“Affairs” and the Actual World

Abstract

The actual world, which surpasses the original state of being, consists in “affairs” (shi). Affairs can be understood as human activity and its outcomes. From the perspective of an abstract metaphysics, “things” (wu) appear to be independent of affairs and to possess ontological priority. However, through properly understanding the actual world we see that in fact affairs manifest the more fundamental import. Humans interact with things through affairs, and in this sense, the relations of humans with things are mediated by the relations of humans with affairs. Things manifest their diverse meaning only through incorporation into affairs. Additionally, the actual world formed through human activity gives rise to both the realm of fact and the realm of value, and affairs thus provide fundamental grounds that unify fact and value. In understanding the actual world, we must avoid reducing affairs, first, to merely matters of the mind and second, to merely matters of language. Affirming that it is based in affairs means that the actual world surpasses the original state of being while also committing us to its reality.

Notes

1 Han Feizi, “Yu Lao” (Clarification of Laozi); Chen Qiyou, Han Fei zi xin jiao zhu (New Commentated and Annotated Han Fei Zi) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2000), p. 449.

2 Hengxian, in Shanghai Bowuguan cang Zhangguo Chu zhu shu (The Warring States Chu Bamboo Texts of the Shanghai Museum), vol. 3 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003), p. 112.

3 Erya, “Shi gu” (Explications of Old Words).

4 Ibid.

5 As Aufheben, a term borrowed from Hegel; herein also sometimes translated as “surpasses” and “moves beyond.”—Trans.

6 Han Feizi, “Yu Lao” (Clarification of Laozi); Chen Qiyou, Han Fei zi xin jiao zhu (New Commentated and Annotated Han Fei Zi), p. 449.

7 Xunzi, “Zheng Ming” (Justification of Names); Wang Xianqian, Xunzi ji jie (Collected Explications of Xunzi) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), p. 487.

8 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002 [1949]), p. 26.

9 Within the elaborate distinction this section draws between “things” (wu) and “affairs” (shi), the author here deploys the term shiwu, combining the two characters, which I here render “items” and gloss with its more literal rendering “the things of affairs.” Below he also discusses wushi, “affairs of things,” inverting the combination. In this we see that tracing the distinction between affairs and things also involves illuminating their interconnections.—Trans.

10 In a broad sense, “events” can also refer to activities presently underway. However, even in these situations, “events” also possess properties of having already occurred. At the same time, the meaning of events themselves can only be fully revealed once they are completed.

11 See Wang Fuzhi, “Zhao gao wu yi,” Shang shu yin yi (Extended Meaning of the Book of Documents).

12 Meng Haoran, “Yu zhuzi deng Xianshan” (Climbing Mt. Xian With the Masters).

13 Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing?, trans. W. B. Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967), p. 5.

14 G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, §1158/11.369.

15 G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §270, Addition; trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 302.

16 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (London and New York: George Bell & Sons, 1894), p. 20 (amending “reality” to “actuality” for consistency with the Chinese text—Trans.).

17 Jin Yuelin, Lun dao (On Dao) (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1987), p. 45.

18 Ibid., p. 67.

19 Wei Yingwu, “Chuzhou xi jian” (At Chuzhou on the Western Stream).

20 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962 [1927]), pp. 254–55.

21 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 256.

22 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 262.

23 See Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 364.

24 , Drawing on language from the Zhuangzi, chapters two (“Qi wu lun” [Equalizing Assessments of Things]) and twenty-four (“Xu Wugui”); Zhuangzi zhu shu (The Annotated and Explicated Zhuangzi), ed. Cao Chuji and Huang Lanfa (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011), pp. 34, 440.

25 , Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 132.

26 Xunzi, “Ru xiao” (The Achievements of the Confucians); trans. Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 56, slightly altered here.

27 Zheng Xuan, “Daxue” (Great Learning), Li ji zhu (Commentary on the Record of Ritual).

28 Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Er Cheng ji (Collected Work of the Cheng Brothers) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), p. 143.

