., M. Puett, R. Weller, and B. Simon (2008), Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shen, Y. (2000), “Conceptions and Receptions of Legality: Understanding the Complexity of Law Reform in Modern China,” in K. G. Turner (ed.), The Limits of the Rule of Law in China, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Skinner, Q. (1969), “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory, 8.1: 3–​53. Skinner, Q. (1974), “Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action,” Political Theory, 2.3: 277–​303. Taylor, C. (1985), “Understanding and Ethnocentricity,” Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wei, C. B. 魏長寶 (2004), “Narratives of the Legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy and Its Transcendence (中國哲學的合法性敘事及其超越),” Philosophical Trends哲學動態, 6: 7–​9. Xu, J. (2009), “Historical Memories of May Fourth: Patriotism, but of What Kind?” China Heritage Quarterly, 17. http://​www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/​features. php?searchterm=017_​mayfourthmemories.inc&issue=017, accessed August14, 2014.

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Zhang, P. and X. Zeng (1981), “Historical Analysis of Rule by Man and Rule by Law人治 與 法治的歷史剖析,” in Y. Xia (ed.), Collected Essays on the Problem of Rule by Law and Rule by Man 法治與人治問題討論集, Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chu ban she. Zhang, S. 章士釗 (2000), “Politics and Society (政治與社會),” in The Complete Works of Zhang Shizhao章士釗全集, Shanghai: Wen hui chu ban she. Zhao, T. Y. 趙汀陽 (2005), Tianxia System 天下體系, Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe. Zhao, T. Y. (2006), “Rethinking Empire from a Chinese Concept ‘All-​under-​Heaven’ (Tian-​xia),” Social Identities, 12.1: 29–​41. Zheng, J. 鄭家棟 (2001), “The Issue of the ‘Legitimacy’ of Chinese Philosophy 中國哲學 的合法性問題,” Chinese Philosophy Year Book 中國哲學年鑑.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Methodology in Chinese-​Indian Comparative Philosophy ALEXUS MCLEOD

WHAT IS COMPARATIVE CHINESE-​INDIAN PHILOSOPHY, AND HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM “COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY”? The area of Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy in the West (at least among philosophers and those in other fields working on philosophical issues) is fairly young. In sinological studies in the mid-​twentieth century, the issue of comparative Chinese-​Indian philosophy mainly arose in the context of attempting to understand Chinese Buddhism. Of necessity, scholars working on Chinese Buddhism had to deal with concepts, theories, and terms that arose in an Indian context, and often (and still today), having some understanding of Indian concepts from philosophy done in Sanskrit was necessary, especially for those working on early Chinese Buddhism. China and India certainly have been no strangers to one another—​thinkers in both regions have been engaged in comparative work considering the other since long before the modern age, beginning with the entrance of Buddhism into China in the late Han period (third century ce), and likely even before this. Philosophical concepts, arguments, and motivations in China have been greatly influenced by Indian ideas since the Eastern Han. By the time of Zhu Xi in the twelfth-​century ce, the influence and entrenchment of Indian ideas was arguably at its peak, even in the thought of non-​Buddhists (or even anti-​Buddhist) thinkers such as Zhu. In the West, however, the comparative project, insofar as one existed, was mainly limited to Chinese Buddhist studies (scholars of Indian Buddhist philosophy had less reason to be concerned with Chinese thought). But the area has in recent years been developing in new and different ways, as an increasing number of comparative scholars are engaging in the project of considering historically unrelated traditions and thinkers in China and India. Also, as China and India both continue to become

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major players in the global economy, there is an increasing amount of attention paid to these neighboring civilizations, and the philosophical traditions of both. In some ways the methodologies of comparative philosophy in Chinese-​Indian thought are the same as those of Chinese-​Western or Indian-​Western comparative philosophy. Some of the models I discuss below mirror those used in other areas of comparative philosophy. There are some additional complications, however, in the case of Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy. “Western” thought is not explicitly in the picture. This raises unique questions. Can those of us doing philosophy in the West, in Western languages, in departments in the modern Western academy, ever truly get away from the “Western” aspects of our thought?1 A couple of things might be said in response to this. First, if this is the case, then any study of non-​Western thought should be “comparative” in nature. How do we explain the difference between study of Chinese thought, for example, and comparative Chinese-​Western thought? Surely there is a difference here—​the work of Western scholars specifically on the Chinese tradition is different in nature and aim than that of scholars engaged in comparative Chinese-​ Western philosophy. Whatever “Western” assumptions and concepts might be embedded in our thought and our ways of approaching texts and traditions, if they do not undermine our ability to study Chinese or Indian thought on their own terms (outside of the Western comparative approach), then there is no reason they should undermine our ability to engage in comparative philosophy with Chinese and Indian thought, rather than with one of them and the West. Perhaps comparative Chinese-​Indian philosophy will be done differently in the West than it might be in China or India, for example.2 This is no reason, however, to think that the project is impossible or illegitimate. If the comparative Chinese-​Indian project is impossible on these grounds, then any attempt to understand traditions in different historical and cultural contexts is likewise doomed. If we can overcome the problem of supposed “incommensurability” and translation (which I won’t get into here, but I’m sure has been covered in other contributions to this volume),3 then there should be no particular problem with the Chinese-​Indian comparative project as opposed to the Chinese-​Western or Indian-​ Western comparative projects. There are, however, some unique obstacles to the Chinese-​Indian comparative project.

OBSTACLES TO THE CHINESE-​INDIAN COMPARATIVE PROJECT While we might expect to find the most robust concern with comparative Chinese-​ Indian philosophy among scholars of Chinese Buddhism, there has still been relatively little work done in the area. As Zhihua Yao (2010: 151) points out, most scholarship in Chinese Buddhism until very recently focused on Chinese thought and texts in the Chinese language. He explains that vast numbers of Buddhist texts remain in the classical Buddhist languages, that is, Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. Even those scholars with purely philosophical interests are required to have the philological skills necessary to work on at

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least one collection of primary sources. Owing to the linguistic limitations of the scholars themselves, the field has been compartmentalized by linguistic and geographical boundaries into Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhism. (Yao 2010: 151) The linguistic situation Yao describes has created a barrier for Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy in general. The language barrier here seems a far greater obstacle to overcome than for comparative philosophy between non-​Western and Western traditions. This is largely due not to incapacity of scholars to learn multiple languages,4 but rather to a few contingent features of contemporary Western academia (especially philosophy departments). First, most Western scholars, in philosophy, history, or other fields gain familiarity with the Western intellectual tradition as part of their scholarly formation. Even scholars who go on to become specialists in Asian thought or other non-​ Western thought are expected to have some background in Western thought. This is especially the case in philosophy. In every graduate program in philosophy in the United States, one will be required to have a fairly broad training in Western philosophy, both historical and contemporary. This will be the case even in those few places one might go to gain specialist training in non-​Western philosophy.5 Thus, any specialist in non-​Western philosophy will already of necessity have the tools to engage in comparative philosophy between their specialty area and the Western philosophical tradition. One interesting feature of this situation is the relaxation of the language requirement for the “Western” side of this comparative project. Asianists in philosophy generally are not required to know French or Latin to work on a comparative project concerning Zhuangzi and Descartes. A scholar working on a comparative project concerning Zhuangzi and Śankara, however, would likely not be taken seriously without facility in both Classical Chinese and Sanskrit. We have an easier time when engaging in the comparative project between a non-​Western text or thinker and a philosopher like Hume, Mill, Locke, or any of the other Western philosophers who wrote in English. The situation concerning specialists in Western academic institutions is a tricky one. Perhaps it is a sign of the narrowness or provinciality of our fields that Western thought is taken as a necessary aspect of our core education as scholars, while non-​Western thought is not. I believe that a more balanced conception of what is necessary for expertise in philosophy requires understanding of non-​Western thought. Until academic departments in general begin to think this way and institute requirements for developing scholars consistent with this, Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy will continue to be a difficult endeavor, as it will require going far beyond one’s training and into areas (as a nonspecialist) where one may not always be welcome. It will require those trained in Chinese (and Western) thought to cross over into the realm of Indian thought, where they will necessarily be less well versed and linguistically adept than specialists in Indian thought, and vice versa. And it will require greater collaboration between scholars of Chinese and Indian thought. Part of the problem here is simply the novelty of non-​Western philosophy in the Western academy in general. There has been serious study of Chinese thought within

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philosophy only for less than 100 years, for example, and the first philosophically trained scholars to engage with Chinese thought as specialists were themselves Chinese thinkers, who had been educated in a Western context (such as Hu Shi and Feng Youlan, mentioned above). Western scholars specializing in Chinese philosophy is an even more recent development, only beginning to surface in the last few generations beginning with scholars like H. G. Creel in the mid-​twentieth century, when the study of Chinese philosophy as philosophy began to emerge from the more general background of sinology. Still, many philosophers working in Chinese or Indian philosophy, until very recently, had training mainly in Western philosophy, due to the nature of the field. Even today, most philosophy departments with specialists in Chinese or Indian philosophy are heavily Western-​based, at least within the continental United States. The situation is somewhat different in philosophy departments in the greater Asian region. Still, one major issue perhaps holding back Chinese-​ Indian comparative philosophy (within philosophy departments) is the attempt of philosophers working in Chinese and Indian thought to gain “respectability” within “mainstream” (read “Western”) philosophy. In part because non-​Western modes of thought have been relegated to the sidelines in contemporary academic study of philosophy, a major concern of people who work in these areas has been to get on the field, as it were, rather than chat with other people sitting beside them on the bench. I think we might find, however, that it will turn out that what’s going on out on the field is not nearly as interesting as we’re led to believe, and that we might discover far more of use by getting together and playing our own game on the sidelines. This is not to disparage the attempt of philosophers working in Chinese or Indian thought to bring greater attention to these areas from all philosophers, make them central to philosophical training, and use ideas from them to advance contemporary debates. All of these things are important. But we should not get so lost in these projects that we overlook the importance of talking to and engaging with other non-​Western traditions of philosophy. It can become easy to think that the Western tradition of philosophy is foundational or necessary in a way that no other philosophical tradition is. Then an area of non-​Western philosophy is seen as a “specialist” area related to the foundational overall core of philosophy (which is fundamentally Western) in the same way philosophy of physics is related to philosophy in general. This is not, however, the way we envision ancient Greek philosophy. As long as Western philosophical thought is taken as necessary and foundational for anyone studying philosophy in ways that other philosophical traditions are not, we will have the problem that it will be difficult to engage in comparative philosophy with multiple non-​Western traditions. This project will simply not have academic and institutional “payoff ” (in terms of publications, recognition, ability to attain top positions, etc.). In philosophy departments, at least, most of the people specialists in non-​Western thought engage with are “Western” philosophers with little to no knowledge of non-​Western traditions, and these are by and large the people non-​Western specialists aim to convince of the philosophical value of non-​Western thought.

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MOTIVES AND METHODS One’s comparative method, of course, will be largely determined by one’s motivation for engaging in the comparative project in the first place. What is it we are looking to accomplish through comparing Chinese and Indian philosophical thought? In this section, I consider a number of actual and possible answers to this question, and the various methods that accompany these answers. The connection between comparative aim and comparative methodology is not one-​ to-​one, of course. Even given a particular comparative aim, there are a number of different methods we might use to achieve the desired end. But comparative goals do narrow the possible methods. If one’s aim is to understand how Indian concepts were integrated into a Chinese context with the rise of Buddhism in China, the “cosmopolitan” method of generating fuller understandings of concepts based on investigation of views on the concept in multiple traditions will not be of much use. Whereas if one’s main aim is to better understand concepts dealt with in multiple traditions, or to advance contemporary debates, different comparative methods will be useful. The most commonly used comparative methods can be usefully placed into one of two categories, which I call historical investigative methods and cosmopolitan methods. Each of these categories contains a variety of methods often very different from one another. What unites the methods under each of these headings is the comparative goal they aim to help one achieve. I have distinguished a number of subcategories within each of these main groups. Here I both discuss methods outlined by comparative scholars (generally as part of their own broader comparative work), and offer my own suggestions for additional models.

Historical Investigative Methods Through Historical Connection—​Buddhism Among some scholars interested in Chinese Buddhism or the influence of Indian thought in China, the primary aim of the comparative project is to explain how Chinese thinkers adapted and transformed Indian concepts into a Chinese intellectual context.6 This is a necessary part of understanding key issues in Chinese Buddhist philosophy. Not all studies in Chinese Buddhist philosophy deal explicitly with issues in Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy. Part of the reason for this is that we can simply often treat Chinese Buddhism as part of a continuous Buddhist tradition stretching back to India, in which the basic Buddhist concepts undergo changes based on the time and place of transmission of the Buddhist dharma. Thus, I would resist the idea that all study of Chinese Buddhist philosophy is inherently comparative Chinese-​Indian philosophy. Some scholars opt for a comparative approach that treats Buddhism and Chinese thought as distinct traditions, and consider the concepts within each in comparative context.7 This approach is similar to that outlined below, concerning the thought of

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non-​Buddhist Indian philosophy and Chinese philosophy, which may have had some indirect influence on one another, but were not directly influential as in the case of certain forms of Buddhism. While Indian Buddhism had direct connection with Chinese thought, it can also be useful to investigate the influence of earlier Indian thought in China, as it is manifested in some of the assumptions and concepts of Buddhism. The concepts of dharma, karma, mind (citra), and other important concepts in Buddhism originate in pre-​Buddhist Indian thought. Thus it can be useful, even in the comparative project where there is historical contact and influence, to think about these wider connections. Because of this connection through Buddhism, it is perhaps more natural for scholars of Chinese philosophy to gravitate toward the comparative Chinese-​Indian projects than for scholars of Indian philosophy. We increasingly see scholars from both sides working on these issues, however, especially as the comparative project grows beyond the Buddhist connection of Chinese and Indian thought, and into consideration of historically independent schools, traditions, and thinkers.8 There are a number of interesting comparative questions concerning the adoption and influence of Indian ideas in China. Intellectual historians and philosophers alike are concerned with such questions. Richard Robinson (1967: 5) posed a few of these questions about the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism in particular, in his classic study on Madhyamaka in China and India: To what degree and in what way did fifth century Chinese Buddhists understand the Madhyamika teaching that Kumarajiva introduced? Did they accept it as a philosophical system or a mystical teaching? In what respects was the Buddhism of Kumarajiva’s disciples Indian, and in what respects was it Chinese? Imre Hamar (2010) also looks to Chinese interpretation and adoption of Indian positions, in a recent discussion of the role of Yogacara thought in Huayan Buddhism. The project of understanding positions of Chinese Buddhists on the basis of their adoption and modification of concepts and arguments from Indian Buddhists is an important area of Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy, which can help us to better understand not only Chinese Buddhism, but also the historical connections between Chinese and Indian thought more generally. There is also the enduring question of the transmission of Buddhism in China. How was it that Chinese thinkers adopted Buddhist ideas, given their foreignness to most Chinese schools of thought? This question taxed a number of scholars.9 While some older works refer to features of the so-​called Chinese mind to explain the influence of Buddhism (Inada 1997: 6), this kind of overarching comparison between the “Chinese mind” and “Buddhism” is not often seen today, and perhaps rightfully so. It seems on one level a category mistake. Why doesn’t Buddhism represent a more general “Indian mind”? Why then compare Buddhism and Chinese thought rather than Indian and Chinese thought more generally, or Buddhism and Confucianism specifically? Thus we see fewer comparative studies involving abstractions such as the “Chinese mind,” and more of particular schools and/​or thinkers, such as early Confucianism and Pali Buddhism, for example. Perhaps there

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are more general things that can be known, but these come from specific schools or thinkers within traditions. Without Historical Connection There are of course additional complications when we come to compare independent texts, thinkers, and schools in Chinese and Indian philosophy, with no obvious historical connection. Here, comparativists working on the Chinese-​Indian project are in the same boat as those working on comparative Chinese-​Western or comparative Indian-​Western philosophy. Thus, some of the methods for comparative philosophy used in those areas are applicable here as well. But are there additional difficulties for the comparative Chinese-​Indian project? Are we Western philosophers writing in Western languages at a unique disadvantage because these traditions are not “ours”? Aside from the difficult question of just what makes a tradition belong to a thinker, there are other pressing questions. How do we become experts in multiple traditions? Do we even need to? Generally comparative philosophy is done by people with a greater grounding in one tradition than the other. Comparativists are made up of people with expertise in Western philosophy who engage and work with Chinese or Indian thought (Joel Kupperman, Owen Flanagan, David Wong, and an increasing number of younger scholars), as well as specialists in particular traditions of non-​Western thought who hope to engage with Western material. There seems to me no reason that such scholars specializing in one non-​Western tradition cannot engage with another non-​Western tradition, in just the same way. There have been a number of goals suggested by comparativists engaged in just such projects. These goals suggest a number of methods for work in Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy. Laurie Patton (2014) suggests that reading early Chinese thinkers like Xunzi “through the lenses of ” Indian thinkers such as the classical Indian thinker Yaska (or others) may open new questions in the original texts and suggest different approaches of interpretation of these texts, both on the Chinese and Indian sides. She calls this a “comparative reading” approach, a phrase adopted from the work of the comparative theologian Francis Clooney. Clooney’s own use of the phrase seems to suggest that the attempt to understand other (in this case religious) texts puts in relief one’s own religious tradition and makes it more discernible. A kind of theological “mirror” that perhaps can be focused only on oneself and one’s own tradition. If this is so, it looks like the Chinese-​Indian comparative project will be a difficult or impossible one. Clooney (1993: 205) writes: The comparative project and the revision of the curriculum cannot stop at any merely posited endpoint; if we understand what happens in the practice of comparative reading, we find everything to be different. The theologically sensitive juxtaposition of one’s scripture and theology with what one recognizes to be another theological version of the world, narrated according to different texts, traditions, and practices, makes one aware of the margins of one’s own theological universe. Ithamar Theodor and Zhihua Yao consider another possible approach for Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy in the introduction to their 2013 collection

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on the topic—​exploring similarities between Chinese and Indian systems as a first step to a greater project of synthesis and investigation into contacts between Chinese and Indian philosophy before Buddhism or perhaps even before Indo-​ Iranian influence. It would indeed be a major discovery if comparative Chinese-​Indian philosophy could yield something like this. There seems no barrier in principle to using philosophical and religious thought in the same way linguists used various related languages of Europe, India, and Persia to determine both the existence of the ancestor language of Proto Indo-​European and to reconstruct important features of this language. The initial attempt to uncover Proto Indo-​European was made based on clear similarities between what we know call the “Indo-​European” languages. Likewise there are noticeable similarities between certain forms of Chinese and Indian philosophy (indeed this may have been why Buddhism gained hold in China, based on its similarity to certain forms of Daoist thought). The Chinese-​ Indian comparative project would then represent the second stage in the process of discovery—​ investigation of the similarities and divergences between systems of thought in both regions, with an eye toward determining possible historical connection. Theodor and Yao (2013: xi) write: Can we speak of a pre-​Aryan Indo-​Chinese cultural continuum? What would these comparative studies lead to? Are these possible parallels simply coincidental similarities or a result of historical diffusion? Before we can address these challenging issues, we need to undertake a phenomenological study describing the similarities and differences as found between Indian and Chinese philosophy and religion. The Analogical Method Another method that can be used for similar aims to those expressed by Patton is what I call the “analogical method.” Since this method is not developed explicitly in current work in Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy (although it does seem implicitly accepted in a number of works), I lay it out here in more detail. Put simply, the analogical method begins with one text about which there are unanswered interpretive questions. One then can find other texts or systems that hold many of the same positions on issues or concepts closely related to the ones intended to be resolved. We might ask the question—​what do other texts that express very similar specific views and the same general goals and approach as our target text have to say about the unanswered issue in the target text? It may be that a similar text says nothing about the issue, in which case it is passed over. But it may be the case that a text has quite a bit to say about the issue that is left more vague or incomplete in the target text. We might then use what the compared text says about the topic to “fill in the gaps” in the target text, to see if we can make sense of such an overall view. Thus, we are working by analogy. One determines that if there is enough similarity concerning a key cluster of views between two thinkers, then they may share another view related to this cluster. It may be the case that the reconstructed view of the target text is inconsistent, in which case we may have to ask the question: is the compared text inconsistent in the same way? If not, we may

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have incorrectly drawn the analogy between them. If so, perhaps this inconsistency is shared. Or maybe it’s only a flaw of the compared text, which the target text remained silent so as to avoid. This in itself would be an interesting result. At most, we could only gain the possibility that a thinker held some similar view to a different thinker in some other tradition. But this is in general the best we can ever do in the history of philosophy. It will be nearly impossible to conclusively demonstrate that a particular interpretation of some historical text is the correct one, because the aspects of texts that require interpretation are just those that are not clear and which admit of multiple interpretive possibilities. Barring the discovery of secret texts by Xunzi hidden away in a cave that spell out exactly what we want to know and rule out all interpretations but one, we are always in a situation of uncertainty, dealing in nothing stronger than plausibility. Although this comparative method is not enough to give us a deductive demonstration that a thinker held a given view, it can serve as the basis for perfectly cogent analogical inductions. Theories and systems of thought in general, if we take them as explicable by the same natural laws of the universe as any other phenomenon (or even if they have their own unique rules), can be usefully evaluated in the same way we evaluate other phenomena, and comparative analogical induction is a time-​tested and respected way of discovering new information about entities and phenomena (Bartha 2013). Of course, such arguments may be of greater or lesser strength, just as any argument, but there is nothing intrinsically outlandish, bizarre, or “pseudoscientific” about analogical reasoning. Indeed, it is one of the most potent tools we have for scientific (and other) reasoning. The analogical comparative methodology may strike some as artificial or illegitimate. Normally one would assume the usefulness of investigating ancient Chinese thinkers through the lenses of contemporary Western concepts, likely because of confidence in the truth or at least reasonableness of these concepts. We tend to privilege contemporary Western approaches and look at everything else with suspicion.10 In my view, we ought to move away from this insular approach to comparative philosophy and use the resources of other rich philosophical traditions, including those of India and elsewhere in the world. There are at least three possible objections to this method. (1) The historical objection: Given that the two traditions in question did not come into contact and developed different concepts, concerns, languages, and texts, to read one in terms of the other is culturally and historically incongruous. Zhuangzi can no more be read as Madhyamaka thinker, for example, than raga can be understood as big band jazz. The lack of shared concepts and concerns of the two traditions makes it impossible to gain much from a consideration of historically unconnected Chinese and Indian thinkers or texts, and must ultimately then be more misleading and artificial than useful. (2) Even if there are important structural parallels between Chinese and Indian systems, analogical induction is ultimately not as strong. The clear parallels or similarities between two thinkers on a number of issues in some cluster of concepts do not guarantee (or even make likely) that the two will agree on some other issue in this cluster. The fact that there are any differences between the two thinkers at all shows that it is possible to share certain views while diverging on

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others. Indeed, even within traditions and schools there is disagreement concerning core ideas—​so how can we possibly establish the likelihood of interpretations on the basis of analogy with thinkers of radically different traditions? (3) Even if we can somehow show that the reconstructed view of an Indian thinker based on using a Chinese thinker as analogy is consistent, this cannot show that the Indian thinker actually accepted such a view. A person’s positions can be inconsistent, and one can fail to adopt or hold things that their other positions logically commit them to. One does not have to (and often does not) recognize all of the implications of their philosophical commitments. In brief, my response to these four objections is as follows: (1): I of course recognize the disparity between schools in the Chinese and Indian traditions, and we don’t need to make the claim that there was any connection between any of them, direct or indirect. While there may have been contact and influence between Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions independently of Buddhism, we can simply assume that the two traditions are wholly independent, unaware of one another, and completely isolated from one the other historically. The Chinese Confucian Xunzi’s concept of li and that of kratu as used by the Indian Mimamsa school (both of which may be translated as “ritual”) are certainly not exactly the same concept, in the sense of a full or “thick” description, but they certainly track the same “thin” conception of a notion shared by our term “ritual”—​indeed we might say it is this that allows for translations of the terms to one another. There is enough kinship between these concepts that it is meaningful and sensible to substitute one for the other in translations between the languages. To render “kratu” into Chinese as “li” or into English as “ritual” is not to arbitrarily select disparate terms expressing unrelated concepts, but takes the three as compatible or in some sense expressing the same concept, at least in a thin sense. Certainly any comparative methodology is to some extent ahistorical, but certainly no more so than it is to attempt to understand early Chinese thought in terms of the Western concepts contemporary historians, philosophers, and scholars of religious study use? It must be then just as useful to speak of Xunzi in terms of Mimamsa thought than it is to speak of early Confucianism in terms of the even more foreign concepts of contemporary economic thought or political theory. In general, we can never completely reconstruct the ideas, arguments, and so on of a text or thinker without simply duplicating the text. And even then we cannot grasp the exact intentions, circumstances, and the like of its authors, as they encountered the text in a very different context. No interpretation is a pure interpretation, and the question then becomes what is our purpose in investigating these texts? Perhaps we can distinguish between intellectually responsible and irresponsible uses or readings of these texts (although I am very wary of making such a distinction, as a general bar to creativity and a bludgeon with which to ensure methodological conformity within certain fields—​to assume that we need “ground rules” is to accept that we’re playing a competitive game, and why think we should be doing

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that?), but we certainly cannot determine a uniquely privileged reading or methodology for approaching these texts that will bring us into the minds of the ancients. (2) and (3): There is some force to these arguments. The parallels between a particular Chinese and Indian text or thinker certainly cannot show that they must have held the same or even similar positions concerning things that are not made explicit in one or the other. But this is not the purpose of the method. The method gives us consistent interpretive possibilities, which is really the most that any interpretive method can do. This method should be able to generate interpretations of less clear aspects of a thinker’s work that is consistent with the thinker’s other views. We might consider the above-​mentioned case of Xunzi and Mimamsa on ritual. Xunzi is less than clear concerning the ultimate source of ritual (whether we should see it as conventional or rather as an aspect of the world).11 The Indian Mimamsa scholar Kumarila Bhatta, in his Slokavartika, insists that ritual is an aspect of the world, rather than something created by convention. Given the deep similarities between Xunzi and Kumarila on other positions concerning ritual, we might use the analogical model to consider whether we can make sense of Xunzi as holding a Mimamsaka view of the source of ritual. It turns out, I think, that such a position is consistent with Xunzi’s other views on ritual, and is a plausible interpretation of his view of the source of ritual. This of course does not show that Xunzi must have held an early Mimamsa view concerning the source of ritual, but rather offers one interpretive possibility. The strength of this interpretation is its ground in a broader system concerning ritual that is very similar to one Xunzi explicitly held. One (among other) natural way of conceiving the source of ritual given Mimamsa-​like positions is the position taken by some early Mimamsa thinkers, which is consistent with Xunzi’s positions concerning ritual, and also makes sense out of the less-​than-​clear passages of the Xunzi concerning the source of ritual. That is to say, considering Xunzi as holding a particular Mimamsaka position makes interpretive sense of the Xunzi and offers us one possible coherent interpretation of his thought on ritual. Given that we simply do not have enough to determine whether Xunzi actually held one or the other position concerning the source of ritual, our interpretive reconstruction of Xunzi’s thought on ritual will have to move beyond the point of simply marshalling textual and linguistic evidence to the stage of considering coherent interpretive possibilities, their consistency, and their results.

