Coming at the end of the great flowering of philosophical inquiry in Warring States China, when the foundations for traditional Chinese thought were laid, Xunzi occupies a place analogous to that of Aristotle in the West. The collection of works bearing his name contains not only the most systematic philosophical exposition by any early Confucian thinker, but also account of virtually every aspect of the intellectual, cultural, and social life of his time. Xunzi was a social critic and intellectual historian (...) as well as a philosopher. He was also extremely active in the political and academic circles of his day, and his teaching had a great influence on the initial institutional organization of a unified China under the first Qin emperor, an influence that continued through later centuries. This is the first of three volumes that will constitute the first complete translation of Xunzi into English. The present volume consists of a general introduction and Books 1-6, dealing with self-cultivation, learning, and education. The translation is accompanied by substantial explanatory material identifying technical terms, persons, and events; detailed introductions to each book; and extensive annotation, with characters when desirable, indicating the basis of the translations. The general introduction recounts the biography of Xunzi, his later influence, the intellectual world in which he lived, and the basic terms that the ancient Chinese used to conceptualize nature and society. (shrink)

Argues that throughout the classical period in China, the word `fa' consistently means measurable, publicly accessible standards for the application of terms used in behavioral guidance. Review of the Daoist analysis of the meaning of fa; Original philosophical role of fa; Detail of Chinese philosopher Han Feizi's theories on the legal use of the term `fa.'.

This ambitious book presents a new interpretation of Chinese thought guided both by a philosopher's sense of mystery and by a sound philosophical theory of meaning. That dual goal, Hansen argues, requires a unified translation theory. It must provide a single coherent account of the issues that motivated both the recently untangled Chinese linguistic analysis and the familiar moral-political disputes. Hansen's unified approach uncovers a philosophical sophistication in Daoism that traditional accounts have overlooked. The Daoist theory treats the imperious intuitionism (...) that alienates critical thinkers as a feature of Confucianism alone. Freed from the view that Confucianism is the core of Chinese thought and from myopic Confucian interpretations, Chinese thinkers emerge as unmistakably philosophical. (shrink)

This a general account of the school of Mo-tzu, its social basis as a movement of craftsmen, its isolated place in the Chinese tradition, and the nature of its later contributions to logic, ethics, and science. It assesses the relation of Mohist thinking to the structure of the Chinese language, and grapples with the textual dynamics of later Mohist writings, particularly in regard to grammar and style, technical terminology, the use and significance of stock examples, and overall organization. Includes edited (...) and annotated Chinese text with an English translation and commentary, a glossary, and a photographic reproduction of the unemended text from the Taoist Patrology. (shrink)

(Uncorrected OCR) Abstract of thesis entitled Similarity and Standards: Language, Cognition, and Action in Chinese and Western Thought Submitted by Christopher J. Fraser for the degree of Ph. D. (Philosophy) at the University of Hong Kong in March 1999 Early Chinese philosophical texts contain numerous passages that depict the perfected human life as a flow of immediate, automatic responses to the environment, occurring without thought, deliberation, or conscious intention. For readers versed in the Western philosophical tradition, this perfectionist vision is (...) puzzling, for it assigns no role to activities we usually think of as quintessentially human, such as theoretical contemplation, abstract reasoning, and know ledge of universal truths. The aim of this dissertation is to explain why early Chinese writers advocated the views expressed in these passages. Toward this end, I present a unified interpretation of the theoretical framework underlying classical Chinese philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and theory of action. I contend that the major philosophical concern in early Chinese thought is correct performance of dcw i!1[ (way, norms). Along with this focus on dcw performance, I argue, early Chinese philosophers hold non-mentalistic theories of meaning, knowledge, and cognition, in which the central explanatory notion is a type of pattern recognition: the behavioral ability to distinguish similar kinds of things by comparing them to public standards. In semantic theory, Chinese philosophers explain the communicative function of language by appeal to speakers' behavioral conformity in distinguishing the extension of terms. In epistemology, they explain knowledge as knowing how to distinguish and name things correctly, according to the norms of dcw. Copyright �1999 Abstract ii Reasoning is not explained in terms of drawing inferences between propositions, but as a process of examining things and distinguishing similarities and differences between them. Human action is guided by recognizing objects as certain kinds of things, thus invoking the normatively proper behavioral responses to them specified by diw. Practical reasoning occurs mainly when the agent encounters difficulty in executing dao and needs to deliberate over how to draw a distinction. A highly intelligent, knowledgeable agent rarely needs to engage in ratiocination or deliberation, but instead draws all distinctions directly as part of the process of perceptual recognition. In this theoretical context, the perfected human is one whose every activity smoothly and flawlessly conforms to dao. Following dao is similar to performing a skill. In the masterful performance of skills, conscious deliberation and ratiocination typically vanish. Similarly, for the ideal performer of dao conscious thought subsides, leaving only a stream of immediate, skilled behavioral responses to the environment. A more detailed overview of the dissertation is given in �1.1. 4 (p. 16). Copyright �1999. (shrink)

This note responds to an interpretation of Mohist Canon and Explanation B 671 published by John Makeham some years ago. Makeham’s interpretation makes significant contributions to our understanding of this passage, especially in calling attention to problems with two influential previous interpretations, those of A. C. Graham and Chad Hansen.3 Yet his reading presents difficulties of its own, which I will attempt to rectify here.

The Mohist School's logical study focuses mainly on the following inference rule: suppose that N and M are coextensive terms, or N a subset of M; it follows that if a verb can appear in front of N, it can also appear in front of M. That is, if 'VM' then 'VN', where V is some extensional verb. Such an approach to logical inference necessitates the study of logical relations among nouns, verbs, and the relations between these two types of (...) words. Evidence is offered here that the Mohists clearly distinguished extensional verbs from intensional verbs, and that this insight enabled them to say, among other things, that VN does not follow from VM, even in cases where N is M or contained in M, as long as the V in question is an intensional verb. (shrink)