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COLLATERALITY IN EARLY CHINESE COSMOLOGY: AN ARGUMENT FOR CONFUCIAN HARMONY (HE 和) AS CREATIO IN SITU

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Roger T. Ames
Roger T. Ames*
Affiliation:
Roger T. Ames, 安樂哲, University of Hawai'i, USA; email: [email protected].
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Abstract

One important benefit of the Guodian and Shanghai Museum slips is the new insights they are providing in our understanding of the early intellectual evolution of classical Chinese philosophy. But there is a second important opportunity that the newly recovered documents provide. Beyond what is new in them, these same materials can be used to qualify, corroborate, and reiterate perhaps old but still undervalued insights into the interpretive context within which we construct our understanding of early China. Indeed, our best interpreters of classical Chinese philosophy are explicit in rejecting the idea that Chinese cosmology begins from some independent, transcendent principle and entails the metaphysical reality/appearance distinction and the plethora of dualistic categories that arise from such a worldview. In fact, the recently recovered Guodian materials provide us with both the resources and the occasion to revisit three related cosmological issues: What is distinctive about classical Chinese cosmogony and its notion of origins? What is the Chinese alternative to the assumptions about our own familiar creatio ex nihilo source of meaning? And how is “creativity” expressed in the Chinese philosophical vocabulary?

摘要

郭店與上博(上海博物館簡稱)簡帛文獻主要貢獻之一是為我們理解 儒道兩家早期知識演進皆提供了新洞識 。不僅如此 ，新出土的文獻還 為我們提供了另一重要機會 : 它們還可被用來證實 、重申那些我們藉以認識古代中國的詮釋語境或 許老却仍被輕視的洞識 。確實 ，古典中國哲学最优秀的詮釋者顯然都 反對這樣一種觀念 ，即中國宇宙論產生于某種獨立 、超驗原理 ，且體現 形而上學的實在/表象區分 ，以及该世 界觀的餘緒 : 種種二元對立範疇 。事實上 ，最近出土的郭店文獻 ，同時為我們提供了 重温三個相關宇宙論問題的材料和機會 : 古典中國宇宙發生論及其起源 觀念的獨特性何在?相對于我們自己所熟悉的 “創生于虛無”(creatio ex nihilo) 觀念 ，中國人有怎樣的宇宙論假定?中國哲學語言如 何表達 “創造”?

Keywords

cosmogonycollateralitycreativityThe Ancestral One Gives Birth to the Waters宇宙論協重創造太一生水
Type
Articles from the Third International Conference on Excavated Manuscripts, Mount Holyoke College, 2004
Information
Early China , Volume 37 , 2014 , pp. 445 - 470

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References

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8. Even human nature is not exempt from process. Dewey, John, The Political Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1933), 223–24Google Scholar, in presenting his understanding of human nature uses John Stuart Mill's individualism as his foil. He cites Mill at length, who claims that “all phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature”; that is, “human beings in society have no properties but those which are derived from and may be resolved into the laws of the nature of individual man.” For Dewey, discussion of the fixed structure of human nature independent of particular social conditions is a non-starter because it “does not explain in the least the differences that mark off one tribe, family, people, from another—which is to say that in and of itself it explains no state of society whatever.”

9. William James cites Kierkegaard, Søren in Pragmatism and Other Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2000)Google Scholar, 98.

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14. Allan, Sarah, “The Great One, Water, and the Laozi: New Light from Guodian,” in T'oung Pao 89 (2003), 237–85.Google Scholar

15. Lüshi chunqiu (Zhuzi jicheng 諸子集成 ed.), 5.46 (“Da yue”).

16. Allan and Williams, Guodian Laozi, 165.

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18. Pang Pu (1999), 303.

19. For a discussion of this focus-field model, see Hall, David L. and Ames, Roger T., Anticipating China: Thinking through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 242–44Google Scholar, 268–78 and Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York, 1998), 23–78.Google Scholar

20. Li Xueqin 李學勤, “Taiyi sheng shui de shushu jieshi” 太一生水的數術解釋， in Daojia wenhua yanjiu 道家文化研究 17 (1999), 298–99.Google Scholar

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22. Analects 2.1: 為政以德，譬如北辰。居其所，而眾星共之. “Governing with excellence can be compared to being the North Star: the North Star dwells in its place, and the multitude of stars pay it tribute.”

23. Analects 17.3.

24. Analects 6.23.

25. Zhuangzi 21.7.33; cf. Graham, Angus C., trans., Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 98–99Google Scholar, and Watson, Burton, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, 97.

26. In fact, in the commentary that the translator James Legge appends to his early English translation of the Zhuangzi, he opines: “But surely it is better that Chaos should give place to another state. ‘Heedless’ and ‘Sudden’ did not do a bad work.” See Legge, The Texts of Taoism, Sacred Books of the East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1891)Google Scholar, 267.

27. Li Ling 李零, Sarah Allan, Xing Wen 邢文, and others in the discussion of The Ancestral One Gives Birth to the Waters at the 1998 Dartmouth Conference made much of the cyclical nature of the creative process. See Allan and Williams, Guodian Laozi, 162–71.

28. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933)Google Scholar, 356.

29. Tang Junyi, “Zhongguo yuzhouguan,” 9 defines this processual cosmology as “ceaselessly proliferating” (shengsheng buxi 生生不息).

