Chinese Philosophy: Hermeneutics

In the history of Chinese and European philosophy, metaphysics has played an outstanding role: it is a theoretical framework which provides the basis for a philosophical understanding of the world and the self. A theory of the self is well integrated in a metaphysical understanding of the totality of nature as a dynamic process of continuous changes. According to this view, the purpose of existence can be conceived of as the development and realization of the full potential given to the (...) individual by its nature. In regard to human nature specifically, this idea of self-realization includes the development of all cognitive faculties as well as of the moral character. Metaphysics has, however, suffered a loss of importance in current debates, especially in ethics. As a result, we observe the emergence of such philosophical views as moral skepticism and even nihilism. The consequence of this tendency has been the renunciation of a claim to understanding and to providing a solid ground for ethics. Yet an intercultural dialogue can provide us with some hope as the consolidation of debates on crucial topics of our traditions might indeed serve as the basis for a more powerful philosophy in the future. (shrink)

I explore how Heidegger and his successors interpret philosophy as an Occidental enterprise based on a particular understanding of history. In contrast to the dominant monistic paradigm, I return to the plural thinking of Dilthey and Misch, who interpret philosophy as a European and a global phenomenon. This reflects Dilthey's pluralistic understanding of historical life. Misch developed Dilthey's insight by demonstrating the multiple origins of philosophy as critical life‐reflection in its Greek context and in the historical matrices of ancient India (...) and China. Misch's approach to Confucius and Zhuangzi reveals a historically informed, interculturally sensitive, and critically oriented life‐philosophy. (shrink)

Is a reconciliation possible between Chinese philosophy and woman when taking into account infamous gender-oppressive cultural practices such as foot-binding, concubinage, etc., in premodern Chinese societies? The article tackles the complexity of the subject by calling the readers' attention to texts from Confucian classics that indeed support intellectual equality of the sexes and classless access to education, while noting diverging historical cultural evidences of women's education and their social status in premodern, modern, and postmodern Chinese societies. The article challenges the (...) belief that Confucian philosophy is unequivocally a sexist ideology to be a foregone conclusion. While not intending to exonerate Confucian philosophy from its opponents' charges, the article questions the adequateness of Western liberal feminism as the means to reappropriate Confucian philosophy. It suggests that a more culturally sensitive approach coupling with better historical and contextual analysis would prove to be both helpful and necessary. (shrink)

Chung-ying’s project of onto-hermeneutics draws in order to shed light on the relations between ontology and epistemology in the hermeneutic act. In the process, not only will we be thinking with Cheng and some Western hermeneutic theorists, but we will also be thinking through history by examining the Confucian act of reading. To the extent that any hermeneutic exercise, in accordance with Cheng’s construal, cannot merely be a disembodied act of theoretical knowing but is also moral effort that entails personal (...) cultivation—or, in Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s terms, Bildung—its espousal and its practice necessarily embody a larger conception of culture. In fact, precisely in terms of the intimate engagement with culture, Confucian insights, filtered through Cheng’s onto-hermeneutic lenses, may have much to offer contemporary hermeneutics. (shrink)

This is an attempt to assemble the fragmentary remains of xuan-school Analects commentary so as to articulate the broad coherence of a xuan-school style of interpretation of that text. A model of "gestural language" is proposed as a way of seeing the overall thrust of interpretive approaches to this text by commentators from Wang Bi in the mid-third century to Huang Kan in the first half of the sixth. This xuan-school approach to reading the Analects is of considerable interest in (...) its own right, reminding us of the centrality of the notions of sagehood and "timeliness" to hermeneutical thought in this period, as well as anticipating some of the insights obtained by modern-day applications of speech-act theory to the interpretation of the text. What close attention to these relatively neglected sources conveys, moreover, is a sense of the real importance of the Analects, and of the sage Confucius, to much xuan-school thought. Viewing this historical style of interpretation in its conceptual sophistication and broad coherence may thus also serve as a corrective to persistent assumptions about xuan-school thought as essentially "metaphysical" or "Neo-Daoist" in its basic orientation. (shrink)

In these reflections I attempt to re-situate the philosophical concerns and challenges of interpretation and translation between worlds in the more expansive context of the global philosophy of worldviews, which probes more deeply into the universal common ground of diverse worlds as they have evolved through the ages. This global space in which widely diverse worldviews (cultures, religions, ideologies, cosmologies, disciplinary narratives, interpretations, translations ) meet and interact opens new horizons and frontiers in exploring the hermeneutical, logical and ontological conditions (...) for the possibility of interpretation and translation across worldviews and traditions. How is translation possible across widely variant worlds? (shrink)