To Catch a Thief: Zhu XI (1130?1200) and the Hermeneutic Art

john h. berthrong TO CATCH A THIEF: ZHU XI (1130–1200) AND THE HERMENEUTIC ART In “Aesthetics and Hermeneutics,” Hans-Georg Gadamer defines hermeneutics: “. . . hermeneutics is the art of clarifying and mediating by our own effort of interpretation what is said by persons we encounter in tradition.”1 Working from this definition, I shall discuss here Zhu Xi’s practice of the hermeneutic art. In probing this question, however, I am uneasily gliding over numerous problems of crosscultural interpretation which complicate comparative philosophy and theology. As Gadamer has affirmed, understanding the tradition of the Western world is a complex task in and of itself. The difficulties are multiplied immeasurably when we try to extend our research to other cultures. Therefore, any examination of Zhu Xi’s hermeneutic art must be tentative and speculative, while perhaps suggestive of new insights into intercultural communication. With all due respect paid to scholarly caution, the nature of Zhu Xi’s attempt to reappropriate the Confucian Dao forces us to consider these comparative issues. Our first question: In what sense is Zhu Xi a hermeneutic philosopher? It is easy to defend the proposition that Zhu Xi is a hermeneutic philosopher if we follow Gadamer in defining hermeneutics as the science of understanding, interpreting, and applying tradition. Anyone who has examined Zhu Xi’s position on interpretation will have no trouble in accepting this. Zhu Xi’s own editors devote two juan (chapters 10 and 11) of his collected dialogues, the Zhuzi Yulei (The Dialogues of Master Zhu), to a discussion of the important Confucian art of reading texts (dushu).2 As we shall show later, there is little doubt that what Zhu Xi calls dushu is quite analogous to the modern notion of hermeneutics as defined by Gadamer. I suspect a resurrected Zhu Xi would find a great deal to agree with in Gadamer’s reflections on the hermeneutic art. Zhu Xi sees the art of correct interpretation as one important aspect of his intellectual mission to save Confucian culture. Daniel. K. Gardner has demonstrated Zhu Xi’s concern for the role of education and learning in his JOHN H. BERTHRONG, associate dean, Academic and Administrative Affairs, and associate professor of Comparative Theology, Boston University School of Theology. Specialties: comparative philosophy and theology, religious pluralism, Chinese religion, Confucianism. E-mail: [email protected] © 2006 Journal of Chinese Philosophy 146 john h. berthrong recent study of Zhu’s program for learning.3 For Zhu Xi this hermeneutic art is more than a recommendation to read the texts in a correct philological fashion: It is a charge to mediate the way, to make the Confucian way one’s own, and to bring the tradition alive in one’s own experience.4 In fact, one common criticism of Zhu Xi and such disciples as Chen Chun (1159–1223) is that they are excessively devoted to the hermeneutic art as a pedantic exegesis.5 This criticism is founded on a basic misunderstanding of what Zhu Xi means by the process of dushu, which is only a part of Zhu’s program for self-cultivation and not an arid form of pedantic “book learning.” Dushu is more specifically a subdiscipline of the self-cultivation program which Zhu Xi calls gewu or the investigation of things. Therefore, in order to understand what Zhu Xi means by dushu in its technical sense, we must first understand what Zhu meant to be the process of investigating things. The doctrine of gewu is one essential element in Zhu Xi’s theory of self-cultivation; it is the substrata upon which his hermeneutic art rests. Zhu Xi carefully adumbrates a program of study and selfcultivation which stands at the center of his philosophic project. The first step in this process is the articulation and appropriation of jing or reverence,6 which one must have in order to begin the task of selfcultivation. This reverence must pervade all the phases of the process with its profoundly serious commitment to the task of preserving Confucian culture. The student must be in a state of jing in order to begin the task of hermeneutical query. The method of query Zhu Xi recommends is best expressed in his famous maxim gewu qiongli, or the investigation of things in order to realize principle. Let us begin with an examination of gewu and then proceed to other aspects of self-cultivation. Some of Zhu Xi’s most pertinent comments on gewu are to be found in his commentary on the lost fifth chapter of the Daxue (the Great Learning).7 Zhu was convinced that the received Daxue text was incomplete, and that there must have been a fifth chapter which explained in some detail the process of gewu zhizhi or “the investigation of things lies in the