30. Tang Junyi “Zhongguo yuzhouguan,” 16.

31. See Daode jing chapters 1, 20, 25, 52.

32. See Daode jing chapter 21.

33. Defoort, Carine, The Pheasant Cap Master: A Rhetorical Reading (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).Google Scholar

34. See Ames, Roger T. and Hall, David L., Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpertation of the Zhongyong (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001), 30–35Google Scholar, for our justification for translating cheng as “creativity” along with the commentarial evidence that supports such a rendering. Commentators late and soon have repeatedly defined cheng as “ceaselessness” and “continuity itself,” and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) in Sishu jizhu 四書集註 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1969), 19, glosses it as “what is true and real” 真實. Wing-tsit Chan, in his A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, 96, puts these two aspects of cheng together, insisting that cheng is “an active force that is always transforming things and completing things, drawing man and Heaven together in the same current.” Tu Wei-ming, in his Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 81–82Google Scholar, concludes explicitly that cheng “can be conceived as a form of creativity” and that it “is simultaneously a self-subsistent and self-fulfilling process of creation that produces life unceasingly.”

35. Zhuangzi 4.2.33; cf. Graham, Chuang-tzu, 53, and Watson, Chuang Tzu, 40.

36. Pang Pu 龐樸, “Yizhong youji de yuzhou shengcheng tushi: Jieshao Chu jian Taiyi shengshui,” 301–5. Liji 禮記 逐字索引A Concordance to the Liji: The ICS Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1992), 9.31.

37. Whitehead, , Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: Macmillan, 1929)Google Scholar, 10.

38. Whitehead, , Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1938)Google Scholar, 58.

39. Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 62.

40. Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 62.

41. I am using the reconstructed transcription of the text found in Guodian Chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡, ed. Jingmenshi bowuguan 荊門市博物館 (Peking: Wenwu chubanshe, 1994), 149.

42. The Mawangdui version has “wisdom” before “ritual propriety,” while the Guodian text has the reverse order. The “Five Kinds of Proper Conduct” (wuxing 五行) are the “four shoots” (siduan 四端) of Mencius plus “sagacity” (sheng 聖). The “four shoots” in the Mencius 2A6, 6A6, and 7A21 occur in the same order as the Guodian text: 仁義禮智.

43. Zhou li HY 4/6b–7a states that “the court tutor instructs the crown prince in the three kinds of excellent habits (sande 三德) and the three kinds of proper conduct (sanxing 三行).” The Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 commentary on this passage observes: “The expression ‘acting on excellent habits’ (dexing 德行) refers to the inner and outer, where that which is in the heart-mind is excellent habits, and the performance of it is conduct.”

44. In Mencius 6B6 it states that “what one has within will necessarily give shape to what is external” 有諸内必行諸外. The Mencius 2B2 has the expression “acting on productive habits” dexing 德行 and 2A3 has the passage “those who act consummately by virtue of their excellent habits are true kings” 以德行仁者王.

45. Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata Serica Recensa, in Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 29 (1957)Google Scholar, 271, defines the term da 達 in dadao 達道 as “break through (as growing grain).” This notion of the advancing pathway recalls Analects 15.29: “It is the person who is able to broaden the way, not the way that broadens the person” 人能弘道，非道弘人.

46. Liji 禮記 逐字索引 A Concordance to the Liji, 32.1.

47. This passage is reminiscent of Analects 6.23:

The Master said, “The wise (zhi 知) enjoy water; those authoritative in their conduct (ren 仁) enjoy mountains. The wise are active; authoritative persons are still. The wise find enjoyment; authoritative persons are long-enduring.”

Wisdom entails appropriateness to context (see Analects 6.22). Thus, in realizing oneself, one necessarily brings realization to one's situation.

48. Importantly, the internal/external neiwai 内外 distinction is a correlative notion like yinyang 陰陽, and hence means “more or less.” Character and conduct cannot be treated as exclusive demarcations.

49. Li ji 禮記 逐字索引 A Concordance to the Liji, 32.23.

50. Angus Graham rejects any essentialistic interpretation of Mencius. In Graham's own words, he cautions that “the translation of xing 性 by ‘nature’ predisposes us to mistake it for a transcendent origin, which in Mencian doctrine would also be a transcendent end.” See his “Reflections and Replies,” in Rosemont, ed., Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts, 287. In setting aside this possible misunderstanding, Graham suggests as an alternative reading that “xing is conceived in terms of spontaneous development in a certain direction rather than of its origin or goal,” and further, that “xing will be a spontaneous process with a direction continually modified by the effects on it of deliberate action”; see Graham, “Reflections and Replies,” pp. 289–90. If I might paraphrase Graham here, xing is a spontaneous process that is continually being altered through changing patterns of human conduct. Distinguishing this from an “essentialist” reading, Graham's interpretation would make xing historicist, particularist, and genealogical. In other words, it would locate Mencius' notion of renxing within the generic features of a process or “event” ontology, a worldview that David Hall and I have argued at length elsewhere is most appropriate for understanding classical Confucianism. See Thinking from the Han, 23–78.

51. Wilhelm, Hellmut, Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977)Google Scholar, 37.

52. Fingarette, Herbert, “The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Chaos,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10 (1983)Google Scholar, 217.

53. James, William, The Essential Writings, edited by Wilshire, Bruce W. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 178–83Google Scholar. James once announced that every sentence should end with an “and ….”

54. Illustrative of this in situ notion of creativity, most canonical Chinese texts—the Yi jing 易經, the Analects, the Zhongyong, the Daode jing, and the Zhuangzi, for example—are not single-authored but rather the work of many hands. Most texts borrow liberally and without attribution from contemporaneously existing works. They are composite documents, with their significance aggregating in lineages that stretch across generations. Redactions of canonical texts are passed on with the collaboration of succeeding generations appending their commentaries that add new meaning as they accrue across the centuries. And so it is with paintings. The masterpieces that today cover the museum walls are seldom an original composition, but the emergence of a distinctive version of a continuing composition to which poetic colophons and calligraphy and the red-chop signatures of connoisseurship are added as they are passed on over the centuries.