What Is Ming 名? “Name” Not “Word”

This article looks beyond the dichotomy between silence (mo 默) and speech (yan 言) and discusses the functions of and attitudes toward silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 as a case representing the variety of ideas of silence in early China. In the West, silence has been widely explored in fields such as religion and theology, linguistic studies, and communication and literary studies. The consensus has moved away from viewing silence as abstaining from speech and utterance—and therefore absence of meaning and intention, toward seeing it as a culturally dependent and significant aspect of communication. However, beyond a number of studies discussing unspoken teachings in relation to early Daoism, silence has received little attention in early China studies. This article approaches the functions of silence by pursuing questions regarding its rhetorical, emotive, political, and ethical aspects. Instead of searching for the nature of silence and asking what silence is, this article poses alternative questions: How do ancient Chinese thinkers understand the act of silence? What are the attitudes toward silence in early China? How does silence foster morality? How does silence function as performative remonstrance? How is it used for political persuasion? How does silence draw the attention of and communicate with readers and audiences? How does silence allow time for contemplation, reflection, and agreement among participants? How is silence related to various intense emotional states? These questions lead us to reflect on previous scholarship which regarded silence in early China as the most spontaneous and natural way to grasp the highest truth, which is unpresentable and inexpressible through articulated speech and artificial language. In this sense, the notion of the unspoken teaching is not only understood in opposition to speech, but also as a means to reveal the deficiency of language and the limits of speech. However, through a survey of dialogues, stories, and arguments in Yanzi chunqiu, I show that silence is explicitly marked and explained within the text, and is used actively, purposefully, and meaningfully, to persuade, inform, and motivate audiences. In other words, silence is anything but natural and spontaneous. Rather, it is intentionally adopted, carefully crafted, and publicly performed to communicate, remonstrate, criticize, reveal, and target certain ideas. That is to say, silence is as argumentative as speech and as arbitrary as language. Finally, an awareness of and sensitivity to silence provides a new perspective to engage with other early Chinese texts.

This issue presents the research on early Chinese texts by Cao Feng, a philosophy professor at Tsinghua University. He is an expert in early Chinese political philosophy and philosophy of language found in transmitted and excavated texts. His extensive education in Japan has left him well versed in Japanese sinology. Although a critical researcher in the field of early Chinese thought and a very prolific writer in both Chinese and Japanese, Cao Feng is little known in the West. This issue introduces three papers selected in consultation with the author: a reflection on the study of excavated texts, the "Huang" component of so-called Huang-Lao thought, and views on language in the Laozi.

A range of early Chinese texts features the term louyi 螻蟻, which modern scholars and translators often interpret as signifying mole crickets and ants. This essentially means that they understand the two characters as standing for two different words, each denoting a different animal. However, a closer look at the examples in early Chinese texts shows that this was probably a disyllabic word referring to a single insect, namely, ants, with no involvement of mole crickets. Understanding what the term actually meant is important because it demonstrates how we, basing ourselves on pre-modern commentarial and lexicographic traditions, often unnecessarily separate compound words into their constituents. Although few specialists of pre-modern China today would subscribe to the much-criticized one-character-one-word model, translations still often treat the two components of disyllabic words as separate entities, even when the context makes it clear that they probably stand for a single word. More interestingly, this phenomenon sheds light on the development of the core vocabulary of sinology, revealing its cumulative and often highly conservative trajectory.