extension of knowledge.” Zhu Xi’s solution to this problem was to append material taken from Cheng Yi (1033– 1107) to make up for the lost fifth chapter.8 Needless to say, this addition to a canonical text provoked great controversy in Confucian circles, which has still not abated.9 Given the importance of Zhu Xi’s commentary on this “lost” section, I quote it in full: The above fifth chapter of the commentary explains the meaning of the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge, which is now lost. I have ventured to take the views of Master Chengyi and zhu xi and the hermeneutic art 147 supplement them as follows: The meaning of the expression “the perfection of knowledge depends on the investigation of things” is this: in order to further my knowledge, I have to go to things and appropriate their principles, for the intelligent mind of humanity is certainly formed to know, and there is not a single thing in the world which does not posses principle. It is only because all principles are not appropriated that a person’s knowledge is incomplete. For this reason, the first step in the education of the adult is to instruct the student, in regard to all things in the world, to proceed from what knowledge a person has to the principles and to investigate further till the limit is reached.After such exertion for a long time, the person will one day achieve a wide and far reaching penetration [of insight into the principle of things]. Then the qualities of all things, whether internal or external, refined or coarse, will all be apprehended, and the mind, in its total substance and great functions, will be perfectly intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This is called the perfection of knowledge.10 Zhu Xi claims that we are always conscious of something, and that we must attend both to our own awareness of consciousness and to the object of consciousness. We are open reverently to sense experience. Things acquire meaning for us by our attending to them. However, this contact is hardly neutral, and certainly not adequately described in terms of “primary” sense qualities.11 Our perception of things is an emotional experience through and through. As much as we abstract from this primordial experience of attending to a world, it is still an experience of concern for things in relation to our consciousness. Knowledge is focused concern for things in relation to our consciousness of those things, including the events of ethical conduct. Knowledge is concern for the integrity of the object, and has meaning only in relation to our consciousness of it. Knowledge is an event, and if we ignore either the object or our consciousness of it, we are bound to form a mistaken impression of the knowledge-event.12 Zhu Xi tries to avoid the pitfall of either pure objectivism or pure subjectivism in the following manner. One part of the act of knowledge, he argues, is objective in the sense that it has a specific object which is an object of concern for us. A thing, event, or person becomes meaningful for us in the act of attending to it, even though we could say that the object of concern is in some sense prior to the act of concern or attention. Zhu Xi therefore has both objective and subjective traits in his interpretive theory. For instance, Zhu does not hold that everything in the world is affected by the mind in the same way as does a Huayan thinker such as Guifeng Zongmi (780–841).13 This fusion of objective and subjective concerns allows Zhu Xi to defend Confucian learning as solid or real in contradistinction to the empty learning of the Buddhists. Whatever else Zhu’s theory of knowledge 148 john h. berthrong demonstrates, it displays the irreducibly realist dimension of the NeoConfucian tradition. In the first part of his huo wen or “further comments” on the Daxue, Zhu Xi defends Cheng Yi’s contention that xue or “study” contains both the substructure of jing or “reverence” as the pre-given condition of study and the actual process of the recognition of things in consciousness. Zhu is here making a distinction between the precondition for the true learning, jing or reverence, and the more technically rational aspects of cognition, which he calls si (“thinking”). Jing is a state of reverent openness to phenomena and si is the actual process of thinking about the objects which come into the mind through the mediation of the body and the senses.This is an important premise. For Zhu, xue as a process of self-cultivation includes both gewu (which deals primarily with the external perceptions of things and events) and chengyi (realization of correct intention through the process of gewu).14 The process of acquiring knowledge cannot be considered without paying equal attention to the state of mind of the scholar