29 See Wang Shouren, Chuanxi lu zhong (Record of Teachings and Practice, vol. 2), in Wang Yangming quan ji (Complete Collected Works of Wang Yangming) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1992), p. 47; Wang Fuzhi, “Cheng ming” (Sincere perspicuity), Zhangzi Zheng Meng Zhu (Commentary on Master Zhang’s Zheng Meng), in Chuanshan quan ji (Complete Collected Works of Chuanshan), vol. 12 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1996), p. 115.

30 Book of Changes, “Xi ci shang” (Appended Phrases, part one), 11; trans. Richard John Lynn, The Classic of the Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 63.

31 Zhuangzi, “Qi wu lun” (Equalizing assessment of things), “De chong fu” (Markers of full virtuosity); trans. adapted from Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Brook Ziporyn (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009), pp. 18, 34.

32 Zhuangzi, “Qiu shui” (Autumn floods); Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, p. 73.

33 Huainanzi, “Yuan dao xun” (Lessons of the Original Dao).

34 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922), 1.1 (p. 25 of the Project Gutenberg transcription, EBook #5760).

35 Mencius 4A27; trans. D. C. Lau, Mencius: A Bilingual Edition (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984), p. 169 (amending “obedience” to “the performing of obedience” to highlight the implication of affairs—Trans.).

36 See the “Renjian xun” chapter of the Huainanzi.

37 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 132.

38 Book of Changes, “Xi ci shang” (Appended Phrases, part one), 5, “Xi ci xia” (Appended Phrases, part two), 1; translation adapted from Lynn, The Classic of Changes, pp. 54, 77.

39 The author here is referencing the traditional Confucian “three immortal achievements” (san buxiu) of social accomplishments, personal virtue, and cultural teachings. See Zuo zhuan, “Xiang gong” (Duke Xiang) year 24.—Trans.

40 Lu Jia, “Zhi de” (Supreme Virtue), Xin yu (New Words).

41 Refers to Li Zehou’s theory of “emotion as substance” (qing benti). See Li Zehou, “Guanyu qing benti” (On Emotion as Substance), in Zhexue gangyao (Outline of a Philosophy) (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011), pp. 39–63.—Trans.

42 Bai Juyi, “Chongxiu Xiangshan Si bi, ti ershier yun yi ji zhi” (Twenty-two Lines in Commemoration of Completing Repairs to the Mt. Xiang Temple).

43 Translation adapted from Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), p. 109.

44 Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 5.62 (p. 74 of the Project Gutenberg transcription).

45 Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View: 9 Logico-Philosophical Essays, second edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 15–16.

46 Note that this does not mean that language limits “what there is” or “things in their natural state” but rather limits our understanding of the world and thus our interaction with things. Quine sees “ontology” as a theory describing the world and is concerned with what kind of descriptions are logically valid and sound. Under Quine’s own view, then, language delimits what Yang has been calling the “actual world” for humans. Yang is arguing that this depiction of things, as with the philosophers indicted in the preceding, is impoverished by underappreciation of the role of human affairs therein.—Trans.

47 Wilfrid Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, ed. Kevin Scharp and Robert B. Brandom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 408.

48 Wilfrid Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in In the Space of Reasons, p. 163.

49 Donald Davidson, “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, second edition (Oxford, UK, and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 199.

50 Xunzi, “Zhengming” (Correcting names); translation adapted from Hutton, Xunzi, p. 237, altered to reflect the author’s intent.

51 Ibid.

52 J. L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words, second edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 5–6.

53 See Austin, How to Do Things With Words, pp. 94–108.

54 Wang Shouren, Chuanxi lu shang (Record of Teachings and Practice part one), Wang Yangming quan ji (Complete Collected Works of Wang Yangming) (Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji chubanshe, 1992), p. 15.

55 Wang Shouren, “Yu Wang Chunfu” (With Wang Chunfu), Wang Yangming quan ji, p. 156.

56 Liang Shuming, Dong-Xi wenhua ji qi zhexue (The Cultures of East and West and Their Philosophy), Liang Shuming quan ji (Complete Collected Works of Liang Shuming), vol. 1 (Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1989), pp. 376–377.

57 In fact, Sellars understood action in terms of the “entry” and “exit” of language between the environment and the subject. See Wilfrid Sellars, “Some Reflections on Language Games,” in Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 323–357.