Langauge, truth, and literary interpretation: A cross-cultural examination

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 1-19

  Tang, Yanfang ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0038751370     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3653997     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. This study focuses on the comparative views of language between Western, or more precisely, Euro-American philosophy and traditional Chinese philosophy. Discussions of language in contemporary China are scanty, and the limited amount of scholarship published on the topic mainly features introduction of Western views and practices. Traditional views of language still strongly influence the Chinese thinking, hence the objectivity of meaning or text is rarely an issue in contemporary Chinese literary criticism.
2. See Yip Wai-lim, "Language and the Real-Life World" and "Aesthetic Consciousness of Landscape in Chinese and Anglo-American Poetry," in Diffusion of Distances: Dialogues between Chinese and Western Poetics (Berkeley, 1993), 63-137; James Liu, Language - Paradox - Poetics: A Chinese Perspective (Princeton, 1988), 3-15.
3. See Yip Wai-lim, "Language and the Real-Life World" and "Aesthetic Consciousness of Landscape in Chinese and Anglo-American Poetry," in Diffusion of Distances: Dialogues between Chinese and Western Poetics (Berkeley, 1993), 63-137; James Liu, Language - Paradox - Poetics: A Chinese Perspective (Princeton, 1988), 3-15.
4. Zhouyi dazhuan xinzhu, anno. Gao Heng (Jinan, 1979), 541. English translations in this article are mine except as otherwise noted.
5. Confucius was supposedly the author of the ten treatises of the Book of Changes. The statement is found in the first of the two treatises entitled "Appended Words" (Xi ci).
6. Abraham Kaplan, The New World of Philosophy (New York, 1963), 270.
7. Lao Zi, Lao Zi zhenggu, anno. Gao Heng (Beijing, 1956), 1.
8. Zhuang Zi, Zhuang Zi jishi, ed. Guo Qingfan (1844-95?; 4 vols., Beijing, 1961), I, 488-89. The English translation is from The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, tr. Burton Watson (New York, 1968), 152.
9. Zhuang Zi, Zhuang Zi jishi, ed. Guo Qingfan (1844-95?; 4 vols., Beijing, 1961), I, 488-89. The English translation is from The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, tr. Burton Watson (New York, 1968), 152.
10. Cheng Yalin, Shi yu Chan (Nanchang, 1989), 138.
11. Lu Ji, "Wen fu," in Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan, ed. by Guo Shaoyu and Wang Wensheng, (4 vols.; Shanghai, 1979), I, 170.
12. Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong yizhu, anno. Zhao Zhongyi (Nanning, 1982), 248. The English translation is from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, tr. Vincent Yu-chung Shih (New York, 1959), 155-56.
13. Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong yizhu, anno. Zhao Zhongyi (Nanning, 1982), 248. The English translation is from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, tr. Vincent Yu-chung Shih (New York, 1959), 155-56.
14. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, 1983), 127, 128, 129.
15. Ibid., 146.
16. F. L. Lucus, Style (London, 1955), 22.
17. Zhuang Zi, IV, 949. The English translation is from Watson, Chuang Tzu, 304.
18. Zhuang Zi, IV, 949. The English translation is from Watson, Chuang Tzu, 304.
19. Liu, Language - Paradox - Poetics, 12.
20. Lao Zi, 100, 152.
21. Liu, Language - Paradox - Poetics, 56.
22. Confucius, Lunyu yizhu, anno. Yang Bozhun (Beijing, 1980), 188.
23. Zhuang Zi, IV, 1098.
24. Ibid., 947.
25. Ibid.
26. Cited by Ge Zhaoguang, Chanzong yu Zhongguo wenhua (Shanghai, 1986), 149.
27. Zhuang Zi, IV, 944. The English translation is from Watson, 302.
28. Ibid., III, 573.
29. Ibid., II, 411.
30. Zhong Hong, Shipin zhu (Hong Kong, 1959), 4.
31. Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong yizhu, 334-35.