engaged in the process of trying to learn. Zhu Xi’s knowledge is an attempt to understand the ethical values which inform each person in the world. If a person does not learn to act as well as to perceive accurately, all the observations of the principles of things and events will not help in the slightest in one’s ultimate quest for sagehood. As Zhu graphically put it, a mind which depends on the observation of things and events independently of concern for fellow creatures is like a wandering group of mounted cavalry, forever lacking a way back home.15 Only a union of ethical cultivation and action based on broad experience in the world qualifies as true knowledge for Zhu Xi. Knowledge is not exhausted in a mechanical or empirical sense, but completed and appropriated existentially in learning to obtain this learning for the sake of the self.16 Zhu Xi argues that this process does more than complete the cognitive capacity of the mind, because the mind is much more than the cognitive/rational capacity of the person. When knowledge has been extended to the utmost and when the unity of the world is felt in a profound way, the mind itself is extended to its most profound limit and there is nothing incomplete in it.17 The principle of things may be found in the external world, but the mind has the capacity to make the distinction between inner and outer a hollow one. The principle of things may be in those things or events, but the principle also relates those things and events to the emerging mind of the person as perceiver.18 The sages teach the student to identify and recognize the transcendent quality of the mind in order to urge the student to make the effort to realize a properly reverent attitude as a necessary precondition for the appropriation of principle.19 zhu xi and the hermeneutic art 149 The second part of Zhu Xi’s maxim of gewu qiongli should also be kept in mind. For Zhu, qiongli means more than to exhaust the totality of principles in a linear order. Qiong conjures up an image of ceaseless searching, of great effort to achieve broad knowledge and expertise in textual comprehension. This is absolutely correct, but qiong also means to appropriate, to know or comprehend a thing thoroughly in an experiential manner.20 The student not only needs a descriptive knowledge of a thing or event, but also needs to understand how this influences a person’s life and how to obtain it. Zhu Xi is not an advocate of a purely intellectual theory of knowledge; knowledge must be tied to the wisdom and conduct of seeking sagehood.21 Zhu Xi’s doctrine of dushu is a crucial element of the process of gewu, perhaps the most important aspect of this process for the scholar. Why does Zhu Xi recommend the reading of books as a method of self-cultivation? Qian Mu (Ch’ien Mu), in the third volume of his monumental Zhuzi Xin Xuean (New Case Studies of Master Zhu), suggests the following reasons. In the first place, Qian argues that Zhu really thinks he is merely urging his students to do what all worthy Confucians have done in the past, to love to study books and the experience of life as a unified whole.22 In the words of the Zhongyong, we should study it [the way to be sincere] extensively, inquire into it accurately, think over it carefully, sift it clearly, practice it earnestly. Where there is anything not yet studied, or studied but not yet understood, do not give up.23 This kind of exhortation to learning is the very lifeblood of the Confucian scholar, both in the pre-Han and the Song and later periods. Second, Qian thinks Zhu Xi wants to use the discipline of hermeneutics to check the “false” claims of one-sided minds and unenlightened consciousness.24 The world is full of bogus sages who Zhu Xi thinks actually understand very little of the true nature of sagehood. In other words, Zhu Xi wants to use the method of dushu to overcome the popular quasi-Chanism and inauthentic spirituality of his day.25 Qian Mu has, in a general way, correctly diagnosed why Zhu Xi urges his disciples to follow the way of dushu, but could still ask, “What positive benefit does the student get from the reading of books?” Zhu Xi has a subtle and complex answer to this question. A general outline of Zhu’s answer will reveal a great deal about Zhu Xi’s theory of interpretation. In his recent study of Zhu Xi’s program of learning to be a sage, Daniel Gardner has suggested that Zhu Xi creates this specific course of study in order to facilitate the appropriation of proper Confucian knowledge by his students.26 Probably the most compelling reason for the program of dushu is Zhu Xi’s conviction that the Confucian classics represent the “words” 150 john h. berthrong of the sages and worthies of the past, the Golden Age of the pre-Han philosophers and kings. These