Collaterality in early Chinese cosmology: An argument for Confucian Harmony (he) as creatio in Situ

Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 43-70

  Ames, Roger T ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII   (United States)

Author keywords

Collaterality; Cosmology; Creativity; Meaning; Origins

Indexed keywords

EID: 84873652435     PISSN: 18126243     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Marcel Granet, La Pensee Chinoise (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1934), p. 478.
2. See Tang Junyi, "Zhongguo Zhexuezhong Ziranyuzhouguan zhi tezhi" [The Distinctive Features of Natural Cosmology in Chinese Philosophy], in Zhongxi Zhexue Sixiang Zhi Bigiao Lunwenji [Collected Essays on the Comparison Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Thought] (Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju, 1988, pp. 100-103
3. Xiong Shili, Mingzinpian (Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju, 1977), pp. 180-191
4. Zhang Dongsun, Zhishi Yu Wenhua: Zhang Dongsun Wenhua Lunzhu Jiyao editd by Zhang Yaonan (Beijing: Zhong-guo Guangbo Dianshi Chubanshe, 1995), pp. 271-272
5. Angus C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (Chicago: Open Court, 1989), p. 22
6. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation, Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1956), p. 290
7. Nathan Sivin, Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections (Aldershot, HANTS: Variorum, 1995), p. 3
8. Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992), pp. 215
9. Norman J. Girardot, Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism: The Theme of Chaos (Hun-tu) (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), p. 64.
10. Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin 's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (NY: Simon and Shuster, 1995), pp. 21-22 is categorical in his evaluation of the power of Darwin's idea, not only for the discipline of philosophy, but both constructively and deconstructively, for Western culture in its broadest possible terms: Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single bet idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. But it is not just a wonderful scientific idea. It is a dangerous idea... There are many more magnificent ideas that are also jeopardized it seems, by Darwin's idea, and th ey, too, may need protection.
11. John Dewey, The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898, edited by Jo Ann Boydston, 5 vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1969-1972), Vol. 1, p. 162. For the history, development, and the context of "the philosophical fallacy," see
12. James Tiles, Dewey (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 19-24.
13. Even human nature is not exempt from process. John Dewey, The Political Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), pp. 223-224 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."
14. Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Chinese Mirror (Chicago: Open Court, 1991), pp. 62-63.
15. John Dewey, The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, edited by Jo Ann Boydston, 15 vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-83), Vol. 12, p. 134.
16. Sarah Allan, "The Great One, Water, and the Laozi: New Light from Guodian," in T'oung Pao (2004).
17. Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams ed., The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998 (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, 2000), p. 165.
18. Christopher Cullen, Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The Zhou Bi Suan Jing (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996), p. 44.
19. Zhuangzi 21/7/33; compare Angus C. Graham, "Reflections and Replies," in H. Rosemont, Jr., ed., Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), pp. 98-99
20. Burton Watson trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (NY: Columbia University, 1968), p. 97.
21. In fact, in the commentary that the translator James Legge, "The Texts of Taoism," in Sacred Books of the East (Oxford: Oxford U, 1891), p. 267 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."
22. Li Ling, Sarah Allan, Xing Wen, 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 Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams ed., The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College (May 1998), pp. 162-171.
23. A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (NY: Columbia University, 1933), p. 356.
24. Canne Defoort, The Pheasant cap master: A Rhetorical Reading (Albany: State University of NY, 1997), passim.
25. See Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Translation of the Zhongyong (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, 2001), pp. 30-35 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 glosses it as "what is true and real."
26. Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University, 1963) p. 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."
27. Tu Weiming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (Albany: State University of NY, 1989), pp. 81-82 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."
28. Zhuangzi 4/2/33; compare Angus C. Graham, Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), p. 53
29. See A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (NY: Macmillan, 1929), p. 10.
30. A. N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought (NY: Macmillian, 1938), p. 58.
31. Hellmut Wilhelm, Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes (Seattle: University of Washington, 1977), p. 37.
32. Herbert Fingarette, "The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Confucius," in Journal of Chinese Philosophy (1983), p. 217.
33. William James, The Essential Writings, edited by Bruce W. Wilshire (Albany: State University of NY, 1984), pp. 178-183. James once announced that every sentence should end with an "and..."