Retrieving the Affective Aspect of Human Being: a Hermeneutical Phenomenological Analysis of 存 Cun/Son’s Historical Origin, its Controversial Role in the East Asian Translation of Being/Existence, and Potential Ontological Implications

Abstract

It is conventionally accepted that while Western philosophy has “being” as a central topic, Eastern thoughts focused only on “nothing”. I will challenge this perception by retrieving the original meaning of the Chinese existential word 存 cun, which can provide a hitherto neglected affective aspect of being, which in the West is also mentioned by only a handful of philosophers, including Heidegger’s famous discussion of Sorge. I will utilize Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology on cun by looking into the present state of cun’s usage, comparing to its original meaning, and proposing a new way forward. Cun and its compound form cunzai is used to translate “being” in modern East Asian languages. However, recently Chinese philosophers began to question the appropriateness of using cunzai for this role. I will go back to the original meaning of cun as care with both lexicographical and orthographical evidence, comparing its antonym pairing to that of the other East Asian existential words such as 是 shi and 有 you, and trace its changes in meaning. In the last section I will propose possible changes to our dealing with our own existence when we retrieve the original affective aspect of cun, with its coherence of care and existence, through the philosophical use of cun in Mencius.