texts are a record of the past which convey to Zhu Xi a vision of normative human behavior. Zhu Xi understands that the message is not always clear in terms of its linguistic, semantic, literary, or historical conventions, but this does not reduce our obligation to attempt the hermeneutic transformation of the past into the living reality of present experience. The keys to the task are the search for the meaning of the text and the examination of its impact on our hearts and minds. A purely external collection of dead facts is meaningless without the thorough transformation of our minds. The real origin of this belief in the efficacy of dushu is Zhu Xi’s conviction that the mind of the student and the mind of the sage are fundamentally the same.27 The mind of the student and the sage are not completely alike—this can hardly be the case in a world full of students but with few real sages, but we all have the potential to become sages even if few actually do so. Zhu’s Northern Song masters teach that one can become a sage through learning. As Zhou Dunyi (1017–73) once recorded, “Someone asked, ‘Can one become a sage through learning?’ The Master [Zhou] said, ‘Yes.’”28 But since all things have their proper place for Zhu Xi, we must not put the cart before the horse, or our minds before that of the realized sage. Zhu Xi continues to reiterate that “it is definitely not a case of giving up my mind in order to search after the mind of the sage, to abandon my theory in order to comply with the theory of the first Confucians.”29 Furthermore, Zhu Xi is quite aware that there was a time when there were no texts for a Confucian to read. The sages in all their wisdom made manifest the Dao, and did not just write books about their self-cultivation. Zhu Xi’s emphasis is on the manifestation of the Dao in ethical conduct.30 At this point in Qian’s analysis of Zhu Xi’s remarks concerning dushu, we confront an opinion of Zhu Xi’s which closely resembles Gadamer’s theory of prejudice.31 Gadamer believes that we really begin in a state of ignorance and that only through the hermeneutic task do we learn to read our life situation correctly, if at all. We begin in error and rise to comprehension. Zhu Xi shares this opinion, and argues that we all begin in error or illusion about the truth and only have a chance to discover the truth through the discipline of study.32 Zhu Xi identifies one basic problem: Most students are willing to copy uncritically the formal “words” of the sages and consider this verbal memory to be perfect. But this flatly contradicts a saying of the Cheng brothers, which Zhu Xi quotes in the Jinsi Lu: “The student must first of all learn to doubt.”33 For Zhu Xi, following the Cheng brothers, doubt is quite radical. We must move behind the form of the words of zhu xi and the hermeneutic art 151 the sages; we must allow the words to produce a new horizon for our minds. Only this will qualify true Confucian learning. The process of learning is not all rote memory or unrestrained free imagination. We have to know, according to Zhu, where we have been before we can know where we are going.34 The possibility of perfection in the future is strongly rooted in the past, and the best guide to this normative past is the collection of classical writings given us by the Confucian sages. Zhu Xi has very definite ideas about how to overcome the initial fact of human finitude, ignorance, and error. He argues that reading a text is basically a matter of spiritual cultivation. One must learn to approach the text with what he calls “an empty mind and calm disposition” (xu xin ping qi).35 The student should approach the text with an open mind about what it may say and should, prior to serious study, try to bracket any preconceived ideas about what he or she thinks it is supposed to say. These preconceived ideas can generate a world of pure mental fabrication on the part of the student who does not study properly.36 This should remind the reader of Xunzi’s doctrine of the mind, for Xunzi is of the opinion that the true mind of the student of the Dao should be “empty, unified, and serene.”37 Although Zhu Xi definitely considers Mencius (Mengzi) the true inheritor of the Confucian Dao, Xunzi’s doctrine of the mind finds its echoes in Zhu’s reflection on the mind and its hermeneutical task.38 What then is the essence of the empty mind which we must bring to the reading of texts? Zhu Xi asserts that it is “a sincere will and an empty mind.” The key here is obviously the sincere will: Prior to the hermeneutic act one must resolve to become a student of the Dao.39 The problem Zhu Xi perceives in his generation (he calls them the moderns) is that they either bore about in the text, mistaking the trees for the forest, or rely slavishly on the