Cosmopolitan Methods The class of methods I refer to as “cosmopolitan” differ from the historical methods in that they are not used for explicitly historical purposes. Instead, cosmopolitan projects generally aim to better understand some key concept, develop contemporary debates, or understand the relative position of a particular tradition of thought in world philosophy. Cosmopolitan projects can thus be understood as more focused on the present and future than the past, in that in them philosophers look to create

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new understandings using the tools of philosophers of the past, rather than primarily trying to understand those philosophers in their historical context. There are still, of course, variable levels of concern with history in the work of cosmopolitan comparative philosophy. A good example of the cosmopolitan project in comparative philosophy is given in the work of Joel Kupperman (2010), who argues that in order to have a proper understanding of what philosophical concepts and theories rationally require, we must investigate multiple global philosophical traditions. An ever-​ present danger in contemporary Western philosophy is to take some agreed upon feature of philosophical orthodoxy as a requirement of rationality, due to the fact that it appears maximally acceptable. This can sometimes be used as the basis for dismissing non-​Western philosophical systems as “irrational” because they do not share these assumptions. If our conception of what rationality requires, however, is based on features of the Western tradition primarily, however, then this is to implicitly make the claim (without argument or other evidence) that the Western tradition is inherently in line with rationality, and that those traditions that diverge from it are thus irrational. Key concepts such as that of truth, for example, can often be defined in contemporary philosophical contexts as identified with certain typical Western ways of thinking, and Chinese or Indian conceptions are then dismissed. In order to have a more accurate understanding of the requirements of rationality, we must understand how other traditions think about concepts such as truth. Otherwise, we are in danger of mistaking provincial features of Western thought as representing universal requirements of rationality. Kupperman specifically discusses a cosmopolitan ethics, but this easily generalizes to other areas of philosophy as well. A number of philosophers working on comparative Chinese-​Indian philosophy have expressed positions similar to Kupperman’s. Indeed, the cosmopolitan method seems to be increasingly influential in comparative philosophy in general today. John Thompson (2014) argues that reading the accounts of the Bhagavad Gita and the Chinese Buddhist text Panruo Wuzhi beside one another can help give us a deeper understanding of both mysticism and the idea of “cross-​cultural spirituality.” In a reflection on the teaching of non-​Western traditions, Laurie Patton, Vernon Robbins, and Gordon Newby (2009) argue that comparative study on particular themes and concepts can enhance our general understanding of these, and that a thematic approach to teaching “World Religions” is thus superior to one that takes different regions as representing separate and distinct traditions. This cosmopolitan approach to comparative thought can be a good counterbalance to the older tendency to essentialize things like the “Chinese mind,” and also can give us a broader and ultimately better understanding of key philosophical concepts. Recognizing the diversity within “traditions” may ultimately help advance the Chinese-​ Indian comparative project, as well as other comparative projects involving non-​Western traditions. As Patton, Robbins, and Newby (2009: 40) write: We emphasize that each tradition has variety within itself, and that regularly this variety is related to multiple practices and emphases within that tradition in various contexts of its history and cultural formations.

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One way of thinking about what I have called the cosmopolitan model is offered by Robert Neville (2008), whose “normative” approach is very similar. According to Neville (2008: 133–​134), the normative approach looks to multiple traditions in order to construct better accounts of concepts and to make headway on contemporary philosophical issues. Echoing the positions of Kupperman and Patton, Neville (2008: 132) writes: Vital and creative philosophy today needs to operate within a public that integrates reflections from as many of the world’s philosophic traditions as possible. Another relevant consideration leading to a method we might classify as “cosmopolitan” comes from outside of the purely philosophical realm. As all of us know, both China and India are major players in the contemporary global political and economic domain. The two nations are the most populous on earth, together comprising almost forty percent of all of humanity. A number of scholars are concerned with the study of contemporary China and India in comparison, as the rise of both nations also creates unique and sometimes problematic connections between the two. Understanding Chinese and Indian thought in comparison can serve as a bridge to further communication between the two. This can involve contemporary as well as ancient thought. Francis Fukuyama, for example, has attempted to understand the contemporary development of India and China in terms of ancient thought and early political systems (Fukuyama 2011). In their recent collection of essays on comparative Chinese-​Indian philosophy and religion, Ithamar Theodor and Zhihua Yao also stress the usefulness of this comparative project for contemporary ethical, political, and other goals. All of this is more than just sloganeering or a clever marketing strategy aimed at winning over those skeptical about the value of the Chinese-​Indian comparative project. Theodor and Yao (2013: xii) offer an excellent and concise explanation: The twenty-​ first century is becoming “the Asian century”; as such it is characterized by the rise of Asia, specifically China and India. Naturally, this rise is not only economic and political, but also cultural and philosophical. This may possibly lead to the articulation of multicultural philosophies that absorb Indian and Chinese ideas, whilst interviewing them in new ways with other ideas. As befitting a global era, these new philosophies will aspire to be multicultural, multireligious, environmentally friendly, and further some general aspects of spirituality. As such it may be worth examining some ideas and themes these two great cultures share. I have offered my own articulation of a “cosmopolitan” method in a number of articles, discussing Chinese and Indian theories of truth, personhood, and moral responsibility, among others, as offering us alternatives to well-​known positions on these topics in Western philosophical thought (McLeod 2011; 2013). The basic position I express is that Chinese and Indian theories on philosophical topics are often very different than those in the West, and that importation of these theories to contemporary debates can help to advance those debates. We might also construct stronger and better theories from those of Chinese and Indian thinkers combined.

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Perhaps, for example, we can devise a theory of truth using elements from the work of the first century ce Chinese thinker Wang Chong and that of the eighth century ce Indian Mimamsa scholar Kumarila Bhatta. This kind of practice has been long accepted when it concerns figures and texts from the history of Western philosophy—​ thus “Neo-​ Aristotelian virtue ethics,” “Lockean provisos,” and a number of other theories and concepts inspired by and created from the positions of historical philosophers. There is no reason we cannot and should not do this for Chinese and Indian philosophy as well.

THE FUTURE OF CHINESE-​INDIAN COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY There are still very few works devoted to Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy. In recent years, however, some scholars have written books and edited collections on the topic. This represents growth in the area, and a trend in the right direction. There are an increasing number of scholars focused on gaining proficiency in both Chinese and Indian languages, as well as greater collaboration between philosophers specializing in Chinese and Indian thought. A few examples are worth noting here. Ithamar Theodor and Zhihua Yao recently edited a collection of 17 philosophical articles on comparative Chinese-​Indian thought (Theodor and Yao 2013). Yao has also edited a special issue of Journal of Chinese Philosophy devoted to what he calls Indo-​Sinitic Buddhist philosophy. Tao Jiang and Chakravarthi Ram-​Prasad have guest edited a special issue of Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy on the topic of Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy, and also run a yearly group at the American Academy of Religion conference bringing together scholars to discuss various topics in Chinese-​Indian comparative thought. Single-​authored volumes are also beginning to appear. Douglas Berger recently authored a book (Berger 2015) comparing conceptions of mind in Chinese and Indian philosophy. While trained as a scholar of Indian philosophy, he also studies the classical Chinese language and engages with Chinese texts. His work represents the kind of effort sorely needed in the field, in order to really launch the project of Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy and bring it into its own. Perhaps with more focus on this comparative project, and more scholars able to contribute, the area will continue to grow in coming years. And with this growth will come more diversity in methodologies for approaching this comparative project.

NOTES 1. This has been a widely discussed problem for the study of non-​Western philosophy in the West in general. Alasdair MacIntyre (1991) argues that there is a robust incommensurability between traditions that threatens to make it impossible for a Western thinker to ever truly understand the Chinese or Indian traditions. Often this kind of position is based on arguments surrounding the deep structural differences

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2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

between Chinese and Western (generally Indo-​European) languages. There is not as much discussion of such an “unbridgeable gap” between the Western and Indian philosophical traditions, both because Indian philosophers engaged in something a lot more familiar to Westerners, and because the core linguistic differences do not obtain between Indo-​Aryan Indian languages (such as Sanskrit) and Western languages such as Greek, Latin, and English, which are related to Sanskrit (by way of Proto Indo-​ European). Although even here, especially in India, “Western” assumptions, concepts, and methods of scholarship still guide and determine how scholars think about these issues. India’s past as a colony of the British Empire ensured that the British system of education and scholarship took hold there. Academia in India is not appreciably different than it is in the UK. Scholars study Western thinkers, methods, and theories, and English is the language of scholarship. The situation in China is somewhat different. The higher education system there is more “native” in some ways. Scholarship is in Chinese, rather than in English, for example. But Western thought still infuses and guides the academy in China, from the structure and purpose of universities to the subject matter of the various fields. Marxist Studies, for example, necessarily occupies a central place in the Chinese academy. The reason I pass over this is that these are well-​known issues in comparative and non-​Western philosophy in general. Even though I think there are numerous solutions to these problems (McLeod 2009: ­chapter 1; Stalnaker 2006: 122–​127; Van Norden 2007: introduction), since they are not specific to Chinese-​Indian comparative philosophy, and are issues for non-​Western and comparative philosophy in general, I will set them aside here, assuming that we can adequately respond to these difficulties. For example, in sinology it is generally expected to have at least a reading knowledge of Japanese and French, in addition to primary facility in Chinese language(s), classical or modern. Anyone who has the time and ability to learn Classical Chinese, Japanese, and French has the time and ability to learn Chinese and Sanskrit. The key factor here is that it is a matter of priority. This particular combination of languages has not been made a priority in any academic field I know of—​certainly not in philosophy or history. A number of scholars in Chinese Philosophy discuss these issues in Olberding (2008). Examples of such work include: Jan (1989), Robinson (1967), Liu (1994), Xing (2013), and Inada (1997). See, for example, An (1998). Recently scholars primarily of Indian thought such as Doug Berger, Ithamar Theodor, Ram Nath Jha, and Chakravarthi Ram-​Prasad have entered the fray in comparative Indian-​Chinese philosophy as well. It is discussed in Inada (1997), and older works by scholars such Hu Shi (1937). Mark Csikszentmihalyi (2006) suggests that part of the reason for the influence of Buddhism was its early association with Daoism. In the Han shu we see mention of Futu (Buddha) alongside that of Daoist figures, suggesting an identification.

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10. The kind of “Whig history” underlying this assumption presupposes that the theories and concepts popular today are somehow more advanced, more likely to be true, or otherwise better than their historical counterparts. The idea that we know more today and are closer to the truth than our intellectual predecessors is an assumption without argument to support it. Some scholars, such as Alasdair MacIntyre for example, hold that we are today in a relatively ignorant and unenlightened age as compared with a number of points in the past. MacIntyre (1981: 263) speaks of today as a “new dark age.” We cannot simply assume that he is wrong about this. 11. This issue has been a controversial one in works on the philosophy of Xunzi, whose views on this topic have been considered by Kurtis Hagen, David Hall and Roger Ames, Paul Goldin, Sor-​hoon Tan, and Fung Yiu-​ming, among others.

REFERENCES An, O. (1998), Compassion and Benevolence: A Comparative Study of Early Buddhist and Classical Confucian Ethics, New York: Peter Lang. Bartha, P. (2013), “Analogy and Analogical Reasoning,” in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://​plato.stanford.edu/​archives/​fall2013/​entries/​ reasoning-​analogy/​. Berger, D. (2015), Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press. Clooney, F. (1993), Theology after Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology, Albany: State University of New York Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2006), Readings in Han Chinese Thought, Indianapolis: Hackett. Fukuyama, F. (2011), The Origins of Political Order: From Pre-​human Times to the French Revolution. London: Profile Books. Hamar, I. (2010), “Interpretation of Yogacara Philosophy in Huayan Buddhism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 37.2: 181–​197. Hu, S. (1937), The Indianization of China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Inada, K. (1997), “The Chinese Doctrinal Acceptance of Buddhism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 24.1: 5–​17. Jan, Y. (1989), “A Comparative Study of ‘No-​Thought’ (Wu-​Nien) in Some Indian and Chinese Buddhist Texts,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 16.1: 37–​58. Kupperman, J. (2010), “Why Ethical Philosophy Needs to Be Comparative,” Philosophy, 85.2:  185–​200. Liu, M. (1994), Madhyamaka Thought in China, Leiden: Brill. MacIntyre, A. (1981), After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. MacIntyre, A. (1991), “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation Between Confucians and Aristotelians About the Virtues,” in E. Deutsch (ed.), Culture and Modernity: East West Philosophic Perspectives, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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McLeod, A. (2009), Moral Personhood in Confucius and Aristotle, PhD Dissertation, University of Connecticut. McLeod, A. (2011), “Pluralism about Truth in Early Chinese Philosophy: A Reflection on Wang Chong’s Approach,” Comparative Philosophy, 2.1: 38–​60. McLeod, A. (2013), “Communal Moral Personhood and Moral Responsibility in the Analects and the Bhagavadgītā,” in I. Theodor and Z. Yao (eds.), Brahman and Dao: Comparative Studies of Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Neville, R. (2008), Ritual and Deference: Extending Chinese Philosophy in a Comparative Context, Albany: State University of New York Press. Olberding, A. (ed.) (2008), APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-​American Philosophers and Philosophy, 8.1. Patton, L. (2014), “Reading Xunzi through Nama: Two Ancient Inquiries into the Nature of Names,” Dao, 13: 53–​62. Patton, L., V. Robbins, and G. Newby (2009), “Comparative Sacred Texts and Interactive Interpretation: Another Alternative to the ‘World Religions’ Class,” Teaching Theology and Religion, 12.1: 37–​49. Robinson, R. (1967), Early Madhyamika in India and China, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Stalnaker, A. (2006), Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Theodor, I. and Z. Yao (eds.) (2013), Brahman and Dao: Comparative Studies of Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion, Lanham: Lexington Books. Thompson, J. (2014), “The Bhakta and the Sage: An Intertextual Dialogue,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 13: 23–​38. Van Norden, B. (2007), Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Xing, G. (2013), “Indic Influence on Chinese Language,” in I. Theodor and Z. Yao (eds.), Brahman and Dao: Comparative Studies of Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion, Lanham: Lexington Books. Yao, Z. (2010), “Introduction [to special issue on Chinese Buddhist philosophy],” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 37.2: 151–​155.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Daoism, Naturalism, and Chinese Culture LISA RAPHALS

Writing in 1991, William Theodore de Bary (1991: ix) exclaimed: Not long ago it would have seemed almost unthinkable to ask, “What significance has Confucianism for the world today?” Twenty or thirty years ago Confucianism was a dead subject in East Asia for all but a few scholars who could easily be written off as antiquarians. Virtually off-​limits to any kind of serious study in Mao’s China, Confucianism survived elsewhere, it was often said, only as a museum piece. This comment reminds us of how recent is the contemporary interest in “Confucianism” in the West and China, in both academic and political circles. This chapter argues that an exclusive focus on Confucianism as the dominant paradigm of Chinese philosophy and culture is destructive. It is destructive because it obscures, to the point of elimination, three fundamentally important elements of Chinese culture and history. Some (but not all) can broadly be described as Daoist. Importantly, none of them can be assimilated into “Confucianism,” however defined. Put in contemporary terms, these aspects of Chinese culture represent naturalistic perspectives that contrast in important ways with the ethical and political orientations of Confucianism, both traditional and contemporary. They are important because they are closely aligned with the rich history of both science and aesthetics in China, which are major contributions to both Chinese and world culture. I argue that Confucianism obscures or ignores three fundamentally important Daoist and naturalist elements of Chinese culture and history: (1) the sciences, both natural—​astronomy, mathematics, and so on—​and human, especially medicine and pharmacopia; (2) strategic thinking, military and otherwise; and finally (3) non-​ Confucian ideals of a good life, including areas of explicitly Daoist influence such as poetry, painting, and other areas of aesthetics. But non-​Confucian ideals of a good life also include independent or “individualistic” elements in Chinese thought. These areas also have profound implications for ethics, government, family life, gender equality, education, business, and the conduct of daily life. I begin with a brief review of the explosion of Confucianism in Chinese and Western academia and popular culture in the People’s Republic of China. I then turn to a consideration of each of these three areas.

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The emergence of Confucianism in China must be seen in the historical context of recent changes in Chinese society (Makeham 2003). After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping began a process of liberalization. Buddhist and Daoist temples and monasteries were rehabilitated and renovated, and restrictions on teaching and scholarship about Confucianism were loosened. This period offered increased prosperity, travel, and openness, with the result that Chinese traveling oversees in the early 1980s encountered the material and cultural advantages of Western cultures and recreated the anguish of the late nineteenth century. But a heated cultural debate during the first half of the 1980s questioned the value of Western Modernism for China and raised issues of national heritage and the nature of indigenous Chinese culture. Within philosophy, Chinese scholars approached traditional philosophical territory through Confucianism, but as Song Xianlin (2003: 83–​85) puts it, Chinese intellectuals approached the subject indirectly by citing overseas discussions of New Confucianism, exporting and then reimporting them (chukou zhuan neixiao 出口 轉内銷). The involvement of overseas scholars such as Tu Wei-​ming 杜維明 helped legitimate the overseas school of “New Confucianism” (Xin Ru jia 新儒家) as a topic in discussions of tradition and Westernization. This trend explicitly identified Confucian culture as the essence of Chinese culture. For example, the first generation New Confucian Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 noted problems with Western values and argued in favor of a reformed Confucianism. He identified European culture with the ability to control nature, the scientific method, and democracy, but also with the defects of excessive intellect, calculation, self-​ assertive individualism and selfishness; and counterposed Confucianism as representative of the “Chinese mode of life.”1 Liang led contemporary scholars such as Zhao Dezhi 趙德志 to identify the characteristics of Chinese traditional culture with Confucian thought.2 Since the 1980s, Confucianism has come to dominate the Western study of Chinese philosophy (perhaps less in Europe than elsewhere). Important exceptions include the work of A. C. Graham (1978; 1981; and 1989 among many others) and Chad Hansen’s (1992) Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought. In China, increasing restrictions on free thought have combined with economic expansion and corruption to create a moral vacuum that was friendly to Confucianism. This “Confucian fever” takes many forms, starting with popular books such as Yu Dan’s 于丹 2006 Lunyu xinde 論語心得 (Notes on the Analects). Another is government sponsorship of a new nationalist Confucianism through the creation of Confucius Institutes and the reopening of Confucian temples and lineage ancestral halls. This has created a revival of Confucian rituals such as celebrations of the birthday of Confucius as well as capping, wedding, and funeral rites. Finally, Confucian education is being revived in “extracurricular interest classes” (kewai xingqu ban 課外興趣 班) to study and memorize Confucian classics, and through the promotion of the study of Confucianism in work environments (Billioud and Thoraval 2007; 2009, Billioud 2010). On a global level this Confucianism seeks to reclaim the historical and cultural preeminence of Chinese civilization; though, as I argue, Chinese civilization is not

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and never was “Confucianism.” The institutes are a form of “soft diplomacy” but that too need not be “Confucian.” Internally, Confucianism speaks to an increasing public perception of corruption and immorality in a contemporary society removed from both traditional values and the dedication and idealism of its Communist foundations. Confucianism thus claims to offer the promise of a culturally Chinese moral compass, but as I shall argue, Confucianism is not the only source for an indigenous ethics. Finally, Confucianism is a useful slogan for government calls for “harmony” (hexie 和諧), a “harmonious society” (hexie shehui 和諧社會), and “human dignity” (rende zunyan 人的尊嚴), terms central to the political slogans in particular of President Hu Jintao. This call for social harmony took a material form with the erection of a thirty-​one-​foot tall bronze status of Confucius in front of the National Museum in Tiananmen Square in January 2011. Four months later, it mysteriously disappeared.3 In this sense, Confucianism again takes up the very authoritarianism (in different clothing) for which it was first criticized by the intellectual dissenters of the May Fourth Movement. I now turn to three major aspects of Chinese traditional culture that are not Confucian, and historically have tended to compete with or oppose at least some aspects of Confucianism. The first are the sciences.

CONFUCIANISM AND THE CHINESE SCIENCES Stereotypes of Chinese philosophy as Confucianism contribute to a perception that there is no connection between Chinese philosophy and science. In 1922 in a paper titled “Why China Has No Science,” Fung Yu-​Lan 馮友蘭 (1895–​1990), then a student of John Dewey, argued that “what keeps China back is that she has no science,” and “China has no science, because according to her own standard of value she does not need any” (1922b: 237–​238). Fung argued that Chinese philosophy had two tendencies: toward “nature” and toward “science” (the products of human activity), represented by the Warring States schools of Daoism and Mohism respectively. The Daoists considered nature perfect; the Mohists sought to improve on it and valued art (in the sense of human invention) over nature. It was Fung’s view (1922b: 238–​ 239 and 244–​250) that Confucianism sought a compromise between them, though he does not explain it in detail, especially since he recognized that there were both “nature”-​and “artifice”-​oriented Confucians (Mencius and Xunzi, respectively). According to Fung, the scientific (“Mohist”) tendency in Chinese philosophy all but disappeared after the Qin dynasty. The subsequent interactions of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism did not produce interest in understanding the natural world, and Song neo-​Confucians had other priorities. The Song dynasty coexisted with the development of modern science in Europe, but the neo-​Confucians were more interested in understanding and controlling the mind than in understanding and controlling nature. And that tendency has persisted through the influence of Confucianism (Fung 1922b: 256–​258). Ninety years later in 2012, Peng Gong, a research scientist at Tsinghua University and the University of California Berkeley, described the effect of

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Chinese philosophy on the development of science in China in noticeably similar terms. He describes “two cultural genes [that] have passed through generations of Chinese intellectuals for more than 2,000 years”: the thought of Confucius and the writings of Zhuang Zhou: “Together, these cultures have encouraged small-​ scale and self-​sufficient practices in Chinese society, but discouraged curiosity, commercialization and technology. They helped to produce a scientific void in Chinese society that persisted for millennia. And they continue to be relevant today” (Peng 2012). But was Confucianism inimical to scientific inquiry? Any answer requires consideration of the intellectual and social contexts of Chinese philosophy and science. Chinese philosophy, science and medicine shared important intellectual contexts in their early development, and some were Confucian. The greatest degree of engagement between philosophy and science came from the qualitative sciences of astronomy or astrology (tian wen 天文) and medicine (yi 醫). The first “scientific” studies were conducted by the early Mohists, the very school most vilified by both Mencius and Xunzi.4 The origins of science in China seem to lie in an amalgam of ideas from both Confucian philosophers and technical specialists, including physicians. These specialists included experts in yinyang 陰 陽, Five Agents or “Five Powers” (wuxing 五行), and technical expertise traditions (Sivin 1988; 1990). Shared concepts that were developed in very different ways by these two groups were key to this amalgam. Early medical and cosmological thinking depicts a cosmos ultimately composed of qi 氣 in constant change, based on the interactions of yin and yang and the Five Agents (Graham 1986; Raphals 1998; 2013). Philosophers deployed these ideas in the yinyang cosmology of the Yi jing and in theories of correlative correspondence between heaven, earth, and humanity. The authors of the Huang Di neijing deployed these concepts in models of the human body as a microcosm of the cosmos. Other “scientists” may have been Daoist, but as Nathan Sivin (1978; 1995a; 1995b) pointed out in a series of articles begun over thirty years ago, simplistic stereotypes of Daoism as mystical or naturalistic obscure understanding of its connections to science. Sivin argues that most scientific and technical expertise arose from popular sources and not from Daoist (or Confucian!) schools. Some Daoist masters adapted existing technical knowledge and practices to their own ends, and their written records preserve these techniques where the artisans who developed the original expertise did not. As a result, historians of science may have credited Daoists with innovations that they recorded but did not invent. But Confucian schools did not go even this far. Joseph Needham, Nathan Sivin, and others have demonstrated that Chinese philosophy is not inherently “anti-​science”; it could be argued that “Confucian” priorities have often steered Chinese philosophy away from scientific concerns. The representation of Chinese culture as Confucian eliminates all or most of the rich history of scientific discovery in China (Lloyd and Sivin 2002, Needham 1979, Needham with Wang 1956b, Raphals 2015b).