32. Jiaoran, "Shi shi," in Lidai shihua, ed. He Wenhuan (Taipei, 1974), 21.
33. Sikong Tu, "Yu Li Sheng lun shishu," in Zhonggui lidai wenlun xuan, II, 196.
34. Sikong Tu, "Yu Jipu shu," in ibid., II, 201.
35. Van Yu, "Canglang shihua," in Lidai shihua, 443. The English translation is from James Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago, 1975), 37, 39.
36. Van Yu, "Canglang shihua," in Lidai shihua, 443. The English translation is from James Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago, 1975), 37, 39.
37. Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," tr. John Sallis, in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York, 1977), 118-22.
38. Huston Smith, "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," Philosophy East and West, 30 (1980), 425, 426-27.
39. Heidegger, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," tr. John Barlow, in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, eds. Henry Aiken and William Barrett (4 vols., New York, 1962), III, 265-68. Cited and discussed in Smith, "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," 430-33.
40. Heidegger, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," tr. John Barlow, in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, eds. Henry Aiken and William Barrett (4 vols., New York, 1962), III, 265-68. Cited and discussed in Smith, "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," 430-33.
41. Smith, "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," 433-34.
42. Cyril Knoblauch, "Words, Thoughts, and Things: Aspects of Neoclassical Semantic Theory" (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1973).
43. Smith, "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," 432.
44. Barry Allen discusses the persistent primacy of reality over language in the Western view of truth in Truth in Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1993, 9-37).
45. I have also discussed my view on this alleged change of Western thinking on language in my article "Art or Science: Chinese and Western Perspectives on Literary Criticism, " The Comparatist, 22 (May 1998), 46.
46. Gustav Bergmann, Logic and Reality (Madison, 1964), 177.
47. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York, 1972), 443.
48. Betty Heimann, Indian and Western Philosophy: A Study of Contrasts (London, 1937), passim.
49. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross (2 vols., London, 1907), II, 39.
50. Ibid., II, 43-44.
51. Smith, "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," 429.
52. Cheng Chung-ying has argued that the non-inflected and non-conjugated features of Chinese, the fact that there are no tense, case, and distinction of gender and number and that the same word with no change of form may function as different parts of speech, exemplifies the "motion-change-process-becoming-and-activity" of Chinese ontology in "Logic and Language in Chinese Philosophy," Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 14 (1987), 288-89.
53. As with many scholars, Smith himself ("Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth," 428) argues that the "absence of definite grammatical rules in ancient China and the ambiguity of individual ideograms and pictograms make it awkward for" Chinese philosophers to deal with abstract ideas.
54. Zhuang Zi, I, 74. The English translation is from Watson, 41.
55. Zhuang Zi, I, 55. The English translation is from Yip, "Aesthetic Consciousness," 107. For a more detailed discussion of Chinese views of man and nature, which informs the discussion here, refer to Yip, 106-14.
56. For discussions of the similarities between Heidegger's views and those of Chinese philosophers, see the articles included in Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (Honolulu, 1987).
57. Cheng Chung-ying, "Logic and Language," 291.
58. Ibid., 296.
59. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (New York, 1958), passim. Cited and discussed in Cheng.
60. Cheng Chung-ving, "Logic and Language," 291.
61. Cited by Joseph S. Wu, "Chinese Language and Chinese Thought," Philosophy East and West, 19 (1969), 423.
62. Fritz Mauthner, Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Leipzig, 1922-23), I, 1, I, 713. The English translations are from Zhang Longxi, The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West (Durham, 1992), 43. The author wishes to express her indebtedness to Zhang for the discussion of Mauthner in this article.
63. Fritz Mauthner, Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Leipzig, 1922-23), I, 1, I, 713. The English translations are from Zhang Longxi, The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West (Durham, 1992), 43. The author wishes to express her indebtedness to Zhang for the discussion of Mauthner in this article.
64. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. C. K. Ogden (London, 1981), 27.