Feng Youlan: The Way Chinese Philosophers ExpressEd Their Thoughts| A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy

▇ The way Chinese philosophers express their thoughts

Western students who are new to Chinese philosophy often encounter two difficulties: one is, of course, a language barrier; the other is the particular way Chinese philosophers express their ideas. Let me begin with the latter difficulty.

When people start reading Chinese philosophical works, perhaps the first impression is that these remarks and articles are short and unrelated. Open the Analects and you will see that there are only a few words in each chapter. And there is almost no connection between the upper and lower chapters. Open Lao Tzu and you will see that the whole book is only about five thousand words, not longer than an article in a magazine; but you can see the whole of Lao Tzu's philosophy. Students accustomed to sophisticated reasoning and detailed argumentation are at a loss to understand what these Chinese philosophies are saying. He will be inclined to think that these ideas themselves are not intrinsically linked. If so, then there is no Chinese philosophy. Because thought without connection is not worthy of the name philosophy.

It can be said that the remarks and articles of Chinese philosophers have no superficial connection, because these remarks and articles are not formal philosophical works. According to the Chinese tradition, the study of philosophy is not a profession. Everyone has to study philosophy, just as Westerners have to go to church. The purpose of philosophy is to enable man as a man to become a man, not to be a certain kind of person. Other learning (not studying philosophy) is to enable a person to become a certain person, that is, a person with a certain occupation. So there were no professional philosophers in the past; non-professional philosophers did not have to have formal philosophical writings. In China, there are far more philosophers without formal philosophical writings than there are philosophers with formal philosophical writings. If you want to study the philosophy of these people, you can only read their quotations or letters to students and friends. These letters were written at various times of his life, and the quotations were not written by more than one person. So they are not related, or even contradict each other, which is to be expected.

The above can explain why some philosophers' statements and articles are not related, and it does not explain why they are short. Some philosophical writings, like Mencius and Xunzi, still have systematic reasoning and argumentation. But they are still not clear enough compared to Western philosophical writings. This is due to the fact that Chinese philosophers are accustomed to expressing their thoughts in the form of famous sayings and metaphorical examples. The whole book of Lao Tzu is full of famous sayings, and most of the articles of Zhuangzi are full of metaphorical examples. This is obvious. However, even the works of Mencius and Xunzi mentioned above still have too many famous sayings and metaphorical examples compared with Western philosophical works. Famous sayings must be short; figurative illustrations must be unrelated.

Therefore, the famous sayings and metaphors are not clear enough. They are unclear and implicitly excessive, with the former compensated for by the latter. Of course, clarity and insinuation are not mutually exclusive. An expression, the clearer it is, the less suggestive it is; just as an expression, the more prose it is, the less poetic it is. It is precisely because the remarks and articles of Chinese philosophers are not very clear, so what they imply is almost infinite.

Implicit, rather than clear, is the ideal of all Chinese art, poetry, painting, and everything else. In the case of poetry, what the poet wants to convey is often not what is directly said in the poem, but what is not said in the poem. According to Chinese tradition, good poetry "has endless words and infinite meanings." So the wise reader can read the unspoken meaning of the poem, and can read the meaning of the line between the lines of the book. Such ideals as Chinese art are also reflected in the way Chinese philosophers express their ideas.

The ideal of Chinese art is not without its philosophical background. The "Foreign Objects" section of Zhuangzi says: "Therefore the rafter is in the fish, and he gets the fish and forgets the fish." The hoofer is therefore in the rabbit, and the rabbit forgets the hoof. The speaker cares, and the one who is proud of it forgets to speak. I'm andyph's forgetting to talk to the man who talks! "To speak to the one who forgets is to speak is to speak." The Zhuangzi speaks of two saints meeting without saying a word, because they "witnessed and survived" (Tian Zi Fang). According to the Taoists, the Tao is not tao, it can only be implied. Words reveal that they rely on the hints of words, not the fixed extension and connotation of words. Once the word has reached its purpose, it should be forgotten. Since you don't need it anymore, why do you have to use words to find trouble? This is true of the words and rhymes of the poems, as well as the lines and colors of the paintings.

In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, the most influential philosophy in China was the "New Taoism", which was called metaphysics. At that time, there was a book called "The New Language of the World", which recorded the good stories and rhymes of famous scholars since the Han and Jin Dynasties. Most of the words were short, some with only a few words. The book "Literature" says that a high official asked a philosopher (the great official himself was a philosopher) about the similarities and differences between Lao Zhuang and Confucius. The philosopher replied, "Will there be no sameness?" Meaning: Isn't it the same? The high official liked this answer very much, and immediately appointed this philosopher as his secretary, which was called "掾" at the time, and since this answer had only three words, it was called "three languages". He cannot say that Lao and Zhuang are not the same as Confucius, nor can he say that they are all the same. So he answered the question, which was indeed a wonderful answer.

The brief remarks in the Analects and Lao Tzu are not simply conclusions, and the premises for deriving these conclusions have been lost. They are all suggestive quotes. Hints are intriguing. You can collect all the ideas you found in Lao Tzu and write a new book of 50,000 or even 500,000 words. No matter how well written it is, it is just a new book. It can be read in contrast with the original book of Lao Tzu, and it can also be of great help to people understand the original book, but it can never replace the original book.

I have already mentioned Guo Xiang, who is one of the great commentators of Zhuangzi. His annotations are themselves classics of Taoist literature. He turned the metaphors and metaphors of Zhuangzi into reasoning and argumentation, and the language of Zhuangzi's poems into his own prose language. His article is much clearer than Zhuangzi's. However, zhuangzi's original text implies, Guo Xiangzhu's clarity, which of the two is better? People still ask that. Later, a Zen monk said, "I once saw Guo Xiang zhu Zhuangzi, but the knowledge of yun: but it was Zhuangzi zhu Guo xiang." (Quotations of the Great Hui Pujue Zen Master, vol. XXII)

▇ Language barrier

It is very difficult for one to fully understand and appreciate the original philosophical works if one cannot read the original texts, as is the case with all philosophical works. This is due to the language barrier. This, combined with the suggestive character of Chinese philosophical writings, makes the language barrier even more daunting. The remarks and writings of Chinese philosophers are all suggestive and simply impossible to translate. The one who reads only the translation loses its implication; this means losing a lot.

A translation, after all, is nothing more than an explanation. For example, if someone translates a sentence of Lao Tzu, he is making his own interpretation of the meaning of the sentence. But this translation can convey only one meaning, and in practice, in addition to the meaning conveyed by the translator, the original text may contain many other meanings. The original text is suggestive, and the translation is not and cannot be. Therefore, the translation loses a lot of the rich content inherent in the original text.

Lao Tzu and the Analects now have many translations. Every translator finds someone else's translation unsatisfactory. But no matter how well translated, the translation must be poorer than the original. It is necessary to combine all translations, including those that have already been translated and those that have not yet been translated, in order to display the rich content of the original Lao Tzu and the Analects.

In the 5th century, Kumarosh, one of the largest translators of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, said that the work of translation was just like chewing rice and feeding people. If a person cannot chew his own food, he has to eat the food that others have chewed. However, after such a chew, the taste and aroma of the rice are definitely much more boring than the original.

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