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Medicine presents a similar picture. According to Zhang Xichun 張錫純 (1860–​ 1933), one of the leading reformers of Chinese medicine in the early twentieth century: 近閱《醫學志報》，多有謂哲學可累醫學之進步者，其人蓋不知哲學做何用， 并不知醫學所由昉也。 Many recent “medical journal reports” take the view that [traditional Chinese] philosophy holds back the progress of medicine, but their authors do not understand the use of philosophy, nor do they understand that philosophy is actually the basis of medicine. (Zhang 1918–​1934: 296) But the shared interests of early philosophers and science diverged. Some Confucian scholars developed expertise in medicine, but “literati physicians” (Ru yi 儒醫) remained distinct from physicians who practiced medicine as a livelihood.5 The first clear articulation of Chinese medical ethics comes not from a Confucian physician but from a Daoist: Sun Simiao’s 孫思邈 (581–​682) “On the Absolute Sincerity of Great Physicians” (Lun tai yi jing cheng 論太醫精誠).6 A second divergence between Confucians and other medical practitioners was in the explicit articulation of a need to preserve one’s person, self, or original nature. An important way to preserve one’s original nature was “nurturing life” (yang sheng 養生): an area of common ground for speculative thinkers and practitioners of traditional medical arts. This term first appears in the third chapter of the Zhuangzi (Yang sheng zhu 養生主) and then throughout a range of second-​century (bce) medical literature.7 In the Han dynasty, yang sheng techniques became a major concern of the Recipe Masters (fang shi 方士) of the Han court (Ngo 1976). Texts on nurturing life include methods for absorbing and circulating qi in the body. These techniques also appear in medical texts excavated from Mawangdui 馬王堆 (Changsha, Hubei, 169 bce).8 Six of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts are concerned with nurturing life, for example, “Recipes for Nurturing Life” (Yang sheng fang 養生方) and “Ten Questions” (Shi wen 十問), which gives advice on techniques for nurturing life (Harper 1998: 22–​30). The “yang sheng culture” of these texts understood self-​cultivation as control over physiological and mental processes, through the transformation of qi. These technical arts form a continuum with philosophy because their transformations were understood as self-​cultivation in the coterminous senses of moral excellence, health, and longevity. Mark Csikszentmihalyi (2004) describes them as part of an “embodied virtue” tradition that structured much of early Daoist philosophy and medical theory. These views informed Warring States accounts of dietary practices, exercise regimens, breath meditation, sexual cultivation techniques, and other technical traditions associated with fang shi. These texts have a very different emphasis from the mainstream of Confucian philosophy and Confucian views of what self-​cultivation is. A third difference between early Confucians and their intellectual competitors manifests in a divergence between Confucian philosophical generalists and technical specialists in disciplines such as military strategy, astronomy, mathematics, and

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medicine. By the Han dynasty, explicitly Confucian “Masters” textualists marginalized the knowledge of technical experts in “scientific” disciplines. This shift is particularly visible in the structure and categorization of texts in the Bibliographic Treatise of the Han shu, which privileges Ru 儒 and generalist texts above technical works.9 The first three sections of the Bibliographic Treatise—​“Classics,” “Masters,” and “Poetry”—​were compiled by Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–​76 bce); the last three—​“Military works,” “Numbers and techniques,” and “Recipes and methods” were compiled by technical experts in military strategy, astronomy, and medicine. The first three sections all contain significant numbers of extant texts; the last three sections consist almost entirely of the titles of lost texts. In these ways, the Bibliographic Treatise asserted the superiority of general and universal knowledge over military, mantic, and medical knowledge, deliberately framed as technical and limited in nature. The knowledge and interests of the technical specialists made up much of what we now recognize as the history of science in China, especially the qualitative sciences of astronomy or astrology and medicine. In later periods the latter included materia medica (ben cao 本草) and internal (nei dan 內丹) and external (wai dan 外丹) alchemy.10 The point, for purposes of this discussion, is that all these topics were largely outside the scope of Confucian expertise, interest, and patronage.

CONFUCIANISM AND STRATEGIC THINKING It could be argued that even if Confucians did not actively pursue or patronize the early sciences, Chinese scientific and medical traditions remain compatible with Confucianism. A different situation of incompatibility occurs in the case of “Military works,” the fourth category of the Bibliographic Treatise. Military thinking presents a case of incompatibility. Starting with Xunzi, Confucians repeatedly attacked the Sunzi and other texts of the “art of war” (bingfa 兵法) genre. Such attacks had three targets: the ethics of “advocates” of warfare, including those who claimed expertise in it; the efficacy of Sunzi-​style strategy; and the charge of advocating deceit. In all three areas there is incompatibility between Confucian and “Militarist” views. Interestingly, the Lunyu does not seem to reject military expertise prima facie, and this is one of several ways in which the Lunyu may differ from “Confucian” traditions ostensibly based on it.11 In a rare remark about warfare, Analects 12.7 clearly states that government requires military expertise, along with sufficient food and the confidence of the people, although Confucius does consider it the most expendable of the three.12 A stronger statement appears in the Da Dai li ji, where Confucius affirms that the sage-​kings of antiquity used the military to suppress cruelty and violence; only in later ages was it used to kill the people and imperil the state.13 If we trace its history, the first attacks on “advocating warfare” were not Confucian but Mohist. The three Mohist chapters “Against aggressive warfare” (Fei gong 非攻) argue respectively that aggressive warfare violates humaneness and righteousness (ren yi 仁 義, ­chapter 17); that its costs outweighs its benefits if assessed accurately (­chapter 18); and that warfare is against the interests of Heaven (­chapter 19).14 The Mencius also attacks advocating warfare, the very notion of a “righteous war” (yi

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zhan 義戰) and claims for expertise in waging war.15 The Xunzi continues the attack on advocating warfare, but adds two new elements: the use of deceit as a principle of warfare and the broader ethical status of deceit. The strongest attack on military thinking appears in Xunzi’s “Debating military affairs,” which attacks Sunzi-​style strategy through a debate between Xun Qing 荀 卿 (Xunzi) and the Lord of Linwu 臨武君 before King Xiaocheng of Zhao 趙孝成 (r. 265–​244 bce). Linwu’s arguments reflect the theory and vocabulary of the Sunzi and other Militarist texts of Xunzi’s time. Xunzi argues that military strength arises from moral qualities, correct ritual, and the orderly government of a good ruler. Soldiers motivated by reward or profit and treated with dissimulation become secretive. By contrast, correct ritual and right conduct (li yi 禮義) transform and unify the people; deceptive strategies are no match for it (Xunzi jishi, 15: 275). Even where they agree, the Xunzi has different priorities than the Sunzi. One example is the need for impartiality and clear regulations. Here, Xunzi “rejects what is dubious” (qi yi 棄疑), while the Sunzi tries to “create victory” by manipulating uncertainty.16 They also agree on generous treatment of conquered populations, albeit for different reasons. Despite some areas of agreement, most Confucians are hostile to the Militarist argument that warfare is of central importance to a state and must be studied. They remain of great interest to the government of the People’s Republic of China, but not to Confucians. But the key divergence between Confucian and Militarist thought is in attitudes toward deception. The Sunzi advocates the use of both indirect and straightforward (yu zhi 迂直, qi zheng 奇正) strategies.17 More important, it advocates and describes using deception to create false appearances that manipulate the perceptions and emotions of both an enemy and one’s own men. As the Sunzi famously puts it: “all warfare is the way of deception.”18 These attitudes are incompatible with a longstanding Confucian hostility to deceptive conduct, starting with the statement in Analects 1.3 that a person of cunning words (qiaoyan 巧言) is rarely benevolent. Elsewhere (2.19), Confucius advises Duke Ai of Lü to: “Raise up the straight over the crooked” (juzhi cuo zhuwang 舉直錯諸枉). Mencius answers a question about whether the end justifies the means (bending one cubit to straighten eight) with the example of a man who caught nothing by following the rules, but caught many birds by driving his chariot so as to catch them deceitfully (zha 詐, 3B1). Attitudes toward deception harden in the Xunzi, which attacks three distinct aspects of deceit: licentious, dissolute, or deceptive (jian 姦) personal behavior;19 social practices of deceit and deception;20 and the lacuna between appearance and reality in the deceptive theories of men with dissolute minds who follow a dissolute dao. 事行失中，謂之姦事；知說失中，謂之姦道。姦事、姦道， 治世之所棄，而亂 世之所從服也。 Undertakings and acts that miss the mean are called deceptive undertakings; knowledge and theories that miss the mean are called deceptive daos. A well

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ordered age avoids deceptive undertakings and deceptive daos, but a chaotic age follows and obeys them.21 But Xunzi’s unequivocal hostility to deception was not universally accepted by Han Confucians. In a chapter of the Shuo yuan titled “Exhibiting the Martial” (Zhi wu 指武), Liu Xiang argues that it is important to understand, and possibly use, deception. He gives the example of King Wen, who had attacked and defeated Xu 徐. King Yan of Xu 徐偃王 responds: 「吾賴於文德而不明武備，好行仁義之道而不知詐人之心，以至於此。」夫古 之王者其有備乎？ “I was too reliant on civil virtue and did not understand martial preparations. I was enamored of the dao of benevolence and righteousness but knew nothing of the mind of deceiving others [zha ren zhi xin] and so I have come to this!” Is it not clear that the kings of antiquity indeed made preparations!22 As Robin McNeal (2012: 22) rightly observes, Liu Xiang clearly identified as a Confucian, so his choice to write a chapter on military thought and argue for the importance of deception indicate that not all Confucians were inherently hostile to military thinking. The stronger legacy of Xunzi is to reject deceit and cunning out of hand. Yet as Liu Xiang’s comment shows, these competences are important to any account of agency and efficacy in early China. In summary, as the above examples show, an ethical but flexible attitude toward strategic and military thinking is another important aspect of Chinese culture that disappears if seen through a too Confucian lens.

DAOIST AND NATURALIST EUDAIMONISM Finally, I turn to non-​Confucian ideals of a good life. The most salient text here is the Zhuangzi, which offers a vision of a good life that is fundamentally different from Confucian ideals. Several key passages give what would now be called a naturalist account of a eudaimonism that is incompatible with Confucian notions of a virtuous life. These differences cluster around the question of whether a good life is achieved by conforming to nature or by pursuing virtue or other predetermined human purposes or goals. In this sense, the eudaimonism of the Zhuangzi is incompatible with Confucian views of a good life. The Zhuangzi repeatedly indicates that a good life is achieved by conforming to nature. It links preserving what is genuine (zhen 真) or “natural” (tian 天) to a mode of “happiness” (le 樂) that does not partake of emotional excess.23 The Zhuangzi is one of several fourth-​century texts that describe the manifestation of emotions as imbalances of qi. Several passages clearly identify qi as the basis of the physical constitution of the body and identify preserving it with naturalness. “Human birth is caused by the gathering together of qi.”24 Grief and joy do not enter into a timely acquiescence to the (natural) rhythms of life and death.25 Another recommends “wandering the limitless” by “mounting the norms of heaven and earth” and “riding the fluctuations of the six qi.”26 A third recommends harmonizing the six qi to nurture life.27

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In addition to its preference for natural over human cycles and rhythms, the Zhuangzi repeatedly urges rejecting specifically Confucian categories of classification. Chapter 2 presents a sustained attack on “what the Confucians and Mohists deem right and wrong.”28 In another example, when Liezi really begins to learn, he transforms from a “polished gem” to an “uncarved block.” He loses the fundamental Confucian distinctions: cooking for his wife (the hierarchy between men and women) and feeding his pigs as if human (the hierarchy of human and animal).29 These passages also address the circumstances that make individual autonomy possible. In the voice of Confucius, Zhuangzi observes that to serve a ruler is the peak of loyalty, but: “the height of power is to serve your own heart-​mind so that sorrow and joy do not alter before it, to understand what you cannot alter and to be at peace with them, as with fate.”30 According to Zhuangzi 15, “when the heart-​mind is without care or joy, this is the height of power.”31 These passages seem to argue for a eudaimonism based on some kind of autonomy, even in circumstances beyond our control. The amalgamation of qi that results in our birth partially determines who we are, but we can “take charge” and transform it. The Zhuangzi seems to advocate a kind of eudaimonic happiness in which equanimity is the height of power. This point is pursued extensively in Zhuangzi 18, “Happiness Realized” (Zhi le 至樂). It begins by linking a state of ultimate felicity—​ not just pleasure or happiness—​to fulfilling one’s allotted lifespan: 天下有至樂无有哉？有可以活身者无有哉？今奚為奚據？奚避奚處？奚就奚 去？奚樂奚惡？ 夫天下之所尊者，富貴壽善也；所樂者，身安厚味美服好色 音聲也。 Does the world have ultimate felicity [in it] or not? Does it have those who have the possibility to give life to theirs persons [through their allotted lifespan] or not? What to do and what to rely on? What to avoid and where to dwell? What to follow and what to forego? What to enjoy and what to hate? What the empire honors is wealth, honor, long life and reputation. What it takes pleasure in is bodily safety [lit. peace], rich food, beautiful clothing, desirable sights and pleasant sounds. (Zhuangzi jishi, 18: 608–​609) According to the Zhuangzi, sages take pleasure in heaven and earth, but this is consistent with balance and equanimity. Read thus, the Zhuangzi describes felicity as a natural state that is not necessarily unique to human beings. It even recommends the equanimity of animals as a model for human felicity: 草食之獸不疾易藪，水生之蟲不疾易水，行小變而不失其大常也，喜怒哀樂不 入於跄次。 Grass-​eating animals are not upset by a change of pasture; water creatures are not upset by a change of stream. They go along with minor change, provided they do not lose the great constancies. [Be like this] and happiness, anger, grief, and pleasure can never enter your breast. (Zhuangzi jishi, 21: 714, cf. Graham 1981: 131) Here the height of power is a distinctive autonomy that persists through change, and does not operate by trying to change what cannot be changed.

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Another area of profound difference between Confucian and broadly Daoist eudaimonism is the status of purposes or goals. Confucian normative ethics stresses the importance of the practice of the virtues in the contexts of complex webs of relationships that constitute any human being. A good Confucian presumably pursues those relationships in ways that conform to the normative demands of the “five relationships” and that also manifest the “five virtues.”32 A powerful alternative is the Zhuangzi’s account of power or virtue (de 德), a nonmoral power, potency, or virtuosity that allows an agent to flourish, follow dao, and so on. Chris Fraser (2014: 544) has argued persuasively that the Zhuangzi presents a second-​order conception of human flourishing in which a good life is marked by distinctive attitudes and manner of activity, rather than the accomplishment of any predetermined goal. Zhuangzian accounts of flourishing are closely associated with “wandering” (you 遊,游) or “wandering freely without a destination” (xiao yao you 逍遙遊, the title of the first pian of the Inner Chapters). For example, Chapter 5, “Signs of the Fullness of Power” (De chong fu 德充符) describes the sage Wang Tai 王駘, whose feet have been amputated for some transgression. With no teachings or practices he has as many followers as Confucius, and has a distinctive way of “employing his heartmind.”33 And “without even knowing what suits his ears and eyes, he lets his heartmind wander in the harmony of de.”34 His “constant heartmind” (chang xin 常心) is like still water (Zhuangzi jishi, 5: 192); people follow him because of his command over his situation: “he makes heaven and earth his palace and the myriad things his treasury.”35 He does this by “letting the heartmind wander.”36 The result is not being bound by things, emotions, or even life itself, but also a mode of activity that has no fixed goals. In another example, the singularly ugly Aitai Tuo 哀駘它 is poor, deformed and apparently powerless. But people trust him, flock to follow him, and yearn to marry him or learn from him. That he seems trustworthy without doing anything particular is attributed to his “power not being manifest” and “keeping his talent whole”:37 使之和豫，通而不失於兌；使日夜无郤而與物為春，是接而生時於心者也。是 之謂才全。 To maintain it in harmony and ease, without losing it through enjoyment; to make it so day and night there are no fissures with the myriad things making it springtime; this is to be a person who encounters and then engenders the timely moment in his heartmind; this is what is called the talent being whole.38 Fraser also suggests that the skilled performance of the expert craftsmen who populate the pages of the Zhuangzi are concrete instances of “wandering” as a mode of activity. On Fraser’s account of Zhuangzian virtuosity, a good life is not devoted to predetermined ends or activities, including the Confucian virtues and political responsibility. Fraser’s account of wandering stresses three points. The first is the exercise of what he calls “large-​scale constancy” (da chang 大常), constancy at a general level that is not disturbed by changing circumstances. Second, this constancy is achieved by identifying with the world in an expanded notion of self that does not lose the individual agent of wandering. Third, the hallmark of

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this constancy is equanimity: the absence of strong emotion, negative or positive (Fraser 2014: 546). It is important to emphasize that this mode of skill or wandering corresponds to the Zhuangist critique of Confucian norms, exemplified by shi fei 是非, judging [things] descriptively and normatively as “so or not so” and “right or wrong.” This point is important because it refutes the possible claim that Zhuangzian literal “wandering” has informed a broad Chinese tradition that has been assimilated into Confucianism, particularly in aesthetics. It could be argued that Confucians also value responsiveness to circumstances, and that flexibility is not a specifically Daoist (or Zhuangist) virtue. The problem with such a claim is that Zhuangist “wandering” is a fundamental aspect of Zhuangzian understandings of the cosmos and human agency within it.39 In conclusion, I have argued that Confucian values are incompatible with three important areas of Chinese traditions and values: indigenous scientific traditions, strategic thinking, and a broadly Daoist vision of human flourishing. In all three cases, key Chinese values and contributions stand to be obscured or misrepresented by a restrictively “Confucian” vision of Chinese culture. The three are important for very different reasons, but all have important implications for ethics, government, family life, gender equality, education, business, and the conduct of daily life. Further, I have argued that these elements are not aspects of “Confucian culture” and cannot be subsumed into it. Daoist and Naturalist elements in Chinese culture diverge from Confucian priorities in their views of several key concepts. The first is the meaning of the key term dao. Confucian daos focus on human social, political, and arguably ritual activity. They stress the distinctiveness of human life from that of animals and the natural world, an attitude that (like Socratic philosophy in Western antiquity) predisposed a philosophical focus on problems of human society, rather than the study of nature. Daoist and (in modern terms) Naturalist daos stress the continuity of life, and position humans as part of the natural world.

NOTES 1. Liang Shuming (1922: 145, 174–​176, and 232). Cf. Fung Yu-​lan (1922a). 2. 这就是说, 中国文化本质上即是孺家文化 (Zhao Dezhi 1988: 24); cf. Liang Shuming (1922: 145). For discussion see Song Xianlin (2003: 96). 3. ‘Confucius Statue Vanishes Near Tiananmen Square,’ New York Times, April 22, 2011. 4. For Mohist treatises on logic, optics and mechanics see Graham (1978), Needham (1956b), Fung Yu-​lan (1922b). 5. For literati physicians see Goldschmidt (2009: 56–​60). 6. Bei ji qian jin yao fang, (1: 1a-​15b For more information see Raphals 2015a. 7. For example, Zhuangzi jishi, 3: 124. Elsewhere it disparages yang sheng practices. See Zhuangzi (15: 535). These ideas also appear in the Nei ye 內業 chapter of the Guanzi (16.3a8–​3b1, trans. Rickett 1998: 48). 8. Harper (1998: 33). See also Harper (1998 and 2000), Ma Jixing (1992), Zhou Yimou (1994), Zhou Yimou and Xiao Zuotai (1987).

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9. It consists of six sections: (1) the Six Arts (liu yi 六藝) or Classics (liu jing 六經), (2) Masters (zhu zi 諸子) texts of Warring States philosophy, (3) Poetry (shi fu 詩 賦), (4) Military works (bing shu 兵書), (5) Numbers and techniques (shu shu 數術), and (6) Recipes and methods (fang ji 方技). These are discussed in detail in Raphals (2008–​2009). 10. For Chinese sciences (rather than “science”) see Sivin (1990 and 1995). For quantitative and qualitative sciences see Sivin (1982 and 1990). 11. For other examples see Raphals (2014) and Slingerland (2003). 12. 足食。足兵。民信之矣 (Lunyu jishi, 24: 836). 13. 聖人之用兵也，以禁殘止暴於天下也；及後世貪者之用兵也，以刈百姓，危國家也 (Da Dai liji jiegu 75 “Yong bing 用兵”: 209). 14. The Mohist chapters distinguish between punitive warfare (zhu 誅) against guilty states—​what in modern terms would be called a “just war”—​and aggressive warfare (gong 攻) against innocent ones. See Mozi zhuzi suoyin (19: 34/​18). For these arguments see Van Els (2013). 15. For example, “in the Springs and Autumns there are no just wars” (7B2). Other passages seem to recognize that some wars are justified. At 1B:11, Mencius states that a true king does not destroy, plunder, or kill the defenseless. Elsewhere, Mencius attacks experts in warfare (4A:14 and 7B:4). 16. Xunzi jishi (15: 276); Sunzi bingfa (6: 120–​123). They agree on other areas. For example, the Xunzi (15: 277) specifies three circumstances under which a general cannot accept a ruler’s orders: he cannot be forced to take an untenable position. engage the enemy with no victory or oppress the people. 17. Sunzi bingfa (5: 86) and (7: 135), respectively. It never uses the term wuwei 無為 (acting by not acting). 18. 兵者，詭道也 (Sunzi bingfa, 1: 12, cf. 7: 142). Against enemy: 1: 14–​19; 6: 106 and 120–​123. Against one’s own soldiers: 11: 252–​254. 19. For example, dissolute or deceptive musical tones (jiansheng 姦聲) arouse people and lead to disorder (20: 381). When sage kings rule, the people have no dissolute or misleading customs (jianguai zhisu 姦怪之俗, 24: 450). An important role of government is to eliminate “lewdness and depravity” (jianxie 姦邪, 12: 237). 20. For example, deceitful persons (jianren 姦人) who steal false reputations for virtue and ministers who lie about their competence (3: 52). Xunzi (3: 51) argues that straightforwardness and effort lead to success, while deceit sand artifice (zhawei 詐 偽) lead to obstruction. 21. Xunzi jishi (8: 124), trans. after Knoblock 1990 (vol. 2): 72, with considerable differences. 22. Shuoyuan jiaozheng (15: 366–​367). This story is probably based on a structurally similar narrative in Han Feizi 49 “Wu du 五蠹”: 19.2a. For discussion and a different translation see McNeal (2012: 20–​21). 23. Fraser (2014: 543–​546), discussed further below. 24. 人之生，氣之聚也 (Zhuangzi jishi 22: 733). 25. 安時而處順，哀樂不能入也 (Zhuangzi jishi 3: 128). 26. 若夫乘天地之正，而御六氣之辯，以遊無窮者，彼且惡乎待哉 (Zhuangzi jishi 1: 17).

