Better late than never: understanding Chinese philosophy and ‘translating it’ into the western academy^†

^†Excerpted from the introduction to the Blackwell Sourcebook in Classical Chinese Philosophy (forthcoming).

Abstract

‘To translate’ means quite literally ‘to carry across, to bring across,’ that is, ‘to remove from one place to another.’ The questions I want to address in this essay are: To what extent have we been successful in, first, understanding the Chinese philosophical narrative and, then, in ‘carrying it across’ into the western academy? To what extent have we been able to grow and ‘appreciate’ (in the sense of value-added) our own philosophical parameters by engaging with this antique tradition? The self-conscious strategy of translation, then, must be to go beyond word-for-word translation and attempt to enable students of Chinese philosophy to read the seminal texts by providing them with a means of developing their own sophisticated understanding of a set of critical Chinese philosophical terms. The premise is that there is no real alternative but to cultivate a nuanced familiarity with the key Chinese vocabulary itself. It is in this effort to take Chinese philosophy on its own terms, then, that we must begin from the interpretive context by taking into account the tradition’s own indigenous presuppositions and its own evolving self-understanding. We must be aware of the ambient, persistent assumptions that have given the Chinese philosophical narrative its unique identity over time.

Keywords:

• Translation
• interpretive context
• Chinese philosophy
• uncommon assumptions
• Chinese cosmology

Notes

^† Excerpted from the introduction to the Blackwell Sourcebook in Classical Chinese Philosophy (forthcoming).

1. I am ‘borrowing’ this distinction from Saussure because I do not want to endorse the kind of structuralism that would allow for any severe separation between langue and parole, instead siding with the sentiments of Mikhail Bakhtin who would see these two dimensions of language as mutually shaping and evolving in their always dialectical relationship. Utterances gradually change the structure of language, and the changing structure orients and influences the utterances that it makes possible.

2. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) uses ‘prejudices’ not in the sense that prejudice is blind but, on the contrary, in the sense that our prejudgments can facilitate rather than obstruct our understanding. That is, our assumptions can positively condition our experience. But we must always entertain these assumptions critically, being aware that the hermeneutical circle in which understanding is always situated requires that we must continually strive to be conscious of what we bring to our experience and must pursue increasingly adequate prejudgments that can inform our experience in better and more productive ways.

3. The population of China proper is over 22.5% of the world’s population, with greater China and the various diasporas making China what Lucian Pye has called ‘a civilization pretending to be a country.’ Indeed, China is a continent – an Africa or Europe – rather than a France or a Nigeria.

4. In thinking through modern Chinese literature, Lydia H. Liu 劉禾 probes the discursive construct of the Chinese modern:

I am fascinated by what has happened to the modern Chinese language, especially the written form, since its early exposure to English, modern Japanese, and other foreign languages …. The true object of my theoretical interest is the legitimation of the modern and the West in Chinese literary discourse as well as the ambivalence of Chinese agency in these mediated processes of legitimation. (Liu 1995, xvi–xviii)

Pointedly alluding to Foucault’s concern of the role of power relations and authority in the process of cultural translation, Liu cites Talal Asad as offering certainly an apposite critique of the British ethnographic tradition, but also a critique that has relevance to cultural translation broadly:

To put it crudely, because the languages of the Third World societies – including of course, the societies that social anthropologists have traditionally studied – are ‘weaker’ in relation to Western languages (and today, especially to English), they are more likely to submit to forcible transformation in the translation process than the other way around. The reason for this is, first, that in their political-economic relations with Third World countries, Western nations have the greater ability to manipulate the latter. And, second, Western languages produce and deploy desired knowledge more readily than Third World languages do. (op. cit., 3)

5. I am indebted to Jung-Yeup Kim for this new translation of the title of this text that has conventionally been rendered the Great Learning. Reading ‘great’ (da) gerundively captures the growth and radiality entailed by education, reminding us of John Dewey’s claim that ‘education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.’ Add reference.

6. Zhu Xi (1969 reprint): Daxue 1a–1b: 大學之道，在明明德，在親民，在止於至善。知止而後有定，定而後能靜，靜而後能安，安而後能慮，慮而後能得。物有本末，事有終始，知所先後，則近道矣。All subsequent citations are to this text unless otherwise stated.

7. 古之欲明明德於天下者，先治其國；欲治其國者，先齊其家；欲齊其家者，先修其身；欲修其身者，先正其心；欲正其心者，先誠其意；欲誠其意者，先致其知，致知在格物。.

8. 物格而後知至，知至而後意誠，意誠而後心正，心正而後身修，身修而後家齊，家齊而後國治，國治而後天下平。.

9. 自天子以至於庶人，壹是皆以修身為 本。其本亂而末治者否矣，其所厚者薄，而其所薄者厚，未之有也。.

10. 此謂知本，此謂知之至也。.