Historians generally describe Zhang Taiyan (Binglin , 1869-1936) as an anti-Manchu revolutionary and treat his Buddhism as subordinate to this larger political project. Far less commonly understood is Zhang's role in preparing the groundwork for the establishment of Chinese philosophy as an academic discipline. Against the backdrop of an intellectual climate in Japan and China during the decades either side of 1900, in which a premium had come to be placed on logic as a precondition for the development of philosophy, Zhang was one of the first Chinese intellectuals to follow the lead of Japanese scholars in maintaining that classical Chinese philosophers had developed indigenous forms of logic. Significantly, he further argued that Chinese versions of Yogacara texts on Buddhist logic and epistemology (yinming ; Skt. hetu-vidya) made it possible once again to gain a proper understanding of China's earliest writings on logic. In this paper I argue that Zhang sought to establish that early Chinese texts "bear witness" to insights into realities that transcend individual cultures but are most fully and systematically articulated in Yogacara systems of learning; and that classical Chinese philosopher-sages had attained an awareness of the highest truths, evidence of which can be found in their writings. In short, I will show that Zhang used Yogacara to affirm the value of "Chinese philosophy" and, in doing so, helped shape its early definition.

In this chapter, I discuss the problem of free will and determinism as it arises in early Chinese Philosophy and in Wang Chong’s Lunheng in particular. In the first section, I argue that there was a problem of free will in early China, arising in most early texts but tackled most directly in Daoist/Zhuangist and early Han texts. I discuss the differences between the “problem of free will” as it arises in many Western contexts and the problem of free will in early China. I then outline Wang’s views on de 德 (potency) and xiu 修 (cultivation) and their connection to the distinction between spontaneous (ziran 自然) and intentional (zhi 志) activity. I argue that Wang’s conception of three kinds of allotment (ming 命) is meant to solve the problem of free will as it arises in the context of his thought, but that his solution is ultimately unsuccessful.

This paper discusses certain conceptual tensions in a set of archeological texts from the Warring States period, the Guodian corpus. One of the central themes of the Guodian corpus is the disanalogy between spontaneous, natural familial relationships and artificial political relationships. This is problematic because, like many early Chinese texts, the Guodian corpus believes that political relationships must come to be characterized by unselfconsciousness and spontaneity if social order is to prevail. This tension will be compared to my earlier work on the “paradox of wu-wei (effortless action),” and the Guodian corpus’ “solution” to the problem of teaching spontaneity—drawing upon the transformative power of music—will be placed within the landscape of early “Confucian” and “Daoist” theories concerning human nature and self-cultivation.

Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Compiled and edited by Susan Bush and Hsio-Yen Shih. Cambridge, Mass.: Published for the Harvard-Yenching Institute by Harvard University Press, 1985. xii, 391 pp. Illustrations; Biographies of Painters, Critics, and Calligraphers; Glossary of Chinese Terms; Glossary of Chinese Names and Titles; Bibliography; Index. $20.00.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Through close readings of excavated texts from Guōdian, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the way in which meaning is produced in early Chinese philosophical texts. It is the first book on early China to cast light on the relationship between material conditions and ideas and shows how, in an evolving manuscript culture, texts were used by different social groups.

The practice of physician acupuncture faces unique challenges in its development and inclusion as a recognized medical specialty. Information contained in early Chinese medical texts offers solutions to some of the divides that separate Chinese Medicine from contemporary biomedicine. Recent advances in classical text research—made possible by the establishment of Chinese language databases—provide new hypotheses of disease pathogenesis and new strategies for treating various acute and chronic illnesses. The Vascular Model of Disease Pathogenesis summarizes some theories of early Chinese medicine into language recognizable by modern science. This theory bridges some of the current disparities between ancient and modern practices and offers a new model of human health, illness, and clinical therapeutics.

This article argues against the strong "holist" position that the early Chinese lacked any concept of mind–body dualism, and more broadly against a "neo-Orientalist" trend that portrays Chinese thought as radically different from Western thought. In the first half, it makes the case against strong mind–body holism by drawing upon traditional archeological and textual evidence. In the second, it turns to resources from the sciences, arguing that large-scale quantitative–qualitative analyses of early Chinese texts suggest that they embrace a quite vigorous form of mind–body dualism, and further that a huge body of evidence coming out of the cognitive sciences suggests that this is not at all surprising. In this section, the role that deep humanistic knowledge can, and should, play in scientific approaches to culture is also explored. The article concludes by suggesting that a mutually informed, humanities–scientific approach to religious studies is the best way for our field to move forward.