commentarial traditions and fail to investigate the real essence or true meaning of the text. As a result of this double mistake, “They daily intone the books of the sages but they fail to recognize the meaning of the sages and worthies.”40 But Zhu does want the student to be aware of the commentaries, which are also the reflections of the Confucian fiduciary community of scholars. The commentaries, according to Zhu, are the source of much valuable insight into the way of the sages.41 Early in the yulei discussion of dushu Zhu Xi offers an interesting insight into the nature of the process that goes beyond what he has said before: The actual reading of the text is a secondary task compared with the great task of becoming a sage.42 Language for Zhu Xi, as for Whitehead, is symbolic and presents images that seek to evoke a proper response. Or, as Zhu says, “When we look at characters, we only see one layer and we do not go on to examine the second layer.”43 Part of the layering process is the recognition of fissures in the text, 152 john h. berthrong those parts of the text which are unclear to us. Only when we have recognized this fundamental obscurity at the beginning does Zhu believe that we might be able to penetrate fully into the true meaning of the text in question. Zhu uses the metaphor of a general who fights long, hard, and skillfully to illustrate the true process of dushu. He even suggests that the process of dushu is like the actions of a magistrate trying to apprehend a thief.44 Just as a thief seeks to escape arrest, so too does the meaning of a text often remain obscure to our understanding. One might well ask now if Zhu Xi is urging the student to commit the so-called intentional fallacy, the desire to understand the author better than he or she understood the original act of composition. Zhu says in his general discussion that one very good way to read texts is to study them so that they seem to be spoken to us face to face.45 Zhu Xi does, however, try to protect himself from letting this kind of dictum become a case of the intentional fallacy. He argues that the ultimate test of dushu is in hearing the good, acting on it, and expelling evil from the mind. This is a process that must go on in the mind of the reader and is not merely understanding the intention of the text or its author.46 The reader must cultivate insight and moral excellence before she or he can truly read (comprehend) a text. The following quotation illustrates what Zhu is trying to accomplish: “One reads texts in order to understand the intention of the sages and worthies because the intention of the sage and worthies is to contemplate the principle of spontaneity.”47 In Zhu’s own terms, the sages seek to understand the very primordial nature of the creative universe. Another metaphor which recurs in Zhu Xi search for the proper method of dushu is the concept of order. One must know the “right” order to be able to comprehend the truth. Zhu is here trying to protect the rationality of the sagely way and insight into the nature of things. Everything, including texts, “has its proper order and cannot be disordered.”48 To paraphrase his maxim, one must follow the proper order in order to advance gradually in learning and must read fiercely in order to purify the intellect.49 He believes that this process will generate a certain calmness of mind: “With quietude then the mind is empty and reason itself can be obtained.”50 At this point he returns to his admonition about emptying the mind in order to be able to dushu: “It is not how many books you read, but how intensely [you read them].”51 He is careful to point out that the mindless pedantic “overflowing” of material is not the breadth of learning to which he refers.52 Zhu Xi continually stresses the “big point” or deep structure of the work which he is reading. He suggests, for stance, that the Yijing is basically a work of yin-yang theory and that the Book of Poetry zhu xi and the hermeneutic art 153 (Shijing) expresses concern for moral cultivation.53 Zhu urges the student to search for the informing structure of the text and then to press on by examining the details of the whole.54 He keeps coming back to an “ordering principle” which must be understood in reference both to the text itself and to what the text reveals about the larger generalities of nature. We will only be able to apply effectively the insights gained from a text when we have grasped the ordering principle of the text in question. Another side to Zhu Xi’s theory of hermeneutics should be mentioned briefly, even though it is less important for general theory than either gewu going li or dushu. This is Zhu Xi’s reflection on what Qian Mu has called jiejing or “the explication of the classics.” Being a Confucian, Zhu