Abstract

One’s translating, reading, and understanding of texts from other eras and traditions are conditioned by tacit assumptions built into one’s own vocabulary and psycho-cultural understanding of self—of which one tends to be only intuitively aware. Thus, for example, when encountering the vocabulary in Classical Chinese for “I,” “me,” “mine,” “self,” et cetera, modern readers are inclined to import their own linguistic, cognitive, and cultural intuitions about these terms, unconsciously and without second thought. This has been particularly problematic for modern Western readers of the Confucian classics, who tend to take self as ontologically and ethically individual. However, recent psychological accounts of self...