Reviewed by: Just War and Pacifism: Chinese and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue Joseph Tse-Hei Lee (bio) Edmund Ryden . Just War and Pacifism: Chinese and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue. Variétés Sinologiques, New Series, 89. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 2001. 181 pp. Hardcover $12.00, ISBN 2-910969-04-5. The wars of the twentieth century and, thus far, of the twenty-first have been "total wars," exhausting huge amounts of resources, killing more civilians than soldiers, and devastating the environment. The question of how to replace violent with nonviolent means of conflict resolution has now become extremely urgent. In Just War and Pacifism, Edmund Ryden, a Jesuit scholar at the Fujen University in Taiwan and author of Philosophy of Peace in Han China (Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 1998), takes yet another look at this question. Exploring the issue from philosophical and cross-cultural perspectives, Ryden adds an ethical dimension to the debate about war and peace by challenging the dehumanization of the "enemy" in contemporary political rhetoric (p. 13). He consults a wide range of disciplines on nonviolent means of conflict resolution including history, philosophy, political science, and theology. In many ways, this book presents a thorough critique of the subject within a dialectical framework of just war, pacifism, and nonviolence, and calls for greater commitment to avoid using war as an instrument of international policy (pp. 14-15). [End Page 250] While the preface lays out the book's objectives and methodology, part 1, "Just War," traces the historical development of the "Just War" theory and discusses its conceptual relevance to the contemporary world. There are at least two ways of looking at the "Just War" theory: the pursuit of justice and the avoidance of war. At the center of the debate is the question of how the theory should be used to justify the use of force in domestic and international politics. Chapter 1, "Just War: A Western Perspective," presents a critical review of the "Just War" theory in Europe by examining the writings of Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Hales, Vitoria, Suarez, Gonzalez, Gentili, and Grotius. Underlying their writings is the idea that God would approve the use of war to pursue peace and justice. When warfare is perceived as a choice between a greater and a lesser evil, these Catholic thinkers are willing to accept the use of war as a defense against the greater evil. In the West, the "Just War" theory is more than a philosophical idea. It is also an official doctrine in the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church that, as such, can only be declared active by the Pope. The last time this doctrine was used by the Pope was in late July 1995, when John Paul II called for "defensive and proportionate" intervention in Bosnia in "a just war" to defend the civilian population.1 The Pope's remark amounted to sanctioning the actions of the Croatian army prior to the U.S.-supported Croatian military action against the Serbs in Krajina in early August 1995, widely known as "Operation Storm."2 All contemporary wars are framed as a struggle between good and evil. The concept of the "Cold War" was based on the same formula, and right-wing politicians and intellectuals in the West are reluctant to abandon this formula. The current U.S. military campaign in Iraq is justified on the basis of the evil of Saddam Hussein's regime. Chapter 2, "Just War: A Chinese Perspective," explores the notion of yi zhan (just war) in ancient Chinese philosophy. There seem to be considerable parallels between early Chinese and Western philosophical texts on the nature of war, an insight that, in an imperfect world, war can be used as a self-defense against aggression. Of all the Chinese philosophical texts, Ryden focuses on the Huainanzi: On Military Strategy because this text is more restrictive about the use of force in a wartime situation. According to the Huainanzi, the sole purpose of an army is humanitarian intervention, and the army must be disbanded after the end of a military campaign. This corresponds to Machiavelli's view that an army should be prevented from establishing itself...

Thus far, the study of early China and its texts is dominated by originalist approaches that try to excavate the authentic meaning of the classics. In this article, I promote the idea that a shift in focus from the intentions of the authors to the readers’ concrete responses could meaningfully accompany our research on the classics’ “original” meaning. Beyond merely illuminating the cultural and intellectual environments in which the various receptions were produced, such research on the classics’ myriad interpretations could also serve as a postcolonial catalyst, helping us identify field-specific trends and reading strategies that, often unnoticed, impact our understandings of early Chinese texts. In other words, reception history would not only give us insights into the history of early Chinese classics and the variegated worlds they inhabited. It would also help us illuminate and reflect upon the ways we researchers shape and preconfigure our visions of premodern China and its texts.