Xi is naturally interested in reading the texts of his school, the Confucian classics.As Zhu points out, the task of providing meaningful commentary to the classics was even a preoccupation of Confucius.55 What, according to Zhu Xi, should an ideal commentary do for a text? He suggests that it should “open up” the meaning of the text for the reader. Zhu points out, for instance, that the Yijing is, in many respects, a book about divination, but through Confucian commentary it has become a useful tool for teaching the principle of right conduct.56 It opens up the potential horizons of the world to the student in a new and correct way: It can help teach her or him to live an ordered and ethical life in the world. But this is not always an easy task for Zhu Xi for he is very aware of the distance between his time and that of the sages, and even that of the early Confucian commentators. Although not as gaping as in modern European commentaries, there is a feeling of distance from the meaning of the early classic in Zhu Xi’s reflections on the explication of the classics. There is even a touch of humor in some of his statements about the problems of understanding ancient texts, even though Zhu Xi is hardly a humorous philosopher. Writing of the Shangshu, he says, “The Shangshu has some parts which should not be explained, some parts where we should conform to the meaning [of the text], some where we should follow the general drift, some parts which are difficult to understand, and some which cannot be explained at all.”57 Writing about the Yijing he makes a nice pun in Chinese: “The Yijing is not easy (‘yi’) to read” (yi bu ke yi du).58 In a more serious vein, Zhu comments, “The Yijing is finally a book of images which are today hard to explicate.”59 He means that the language of the Yijing is so obscure and archaic that it is almost impossible in the Southern Song to know exactly what the text is saying through its rich and evocative symbolism. There is, Zhu Xi recognizes, a gap between the images of the past and the concrete realities of today. Zhu Xi is generally of the opinion, with certain exceptions, that 154 john h. berthrong the real transmission of the way was broken with the death of Zengzi in the late Zhou and was not fully reestablished until the two Cheng brothers began to teach in the Southern Song.60 As a consequence, from Zhu Xi’s perspective, there had been a very considerable gap of more than a thousand years in the meaningful transmission of the correct understanding of the Confucian classics. A final comment is appropriate: Zhu Xi is interested in texts beyond the Confucian tradition and, in fact, has left in the Yishu (Posthumously Remaining Works) two short commentaries on an early Daoist self-cultivation manual.61 Zhu is also quite interested in many important philosophic Daoist texts such as the Laozi and Zhuangzi and often applies his concept of hermeneutics to these texts.62 For example, he believes that most commentators have completely missed the general point in the Laozi. Referring to the enigmatic spirit of the valley mentioned in chapter 6 of the received text, Zhu Xi asks, “What does this spirit of the valley really mean?” His answer: “The ‘valley’ is only the empty and receptive, while the ‘spirit’ is labeled the responsive.”63 Zhu Xi is trying to show that there is a balanced polarity in the image of the spirit of the valley which relies, no doubt, on the general philosophic background of yin-yang speculation, the eternal rhythm of the receptive and responsive elements of the cosmos. Whether he is correct or not in his application of this principle to Laozi’s text, his is one interpretation of the important image of the spirit of the valley. In Truth and Method Gadamer writes, My thesis is that the element of effective-history is operative in all understanding of tradition, even where the methodology of the modern historical sciences has been largely adopted, which makes what has grown historically and has been transmitted historically an object to be established like an experimental finding – as if tradition were as alien and, from the human point of view, as unintelligible, as an object of physics.64 This passage clearly reveals both what Zhu Xi and Gadamer share and how the two differ. For Zhu, the hermeneutic art aims at the production of an “effective-history” for the student in her or his confrontation with tradition. Zhu Xi is fully aware of the historical distancing felt so keenly by modern European scholars, but still believes that he is, with certain qualifications, an heir to the whole of the Confucian tradition. The separation, the disruption of tradition which Gadamer calls the rise of historical consciousness, would seem alien to Zhu Xi. However, Zhu Xi would agree with Gadamer