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27. 合六氣之精以育戝生 (Zhuangzi jishi 11: 386). 28. 儒墨之是非 (Zhuangzi jishi 2: 63 and 66); cf. 11: 373 and 377; 14: 527; 22: 765; 24: 838, 840, 852; 32: 1042. 29. 為其妻爨，食豕如食人 (Zhuangzi jishi 7: 306). For an excellent discussion of this passage see Defoort (2010). 30. 自事其心者，哀樂不易施乎前，知其不可柰何而安之若命，德之至也 (Zhuangzi jishi 4: 155), translation modified from Graham (1981: 70). 31. 故心不憂樂，德之至也 (Zhuangzi jishi 15: 542). 32. Contemporary Confucians disagree on how these relationships should be interpreted in the present world and how these virtues should be interpreted today. 33. 其用心 (Zhuangzi jishi 5: 189). 34. 不知耳目之所宜，而游心於德之和 (Zhuangzi jishi 5: 191). 35. 況官天地，府萬物 (Zhuangzi jishi 5: 193). 36. 遊心 (Zhuangzi jishi 5: 191). 37. 德不形; 才全 (Zhuangzi jishi 5: 210). 38. Zhuangzi jishi (5: 212), translation indebted to Graham (1981: 80) and Fraser (2014: 547). 39. However, as Fraser points out, wandering is not completely unconstrained. It consists in using de to engage with dao: the structure and patterns of the world.

REFERENCES Billioud, S. (2010), “Carrying the Confucian Torch to the Masses: The Challenge of Structuring the Confucian Revival in the People’s Republic of China,” Oriens Extremus, 49: 201–​224. Billioud, S. and J. Thoraval (2007), “Jiaohua: The Confucian Revival in China as an Educative Project,” China Perspective, 4: 4–​20. Billioud, S. and J. Thoraval (2009), “Lijiao: The Return of Ceremonies Honouring Confucius in Mainland China,” China Perspectives, 4: 82–​100. Da Dai liji jiegu 大戴禮記解詁 (1983), P. Z. Wang 王聘珍 (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua. De Bary, W. T. (1991), The Trouble With Confucianism, New York: Columbia University. Defoort, C. (2012), “Instruction Dialogues in the Zhuangzi: An ‘Anthropological’ Reading,” Dao, 11: 459–​478. Fraser, C. (2014), “Wandering the Way: A Eudaimonistic Approach to the Zhuāngzǐ,” Dao, 13.4: 541–​565. Fung, Y. L. (1922a), “Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies by Liang Shuming,” Journal of Philosophy, 19.22: 611–​614. Fung, Y. L. (1922b), “Why China Has No Science—​An Interpretation of the History and Consequences of Chinese Philosophy,” International Journal of Ethics, 32.3: 237–​263. Goldschmidt, A. (2009), The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–​1200, London and New York: Routledge. Graham, A. C. (1978), Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Science, Hong Kong: Chinese University and London: School of Oriental and African Studies.

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Graham, A. C. (1981), Chuang tzu: The Inner Chapters, London: Unwin paperbacks. Graham, A. C. (1986), Yin-​Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking, Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Graham, A. C. (1989), Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, LaSalle: Open Court. Han Feizi 韓非子, Sibu congkan ed. Han shu 漢書 by Ban G. 班固 (1962), Beijing: Zhonghua. Hansen, C. (1992), A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University. Hou Han shu 後漢書 by Fan Y. (1962), 范曄, Beijing: Zhonghua. Knoblock, J. (1988, 1990, 1994), Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (3 vols.), Palo Alto: Stanford University. Liang, S. M. 梁漱溟 (1921), Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (東西文 化及其哲學, Beijing: Zhonghua, 2013 reprint. Lloyd, G. E. R. and N. Sivin (2002), The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece, New Haven: Yale University. Lunyu jishi 論語集釋 (1996), Cheng S. D.程樹德(ed.), 4 vols., Beijing: Zhonghua. Makeham, J. (2003), “The Retrospective Creation of New Confucianism,” in J. Makeham (ed.), New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 25–​53. McNeal, R. (2012), Conquer and Govern. Early Chinese Military Texts from the Yizhou shu, Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Mozi zhuzi suoyin 墨子逐字索引 (2001), ICS Ancient Chinese Texts Concordance Series 41, D. C. Lau (ed.), Hong Kong: Commercial Press. Needham, J. (1979), The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West, Boston: G. Allen & Unwin. Needham, J. with Wang Ling (1956a), Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 1: Introductory Orientations, Cambridge: Cambridge University. Needham, J. with Wang Ling (1956b), Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University. Ngo, V. X. (1976), Divination, magie et politique dans la Chine ancienne. Paris, rpt. Paris: You-​feng, 2002. Peng, G. (2012), “Cultural History Holds Back Chinese Research,” Nature, 481 (411), January 26. Raphals, L. (1998), Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China, Albany: State University of New York. Raphals, L. (2008–​2009), “Divination in the Han shu Bibliographic Treatise,” Early China, 32: 45–​101. Raphals, L. (2013), Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece, Cambridge: Cambridge University. Raphals, L. (2014), “Uprightness, Indirection, Transparency,” in A. Olberding (ed.), Dao Companion to the Analects, Dordrecht and New York: Springer. Raphals, L. (2015a), “Chinese Philosophy and Chinese Medicine,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2015 Ed. (online).

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Raphals, L. (2015b), “Science and Chinese Philosophy,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2015 Ed. (online). Shi ji 史記 by Sima Q. 司馬遷 (1959), Beijing: Zhonghua. Shuo yuan jiaozheng 說苑校證, by Liu X. 刘向(1987), Xiang Z. L.向宗魯 (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua. Sivin, N. (1978), “On the Word ‘Taoist’ as a Source of Perplexity, With Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China,” History of Religions, 17.3/​4:  303–​330. Sivin, N. (1988), “Science and Medicine in Imperial China—​The State of the Field,” Journal of Asian Studies, 47: 41–​90. Sivin, N. (1990), “Science and Medicine in Chinese History,” in P. S. Ropp (ed.), Heritage of China. Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California. Sivin, N. (1995a), “State Cosmos and Body in the Last Three Centuries B.C.E.,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1: 5–​37. Sivin, N. (1995b), “Taoism and Science,” in Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China. Researches and Reflections, Variorum Collected Studies Series 8, Aldershot: Variorum. Slingerland, E. T. (2003), Effortless Action: Wu-​wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China, New York and Oxford: Oxford University. Song, X. L. (2003), “Reconstructing the Confucian Ideal in 1980s China: The ‘Culture Craze’ and New Confucianism,” in J. Makeham (ed.) (2003), New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 81–​104. Sun, S. M.孫思邈, Lun taiyi jing cheng 論太醫精誠, in Bei ji qian jin yao fang 備急千金要 方·卷一, Siku quanshu ed. 1: 1a-​15b. Sunzi bingfa 孫子兵法, (1999), in Shiyi jia zhu Sunzi jiao li 十一家注孙子校理, Beijing: Zhonghua. Van Els, P. (2013), “How to End wars with Words,” in C. Defoort and N. Standaert (eds.), The Mozi as an Evolving Text: Different Voices in Early Chinese Thought, Leiden: Brill. Xunzi jishi 荀子集釋 (1988), Li D. S.李滌生 (ed.), Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng. Yu, D.于丹 (2006), Lunyu xinde 論語心得, Beijing: Zhonghua. Zhang, X. C. 張錫純 (1918–​1934), Lun zhexue yu yixue zhi guanxi 論哲學與醫學之關 係, in Yi xue zhong zhong can xi lu 醫學衷中參西錄, rpt. Taiyuan: Shanxi kexue jizhu chubanshe, 1990: 296–​298. Zhao, D. Z.趙德志 (1988), “Xiandai xin Rujia manlun (xu)’ 現代新儒家漫論(續),” Shehui kexue jikan 社会科學辑刊 1988.2: 24–​25. Zhou, Y. M. 周一謀 (ed.) (1994), Mawangdui yi xue wenhua 馬王堆醫學文化, Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe. Zhou, Y. M.周一謀, and Xiao Z. T. 蕭佐桃 (1987), Mawangdui yi shu kao zhu 馬王堆醫書 考注, Tianjin: Tianjin kexue. Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 (1961), Guo Qingfan 郭慶籓 (ed.), Beijing: Zhonghua.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Interdisciplinary Methods in Chinese Philosophy: Comparative Philosophy and the Case Example of Mind-​Body  Holism EDWARD SLINGERLAND

Over two hundred years ago, David Hume—​impressed by the growing explanatory power of the natural sciences of his time—​called upon philosophy to join in the trend toward empirical inquiry, to abandon armchair speculation and a priori abstraction and “hearken to no arguments but those which are derived from experience” (Hume 1777/​1976: 174–​175). Due, no doubt, to a widespread disciplinary self-​conception that relegated the empirical to the intellectually and ethically irrelevant realm of “heteronomy,” Hume’s call to arms largely fell upon deaf ears, and it is only in the past decade or two that a new movement emphasizing “empirically responsible” philosophy has begun gaining momentum. This movement—​ which in its latest iteration was inaugurated in the early work of Owen Flanagan and Mark Johnson (Flanagan 1991; Johnson 1993)—​has argued that philosophical speculation needs to be informed and constrained by our current best empirical accounts of how the human mind works, and encompasses positions as diverse as Johnson’s efforts to restore philosophical standing to embodied aesthetics (Johnson 2007); the use of social psychological research to criticize philosophical conceptions of character or virtue (Doris 2002); the work of “neo-​Humeans” such as Jesse Prinz and Shaun Nichols (S. Nichols 2004; Prinz 2006; 2007), and the so-​ called experimental philosophy movement spearheaded by Stephen Stich and his students (Knobe and Nichols 2008).

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Although in the broader field of philosophy the effort to move away from pure a priori methodologies has met with only sporadic success (Flanagan 2009), in the specific subfield of Chinese philosophy there appears to be an unusual openness to integrating science and humanities approaches. This is perhaps because Chinese philosophy is a younger and less established—​but therefore also less methodologically rigid—​field. In any case, it is becoming more and more common to see approaches to Chinese philosophy that are seriously informed by cognitive and evolutionary science, for instance by moving away from disembodied accounts of human cognition and toward more empirically plausible, embodied models (see, e.g., Bruya 2010; R. Nichols 2011; Sarkissian 2010; Seok 2012; Slingerland 2011a; Wong 2015). The purpose of this chapter is to provide a concrete illustration of the benefits to Chinese philosophy of embracing cooperation between the humanities and natural sciences (Slingerland 2008; Slingerland and Collard 2012; Taves 2009). On the one hand, I hope to show both how techniques borrowed from the sciences can be drawn upon as supplements to traditional humanistic methods, and how engaging with literature from various branches of the cognitive sciences can allow scholars of Chinese philosophy to begin their interpretative projects from a more accurate hermeneutical starting point. On the other, I will also discuss the manner in which philosophers and other humanists can play an important role in helping cognitive scientists to think through their categories and get beyond often quite historically and culturally parochial models of human cognition. The particular case example upon which I will focus is the conceptualization of early Chinese conceptions of body and mind, in particular the view—​very common in Chinese philosophical circles—​that the early Chinese had a uniquely “holistic” view of body and mind. I hope thereby to concretely demonstrate the benefits of interdisciplinary, science-​humanities methodologies for our field by showing how both specific bits of knowledge and entire methodologies from the sciences can help us to break out the endless, circular debates on the topic. The case example will also hopefully serve as a concrete “how to” manual for scholars interested in performing similar studies. An almost universally accepted truism among scholars of Chinese philosophy is that, while “Western” thought is dualistic in nature, early Chinese thought can be contrasted as profoundly “holistic.” This sentiment can be traced back to the earliest reception of Chinese thought in Europe, where second-​hand accounts of Confucian thought penned by Jesuit priests caused thinkers such as Leibniz and Voltaire to see Chinese mind-​body holism, or their supposed lack of distinction between the secular and religious, as precisely the medicine needed to jolt sick European thought out of its doldrums.1 One of the odd features of the modern Academy is the fact that, while the negative side of this sort of cultural essentialism—​the denigration of China as psychologically and politically infantile by the likes of Hegel and Montesquieu—​has been singled out and rejected as perniciously “Orientalist,” its normatively positive manifestation has continued to flourish. What I have come to think of as “Hegel with a happy face”—​the idea that some essential Chinese holism can serve as a corrective to an equally essentialized Western thought—​can be traced from the early European philosophes to scholars such as Lévy-​Bruhl (1922) and Granet (1934) straight down

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to prominent contemporary scholars of Chinese thought such as Roger Ames, Henry Rosemont Jr. (2009), and François Jullien (2007).2 The “radical holist” position embraced by these scholars has many components: the dualist binaries supposedly foreign to Chinese thought include transcendent-​ immanent (Needham 1974: 98), part-​ whole (Jullien 2007: 90), nature-​ culture (Sterckx 2002: 5), and individual-​collective (Ames 2008: 29). Below we will focus on one particular important binary, that of body and mind, characterizing the radical mind-​body holist position as well as briefly reviewing some of the traditional humanistic evidence against it.3 I will then turn to two new sources of evidence against radical holism, both borrowed from the sciences: a method for performing large-​scale random sampling and multiple researcher coding as a check against our qualitative intuitions, and a body of empirical evidence from the cognitive sciences concerning the likelihood of some form of mind-​body dualism being a human universal. I will conclude that early Chinese thought is, in fact, characterized by an at least “weak” mind-​body dualism—​one in which mind and body are experienced as functionally and qualitatively distinct, although potentially overlapping at points—​ and moreover that such dualism is likely to be a human cognitive universal.

THE MYTH OF STRONG MIND-​BODY HOLISM IN EARLY CHINA One common focus of claims about supposed mind-​body holism in early China is the character xin 心, variously translated as “heart” (the original graph is clearly a depiction of the physical organ), “heart-​mind,” or “mind.” It is relatively uncontroversial in the field that, depending upon the text and historical period, xin can refer to the physical organ itself or, more abstractly, to a locus of both the sort of higher cognition typically associated with mind in Western cultures and emotions or feelings, which tend to be associated more with body. A relatively weak form of the holist position—​one that will be defended below—​would hold that we do not find in early China the sort of distinction between an entirely disembodied mind, esprit, or Geist and an ontologically distinct body that characterizes certain philosophical positions in the West. Unfortunately, all too commonly defenses of this more cautious, accurate view—​that Cartesian ontological dualism was unknown in early Chinese thought—​ quickly slide into cultural caricature: the actually rather odd position defended by Descartes is what “Western” thought always has been about, which means that, since the Chinese are not Cartesians, they must be somehow radically different, even a “different order of humanity” (Ames 1993ba: 149). What I will call the strong holist position holds that, for the early Chinese (or “the Chinese” or even the “East” more generally), there exists no qualitative distinction at all between anything we could call mind and the physical body or other organs of the body. This view is arguably the default position in Western scholarship (Ames 1993a; Jullien 2007; Lewis 2006; Santangelo 2007), and also similarly common in contemporary Chinese scholarship (Zhang 2008: 29; cf. Tang 2007; Yang 1996).

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DEBUNKING THE MYTH OF STRONG HOLISM There is a kernel of truth to the strong holist position—​otherwise it would not enjoy such continued endorsement by knowledgeable scholars—​but we need to resist the tendency to slip from reasonable claim into caricature, or to mistake explicit philosophical positions for actual human cognition. Moreover, we have no need to turn to interdisciplinary methodologies in order to doubt the idea that early Chinese conceptions of body and mind are somehow radically different from ours. In a recent article (Slingerland 2013) and a monograph in progress, I review in some detail the traditional humanistic evidence—​textual, historical, and archeological—​against the strong mind-​body holist position. These include the basics of early Chinese afterlife beliefs, as reflected in texts, religious practices, and archeological evidence, as well as a consideration of certain Warring States (sixth to third century bce) philosophical arguments and positions that make little sense except against the background of a non-​Cartesian, but still relatively robust, mind-​body dualism, where the xin enjoys a qualitatively different role vis-​à-​vis the body. Even some passages in Warring States texts that explicitly deny a special role to the xin, which often constitute the backing for strong holist claims, can actually be seen as evidence against the strong holist claim if understood in their proper context. The most well-​known example is perhaps Mencius 6A:7: With regard to the mouth, all palates find the same things tasty; with regard to the ears, all find the same things pleasant to listen to; with regard to the eyes, all find the same things beautiful. Now, when it comes to the xin, is it somehow unique in lacking such common preferences? What is it, then, that minds share a preference for? I say that it is order and rightness. (Van Norden 2008: 151) This passage serves as a key piece of evidence for Jane Geaney, who portrays it as a strong indication that the xin and other organs are not “radically different in nature” (2002: 101), and that, for the early Chinese, the xin “behaves like the senses and seems to be considered a sense function” (13), no different from the other organs. The basic point that is being missed here, though, is that the rhetorical structure of this passage makes it clear that Mencius, in arguing that the xin is like the other organs, is making an argument, not expressing an assumption—​and making an argument that he clearly expects will be met with resistance or incredulity.4 The “taste” for rightness and order that Mencius attributes to the xin is understood metaphorically on the analogy of physical taste: were the xin really viewed as on equal footing with the mouth or the body there would be no necessity for Mencius to posit such analogies. Anyone who doubts that passages such as 6A:7 are fundamentally predicated on mind-​body dualism should try substituting another organ for the xin: “Now, when it comes to the ear, is it somehow unique in lacking such common preferences?” sounds as ridiculous in classical Chinese as it does in English. Here again, processing fluency tells us much about the implicit background of cognitive universals that provides the very context of intelligibility within which philosophical argumentation can take place. Over a decade ago Michael Puett (2001: 1–​20) explicitly identified

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the sort of conflation of argument and assumption described here as the key to many false stereotypes about early Chinese thought, such as the supposed holism between nature and culture, or the supposed lack of the concept of innovation. It is time for scholars of early China to take this point to heart, as it were. What I would really like to focus on in this chapter, however, is how we can supplement the more traditional humanistic evidence we tend to rely on in Chinese philosophy with two relatively new—​at least for humanities scholars—​styles or sources of evidence. Both serve to strengthen the case that the early Chinese were mind-​body dualists of a sort. They are also both intended as illustrations of the potential benefits of making use of techniques and specific findings about human cognition borrowed from the sciences, as well as how this interaction has to flow both ways.

POINTS OF CONTACT, PART I: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS One issue with any textual evidence raised in any exchange between humanities scholars is the problem of cherry picking: defenders of holism tend to highlight particular textual passages or details of the archeological record, opponents others. This is less of a problem when it comes to extreme, culturally essentialistic claims to the effect that the early Chinese completely lacked a given concept—​whether mind-​ body dualism or any other—​where a handful of clear counter-​examples are sufficient for debunking purposes. More reasonable claims concerning cultural differences, however, are typically less totalizing, and focus on general trends or dominant patterns rather than claims of complete exclusion. A. C. Graham, for instance, notes that defensible generalizations about “Chinese thought”—​for instance, that it is relatively uninterested in formal logic—​are reports of general trends, always admitting exceptions for particular thinkers or historical periods (Graham 1989: 6–​7; cf. Van Norden 2007: 10–​15). I would argue that, when it comes to these sorts of more reasonable claims about general cultural trends, our traditional method of drawing upon textual evidence is undermined by the possibility of persistent bias. The cultural significance of individual passages suggesting a more or less “holistic” stance toward mind and body is difficult to assess without a clear sense of how representative they are of the corpus as a whole, and such a sense cannot be accurately captured by traditional methods. As students of Chinese philosophy, we have a deep familiarity with the textual corpus relevant to the tradition(s) we study, and we all at least implicitly assume that the passages that we draw upon when we make generalization about our traditions are in some way more revealing or more representative than those of our opponents. It remains the case, however, that intuitions are often misleading or intellectually self-​serving. This problem of individual bias is a central concern in the various branches of the natural sciences, which have developed a variety of methodologies to minimize its influence. When it comes to the qualitative analysis of any sort of corpus—​written texts, transcripts of interviews, videos of human or other animal behavior—​these

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methodologies include large-​scale random sampling of data, coding or analysis of this data by independent researchers, checks of intercoder reliability, and statistical analysis in order to evaluate the significance of any discerned trends.

CONCEPTS OF XIN IN EARLY CHINA:  A LARGE-​S CALE CORPUS ANALYSIS Inspired by these methods, several years ago I ran a study that attempted to supplement the exclusively qualitative, but therefore necessarily somewhat ad hoc, methods typically employed by scholars of religion with methods borrowed from the natural sciences that combine qualitative and quantitative analysis. This study attempted to approach the question of the relative prevalence of mind-​body dualism in early China by performing a keyword-​focused random sampling of passages from the pre-​Qin corpus of received texts, supplemented by the corpus of recently discovered Warring States archeological texts from Guodian.5 To get a sense of changes over time, these texts were roughly classified into three periods: pre-​ Warring States (c.1500 to c.475 bce), early Warring States (late fifth to mid-​fourth century bce), and late Warring States (mid-​fourth century bce to 221 bce).6 We extracted passages containing xin from an online database of the entire received pre-​Qin corpus,7 as well as a database of a cache of recently discovered pre-​Qin archeological texts.8 The result was 1,321 passages, automatically chunked into traditionally established textual units by the search engine. Then my three coders (graduate students of mine, who were technically blind to the hypothesis that I wanted to explore, although—​ being my students—​no doubt at least dimly aware of the purpose of the study) and I randomly sampled sixty passages and inductively developed a set of twenty-​nine codes to classify its usage (see Figure 17.1). Next, the three coders applied these codes to 620 passages randomly sampled passages, presented in a randomized order. First, each passage was independently coded by two of the three coders. Passages for which both coders’ decisions agreed on all twenty-​nine codes were considered finalized at this point (310 passages, or about half). For the remaining passages a third coder (i.e., the one not in the pair who initial coded that passage) independently coded these passages, and where their twenty-​nine decisions corresponded exactly to one of the first two coders, these passages were again considered finalized (159 passages, or approximately half of the remaining passages). The remaining disagreements were arbitrated and finalized by myself, with full access to the original coders’ decisions and notes. Considering the rather high standards set for intercoder agreement—​ perfect agreement on twenty-​ nine separate decisions—​ intercoder reliability was quite good, with an initial 0.50 correlation in Round 1 and 0.76 correlation having been achieved by the end of Round 2. In order to assure that my own coding in the Round 3 did not distort the results, we also did a check and assured that all of the trends discussed below were still significant after Round 2: all effects retained their statistical significance and directions, and their magnitudes remained close to those reported below.

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FIGURE 17.1  Codes applied to textual passages (from Slingerland and Chudek 2011a).

Of the codes applied to the passages, two main categories bear directly on the analysis of our results that I would like to review here: (1) whether or not xin is contrasted with the body; and (2) whether it is used to refer to a bodily organ, locus of feelings and emotions, or a locus of cognition in the deliberate, reflective sense usually connoted by mind. To begin with, we found that passages involving an explicit contrast between the xin and the body9 were quite common, constituting four percent of Pre-​Warring States passages (7/​179), and roughly ten percent of Early (3/​35) and Late (42/​406) Warring States passages. This increase in frequency of contrasts over time was statistically significant, suggesting that mind-​ body disjunction was becoming a more prominent concern or theme.