LEXICOGRAPHICAL METAPHOR VINCENT DAVID REGAN Modern lexicographical practice works to describe semantically , syntactically, and succinctly a native understanding of individual words and multi-word lexical units. Dictionary definitions follow any of several methods of treatment: analytic , synthetic, functional, or synonymous. Whichever treatment or combination of treatments is brought to articulate a word's definition, the guiding principle is objectively and descriptively bound, as opposed to being subjectively and prescriptively founded. Effectively, such a logical, objective system attempts to filter out as much human interference as possible by regarding the world from an impartial or "God's eye" perspective. This insures a fair representation, nondiscriminatory and unbiased, of lexical reality. In an unreal, totally abstract world, perhaps. But we must in common sense acknowledge the human factor with experientially based explications . It would seem that, if there were a philosophical paradox in the make-up of dictionary definitions, the path to its resolution would not involve metaphorical language usage. After all, metaphor has long been ignored in both linguistic and lexicographical theory and only superficially appreciated in literary theory. It has generally been regarded as a nonliteral use of language, i.e., figurative or poetic language. LakofF and Johnson introduced their penetrating study of metaphor by noting that it traditionally was understood as a "rhetorical flourish," constituting "extraordinary rather than ordinary language" (3). And this orientation seems doomed to 2 Vincent David Regan contrived manifestations on the dictionary page. It would be hardly conducive to objective lexicographical analyses. Metaphoric representations of word meaning would be all too susceptible to inexact, variable, and emotional findings. At issue here first is the overriding and all-pervasive scientistic infatuation with objective notions and, concomitantly, the abhorrence and avoidance of unempirical subjective conclusions . Such a theoretical dichotomy presented to the writer of dictionary definitions is simplistic at best and, at worst, unrealistic and fallacious. Missing from this philosophical framework is the role of a third possibility, which transcends the false duality of "either/or" constructs—the very human experiential notions initially mentioned at the end of the first paragraph. This article will be promoting just this experiential tack to the composition and understanding of lexicographical definitions , though ironically such an approach is presently extant in all dictionaries and has ever been so. Whereas the thrust herein will advance the conscious manipulation of metaphor for lexical interpretation, in fact the very nature of language is such that unconsciously language users, including lexicographers, have always worked metaphorically to explain the world. The conceptual system that underlies a language effectively controls the substance and scope of that language's constituent parts. This system is largely imperceptible because the medium for its explanation is that which in itself entails the problem. In effect, language cannot serve to explicate language because language use is problematic by the nature of the very vehicle that disseminates itself. Simply put, the way we conceptualize the world works mentally outside the domain of language and within that of experiential, sociocultural activity. One's conceptual system plays a cen- Lexicographical Metaphor3 tral role in defining everyday reality, and it usually is not something conscious, but rather automatic. Our most reliable evidence for the system's existence is, oddly enough, linguistic and lexical despite the fact that language is the only amenable medium to be used in contriving an understanding of both the medium and its contents, language . Insofar as language is controlled by its users, who are unaware of how it works (people take language for granted), and inasmuch as metaphor is omnipresent in language (literally , not figuratively), our language is structured in large part metaphorically. At a deeper level, as the language is, so also our thoughts and actions are structured. While this presupposes an alinguistic source for our thinking ability, it renders by and large our thinking a relatively automatic phenomenon. Unconsciously it proceeds, instigating metaphorical reflexes to our understanding of reality. "The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another" (Lakoff and Johnson 5). Structurally complex or superficial, metaphorical concepts are systematic and prioritized to the mainstream culture of the speaker's language. They derive orientationally or ontologically from primal human body functioning in the...

Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China