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One question that came up when I presented our preliminary results to groups of psychologists was how this frequency of xin-​body contrasts compared to contrasts between other organs and the body. My initial response was that there were no examples of other organs being contrasted with the body—​my intuition was that, although xin-​body contrasts slip under the interpretative radar because they accord with our innate folk dualism, any mention of a liver-​body or ear-​body contrast would have come to my attention. In the spirit of quantitative demonstration, however, we put this to the test: to provide a baseline for comparison, we did a quick follow-​ up study looking for any contrasts between the body and four other commonly mentioned organs in Warring States texts, two external (mu 目 “eye” and er 耳 “ear”) and two internal (gan 肝 “liver” and fu 腹 “stomach”). Of the 864 passages containing occurrences of these terms in the received pre-​Qin textual database, only 337 also contained one of the predominant “body” terms (xing 形, shen 身, ti 體) and thus were likely candidates for a contrast, and these 337 were coded by two coders working independently on mutually exclusive subsets. Only one contrast—​a single passage where the stomach is contrasted with the body10—​was found. This means that the odds of xin being contrasted with the body were about seventy-​seven times greater than the other organs we examined: in other words, xin is essentially unique in being contrasted with the body. This finding alone renders completely untenable the claim that the xin is in no way qualitatively different from the other organs. A second trend in which we were interested was the extent to which xin was portrayed as primarily a physical organ, a locus of emotion, or a locus of “higher” cognition,11 and whether or not there were any patterns in such references that changed over time. What we found is that the frequency with which xin referred to body did not differ significantly between the three periods, but the rates of reference to xin as locus of cognition and emotion did. Xin as locus of cognition was much more frequent in the early andlate Warring States compared to the pre-​Warring States period, although there was no statistically significant difference in frequency between the early and late Warring States. In contrast, xin as locus of emotion showed the reverse pattern: it was referred to significantly less in the Early and Late periods than the Pre period, while also not significantly differing between the Early and Late period. The general pattern of our findings is illustrated in Figure 17.2. Throughout all three periods, xin referred to a physical body organ at a consistently low rate (about three percent). During the pre-​Warring States period, it referred about equally often to a locus of emotion or cognition. By the early Warring States period it was being used to refer to the locus of cognition far more frequently (about eighty percent of the time) than emotions (about ten percent of the time), and this pattern persisted into the late Warring States period. This change also corresponded to a rise in the frequency of explicit contrasts of xin with the physical body. Although the xin is often portrayed as the locus of emotion as well as other cognitive abilities in the pre-​Warring States period (roughly 1500 bce–​450 bce), this study suggests that, by the end of the Warring States (221 bce), there is a clear trend whereby the xin is less and less associated with emotions and becomes increasingly portrayed as the unique locus of “higher” cognitive abilities: planning, goal maintenance, active rational thought, categorization and language use,

INTERDISCIPLINARY METHODS IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY 331 Locus of Cognition Locus of Emotions Bodily Organ

1.0

Frequency

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0 Pre

Early

Late

Period

FIGURE 17.2  Temporal trends in the rate at which xin refers to a physical organ, a locus of emotion or a locus of cognition, in the pre, early and late Warring States periods, with ninety five percent confidence intervals—​the margin of possible statistical error. (From Slingerland and Chudek 2011a).

decision making, and voluntary willing. This neatly maps onto a parallel trend in the translation of early Chinese texts: in pre-​Warring States texts xin is almost exclusively translated as “heart,” whereas translations begin to switch to “heart-​ mind” (or simply vary among themselves between “heart” or “mind”) by the early Warring States period and then render xin almost exclusively as “mind” by the time we reach such late Warring States texts as the Zhuangzi or Xunzi. This trend, when noticed at all, has often been attributed to linguistic sloppiness on the part of the translators, but our study suggests that in fact the situation is quite the opposite, in that xin seems to gradually shed its associations with emotions—​especially strong, “irrational” emotions12—​and comes to be seen as a faculty whose abilities map on fairly closely to the folk notion conveyed by the English mind. Moreover, it alone of all the organs is singled out to be contrasted with the various terms used to refer to the physical body (xing 形, shen 身, ti 體). What is so interesting about this early Chinese case is that linguistic resources seem to militate against mind-​body dualism: the term that came to refer to the seat of cognition was represented by a graph denoting the physical heart, a concrete organ embedded in the body and also the locus of desires and emotions. Nonetheless, over a period of several hundred years, texts employing classical Chinese still developed a quite strong form of mind-​body dualism that strikingly mirrors modern Western folk

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conceptions, and that remained the default picture for the rest of its history.13 While identification of potential causation is necessarily speculative, we think that the best explanation for the trend that we documented in this study is that it represents a semantic shift that was driven by a need for increased conceptual precision that accompanied the vast expansion of literacy as we move into the late Warring States, and that was guided by intuitive folk dualism. In other words, as more and more human beings began using classical Chinese as a means of communication, the semantic range of words like xin converged on a cognitive anchorpoint provided by intuitive folk dualism.

METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL ISSUES One motivation in reporting this study here is that its techniques can be easily adapted for use in accessing other historical materials—​“data from dead minds” (Martin 2013)—​in order to address, in a rigorous and quantifiable manner, a wide variety of questions that interest philosophers, scholars of religion, and other humanists.14 The complete literary records of many cultures are now available in fully searchable, electronic databases, providing us with an incredibly powerful tool simply not available to any other generation of scholars. One of the next frontiers is automated or semi-​automated coding. Fully automated coding involves using powerful search engines to scour large quantities of materials over time to look for specific patterns of usage specified by the researchers. This technique was employed in one high-​profile study that involved querying the entire the Google Book archive, which contains over five million books—​four percent of the books ever published (Michel et al. 2011). Despite a couple of intriguing results—​particularly the idea of using proper name frequency patterns to document statistical signatures of active suppression or censorship—​the results of this study probably strike most humanists as rather gimmicky, and there are problems with the source materials being queried (only books, and only books that have been entered in Google’s database). Nevertheless, as a proof of concept demonstration, I would submit that anyone not impressed and excited by the potential for such techniques to enhance humanistic research simply has not thought about it carefully enough. Another exciting approach is semi-​automated coding, where—​during a trial run or repeated iterations of trial runs—​the qualitative judgments of a human coder can be tracked by an algorithm-​generator or actively codified into “dictionaries,” with the resulting patterns then able to be instantly and automatically applied to mind-​bogglingly large quantities of data.15 This technique, still in its infancy, combines the best of qualitative and quantitative approaches, and is perhaps the most promising from the perspective of scholars of religion. Although the methods employed in this study are standard for scientific qualitative coding exercises, several potential limitations immediately leap out to anyone trained in interpreting texts for a living.16 The formulation of the initial coding categories has an obvious role in shaping the results; coding decisions will be biased by individual coders’ cultural models and individual assumptions about the texts; and the very idea of “hypothesis-​blind” coding seems undermined by the signals sent by the chosen

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keyword and coding categories, as well as the high degree of personal knowledge on the part of the coders of my own preassumptions. Moreover, pre-​Qin texts are notoriously difficult to understand: classical Chinese is a relatively uninflected language, and the inevitable ambiguities present in the original texts are often resolved in a very particular—​but perhaps inaccurate direction—​by the traditional commentaries and English translations that my coders were allowed to consult. There is, moreover, the problem of proper rhetorical framing mentioned above. The single most common issue that ended up having to be adjudicated by me in Round 3 concerned the rather abstract codes having to do with xin being implicitly or explicitly contrasted or identified with the body and other organs. As we saw with Mencius 6A:7, discussed above, even specialists in field would seriously disagree about which codes to apply to that passage: Jane Geaney and many others would have coded it as “0.3 Xin Conceptually (Explicitly) Identified with Other Organs,” whereas I have argued that one needs to add the code, “0.2 Xin Grammatically/​ Rhetorically (Implicitly) Contrasted with Other Organs,” to pick up the proper rhetorical framework. This is difficult—​and debatable—​stuff. Finally, I think it is fair to say that humanities scholars in general are suspicious of attempts to handle the complexity of textual interpretation by means of a process that results in graphs and charts and statistical margins of errors: the statistical cleanliness masks a host of potential systemic complications. I anticipate that many of my colleagues will see our study as an instance of the sciency-​sounding smoke and mirrors being used to obscure the messiness of interpretation—​an attempt to borrow the prestige of the “ethnoscience of the West” to push our own interpretative agenda. I obviously disagree. Despite the many reasons for being cautious in both applying and interpreting the results of such methods, I think that they can serve as a useful example of how techniques from the natural sciences—​large-​scale, team-​ based analysis, random sampling, statistical analysis—​can be put to good use in the humanities. Humanists have always been empirically minded: scholarly claims are not taken seriously unless supported by textual or archeological evidence. This sort of evidence has, however, typically been gathered and presented in a highly biased and unsystematic manner: scholars arguing for mind-​body holism in early China, for instance, will cherry-​pick a dozen or so passages from among hundreds or thousands on the topic to defend their claim. François Jullien, to take a habitually egregious example, cites only a single substantive passage in support of his argument that the early Chinese concept of a holistic body-​mind is quite alien to “our” dualism (Jullien 2007: ­chapter 4), and this passage is from a late Warring States text portraying the xin as a physical organ—​a category that makes up two percent of the passages we coded from this period. Even careful scholars such as Geaney, who makes much more of an effort to substantiate her claims with copious textual evidence, are constrained by the standard of our genre to limit themselves to a subset of available passages that have been chosen in anything but a disinterested manner. Of course, each partisan in any given debate works under the assumption that his or her chosen passages are somehow more representative or revealing than that of his or her opponents, but there has been a surprising lack of interest among humanists in adopting techniques to compensate for personal bias that have long been pillars of the scientific method.17

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The sort of large-​ scale corpus sampling method employed in this study is expensive and, frankly, irritating to implement. As I quickly discovered upon embarking on this project, large-​scale corpus coding projects share many of the liabilities of scientific inquiry in general: they are enormously time-​ consuming, expensive, full of administrative difficulties, and most of all boring. For a scholar used to working solo in the pristine silence of his or her office, managing a team of coders, with all of their personal dramas and idiosyncratic takes on the coding process, is surprisingly difficult. Methodological advances, automation, and hard-​ won lessons—​ coding sheets should be simple, coding schedules generous—​ can help to reduce the burden, but simple funding limitations (coders need to get paid, software needs to be purchased) will no doubt slow the adoption of these techniques. Despite these limitations, the ability of large-​scale corpus analyses to give us relatively objective overviews of huge quantities of historical materials—​using the power of sheer numbers to compensate for inevitable individual biases—​should not be dismissed by philosophers. As we note in our reply to Klein and Klein (2011), who see the problems inherent in interpreting early Chinese texts as potentially fatal to our project, our approach is not intended to sidestep the problems of textual interpretation, but rather to use the power of sheer quantity to help put qualitative disagreements into perspective: Large-​scale coding and statistical analysis allow the noise of randomly distributed interpretative differences to be distinguished from the signal of genuine historical patterns by exploiting large samples and statistical inference. These methods also quantify qualitative disagreements, providing measures of inter-​coder reliability that specify just how much difference in interpretation exists. They provide a path out of endless cycles of disagreement by specifying precisely documented techniques for resolving disagreements, which can be replicated, systematically altered and statistically analyzed. (Slingerland and Chudek 2011b) These techniques can also provide counter-​intuitive results that help us to better situate our qualitative intuitions, and reveal unexpected patterns. For instance, I was very much surprised by the sharp reduction in xin as locus of emotion in the late Warring States: my intuition, I think shared by most in my field, was that xin maintained a strong emotional component throughout the Warring States. Our study results suggest that this intuition is wrong. Large-​scale corpus analyses therefore can, and should, play an important role in supporting, supplementing, and—​when necessary—​correcting traditional approaches. At the same time, as humanists become more familiar with the manner in which qualitative analysis is undertaken in the sciences, their deep familiarity with the problems inherent to cross-​cultural comparison—​and hermeneutics more generally—​can and should begin to have an impact. It is significant that, in the initial version of their piece in Cognitive Science, Klein and Klein strongly contrasted the more objective, “unproblematic” coding issues faced in most psychological experiments with the interpretative challenges inherent to studying early Chinese texts. In fact, interpretation is very much front and center in most areas of the sciences—​a point that has been made loudly and clearly in the “science studies”

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literature—​which means that injecting a bit of humanistic hermeneutic Angst into the sciences would be extremely helpful, provided that it is done in a constructive manner. My experience with work in cognitive and social psychology suggests that most scientific researchers are much less concerned than they ought to be about potential complications that are screamingly obvious to anyone coming out of the humanities: problems of translation, differing cultural models, pervasive conceptual bias on the part of investigators, and so on. This means that the quality of this sort of work would be vastly improved by input from humanities scholars, not merely as data-​providers (glorified RAs), but as theoretical and methodological advisors involved in the most preliminary steps of study design. One reason for the growing gap between the science and the humanities is that—​ arguably under the influence of epistemologically skeptical “Theory”—​humanists too often see the interpretative and methodological problems inherent to scientific research as an excuse to entirely dismiss scientific inquiry as a useful source of knowledge about the world (Slingerland 2008: ­chapters 1–​3), even though we presumably feel that there is something useful or informative about our own work. When presented with scientific studies informed by culturally or linguistically naive assumptions, our response is too often to throw up our hands and completely dismiss the results, rather than to offer to work together to help overcome—​to the extent that it is possible—​the relevant naiveté. As someone trained in the humanities, I am familiar with the stereotype of scientists as culturally and linguistically illiterate, blissfully unaware of their own cultural assumptions and unjustifiably confident of the validity of their own categories of understanding. I have also certainly met my fair share of scientists who fit this characterization. As I have come to spend more and more time collaborating with scientists, however, I have also become familiar with their stereotype of the stubbornly obscurantist humanist, who wrinkles up her nose at their ridiculous “data,” but who—​when pressed for details or concrete suggestions for improvement—​walks off with her nose in the air, muttering in French. Again, a cartoon, but again containing a modicum of truth. For all their faults, scientists are very keenly concerned with the accuracy of their results, and are very willing to listen to anyone who has concrete suggestions for how to improve this accuracy. It is time for us to begin talking.

POINTS OF CONTACT, PART II: COGNITIVE SCIENCE EVIDENCE REGARDING MIND-​BODY “FOLK” DUALISM To anyone starting from a cognitive scientific standpoint, the idea that any Homo sapiens anywhere completely lacked any sense of mind-​body dualism comes as a bit of a surprise. Cognitive scientists have been arguing for decades for the existence in human beings of a tendency of human beings to project intentionality onto other agents, and the world more broadly. This tendency has come to be referred to by cognitive scientists as “Theory of Mind” (ToM),18 being “theory”-​like because it goes beyond the available data to postulate the existence of unobservable, causal forces: mental forces

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such as thoughts, desires, or beliefs. It is apparent that, from a very early age, human beings conceive of intentionality as a distinct sort of causality, and distinguish it from both the kind of physical causation that characterizes folk physics and teleological, “vitalistic” causation. Infants and very young children suspend contact requirement for interpersonal causality, and understand that agents—​ as opposed to objects—​ harbor goals and desires and experience emotions (Spelke, Phillips, and Woodward 1995). Intentionality is viewed by children as a special type of “internal” cause that can work at a distance, and that invites responses from affected agents (Premack and James-​Premack 1995). Even very young children also seem to expect agents to be self-​ propelled, as opposed to objects, which should only move when contacted by another object (Rakison 2003; Spelke, Phillips, and Woodward 1995). There is a massive, and rapidly growing, literature on Theory of Mind. Here I will merely note that this tendency appears to emerge quite early in development (e.g., Bloom 2004; Phillips and Wellman 2005; Spelke, Phillips, and Woodward 1995); has a largely automatic and perceptual component in addition to cognitive components emerging later in development (Scholl and Tremoulet 2000); is present cross-​ culturally in contemporary populations (Avis and Harris 1991; H. C. Barrett et al. 2005; Cohen 2007; Cohen et al. 2011); is vulnerable to selective and at least partial damage in conditions such as autism (Baron-​Cohen 1995; Tager-​Flusberg 2005); and would appear to be distributed in human populations in a spectrum ranging from autism (deficient ToM) to schizophrenia (excessive ToM) with a clear genetic basis (Crespi and Badcock 2008; Crespi, Stead, and Elliott 2009). As Paul Bloom (2004) has observed, this ToM or “intentional stance” (Dennett 1987) lies behind a disjunction in the humanly experienced world between mind-​possessing, intentional agents and mindless things governed by mechanistic causality. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that something at least functionally analogous to ToM may cross the species barrier. Although there is a heated controversy over whether or not other great apes possess full-​ blown ToM—​that is, the ability to model belief systems in other agents that differs from one’s own belief system—​primates and other mammals clearly possess some elements of ToM, and recent studies have suggested that some sort of fundamental distinction between animate agents and inanimate objects may be deeply rooted in the vertebrate brain (Mascalzoni, Regolin, and Vallortigara 2010). The fundamental nature of this disjunction—​its early onset in infant development, automaticity, and apparent universality—​motivates Paul Bloom’s argument that mind-​body dualism is not an accidental philosophical legacy of Plato or Descartes, but rather a universal feature of embodied human “folk” cognition.

THE IMPACT OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE: SHIFTING OUR HERMENEUTICAL STARTING POINT As I have argued in great detail elsewhere (Slingerland 2008), taking seriously this sort of scientific work on the nature of human cognition would have a salubrious constraining effect on the humanities by challenging some of our fundamental assumptions. Humanistic inquiry in Western academy has, especially over the last

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half-​century or so, been dominated by disembodied models of human cognition. Whether rationalistic and universalist or social constructivist and radically particularistic, these models have been based on the assumption that the basic architecture of human thought arises in a manner completely independent of our evolved, biological embodiment. Such a position is no longer empirically tenable. The human mind is inextricably embodied, and like all embodied minds is the product of evolutionary processes. In the case of humans, these evolutionary processes occur in both biological (genetic) and cultural forms,19 but neither one has the effect of magically extracting us from the physical world in which we are embedded. As we all know, the manner in which a hermeneutic journey unfolds depends very much upon its point of departure. In comparative philosophy, as well as in the field of Chinese philosophy, the default point of departure has too often been the assumption of radical cultural difference that naturally falls out of a disembodied, culturally or linguistically constructed model of human cognition. As several scholars of Chinese thought have observed, the result has been a continuation of the kind of exoticization of China one finds in early European Orientalism, whereby China is transformed into a culturally monolithic, timeless, and eternal Other that can be juxtaposed with a similarly monolithic, static West (Billeter 2006; Saussy 2001; L. Zhang 1998). This is why Chinese philosophy, like any humanistic field, stands to benefit by changing our horizon of understanding in light of our current best understanding of the mind coming out of the cognitive sciences. If it were, in fact, the case that we were disembodied consciousnesses, inscribed upon or constructed by language and culture all the way down, radical difference between, say, Greek-​inspired thought and Chinese-​ inspired thought would be a reasonable starting assumption—​ the languages and social systems are quite different. However, the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence about human cognition strongly suggests that we are not, in fact, so deeply embedded in language and culture: we are embodied animals, with a conceptual world costructured by genes and the physical-​cultural environment (Slingerland 2008: ­chapter 3). Taking cognitive science, and a fully embodied picture of human beings, seriously transforms radical cultural-​ linguistic difference into something that needs to be decisively demonstrated, rather than merely assumed. Just as work on Theory of Mind should make us profoundly skeptical of claims that any people anywhere lacked a basic sense of mind-​body dualism, work on basic-​level cognitive categories, innate human essentialism, and folk physics (basic causality) similarly changes the burden of proof for scholars who would argue for other aspects of early Chinese holism—​that, for instance, they lacked a concept of psychological interiority, of biological essences or teleology, the distinction between fact and appearance, or anything resembling “our” concepts of causation or time. Cognitive scientific evidence about human cognition changes the burden of proof for all of these claims on two scales. In the broader context, it is simply a priori unlikely that we would find such radical differences in such basic concepts among members of the same species—​even a species as “hyper-​cultural” as our own. In a narrower context, there is also a large, and constantly growing, body of specific experimental findings that argue against each particular claim (De Jesus 2010; Slingerland 2008: ­chapter 3). This combined burden is one that claims of radical incommensurability simply cannot bear.

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INTEGRATING COGNITIVE SCIENCE WITH CULTURAL STUDIES Having argued that philosophers tend to fetishize cultural difference to our professional detriment, I would like to close with a discussion of the benefits of focusing upon difference. Arguably one of the primary rationales for the studying other cultures is that they often are founded upon distinct conceptions of the self, the self ’s relationship to society, the relationship between reason and emotion, and so on, and that difference can provide space for reconsidering deep assumptions of one’s own culture. Some of the scholars who have been most active in promoting the uniqueness of early Chinese philosophy, such as Roger Ames or Henry Rosemont Jr., are motivated by the conviction that Western economic rationalism and extreme individualism have led to social alienation and ecological disaster, and that the more “holistic” view of the self and society that we find in certain forms of Confucianism might present an alternative, more positive vision.20 Although I oppose these scholars’ more extreme claims about radical cultural difference, this aspect of their projects represents an important contribution to our understanding of both early China and ourselves. In the remainder of this section I would like to explore the kernel of truth behind the myth of radical Chinese holism, as well as how a serious consideration of early Chinese mind-​body concepts has much to offer contemporary conceptions of the self and models of ethical education. Paul Bloom, in arguing for universal mind-​body folk dualism, has portrayed this dualism as Cartesian in nature (2004: xii)—​that is, as an ontological substance dualism. Even within cognitive science circles this claim has not gone unchallenged, and some important recent work in cognitive science, combined with data from early China, allows us to add nuances to the basic schema outlined in Bloom (2004). Challenges to the idea that we are all Cartesian dualists have been advanced on at least three fronts: (1) whether or not it is the case that our division of the world and agents boils down to only two parts; (2) if that is the case, whether or not we distinguish entirely sharply and cleanly between the two parts; and (3) whether or not any fundamental divisions in human cognition, if they exist at all, map onto the semantic ranges picked out by the English words mind and body. I will focus upon each of these challenges in turn, exploring the manner in which knowledge of early China bears upon the debate, hoping thereby to illustrate how humanistic knowledge—​deep, textured knowledge of other cultures—​can and should inform work in the cognitive sciences.

ARE FOLK VIEWS OF THE SELF “DUALISTIC”? Cartesian dualism posits a stark dichotomy between a single, indivisible consciousness-​ soul and a body, only the latter of which may be divisible into subcomponents. For scholars of early China, one of the most obvious problems with claiming universality for this schema is the fact that, at least by the time that we reach the Warring States, “the” soul is generally not conceived of as unitary, but made up of several components

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related to one another in a complex and probably somewhat inconsistent manner—​ the specific conceptions varying over time and by region, and not even showing rigid consistency within single texts. From the earliest texts we have the body being contrasted with the “spirit” (shen 神), a more-​or-​less unitary entity that represents the personal essence of the deceased, that leaves the body at death to take residence somewhere “up” above the visible world, and that serves as the focus of sacrificial rituals or prognostications. Even in the early texts, however, and with increasing frequency as we move into the Warring States, the spirit is discussed alongside at least two other subsouls, the po 魄 and the hun 魂. The standard scholarly position has long been that these two souls were conceived of as separate, and as having different fates after the death of the body. A classic article by Kenneth Brashier (1996) has called this neat dichotomy into question, demonstrating that, although there is considerable evidence for a hunpo dualism in the elite literati tradition, there were multiple other scholarly and popular conceptions where hunpo was used as a compound, or the two terms were used interchangeably. The only constant seems to be that, despite their varying degrees of entanglement with the “body complex” (149), terms like hun and “spirit” were all consistently linked to mental activity and the continuation of consciousness—​as well some degree of personal identity—​beyond the death of the physical body. This sort of contrast between the body or “body complex” and a more rarefied spirit is a dualism of a sort, but significantly weaker than the ontological substance dualism we find in Descartes. Interestingly, similar challenges to Bloom have been presented by cognitive scientists familiar with cross-​cultural data. Richert and Harris (2008), for instance, provide a variety of cross-​cultural evidence suggesting the prevalence of a tripartite (body-​mind-​soul) model of the self, rather than simple mind-​body dualism. As is the case with early Chinese conceptions, this tripartite schema can still be brought under the umbrella of folk dualism if we note that concepts such as that of “soul” or personal essence are fundamentally parasitic on the concept of mind: things without minds do not have souls. In this respect, the various soul-​like concepts that we find in the world’s religious traditions—​as well as the fact that these souls themselves can have quite numerous subtypes—​can be understood as cultural fine-​tunings and subdivisions of a more fundamental and universal concept of mind. Nonetheless, too simplistic a picture of the self as consisting of two, and only two, components is clearly inadequate.

“WEAK” OR “SLOPPY” FOLK DUALISM: MIND AND BODY INTERPENETRATE There is a rather large and constantly growing literature on the “embodied” or mind-​body integrated nature of Chinese thought.21 Since this is a well-​trodden path, I will keep this portion of my discussion brief. To begin with, with regard to xin-​body relations, the early Chinese conception of xin is undeniably different from Cartesian esprit or Kantian Geist in that it refers

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to a concrete organ in the body, the seat of emotions and desires—​or at least certain emotions and desires—​as well as “reason” and language ability. As part of the body, the xin interacts with body and bodily energies (qi 氣) in multitudinous and complex ways, a fact that is highlighted both in the philosophical literature—​see particularly Mencius 2A:2—​and the later medical literature.22 This means that, as Henry Rosemont Jr. has noted, we do not find in early Chinese thought the sort of widespread and sharp “cognitive/​affective split” (2001: 78) that characterizes much post-​Enlightenment thought in the West. For many early Chinese thinkers, the xin is the locus not only of the sort of “rational” functions that thinkers such as Descartes or Kant associate with the mind—​abstract thought, free will, reflection—​but also a panoply of normative emotions, such as compassion or moral disgust, that such thinkers would relegate to the “heteronymous” realm of the body. Even some of the Chinese thinkers who in fact posit a rather sharp divide between the xin and the emotions still embrace a relatively “holistic” model of the perfected sage, who has reshaped his emotions and desires to accord with the normative order.23 This is why many early Chinese thinkers also value embodied “know-​how” or tacit knowledge over the sort of abstract, explicit theoretical knowledge that is prized in most of post-​Enlightenment Western thought (Billeter 1984; Eno 1990; Fingarette 1972, Ivanhoe 1993/​2000; Slingerland 2003). Another sense in which the early Chinese conceptions of mind and body could be considered “holistic” is that neither the mind nor the postmortem spirit is completely immaterial. The xin is, as noted above, very much a part of the body, and despite its special powers does not consist of a separate substance. Ancestral spirits and other supernatural beings occupy a space somewhere between the visible human world and the very rarified abode of Heaven, and interact causally with the visible world in a variety of ways. The kernel of truth behind claims that the early Chinese had a radically “immanent” conception of the universe is that they appeared to have seen minds, souls, or spirits as not completely immaterial—​that is, “made” out of a different stuff than the visible world—​but rather as consisting of very rarified stuff, on some sort of continuum with the material making up the visible world. Even a cursory examination of non-​Chinese traditions, however, makes it clear that this kind of overlap or interpenetration of mind and body, or “reason” and emotion, is by no means unique to China or “the East.” To begin with, it is important to recognize that conceiving of the mind as exclusively a seat of amodal, algorithmic reason—​completely detached from and ontologically distinct from the body and the material world—​is by no means a hegemonic position even within the Western philosophical tradition. Aristotle, for instance, based his entire ethics upon virtues, which are essentially a type of “intelligent” emotional-​somatic capacity, linked to the body and to a type of “skill” or implicit knowledge (Wiggins 1975/​1976). In the Aristotelian model of the self—​one that dominated scholastic philosophy throughout the Middle Ages—​such capacities occupy a third place in between abstract cognitive capacities and more gross bodily functions. Although the disembodied model of the mind came to assert a fairly broad hold on the Western philosophical mind during the European Enlightenment, there were prominent holdouts—​including Leibniz and

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Spinoza—​and the development of post-​Enlightenment philosophy in the West has arguably been a story of attempts to move beyond Cartesianism and reintegrate the body and mind. As Bryan Van Norden has observed, philosophical Cartesianism in fact represents only a small portion of the Western philosophical tradition, and is no longer seriously defended by most Western philosophers; the portrayal of “Western” philosophy as characterized by some kind of monolithic Cartesianism is thus an unfortunate example of a “methodologically dualist” approach that caricatures both “Eastern” and “Western” thought (Van Norden 2002: 167–​168). Once we leave the realm of philosophy, it becomes clear from even a cursory survey of the literature on “folk” intuitions that strong Cartesianism is, in fact, a rather strange and counter-​intuitive view even for “us Westerners.” When reasoning about topics such as spirit possession or the afterlife, study participants in the Western world have intuitions about which capacities clearly go with “the mind” (abstract thoughts and personal identity); which clearly go with “the body” (physiological functions); and which are intermediate capacities, such as appetites and habits, that straddle body and mind (Cohen 2007; Cohen and Barrett 2008). In one recent study, Emma Cohen and her collaborators (2011) found that, when asked to imagine having left their own body and entered a rock or a plant, subjects in both rural Brazil and Oxford viewed their capacities as more or less “body dependent.” For instance, they were quite likely to say that, even if they had entered a rock, they would still remember things, see things, or know things, but relatively unlikely to say that they would feel achy or sore or feel hungry. The sorts of capacities that we typically associate with mind tended to be seen as body-​independent—​easily migrating to the rock or the plant—​while others remained tightly yoked to the physical body and many hover somewhere in between. In all of these studies, the sorts of capacities that often, but not always, migrate with the spirit or survive the death of the physical body map quite nicely onto the functions of the Chinese xin that are often cited as examples of radical “holistic” thinking. What is particularly interesting about this study is that the rural Brazilian subjects—​most of them entirely without formal education—​were more dualistic than the UK subjects. Cohen et al. speculate that this may be due to the UK subjects’ exposure to Western biomedical and neurological education, with its message of an integrated mind-​body system. That is, education in “Western” science—​so typically associated with the supposedly monolithically Cartesian Western mind—​may in fact serve to undermine innate folk dualism. Very similar results were obtained by a recent study by Chudek et al., which found that, among rural Fijian subjects, mind-​body dualism decreased in subjects that had more exposure to Western education (Chudek et al. Submitted). Another helpful set of illustrations (both figuratively and literally) of folk mind-​ body overlap is provided by K. Mitch Hodge (2008) in an important study that explicitly critiques Bloom’s theory of “innate Cartesianism.” Examining examples of funerary rites, mythology, iconography, and religious doctrine drawn from a variety of world cultures, Hodge points out that the folk’s dualism is clearly not one whereby mind and body are conceived of as entirely different, noninteracting substances. Inert bodies continue to contain traces of the minds that once inhabited them, which is why corpses present such a profound religious and emotional

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problem: they are objects—​and, within a short period of time, threats to public health—​that somehow seem different from ordinary objects. Indeed, one could argue that the primary purpose of mortuary rituals is to break this connection in a workable fashion, allowing the corpse to be disposed of safely while either gradually detaching the mind-​traces from it completely, or transferring these traces to another, more durable object (a gravestone, ancestor tablet).24 In a similar fashion, minds never free themselves entirely from their mortal coil: the dead continue to be imagined as possessing ethereal bodies resembling those they “possessed” in life, as well as being subject to the sorts of physical limitations typically imposed by bodies.25 There are a myriad of parallels in early China to the sort of physical representations of the dead that Hodge documents, where the deceased are visually represented as possessing very much the same form in the afterlife—​although sometimes rather more attenuated or vague—​that they possessed in life, and where the human and supernatural realms are portrayed as distinct but connected in some fashion.26 Artistic portrayals of this sort are extremely revealing precisely because they are not explicitly about worldviews—​ that is, they are not consciously formulated theological or philosophical accounts—​but rather their indirect expressions, and therefore arguably much better at revealing the contours of real-​life cognition in a given culture. If we set side by side, for instance, a silk tomb painting from Zidanku (fourth century bce) representing the deceased as a male figure riding on a dragon (Lai 2005) and any randomly chosen Renaissance painting depicting the soul of the dead as a rather buff and well-​dressed Italian aristocrat, one would be hard-​put to single out one of the two as more or less “holistic”: in both cases the dead person is imagined as both body-​like in form but somehow less than material. The famous Changsha Mawangdui name banner of Lady Dai portrays the universe as consisting of distinct registers—​most scholars see them as at least threefold, representing an immanent realm sandwiched by a heavenly realm above and underworld below (H. Wu 1992: 121–​127)—​populated by somewhat ethereal, but nonetheless body-​ like, figures. Compare this painting to, say, Paolo Veronese’s The Battle of Lepanto (1572),27 depicting the famous battle in 1571 where a fleet of galleys from the Christian Holy League defeated the Ottoman fleet in a battle off Greece. In the painting we see the two fleets locked in combat below, while in the clouds above a gathering of quite vigorous-​looking saints, led by St. Justina, is pleading with the Virgin to grant victory to the Christian forces. They are apparently winning her over, because to the upper right we see a cherub beginning to rain flaming arrows down on the Turkish forces. Which of these vertical schemas depicted in these paintings is more disjunctive? I fail to see any principled reason for seeing either depicted universe as any more or less “immanent,” or involving more or less interpenetration of otherworldly realms, than the other. Informed by both traditional humanistic evidence and knowledge and methods borrowed from the sciences, we can conclude that Descartes’s austere mind-​body substance dualism is a rather counter-​intuitive philosophical position, alien to any person’s everyday cognition. Cartesianism represents an intellectually rigorous working out of a rather “sloppy” folk intuition, but like many philosophical or theological concepts—​ for example, a completely transcendent immaterial God,

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Calvinistic predestination or Buddhist “no-​ self ” doctrines (Barrett 1996; Slone 2004)—​online human cognition seems somewhat impervious to its logic. Looked at in this light, the fact that the early Chinese were not Cartesian dualists is not much to write home about, and in no way entails that mind-​body dualism of some sort was entirely alien to their thought. While the early Chinese did not posit a scalpel-​sharp, perfectly clear divide between mind and body—​or “higher” cognitive abilities residing in the “mind” as opposed to lower ones located in the body—​they clearly saw xin and the various words for the physical body as two qualitatively distinct points of attraction on a spectrum, with some intermediate abilities or features potentially falling on one side of the line or the other depending upon the exact time period, the school of thought, or the pragmatic context (e.g., medical diagnosis and treatment vs. philosophical reflection on methods of self-​cultivation). In this sense, they were no more or less dualistic than “we” are.

CONCLUSION: DOING COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY As Roger Ames, Henry Rosemont Jr., and François Jullien have argued quite convincingly, early Chinese conceptions of the self—​and we should acknowledge that there are many of them—​do present us with models of mind-​body, reason-​ emotion, and individual-​ society relations that, on the whole, provide edifying contrasts to the disembodied, hyper-​rationalist models that have dominated recent Western philosophical thinking. This has implications that go far beyond philosophy or religion, since these psychologically unrealistic models coming out of philosophy have had—​ and continue to have—​ deleterious impacts on legal, political, and educational policy (Slingerland 2011a; 2011b). They also played a role in sending so-​called first generation cognitive science down some ultimately dead-​end paths—​ an influence that the field as a whole has only recently recovered from. In these respects, engaging with early Chinese models of the self can clearly serve as an important, substantive corrective to recent philosophical-​ religious excesses and wrong turns. However, it is also imperative that the sort of conceptual variation that emerges from comparative philosophy be contextualized within a framework of basic human cognitive universals—​indeed, it is this very framework that allows texts or thinkers from another era or cultural context to be comprehensible in the first place. It is important to recognize that a fully exoticized “Other” cannot engage us at all, and that the religious or philosophical challenge of texts such as those of early China can only be felt against a background of cognitive universality. Once the shift from radical cultural-​ linguistic constructivism to embodied commonality is made, the landscape of comparative philosophy begins to appear to us in a very different light. Embodied cognition and a dual-​inheritance model of gene-​culture coevolution provide us with a scientifically plausible, realistic model of human cognition and culture-​cognition interaction, an ideal new starting point for cross-​cultural comparative work. Embodied experience of a shared world can serve as a bridge to the cultural “Other,” and provide us with powerful new theories of how

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this shared cognitive structure can be elaborated by culture, language, and history into quite idiosyncratic—​but ultimately still comprehensible—​forms (Slingerland 2008, ­chapter 4). If comparative philosophy and some sense of progressive research agenda are to regain their proper place at the core of the study of Chinese philosophy, an approach that combines the best knowledge and practices of both the science and the humanities is our most promising way forward.

NOTES I have benefited greatly from audience feedback at the venues where I have presented aspects of this work, including the Collège de France, Princeton University, Ca’Foscari (Venice), AAS 2011 and Pacific APA 2010. In particular, I’d like to thank Paul Goldin, Anne Cheng, Martin Kern, Ben Elman, and Willard Peterson for comments that have helped me clarify my arguments. This research was supported by a Canadian SSHRC grant and the Canada Research Chairs program, and this chapter is a modification of a previously published article: “Body and Mind in Early China: An Integrated Humanities-​Science Approach,“ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81.1: 6–​55 (March 2013). 1. See Jensen (1998) on the early reception of Confucianism in the West, and Cook and Rosemont (1994) on Leibniz and his reception of Chinese thought. 2. See Brown 2006 for an excellent survey of the history of this debate, as well as Puett (2001: 4–​20), Billeter (2006), Cheng (2009), McDonald (2009), Saussy (2001), and L. Zhang (1998) on the continued dangers of cultural essentialism in contemporary Chinese studies. 3. Also see Farmer, Henderson, and Witzel (2000) for an excellent general critique of the position that holism is somehow unique to China, as well as Michael Puett’s (2001) commonly ignored, but nonetheless definitive, debunking of claims concerning nature-​ culture holism in early China. 4. Cf. Mencius 7A:27, where hunger and thirst are described as being able to distort one’s physical as well as metaphorical—​that is, xin-​based—​“taste.” 5. Preliminary results have been reported in Slingerland and Chudek (2011a), to which the reader is referred for more technical details and statistical analyses. Also see the critique by Klein and Klein (2011), and our response in Slingerland and Chudek (2011b). 6. Of course the dating—​even rough—​of texts from the pre-​Qin period is controversial, not least of all because, like most pre-​printing-​press texts, they are rather permeable, taking in material from different time periods and subject to scribal and editorial whims. There are currently various factions within the field of early Chinese studies, ranging from scholars who still defend a very clear and “traditional” chronology of pre-​Qin texts to what I would characterize as a “radical fringe” that has been arguing for extreme textual indeterminacy in all pre-​Han texts (e.g., Brooks and Brooks 1998). I would place myself somewhere in the middle, and would stand by the claim that the three-​part periodization that I employed in the study is broadly defensible on both philological and philosophical grounds (see Slingerland 2000 and Goldin 2011).

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  7.   8.

  9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

In any case, the contrast between the pre-​Warring States texts on the one side and the early-​and late-​Warring States texts on the other is certainly uncontroversial, and the trends I discuss still hold if we collapse early and late Warring States into one category. An online database maintained by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan (http://​210.69.170.100/​s25/​index.htm). An online database of the so-​called Guodian corpus of bamboo texts (interred roughly 300 bce and discovered in 1993), maintained by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (http://​bamboo.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/​). The inclusion of archeological texts was intended to help offset the inevitable bias introduced in dealing with transmitted texts, which may have been subjected to editorial selection bias over the centuries. The Guodian corpus was chosen because of the ease of accessing and searching it online. As Paul Goldin has observed (personal communication), however, this introduces a potential new, and more avoidable, source of bias—​the selection of one particular archeological corpus among the many now available—​that should be corrected in future iterations of this study. Instances of xing 形, shen 身, ti 體, li 力 (“physical strength,” one instance in the late Warring States) and qi 氣 (when used in the sense of physiological energy) were all taken as references to the “body.” Mencius 4A:19 (Van Norden 2008: 99), where physically taking care of one’s parents is characterized as “merely caring for their mouths and limbs” (yang kouti 養口體); this arguably expresses a coordination rather than a contrast. Note that, for the purposes of the final analysis, content codes 13–​15 (all referring to various aspects of what one might term “higher cognition) were collapsed into one code. We did not systematically explore the issue of where these emotions go once they are expunged from the xin, but my qualitative intuition is that they are downloaded onto the qi, or bodily energy. Nothing like this sort of systematic study has yet been performed on post-​Qin, let alone contemporary materials, but qualitative analysis suggests that, once Buddhism is introduced to China in the beginning of the Common Era, the conception of xin becomes, if anything, even more disengaged from the body. See, for instance, Clark and Winslett (2011), the methodology of which was inspired by an early version of the project reported in Slingerland and Chudek (2011). See, for instance, James Pennebaker’s “Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count” program at http://​www.liwc.net/​. As part of a large, multiyear grant awarded to us at UBC to study “The Evolution of Religion and Morality,” we will be making such tools (along with summaries of their strengths and weaknesses and instructions on how to use them) available to scholars of religion; consult our website at: http://​www.hecc.ubc. ca/​cerc/​project-​summary/​. See, for instance, the critique of our study in Cognitive Science by Klein and Klein (2011). One prominent exception, as Luther Martin has observed (personal communication), has been the work of biblical scholars, who since the nineteenth century have used concordances (and more recently electronic databases) to perform word-​count studies aimed at, for instance, distinguishing between “genuine” Pauline letters and the deutero-​Pauline literature.

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18. Perhaps the best recent (and quite readable) introduction to theory of mind is Bloom (2004). 19. For more on “dual inheritance theory,” see Richerson and Boyd (2005) and Henrich and McElreath (2007). 20. On this topic, see Rosemont and Ames (2009) and Ames’s thoughtful celebration of Rosemont’s work in Ames (2008). 21. For a sampling, see Ames (1993), Csikszentmihalyi (2004), Geaney (2002), Yu (2009), K.-​m. Wu (1996), Yang (1996), Zhang (2008). 22. Harper (1998) and Porkert (1974) provide helpful discussions of the medical literature; Ishida (1989) serves as a representative example of how the conception of xin in a particular medical text is too commonly reified into “the” Chinese view, as if that view were both monolithic and eternal. 23. Xunzi, for instance, has a quite “rationalistic” model of the xin, one of the main functions of which is to monitor and control the emotions and desires. “The likes and dislikes, delights and angers, griefs and joys of the inborn nature are called emotions,” he says in one typical passage. “When the emotions are aroused and the mind makes a choice among them, this is called thought” (22/​1b; Knoblock 1994: 127). See Yearley (1980) for more on the Xunzian model of the mind. 24. In his “Discourse on Ritual” (lilun 禮論), Xunzi offers an extremely detailed and sophisticated account of how Confucian funerary rites are designed to perform this psychological function (Knoblock 1994: 49–​73). 25. Cf. notions concerning the epistemological and physical limitations of supposedly omnipotent and omniscient supernatural beings (J. L. Barrett 1996; 1998; J. L. Barrett and Keil 1996). 26. See Lai (2005) for an excellent review of early Chinese funerary materials. 27. Now housed in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

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Knoblock, J. (1994), Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, vol. 3, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lai, G. L. (2005), “Death and the Otherworldly Journey in Early China as Seen through Tomb Texts, Travel Paraphernalia, and Road Rituals,” Asia Major, 18.1: 1–​44. Lévy-​Bruhl, L. (1922), La mentalité primitive, Paris: Alcan. Lewis, M. E. (2006), The Construction of Space in Early China, Albany: State University of New York Press. Martin, L. (2013), “Cognitive Science of Religion and the History of Religions (in Graeco-​Roman Antiquity),” Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 1.1. Mascalzoni, E., L. Regolin, and G. Vallortigara (2010), “Innate Sensitivity for Self-​ propelled Causal Agency in Newly Hatched Chicks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107.9: 4483–​4485. McDonald, E. (2009), “Getting over the Walls of Discourse: ‘Character Fetishization’ in Chinese Studies,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 68.4: 1189–​1213. doi:10.1017/​ S0021911809990763 Michel, J.-​B., Y. K. Shen, A. P. Aiden, A. Veres, M. K. Gray, The Google Books Team, J. P. Pickett, D. Hoiberg, D. Clancy, P. Norvig, J. Orwant, S. Pinker, M. A. Nowak, and E. L. Aiden (2011), “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books” Science, 331: 176–​182. doi: 10.1126/​science.1199644 Needham, J. (1974), Science and Civilization in China 5.2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nichols, R. (2011), “A Genealogy of Eary Confucian Moral Psychology,” Philosophy East & West, 61.4: 609–​629. Nichols, S. (2004), Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment, New York: Oxford University Press. Phillips, A. and H. Wellman (2005), “Infants’ Understanding of Object-​directed Action,” Cognition, 98: 137–​115. Porkert, M. (1974), The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence, Cambridge: MIT Press. Premack, D. and A. James-​Premack (1995), “Intention as Psychological Cause,” in D. Sperber, D. Premack, and A. James-​Premack (eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary debate, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Prinz, J. (2006), Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prinz, J. (2007), The Emotional Construction of Morals, New York: Oxford University Press. Puett, M. (2001), The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rakison, D. H. (2003), “Parts, Motion, and the Development of the Animate-​Inanimate Distinction in Infancy,” in D. H. Rakison and L. M. Oakes (eds.), Early Category and Concept Development: Making Sense of the Blooming, Buzzing Confusion, London: London University Press. Richerson, P. J. and R. Boyd (2005), Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Richert, R. A. and P. L. Harris (2008), “Dualism Revisited: Body vs. Mind vs. Soul,” Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8: 99–​115. Rosemont, H., Jr. and R. T. Ames (2009), The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Santangelo, P. (2007), “Emotions and Perception of Inner Reality: Chinese and European,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 34.2: 289–​308. Sarkissian, H. (2010), “Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs: The Problems and Promise of Situationism in Moral Philosophy,” Philosopher’s Imprint, 10.9: 1–​15. Saussy, H. (2001), Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Scholl, B. J. and P. D. Tremoulet (2000), “Perceptual Causality and Animacy,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4.8: 299–​309. Seok, B. (2012), Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Slingerland, E. (2000), “Review: Why Philosophy Is Not ‘Extra’ in Understanding the Analects” [The Original Analects by Brooks, E. Bruce; Brooks, A. Taeko], Philosophy East and West, 50.1: 137–​141. Slingerland, E. (2008), What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body & Culture, New York: Cambridge University Press. Slingerland, E. (2011a). “ ‘Of What Use Are the Odes?’ Cognitive Science, Virtue Ethics, and Early Confucian Ethics,” Philosophy East & West, 61.1: 80–​109. Slingerland, E. (2011b), “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics,” Ethics, 121.2: 390–​419. Slingerland, E. (2013), “Body and Mind in Early China: An Integrated Humanities-​ Science Approach,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 81.1: 6–​55. Slingerland, E. (in preparation), “Body and Mind in Early China: Beyond the Myth of Holism.” Slingerland, E. and M. Chudek (2011a), “The Prevalence of Mind-​Body Dualism in Early China,” Cognitive Science, 35: 997–​1007. Slingerland, E. and M. Chudek (2011b), “The Challenges of Qualitatively Coding Ancient Texts,” Cognitive Science, 36: 183–​186. Slingerland, E. and M. Collard (eds.) (2012), Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities, New York: Oxford University Press. Slone, D. J. (2004), Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn’t, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Spelke, E. S., A. Phillips, and A. L. Woodward (1995), “Infants’ Knowledge of Object Motion and Human Action,” in D. Sperber, D. Premack, and A. James-​Premack (eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sterckx, R. (2002), The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, Albany: State University of New York Press. Tager-​Flusberg, H. (2005), “What Neurodevelopmental Disorders Can Reveal About Cognitive Architecture,” in P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Tang, J. J. 汤一介 (2007), Ruxue de xiandai yiyi 儒学的现代意义, Jianghan Luntan 江汉论 坛, 1: 1–​14. Taves, A. (2009), Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-​Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van Norden, B. (2002), “The Dao of Kongzi,” Asian Philosophy, 12.3: 157–​171. Van Norden, B. (2007), Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, New York: Cambridge University Press. Van Norden, B. (2008), Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company. Wiggins, D. (1975/​1976), “Deliberation and Practical Reason,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76: 29–​51. Wong, D. (2015), “Early Confucian Philosophy and the Development of Compassion,” Dao, 14.2: 1–​38. Wu, H. (1992), “Art in a Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui,” Early China, 17: 111–​144. Wu, K. M. (1996), On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill. Yang, R. B. 楊儒賓 (1996), Rujia Shentiguan 儒家身體觀, Taibei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan. Yearley, L. (1980), “Hsun Tzu on the Mind,” Journal of Asian Studies, 39.3: 465–​480. Yu, N. (2009), The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective: Culture, Body, and Language, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Zhang, L. X. (1998), Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zhang, Z. L. 張再林 (2008), Traditional Chinese Philosophy as the Philosophy of the Body 作爲身體哲學的中國古代哲學, Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue chubanshe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Chinese Philosophy as Experimental Philosophy HAGOP SARKISSIAN AND RYAN NICHOLS

INTRODUCTION Among the methods used to interpret and investigate Chinese philosophy surveyed in this volume, experimental philosophy is, almost assuredly, the least well known and least deployed. In fact, there is very little published work that falls under the title of “experimental Chinese philosophy” as we will define it. Part of the reason why has to do with the recent vintage of this methodological movement, which only began in earnest in the last fifteen years. Yet another possible reason has to do with a substantive question concerning whether the methods of experimental philosophy are even appropriate for the investigation of Chinese philosophy for, as we shall see, some assumptions must be met before considering whether they are. Nonetheless, we maintain that fruitful avenues of research lay within relatively easy reach. Given this backdrop, the purpose of this chapter is to briefly assay the landscape of experimental philosophy and identify which, if any, of its central manifestations may be of use for those working in the Chinese philosophical tradition.

EMPIRICALLY INFORMED PHILOSOPHY VS. EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Before proceeding, it might be helpful to characterize experimental philosophy by contrasting it with a related yet (for present purposes) distinct approach—​empirical philosophy.1 “Empirical philosophy” refers to an approach by numerous philosophers (most noticeably in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, political philosophy, and moral philosophy) to make use of observational and experimental research from the social, behavioral, and natural sciences to inform, enrich, and adjudicate philosophical claims. Empirical philosophy of this type has a long and storied history. Outside of a brief interregnum in the twentieth century, when analytic philosophers were centrally preoccupied with the analysis of the semantics of ordinary concepts, philosophers

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throughout history have availed themselves of research in relevant disciplines—​ oftentimes even doing the work themselves. Among those who have approached philosophical questions empirically include such notable figures as Descartes, Hume, Newton, and Locke (e.g., Appiah 2008: ­chapter 1; Knobe 2007). Today, many philosophers working in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, moral philosophy, and applied ethics routinely and systematically draw upon the social, behavioral, and biological sciences to inform their theories. Some empirical philosophy is almost akin to highly theoretical science. This is true in disciplines such as philosophy of biology and philosophy of physics, where much research is dedicated to systematizing the empirical research in these fields and placing it in a coherent and broad theoretical framework. Jesse Prinz has characterized this type of work in the philosophy of mind as follows. One might put the point by saying that empirical philosophy is a form of theoretical psychology, which tries to systematize empirical results, draw implications, guide research, and relate laboratory findings to broad overarching issues that have been of traditional concern in philosophy. (2008: 218) However, philosophers also draw upon empirical research more selectively, using it to inform focused research and to make more narrow claims as well. For example, philosophers have used research from experimental psychology to make claims about the nature of moral judgment (e.g., Kelly 2011; Mikhail 2007) and consciousness (e.g., Prinz 2012). Indeed, those working with the Chinese tradition have increasingly made use of empirical research in their interpretations of the classical texts. Bongrae Seok (2013), for example, has argued that thinking of classical Confucian theories of virtue from a framework informed by cognitive science can help us understand the tradition better and also make it more relevant and applicable to contemporary concerns. Specifically, he argues that classical Confucianism seems committed to the idea that moral cognition is embodied in important ways. He makes extensive use of the scientific literature on embodied cognition to elucidate this theme. Hagop Sarkissian has argued that the Confucian concept of de might be understood as arising from virtuous individuals minding the impact of minor features of their bearing, demeanor, countenance, tone of voice, and other related qualities. The impact from changes in these characteristics has been measured in experimental social psychology (Sarkissian 2010a). Ryan Nichols and Don Munro have argued that resources from evolutionary biology and psychology such as kin selection and reciprocal altruism can help us understand salient aspects of classical Confucian thought, such as its emphases on reciprocity and filial devotion (Munro 2002; Nichols 2011). Eric Schwitzgebel (2007) has drawn on developmental psychology in assessing the competing claims of Xunzi and Mengzi on the proper course of self-​ cultivation; Brian Bruya (2010a; 2010b) draws on the cognitive science of action in understanding Early Confucianism; Ted Slingerland (2013) has drawn on the psychology of dualism and dual-​process theories of cognition (Slingerland et al., 2012) in interpretations of early Chinese classics; David Morrow (2009) has used Mencius as a way to argue for a particular model concerning the relationship between

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emotion, moral principle, and moral judgment. More recently, David Wong (2015) argues that metaphors of adorning, crafting, and cultivating human nature in early Confucian texts refer to distinct aspects of it, and that resources from psychology and neuroscience can help us better understand them.2 Experimental philosophy is distinguished chiefly in that philosophers themselves (often in collaboration with researchers in the relevant sciences) conduct the experiments by generating the hypotheses, developing the experimental design, collecting data, and doing the statistical analyses (see also Rose and Danks 2013). This requires some training and familiarity with experimental research methods, which is why much of this work is done in collaboration with researchers in related fields who are experienced in the methods. Fortunately, given the significant overlap in research interests between philosophers and many social and behavioral scientists, opportunities for fruitful collaboration are not difficult to find.

THREE TYPES OF EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Experimental philosophy is, then, the systematic exploration of philosophically relevant questions using the tools of experimental science. Its aims, goals, and methods are, however, diverse. The following taxonomy might be fruitful for framing the remaining discussion. This taxonomy draws from previous work with some modification (e.g., Alexander 2012; Nadelhoffer and Nahmias 2007). It is by no means exhaustive, and particular projects may fall under more than one category. Extended Conceptual Analysis: Conceptual analysis is a traditional method of philosophy, with a venerable past. For example, when Socrates asks about the nature of justice, or the nature of what is pious, he is engaged in conceptual analysis—​ seeking to elucidate the nature of a concept by examining its usage and breaking it down into its more basic components. This is arguably the focus of many early discussions in the Chinese tradition as well. We can understand Confucius’s attempt to clarify the application of terms such as “filial” and “upright,” and Mencius’s argument about the correct application of the concept of a true king, to be analogues of this practice. The result is a characterization that provides a concept’s prototypical instantiation, general definition, or condition of apt use. This seems to be an activity supremely suited to pursuit without any highly specialized training or equipment save the individual mind and clarity of thought. As Timothy Williamson notes, If anything can be pursued in an armchair, philosophy can. Its traditional method is thinking, without observation or experiment. If the pursuit is conceived as social, rather than solely individual, then speaking must be added to thinking, and several armchairs are needed, but that still leaves philosophy looking methodologically very far from the natural sciences. Loosely speaking, their method is a posteriori, philosophy’s a priori. (Williamson 2005: 1) However, even here we have a hint at the potential benefits of using experimental methods. The “social” dimension noted by Williamson is most readily understood

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as referring to dialogue—​analyzing concepts with shared users of the concepts. Why reflect with others? As shared users of concepts, we might help one another elucidate and analyze the semantics of the concepts being considered. If this is so, then experimental methods can extend this activity systematically, canvassing the intuitions of ordinary language users on a host of concepts at the heart of philosophical debate. Some experimental philosophy is of this kind, aiming at arriving at a deeper understanding of the concepts themselves. Other projects use experimental methods to analyze concepts to see whether the analyses undertaken by philosophers either track or depart from ordinary, prephilosophical intuition. Some work in experimental philosophy clearly fits under this general rubric. For example, there were a number of early papers devoted to exploring folk intuitions concerning the relationship between causal determinism on the one hand, and free will and moral responsibility on the other. The purpose of some of this research was to identify whether ordinary, untutored intuitions aligned with those of philosophical compatibilists (who claim that moral responsibility is compatible with the thesis of causal determinism) or incompatibilists (who claim that determinism undermines moral responsibility). Showing that ordinary intuition conflicts with either camp would then give that camp an extra theoretical burden, as it would have to explain away what seems intuitive to most users of these concepts (see Sommers 2010 for a review). As experimental philosophy has developed over the years, research of this kind has continued but in a minor role.

PSYCHOLOGICAL MODELING Extended conceptual analysis is chiefly interested in the nature of the concepts themselves, and how best to analyze them. Another project aims, instead, to uncover the psychological mechanisms that underlie the application of these concepts. What are the psychological processes that give rise to these concepts? Are they driven by cold, calculating cognition, or hot, reflexive cognition? What factors are the judgments sensitive to? And are the processes reliable? Experimental projects falling under this general theme are most closely aligned with traditional cognitive science, and taken together the number of studies done so far under this theme would constitute the clear majority of all experimental studies (Knobe forthcoming). Put another way, most work done under this broad theme is not done to elucidate a concept or to provide a more nuanced or novel analysis of a concept (such as moral responsibility or justice or beauty). Instead, psychological modeling seeks to show how the application of a concept may be affected by factors or considerations in unexpected ways. As Joshua Knobe, a leading figure, puts it: In the paradigmatic case of this sort of work, a researcher is studying people’s application of a concept and comes upon some specific pattern in the results that seems highly surprising and counterintuitive. Then other researchers explore this effect further, trying to get at the cognitive processes underlying it. Throughout this whole process, the emphasis is always on one particular effect and its

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psychological underpinnings; no one ever proposes anything that looks like an analysis of the concept as a whole. (Knobe forthcoming) Knowledge of these psychological processes can, of course, inform our judgments as to the veracity of the judgments themselves. For example, if the judgments are the product of cognitive processes that we have antecedent or independent reason to think are unreliable, then we might then be skeptical that the judgments resulting from such processes are veridical or reliable themselves (e.g., Nichols 2014).

PHILOSOPHICAL RESTRICTIONISM Finally, some projects in experimental philosophy are aimed at curtailing the ambitions of standard philosophical methodology, such as conceptual analysis and the use of thought experiments to elucidate intuitions in the construction of philosophical theories. Despite constituting a very small minority of experimental projects, restrictionism is a highly visible one, including some of the most discussed, cited, and controversial projects in experimental philosophy. Papers in this “negative project” (e.g. Alexander, Mallon, and Weinberg 2014) seek to problematize traditional philosophical methods by showing that the intuitions or judgments that they yield stem from processes that are unreliable or prone to systematic bias. For example, researchers have reported systematic differences in philosophical intuitions stemming from the order of the cases presented (e.g., Schwitzgebel and Cushman 2012), the context in which thought experiments are presented (e.g., Liao et al. 2012; Tobia, Chapman, and Stich 2013), the identities of the actors in the experiments (e.g., Sarkissian et al. 2011), or the social or cultural background of the participants themselves (e.g., Machery et al. 2004; Sytsma et al. 2015). One large motivation for the restrictionist project has been the well-​documented, pervasive, and systematic psychological differences between East Asians and Westerners, especially pertaining to how individuals in these different cultures conceive of, categorize, and explain the social and nonsocial world. Richard Nisbett and colleagues (2001), in an influential review of this literature, argue that whereas East Asians think holistically, attending to the relationships between objects and situating them into broader contexts, Westerners think analytically, attending to the separateness of objects and classifying them in distinct categories. These include cultural differences in how people think about individuality, agency, and entativity (i.e., where individuals spontaneously draw boundaries between individuals) (Heine et al. 2008; Markus and Kitayama 1991). Westerners endorse and reflect a commitment to the separateness of persons as individual loci of control, who value independence from others. By contrast, individuals in many cultures of Asia, East Asia, Southern Europe, and Africa see individual behavior as largely organized and determined by, and thus contingent on the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others, as well as their nonsocial environmental context.3 Experimental philosophers have used this research program to generate hypotheses on how individuals from these different cultures will diverge in their philosophical intuitions in a systematic way, thus bringing the universal ambitions of philosophy into question.

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Of course, cultural differences in cognition represent just one way in which philosophers’ ambitions may be parochial, contingent, or local. Other individual differences, such as age or gender, or motivated cognition, may also play a role.

EXPERIMENTAL CHINESE PHILOSOPHY There is little work that qualifies as experimental Chinese philosophy under any of the characterizations above. Thus, in what remains, we will provide a couple of case studies concerning how one might use experimental methods to explore the Chinese intellectual tradition. There are two broad types of projects one might do: (1) Test for the impact of internalized Chinese social/​philosophical culture: Subjects appropriate for this study would be drawn from East Asian societies inheriting Confucian cultural and moral values, such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. (2) Test specific philosophical claims that appear in the philosophical tradition itself, such as claims concerning the nature of moral judgment or the effects of observing ritual propriety. In what follows, we will give examples of both types of projects, using two of Confucianism’s most distinctive features as test cases—​filial piety and ritual propriety.

EXAMPLE 1—​FILIAL PIETY Consider the philosophically rich anecdote in Analects 13.18, having to do with Upright Gong, in the context of experimental and empirical philosophy. 13.18 The Duke of She said to Confucius, “Among my people there is one we call ‘Upright Gong.’ When his father stole a sheep, he reported him to the authorities.” Confucius replied, “Among my people, those who we consider “upright” are different from this: fathers cover up for their sons, and sons cover up for their fathers. ‘Uprightness’ is to be found in this.” (Slingerland 2003a: 147) Philosophers standardly approach this passage from one of three positions, either a comparativist perspective, a close-​reading perspective, or an intra-​textual perspective. Comparativist readings might discuss the relationship between the case of Upright Gong and the case of Euthyphro, from the eponymous early Platonic dialogue (e.g., Zhu 2002). Euthyphro charged his father with murder after his father had caused the death of one of his slaves. Close readings of Analects 13.18, by contrast, tend to contextualize the passage in its social and political setting as they mark nuanced linguistic features; authors sometimes accompany close readings with criticism (see Hall and Ames 1987: 300–​309; and Liu 2009). However, most treatments of the Upright Gong case fall into the third camp, by virtue of their attempts to position the passage in relation to other parts of Analects or other Early Confucian source texts (e.g., Chan 2012).

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Instead of these approaches, one of the current authors (Nichols) along with a research team, explored the passage from an experimental angle. Broadly, this research team wanted to know about the cultural mirroring of the passage’s moral ethos in contemporary China, as compared to elsewhere. After all, studies show that Chinese (and East Asians in general) have greater rates of filial piety than others (Hwang 1999), a fact routinely attributed to Confucian cultural heritage. Would Chinese subjects be more willing than Western subjects to show agreement with Confucius’s advice and disregard principles of justice by concealing the crimes of kinsfolk? In psychological studies it is not enough to raise good research questions; one must craft principled reasons to hypothesize that a specific, testable answer is true. To illustrate, one of the hypotheses of this research was that Chinese participants would express more filial piety than American participants by being more willing to conceal the crimes of their fathers. Nichols et al. (2016) designed an experiment that duplicated several key features of the case of Upright Gong, focusing not specifically on stealing but on other immoral behavior. All participants in the experiment read a short passage asking them to imagine being the passenger in a car when the driver of the vehicle causes an accident. Two components of this short passage varied according to experimental condition. One variable concerned the identity of the driver causing the accident: either one’s father, one’s taxi cab driver, or one’s supervisor at work. A second variable concerned the resulting consequences of the imaginary accident: either property damage to someone else’s car, bodily injury of a pedestrian, or vehicular manslaughter of a pedestrian. In all cases, the driver speeds away. Participants were drawn from both Chinese and Western populations, and were asked the same set of questions (in Chinese or English), which revolved around moral psychology. For example, they were asked “How ashamed would you feel if you turned in the driver to the civil authorities, and other people found out that you did so?” and “How morally wrong do you believe was the driver’s actions?” Answers to these and other questions were collected on a scale, meaning that participants were not forced into answering yes or no questions. Results confirmed the hypotheses that Chinese participants were significantly more influenced by filial piety and by authority in their moral psychological reasoning. This can be illustrated by using data from the question “How willing would you be to conceal this offense?” Across all conditions, Chinese were much more willing to conceal the driver’s crime than were American participants. In particular, even though both Chinese and American participants were more willing to conceal the crimes of their fathers than, say, the crimes of their taxi drivers, Chinese participants were much more willing to do so (Nichols et al. 2016). In sum, we used an analogy of the case of Upright Gong and recruited contemporary Chinese and American subjects to study moral psychology. Our conclusions from this experiment shed light on the influence of Confucianism and filial piety on Chinese subjects. While we can’t restate that argument here, we have evidence to believe that cultural transmission makes cross-​cultural psychological studies like this one relevant for understanding the influence of the contents of Confucianism. Cultural transmission refers to the processes that facilitate the vertical diffusion

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(across generations through time) and horizontal diffusion (across a population at one time) of information. Cultural transmission modelers and theorists (Henrich and Boyd, 1998; Richerson and Boyd, 2005) have made many gains in testing their hypotheses. As a result, historians of philosophy interested in the testable legacy of ideas could improve their work by making themselves familiar with and applying cultural transmission theory to historical philosophical ideas. More importantly, perhaps, studies such as this one might help adjudicate some of the competing philosophical claims made throughout history concerning the role of filial piety in social and political life, especially with regard to its relationship to other Confucian values such as humaneness or benevolence (ren). Time and again the weightiness of filial piety as a core Confucian value has spurred debates as to its potential corrupting effects. Can Confucianism be a viable sociopolitical ethos if its excessive emphasis on partialism undermines or compromises its commitments to general benevolence and social justice? This question, arising throughout the history of Chinese thought (see Chan 2012), and once again the locus of scholarly attention (see Sarkissian 2010b), has proven to be recalcitrant. Experimental research may help to adjudicate philosophical debates in this domain by exploring these philosophical questions using new methods (cf. Sarkissian ms).

EXAMPLE  2—​RITUAL Another distinctive aspect of early Confucian ethics is its emphasis on rituals, or the li. The li referred to a broad range of activities and practices, among them participation in formal religious rites keyed to important life moments (e.g., mourning rites, wedding rites) as well as more mundane aspects of social conduct that would fall under manners or etiquette. In particular, both Confucius and Xunzi maintained that practicing rituals could have transformative effects on individuals, including forming strong emotional connections with others, and fostering feelings of reverence and benevolence. Indeed, ritual practice was thought to promote social harmony, providing individuals with both scripts for normative behavior as well as connecting them to a transcendent order—​the Way of Heaven. Rituals provide meaning and situate one’s behavior in a larger framework (Cook 2004; Csikszentmihalyi 2004; Slingerland 2003b). But how do rituals enable this? On the one hand, one might think that the early Confucians endorsed a view whereby ritual efficacy lay in their relationship to Heaven, working in inscrutable ways to shape human dispositions and conduct. Some passages in the Analects, for example, reflect a kind of reverence for the power of the ceremonial that is beyond human ken (e.g., 3.11). On the other hand, many have thought that the early Confucians were making claims based on the actual effects of ritual participation through careful observation, first-​hand experience, and engagement with the received tradition. According to this latter way of looking at the issue, the early Confucians were making broad, empirical claims about the functional role of ritual performance in human psychology. But what, precisely, is this role? How should we understand it?

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Consider two distinct possibilities. We might think that the practice or ritual—​ that is, participating in the rites and comporting oneself according to ritual form—​ would cause or cultivate the caring and prosocial emotional attitudes. The particular gestures, postures, incantations, and sequence of events of ritual ceremonies could evoke the appropriate dispositions in the participant. There is textual evidence to support this view, as numerous passages reflect the belief that something about the particular ritual forms passed down through antiquity and through the Zhou dynasty were thought to be incredibly important and profound (e.g., the Di sacrifice mentioned in Analects 3.11). Indeed, the general Confucian attitude toward ritual is one of conservatism, and there is manifest disapproval of deviation away from orthodox ritual form (with rare exceptions such as that found in Analects 9.3). However, other passages note that the li could be practiced pro forma (or even reluctantly) without any emotional evocation. This is revealed in the infamous exchange between Confucius and Zai Wo, who resists observing the traditional three-​year mourning period for his deceased parents, believing such a protracted time in the solitary and meager mourning rites would hinder important parts of self-​cultivation (17.21). Confucius claims that if Zai Wo would feel at ease ending the mourning period after one year then he should do so. Here the natural, genuine feelings are lacking, and so the ritual is meaningless without them. We can also infer that the barren and simple mourning lifestyle would not be sufficient to make Zai Wo feel a greater sense of loss for his parents. If ritual forms cannot foster the emotions, perhaps the emotions must be brought along with the practitioner, as some have suggested. For example, Bryan Van Norden (2007) has argued that rituals are meant to be approached as though they are sacred, and persons ought to participate in rituals with awe and reverence. These feelings imbue the ritual with a kind of authority. On this view, rituals can have transformative effects on persons only if they approach them with a standing commitment to treat them as sacrosanct. Participants must be instructed on how to feel about the ceremony in question (e.g., joyful or dignified), and the ritual form must have resonating elements (e.g., festive or solemn music). We might then hypothesize that ritual form is important, but the meaning imparted to rituals is of even greater importance. From here, we can generate some testable hypotheses.4 For example, participants might be invited to partake in an experiment on the effects of body posture on learning. All participants would be asked to assume a posture that either has some preexisting association with religious rites—​ say, a traditional bow, a kneel, or a position mimicking prayer—​ or one with no such association—​say, flexing one’s arms or sitting in one direction while twisting one’s torso to face another. For each such posture, one set of participants would be told that it has deep and significant ritual meaning in several cultures, where adopting the posture in question is thought to foster communal values or commitments (the “value condition”), whereas another set of participants would be told that the relevant posture is meant to test their physical capabilities or constrain their movements (the “control condition”). All participants would then be asked to take part in a subsequent experiment aimed at testing some moral or prosocial

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tendency, such as contributing to a common good or curtailing self-​interest. The main hypothesis would be that the participants in the value condition would be more likely to act in morally positive or prosocial ways as opposed to those in the control condition. A secondary hypothesis would be that preexisting levels of religiosity or spirituality, as well as preexisting association of posture with ritual form, might also significantly influence the efficacy of adopting the postures. Some existing research supports these hypotheses (e.g., Barrett and Lawson, 2001). Several early Confucian texts speak of the efficacy of ritual when coupled with appropriate attitudes and emotions, and scholars have explored and evaluated these claims throughout history from the armchair. Yet such claims can be explored using experimental designs such as the one just noted.5

CONCLUSION The field of East Asian philosophy has been unusually friendly to interdisciplinary approaches to philosophical questions, but we have considerable room in which to make further contributions. Indeed, in this brief introduction to the topic, we have not had occasion to discuss many other relevant studies, testing hypotheses on East Asian texts for example by using resources from text analytics (e.g., Slingerland and Chudek 2011). And while it might be argued that experiments, whether with human subjects or textual corpora, are best left to experienced scientific researchers, it is not always reasonable to expect that the specific claims made in the Chinese philosophical tradition will be so tested without the contributions of scholars working with the tradition. Specialists working in the tradition are best positioned to generate the hypotheses and represent the claims in the classical corpus in an honest and faithful fashion. Moreover, studies concerning Chinese thought can be made much stronger by collaboration with those who specialize in Asian or East Asian fields with differing disciplinary strengths, whether historians, political scientists, economists, literature scholars, or linguists. Fruitful avenues for exploration lay in the offing for those willing to make the effort to establish ties with other researchers and jointly explore shared research agendas.

NOTES Our thanks to Joshua Knobe for helpful comments and discussion on a previous draft. 1. For an overview of some work in this area, see Knobe et al. (2012). 2. See also the special issue of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture (Volume 9) edited by Brian Bruya, containing other work along these lines. 3. Chinese philosophy is implicated in the restrictionist project. This is because of the close connection between Chinese philosophy—​especially Confucian philosophy—​ on the one hand, and East Asian social and political culture on the other. Confucian cultures persist in many East Asian societies today, including (but not limited to) the cultures of Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. Many psychological

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and behavioral differences documented by the researchers above were with the participation of East Asian subjects, and the tendencies they exhibit align with the principles and precepts found in the Confucian intellectual tradition itself. These include, for example, an emphasis on family duties as weighty values shaping the practices of everyday life, understanding (and endorsing) human society as consisting of dyadic relationships arranged largely along hierarchical orientations, seeing the self as shaped profoundly by such relationships, and embracing communal values to a much greater extent than individual ones. We won’t get here into the complicated story of the direction of causality, and prefer to take a position where geographical/​ecological features can play an important role in shaping basic cultural orientations and values, but also where such values can then evolve through cultural evolutionary forces and reinforce and extend such orientations and in ways that would be highly underdetermined by the factors stemming from the original ecological context. 4. My thanks to Ted Slingerland (personal correspondence) for suggesting the general form of such an experiment. 5. While our two examples concerned aspects of Chinese philosophy which might be considered distinctive, it is important to note that existing work in experimental philosophy has also found that Chinese and Western subjects share core intuitions in a wide range of philosophical domains, including free will (Sarkissian et al. 2010), metaethics (Sarkissian et al. 2011), and the self (De Freitas et al. ms).

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INDEX​

abduction 40, 50–1 see also reason adequacy conditions  199, 200, 207–13 aesthetic  approach to texts  146–8 cosmology  37, 41, 44–6, 50, 52 experience  48, 258, 261 style 264 see under order aesthetics  48, 138, 146, 260–6, 307, 317, 323 feminist  260, 261–2 see also body art agency  45, 49, 100, 209, 314, 317, 357 anachronism 96, 103 analogical thinking  see correlative thinking analogy  77, 81, 82, 85–6, 163, 230, 237, 296–9, 326, 359 analysis  coding/​statistical  328–9, 333–4 comparative 259 conceptual  227, 228, 232, 233, 238–40, 355–6, 357 historical 83, 85 linguistic 227 logical 227–30, 233, 235, 238 ontological 189 philosophical  105, 128, 231, 239 scientific  97; vs. synthesis in philosophy 246 textual  59, 67–​72, 78–​83, 248, 263, 273, 281, 327 Aristotle  77, 81, 95, 138, 146, 148, 157, 211, 248, 340 ars contextualis  40, 47, 51–3 assimilation 185–6, 195, 205, 206 associative thinking  see correlative thinking autonomy  131, 164–5, 188, 315

Bacon, Francis  262 beauty  138, 139, 263, 265–7 being/​nonbeing  introduced by Buddhism  99 mistranslation of you 有 and wu 無, 98 Berleant, Arnold  265 Bhagavad Gita 300 bianfa 變法 (change of models/​ referents) 278 body  77, 136, 190, 194–​5, 258–​60, 262–3, 265 art  262, 265–6 and mind  48, 50, 66, 194–5, 259–60, 262 see under dualism and holism Book of Changes see Yijing Book of Rites (Li Ji 禮記) 281 Book of Songs see Shijing Brentano, Franz  117 Buddhism  82, 99, 128, 149, 165, 189, 231, 302, 309 Chinese  289, 290–​1, 293–​4, 300 Madhyamaka 294 no-​self  192, 211 Yogacara 294 Zen  230, 240–3, 254 Butler, Judith  192, 258, 259 causality  39, 44–6, 136, 184, 187, 188, 189, 235, 236, 336 Chan, Wing-​tsit  6, 77, 281 charity, principle of  145, 159, 188, 191, 235, 236, 237 Chmielewski, Janusz  235 Christianity 76–7, 86, 97, 100, 144, 164, 190, 230, 234, 282 see also Jesuits classicism see jingxue classicists see Ru

368

Clooney, Francis  295 cognition  165, 171, 325–7, 329–31, 336–8, 342, 356, 358 and affect/​emotion  50, 136, 330–2 embodied  324, 343, 354 coherence  cosmological or metaphysical  45, 189 in texts  66, 78–​90, 93, 203 Collingwood, R. G.  2, 232 colonialism 144–5, 192, 268, 285 see also Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and postcolonial studies community  46, 103, 104, 131, 245, 246 academic  11, 57, 58, 59, 95, 215 Chinese  227, 233, 268 of interpreters  282 and knowledge  279, 285 philosophical 69, 215 textual 92, 93 complementarity  47, 136, 145, 148, 206, 209–10, 260 conceptual scheme  228, 235, 236, 238, 240–1 Confucianism  3, 9, 47, 231, 260, 280 Korean 120–1 New Confucianism  8, 116, 163, 228–​30, 308 and “Ruism”  144–5 Song-​Ming neo-​Confucianism 129–30, 149, 189, 230, 233, 281, 309 success of  167–8, 171 twentieth century  193, 308 Confucius  2, 53, 134, 171, 172, 280, 309 authorship of Analects 79, 81, 82 historical 81, 144 institutes 308 in the Zhuangzi 315, 316 see also Kongzi consciousness  247, 253, 337, 338, 339, 354 absolute or pure  229, 234 moral 167, 262 context  cultural 62–5, 105, 264, 278, 280, 282, 343 historical 61–5, 84–5, 97–​102, 116, 121–2, 156, 231, 238, 259, 280, 300 intellectual 293, 310

INDEX

social  67, 121–2, 310 correlative thinking  37, 38–​42, 44, 99, 228, 235–8, 310 see also resonance theory see under cosmology cosmology  5, 45, 310 Chinese  38– ​46, 47, 51, 53, 83, 99 Confucian 48, 260 correlative  76, 146, 191, 235 see also Wuxing and Yijing creativity  139, 166, 264 cosmological 42, 52 of experience  46, 53 in reading texts  68, 84–5, 298 Da Dai Li Ji 大戴禮記 (Elder Dai’s Book of Rites) 312 Dallmayr, Fred  278, 283 dao 道 (the way)  41, 48, 52, 76, 98, 103, 242–3, 261 Confucian  162, 168, 169–70, 313–14 daoxue 道學 (School of Principle) 115–16, 120, 122 and de 德  44, 47, 48–9, 53, 316 transmission of (daotong 道統) 171; vs. truth 37, 160–2 see under tiandao Daodejing 道德經 44, 46–9, 52, 76, 79, 80, 83, 86, 105, 146, 149 Daoism  83, 103, 128, 230, 231, 261, 265, 309–​11 naturalist  52, 309, 314–17 see also Daodejing and Zhuangzi Davidson, Donald  215, 230, 235, 236, 238, 240–​1 deceit/​deception  312–​14 Defoort, Carine  6, 106, 282 Derrida, Jacques  6, 192 Descartes, Rene  144, 234, 259, 325, 336, 339, 340, 342, 354 Dewey, John  1, 3, 138, 158, 160–1, 167, 172–4, 309 Deweyan inquiry  161–3, 172–4 De 德 (virtue, virtuosity)  44, 47, 52–3, 76, 311, 314, 316, 354 charisma 100, 101 nonmoral power  316–17 rule by (dezhi 德治) 276–7 see under dao

INDEX 369

dialogue  69, 86–7, 184–​7, 191, 195, 214–​15, 242–​3, 249–50, 278, 282–​3 discourse  47, 71, 94, 191, 243, 258, 263, 264, 266 Eurocentric/​Western  63, 262, 283 modes of  276–​7 philosophical  71, 95, 157 political 122, 266 theoretical  63, 130, 135, 161 Dong Zhongshu  96 dualism  48–​51, 242, 257–9 Cartesian  259, 325, 338–9 mind-​body  50, 148, 194–6, 257–8, 325–​32, 335–​43 eligibility of methodological perspectives  200, 202, 209 emotion 116–20, 160, 257–9, 262–3, 334, 336 moral  117, 119, 165, 340 and reason  118–​19, 195, 338, 340 and ritual  360–2 in Zhuangzi  314, 316–17 see under cognition epistemology  3, 5, 137, 138, 146, 166, 187, 214 see also knowledge equality  137, 307, 317 in constructive engagement  209 see under gender essentialism 76–7, 259, 324, 327, 337 ethics  137, 139, 146, 159, 172, 187, 214, 250–1, 309, 360 Confucian and phenomenological comparison 116–20 Confucian vs. Daoist  314–17 Confucianism not merely  164 cosmopolitan 300 medical 311 role 40, 131 virtue 137–8, 186, 211, 302, 340 of warfare  312–​14 eudaimonism (Daoist)  315–17 Eurocentrism  10, 106, 143–5, 184–5, 274, 281, 283, 284, 285 see also Orientalism, and colonialism evidence  51, 82, 87, 100, 167, 234, 237, 299, 336 Chinese criteria of  273, 275–6

for Chinese exceptionalism  93 cross-​cultural  339, 359 empirical  187, 190, 228, 233, 238, 262, 325, 337 historical  62, 105, 232, 333 humanistic  325–​6, 342 objective 231, 236 scientific  194, 335–7 textual  38, 66–9, 79, 103, 188, 194, 326, 327, 333, 361 existence  human 171, 259 nature of  183, 184, 185, 186 of objective world  164, 189 of phenomena  100, 164, 171, 233 experience 41–2, 44–8, 131, 146, 165, 166, 268, 323, 343 basis of Confucian thought  58–9, 62–3, 66, 261 and concepts  187–8, 248 in Continental philosophy  247, 248, 253 holistic 146, 149 human  38, 40–3, 61, 62–3, 161, 174 in Pragmatism  161, 168, 172 relation to metaphysics  186–9, 193 transcendental 234, 299 see under aesthetic experiment  conducted by philosophers  355, 358–60 in Pragmatism  40, 160, 161–2, 163, 172, 173, 174 psychological/​cognitive science  334, 336, 337, 354 thought 239, 357 facts  51, 87, 99, 100, 139, 162, 184, 262, 337 historical or social  203, 232, 239, 240 of the case  162–3, 173 faith  134, 145, 174 see also Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and tianming family  46, 53, 99, 136, 149, 171, 266, 307 resemblance 128 fangshi 方士 formula masters  4 recipe masters  311

370

fatalism 169–70 see also ming 命 feeling  see emotion feminism 261–2, 267–8 global 265 Western 257–61 see also gender Feng Xiaoqing  267–​8 Feng Youlan  see Fung Yu-​lan five agents/​elements/​phases  see wuxing 五行 focus and field  39, 44–​50, 53 Foucault, Michel  190–1, 285 Fraser, Chris  80, 316–17 Fu Sinian  228, 231 Fung Yu-​lan  5–​6, 60, 61, 62, 64, 72, 233–5, 281, 292, 309 translation of Zhu Xi  77–8 Gadamer, Hans-​G eorg  140, 247–8, 249, 278, 286 Geaney, Jane  99, 326, 333 gender 191–4, 258–68, 358 equality 307, 317 inequality  193, 260, 264, 307, 317 oppression 192–3 generalization  10–​11, 72, 75, 189, 195, 246, 275, 281, 300, 327 Gi Gobong  119–20, 122 Golden Rule  132 Goldin, Paul R.  194–​5 Gongsun Longzi 公孫龍子 235 Gottner-​Abendroth, Heide  260–1 Graham, Angus C.  37, 42, 80, 98, 103, 235–7, 308, 327 Granet, Marcel  39–​42, 235, 324 Gu Kaizhi  262 Guo Xiang  9, 104 Han Feizi  98 Han Wonjin  121, 123 Hansen, Chad  191, 308 harmony (he 和)  48, 68, 136, 146, 149, 168, 260, 309, 316 Hegel, G. W. F.  2–​3, 91, 128, 171, 210, 248, 253, 324 Heidegger, Martin  246, 248–9, 251–2, 253–4, 286

INDEX

Hermeneutics  8, 10, 145, 247–9, 278, 334 Hershock, Peter  42–3 holism  41, 44, 136, 139, 146, 149, 236, 260, 338 body-​mind  195, 324–7, 333, 337, 338, 340–2 see also dualism Hu Pingsheng  96–7 Hu Shih (Hu Shi)  3–​4, 60, 72, 103, 156, 167, 231–3, 234, 274, 282 Huainanzi 80, 83 huangji 皇極 (royal ultimate)  122 Huang-​L ao 80 human nature  163, 166, 185, 355 see also xing Hume, David  139, 157, 211, 323 Husserl, Edmund  117, 246, 251–2, 253–4 hypothesis  51, 160, 162, 167, 168, 234, 239, 332, 355 I Teogye  119–21, 122 idealism, xinxue 心學 as 281 ideals  Chinese 40, 250 Confucian  169, 170, 172–4 Daoist  265, 314–​17 as ends-​in-​view  173–​4 feminine 263, 266 identity  41, 207, 209, 211, 212, 229, 359 female 268 personal  46, 194, 339, 341 uniquely “Chinese”  274 immanence  see under transcendence imperialism 185, 284 incommensurability  12, 228, 235, 290, 337 synchronic vs. diachronic  279 indeterminacy  37, 41, 49, 51 individualism  132, 193, 196, 308, 338 individuality 46, 357 ineffability 229–30, 241 intellectuals  Chinese  58, 61, 171, 275, 308, 310 premodern 96, 101 intelligence  48, 172–​4, 240, 340 intention/​intentionality  165, 231, 241, 335–6

INDEX 371

interpretation  10, 79, 81, 84–6, 128, 145, 202–​7, 333–​4, 354 based on cross-​cultural analogy  297–9 of historical evidence  232 through jingxue 282 and overlap of multiple texts  120 see also translation and hermeneutics intra-​spection vs. introspection  50 intuition  63, 99, 137, 325, 327, 334, 357 folk  341, 342, 356 intellectual 164–6, 168–9, 171, 229, 261 Islam 82 James, William  40, 157, 160–1, 230 see also pragmatism Jeong Sihan 丁時翰 120 Jesuit  106, 144–5, 324 jingxue 經學 (classicism)  273, 281, 282 see also kaozheng Jixia Academy  95–6 Jullien, François  325, 333, 343 Kant, Immanuel  91, 117–19, 122, 128, 164–​7, 233–4, 248 kaozheng 考證 (evidential research)  4, 10, 148, 281 Kirkland, Russell  83, 86 knowledge  117, 137, 161, 164–5, 171, 248, 250, 261, 282 empirical  163, 165, 166, 167 forms of  282, 283, 284 historical 71, 101 innate 262 of phenomena  166–​7 and power  285 production  278, 279, 280, 284, 286 scientific  163, 171–​2 , 312, 324, 335 technical 310, 312 see also zhi Kongzi (Master Kong)  95, 101, 102, 105, 144 see also Confucius Kupperman, Joel  295, 300 language  classical Chinese  10, 92, 146–7, 235, 333 in Continental philosophy  248, 250, 251, 253

philosophy of  133, 137, 214, 236 and reality  41, 133, 229, 239, 240, 241–​2 , 253 and thinking  60, 240–​2 , 249, 279 law  4, 42, 232, 236 and government  276–​7 moral 118, 165 natural  104, 282, 297 Legge, James  76–7, 78, 83, 97, 105 legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy  6, 60, 129, 273, 282 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm  186, 187, 324, 340–​1 Levinas, Emmanuel  249–53 li 理 (principle, pattern)  9, 117, 166, 168, 189, 233 in Zhu Xi  66, 69, 77–8, 116, 119 see under tian Liang Qichao  103, 277, 278–9 Liu Xiang  79, 94, 312, 314 Locke, John  157, 274, 302, 354 Loewe, Michael  96, 103 logic  5, 91, 93, 130, 159, 238, 239, 240, 242, 327 Chinese 235 see under analysis Lu Xiangshan  117, 166 mandate of heaven  see tianming manuscript culture  91–​5 materialism 195 May Fourth movement  171, 192, 231, 309 meaning  of concepts  157–9, 238 of Confucian ideals  172 of experience  248 making 40 of ritual  360–1 of texts  10–​11, 77, 84–5, 134, 158, 247, 249, 282 theory of  158, 236 of words  102, 157, 159, 236, 238, 240, 282 medicine, Chinese  136, 310, 311, 312 Mencius (Mengzi)  61, 67, 81, 131, 132, 168–71, 280, 310, 313, 354 on body and mind  258–60, 262, 326, 340

372

in East Asian Confucianism  119–21 in Mou Zongsan’s thought  116–17, 166, 168 text  79, 93, 105, 134, 163, 312–13 metaphor  48, 53, 149, 230, 236–7, 355 importance in Chinese philosophy  146–​8, 150 “method house”  202 metaphysics  5, 131–​2 , 160, 233–​4, 250, 259–​60, 281 Aristotelian 81, 189 Chinese  184–​6, 189, 195 moral  164–​5, 167, 227, 229, 241 see also cosmology Mimamsa 298–9, 302 mind  238, 240–1 “Chinese” 294, 300 disembodied 340–1 philosophy of  214, 353, 354 theory of (ToM)  335–6, 337 see also xin see under holism, dualism, body ming 命 (mandate/​decree/​destiny)  44, 98, 99, 169–70, 260 see under tian Mohism  3–​4, 234, 309, 310, 312 Mou Zongsan  60, 62, 116–​19, 163–7, 168–​9, 171–2, 228–​9, 234, 241–2, 261 Mozi  80 –​1 , 83, 101, 104, 147, 149, 169 see also Mohism mysticism  5, 134, 228, 230, 236, 240, 294, 300, 310 myths  163, 262, 265 national heritage  274, 308 naturalism 160, 208 see under Daoism nature  43, 76, 189, 208, 258, 309 human interaction with  174, 191, 193, 261, 265, 308, 314 study of  232, 317 see also tian Needham, Joseph  39–​42, 43, 44, 50, 235–6, 310 Neville, Robert  9, 301 norms  208, 264, 314, 317

INDEX

moral 133, 262 rational  230, 240–2 noumena  167, 168, 171 and phenomena  164–6 objectivity 165, 247 order 40–2, 46, 78, 162, 229, 236, 237, 326, 340, 360 aesthetic  13, 41, 237 cosmic 47, 52 natural 49, 282 political 63, 171 social  49, 63, 168, 171, 259 in text  93, 130 organism 40, 42, 44 Orientalism  264, 324, 337 see also colonialism, Eurocentrism, imperialism Pan Guangdan  267–8 parochialism  279, 283, 285, 324 patriarchy  257, 259, 260, 262, 266, 267 pattern  39–​40, 42, 45, 100, 189, 232, 235–6 of deference  49, 52–3 of relationships  38, 43–5 see also li Patton, Laurie  295, 296, 300 Peirce, Charles S.  40, 50–1, 157–61, 163 person  43, 46, 48–​50, 52–3, 131, 194, 339, 357 authentic  81, 164, 250 constituted by relationships  47–9, 131, 316 consummate  40, 41, 251 personal cultivation  129, 138, 139, 149, 167, 168, 173, 311, 361 cosmic reach of  47 and ming 170, 171 neo-​Confucian  165–6 phenomenology  47, 117–​19, 128, 247, 296 Plato  77, 82, 95, 147, 233–4, 250, 251, 257–9, 336, 358 postcolonial studies  284–5 practice  feminine 263–4

INDEX 373

intelligent  37, 38, 39, 44, 48, 50 journaling 149 orthopraxy 103, 104 primacy of  37, 63, 129, 130, 134–5, 149, 155–6 theory and  37, 135–6, 156, 161, 189–​ 91, 193–​4 Pragmatism  40, 128, 137–8, 156–63, 167, 171–4 psychoanalysis  258, 267–8 psychology  5, 172, 330, 334–5, 354–​5, 356–7, 359–60 folk 194 see under science Puett, Michael  75, 281, 326–7 qi 氣  43, 116, 183, 258, 310, 311, 314–15, 340 and li 理  69, 119, 166 Qian Mu  63, 103 Quine, W. V. O.  187–8, 191, 208, 246 rationalism 5, 192 lixue 理學 as  281 rationality  229–​30, 234, 236, 241, 300, 340 see also reason reality  130–​1, 161, 163, 170–​1, 184, 239, 253, 265, 313 ultimate 43–4, 165–7, 168, 229–30 see under language reason  101, 130, 187, 192, 233, 257–​8, 259, 260 practical 118, 165 pragmatic 138 see also abduction and rationality see under emotion relation  constitutive/​internal  39, 41–9 external 42, 50 “host and guest”  261 power  190, 263, 274, 282, 284–5 productive 41, 46 subject-​object  63, 261 with the other  250–3 relativism 210, 235 resonance theory  99–​100 see also correlative thinking

responsibility  40, 52, 131–​2 , 170, 174, 188, 249–51, 253, 316 moral  118, 138, 301, 356 Ricoeur, Paul  145, 248 ritual (li 禮)  136, 139, 149, 262, 281, 308, 313, 339, 342, 360–2 compared with kratu 298–9 Robinson, Richard  294 Rosemont, Henry  102, 105, 106, 130, 131, 250, 325, 338, 340, 343 Ru 儒 (classicist, Confucian)  96, 104, 144–5, 312 rule: by law (fazhi 法治) as distinct from rule-​of-​law  276–7 by persons (renzhi 人治) 276–7 by virtue (dezhi 德治) 276–7 Ryle, Gilbert  91, 229, 237 sage  47–​50, 53, 66, 100–1, 115, 134, 139, 168, 259, 315–16, 340 Schiller, Friedrich v.  118–19 science  39, 171, 187, 189, 353, 355 and Chinese philosophy  307, 309–12 cognitive  2, 9, 324, 325, 337–8, 343, 354, 356 concern with bias  327–8 and humanities  324–​33, 335 in Pragmatism  159–​60, 163 scientific method  231–​2 , 308, 333 Searle, John  215, 217, 231–2, 239–​40 self  44, 131, 171, 188, 189, 192–​3, 240–3, 251–2, 316–17 folk views of  338–43 and other  132, 249–53, 250, 252, 264 as subject  249–50, 262 see also person self-​cultivation  see personal cultivation Seong Ugye  119, 120, 122–3 sexuality  190, 258, 262, 263, 264 shen 神 (spirit, spirituality, unseen vital force)  39, 41, 98, 339 sheng 聖  see  sage Shi 勢 (contextualizing circumstances)  44–​6 shi 士 (man of service)  101–2 Shijing 詩經 (The Odes)  162, 258, 263

374

siduan 四端 (four buddings/​ sprouts)  116–​17, 119–20, 122–3, 166 sinology 280–1, 289, 292 Sivin, Nathan  310 Skinner, Quentin  276, 280 social contract  274 solipsism 252 speech act  133, 134, 137, 140, 237 subaltern  106, 284–5 subjectivity  63, 131, 140, 229, 234, 240, 250, 253 sublation 210 Sun Wu bingfa 孫武兵法 96 Sunzi 312, 313 Suzuki, D. T.  241–​3 Tang Junyi  58, 60, 62–5, 69, 228–9, 234, 261, 265 Taoism  see Daoism teleology  139, 189, 190, 191, 337 Theodor, Ithamar  295–6, 301 ti 體 (constitutive, form, substance, reality)  115, 166, 229 體認 (personally recognizes) 63, 66, 69 tiyan 體驗 (personally experience) 63, 66, 69 tiyong 體用 (forming and functioning) 41, 43, 44 tizheng 體證 (personal verification; justification by bodily experience) 166–7, 229 tizhi 體知 (knowing by bodily experience) 229 tian 天 (heaven, nature)  41, 48, 76, 169, 229, 312, 314, 315 tiandao (way of heaven/​nature)  48, 229 tiandi 天地 (heaven and earth)  41, 166 tianli 天理 (Heaven’s principle/​ pattern)  165, 168, 229, 282 tianming 天命 (mandate of heaven)  134, 167–71, 229 tianwen 天文 (astronomical patterns) 100, 310 tianxia 天下 (all under heaven)  46, 277 transcendence  119, 184, 193, 233–4, 265, 342, 360

INDEX

as immanent  117, 165, 168–9, 193, 229–30, 325, 340, 342 of the mind  167, 229, 240, 265 religious  134, 173–4, 234 transcendentalism  128, 167, 227, 228–30, 234, 240–3 transcendental argument/​ deduction 233–4 transcendental ego  250, 252 translation  75, 76–8, 83, 97–8, 105–6, 144, 185, 281–2, 298, 331 radical 187–8 truth  104, 130, 174, 208, 210, 300, 302 absolute 156, 167 claims 139, 187 contrast with the way (dao 道) 37, 160–2 in practical life  137, 161 propositional  129, 140, 161 regime of  100, 102 transcendental 228–9, 234 Tu Wei-​ming  229, 308 universalism  62, 117, 122, 131, 258, 260, 279, 280, 283, 337 value  137, 138, 161, 165, 232, 276, 308–9, 317, 361–2 of Chinese Philosophy  5–​6 ethical/​moral  170, 171, 358 inquiry  156, 172–4 patriarchal 257 philosophical  11, 83, 146, 292 sense of  118–19 of traditional texts  6–​7, 11, 83, 85, 102, 156 universal 96, 279 women’s 263–4 virtue  see de 德 Voltaire 104, 324 Wang Chong  4, 94, 302 Wang Yangming 王陽明 72,  117, 121, 166, 168, 171 weiyan dayi 微言大義 (small words, great meaning) 282 Whitehead, Alfred N.  41, 43

INDEX 375

Williams, Bernard  91, 100 wisdom  42, 50, 52, 128, 135, 228, 241, 251 see also knowledge and zhi Wittgenstein, Ludwig  91, 104, 127–8, 148, 246 wuwei 無為 (non-​coercive acting)  52, 80, 98, 261, 265 wuxing 五行(five phases)  77–8, 82–3, 97, 98, 235, 310 xian 賢 (man of worth, worthy)  100–​1 xiao yao you 逍遙遊 (free and easy wandering) 102, 316 Xie Liangzuo  119 xin 心 (heartmind, mind)  49–​50, 98, 116, 119, 168, 194–5, 229, 315, 325–6, 328–32 benxin 本心 (original heartmind)  165, 166, 229, 242 changxin 常心 (constant heartmind) 316 refers to body  330, 333 xuxin 虛心 (open mind)  66, 67 see also  mind xing 性 (human nature, natural propensities)  61, 67, 116–17, 119, 260, 355 in the Mencius 147, 166 in Song-​M ing neo-​Confucianism  168, 229 see also human nature xixue zhongyuan 西學中原 (Western knowledge all had a Chinese origin) 284

Xunzi (Xun Qing)  61, 67, 96, 103, 195, 309, 310, 312, 354, 360 and Mimamsa  298–​9 text  79, 81, 83, 194, 195, 313–14, 331 Yang Shi  119 Yang Xiong  94, 99 yangsheng 養生 (nurture life)  311, 314 Yao Zhihua  290–1, 295–6, 301, 302 Yijing 易經 (Book of Changes)  3, 38–9, 41, 98, 127, 146, 150, 258–260, 310 yinyang 陰陽 41,  48, 98, 193, 235–6, 246, 260, 310 Yu Yingshi  101, 115–16 Zhang Shizhao  277 Zhao Tingyang  277 zhen 真 (genuine/​authentic)  164, 314 zhi 知 (knowing, wisdom)  42, 48, 52, 162 how  137, 147, 229, 340 liangzhi 良知 (moral knowing)  165, 167, 168, 171 see also knowledge Zhongyong 中庸 47,  52, 76, 138 Zhu Xi  77–8, 103, 116–17, 119–​20, 149, 166, 168, 289 on studying texts  65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 134–​5, 149 see under Fung Yu-​lan Zhuangzi  67, 104, 186, 195, 208, 297 text  76, 79–​80, 81, 82, 83, 98, 101, 102, 103, 147, 311, 314–17, 331 ziran 自然 (spontaneous, natural)  44, 46, 49, 168, 187