about the result of the hermeneutic act: “Time is no longer a gulf to be bridged because it separates, but it is actually the supportive ground of the process in which the present is rooted.”65 zhu xi and the hermeneutic art 155 One more comparison is noteworthy. For Zhu Xi the ultimate task to be achieved through the process of self-cultivation is the realization of the sagely nature. According to Zhu (and all other NeoConfucians), the aim of the hermeneutic art is to fuse the inner and outer life of a person into a perfect sagely disposition, one which will function in an effective or timely fashion in all situations. The student, Zhu Xi argues, should be able to apply the insights of the tradition gained through the interpretation of texts. Here Zhu Xi would probably agree with Gadamer’s discussion of the role of German Pietism in the development of modern European hermeneutics. Gadamer writes, “In the course of our reflections we have come to see that understanding always involved something like the application of the text to be understood to the present situation of the interpreter.”66 A hermeneutic insight lacking sublititas applicandi (“application”) is simply false learning for Zhu Xi. It is therefore easy to see that Zhu Xi’s doctrine of dushu is analogous to Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory. This comparison is valid because it represents the spirit of reading texts common to both thinkers. Of course, there are differences which could be as easily highlighted as the common points; there is much in common in their hermeneutic theories. While Zhu Xi certainly does not feel the same poignant sense of alienation from tradition which infects modern European hermeneutic theory, he could certainly have appreciated the dilemma. What finally does such a comparison prove, if anything? At a minimum, there is the old cliche that similar situations call for similar responses. Both men were deeply interested in the interpretation of texts in order to better live and understand life. However, this is true only if the situation and the conceptualizations of the thinkers are somehow analogous: What, for example, could assume the place of modern ecumenical science in Zhu Xi’s world? How does Zhu Xi frame his vision of the cosmos and the manifestation of the meaning of the texts within that world? And what was the complex nature of the highly urbanized and educated world of the Southern Song intellectual? Complex as civilizations are, they do, from time to time, make music that makes us ask if we have not heard that tune before. There is something that seems the same and something that is incurably unique in each great philosophic statement. BOSTON UNIVERSITY Boston, Massachusetts Endnotes 1. Hans-George Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Lingo (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1976), 98. 156 john h. berthrong 2. Li Jingde (fl. 1263), ed., Zhuzi Yulei Daquan (The Great Compendium of the Classical Dialogues of Zhu Xi) (8 vols.) (Tokyo: n.p., 1973; a reproduction of a Japanese edition of 1668), 1:465–541. This includes juan 10 and 11. 3. Consult Zhu Xi, Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically, translated with commentary by Daniel K. Gardner (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1990), 3–81. Gardner has translated selected passages of juan 10 and 11 of the Yulei mentioned in note 2. 4. Gadamer, in discussing the role of the German Pietist tradition, also stresses the application of understanding and insight gained through the hermeneutic art. See Hans-George Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 274–75. 5. For a summary of Zhu Xi’s place in and contribution to the growing Neo-Confucian tradition, see Donald J. Munro, Images of Human Nature: A Sung Portrait (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: Life and Thought (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1987); Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: New Studies (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989); and Wing-tsit Chan, ed., Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986). For an illuminating interlinking exposition of Zhu Xi’s place and influence in the East Asian Confucian tradition, see Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Liberal Tradition in China (Hong Kong and New York: The Chinese University Press and Columbia University Press, 1983); Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-andHeart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); and Confucianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). 6. In many respects, jing or “reverence” means to focus on one thing in a pure state of intentionality. Zhu Xi says,“It is not like clod-like sitting, with the ears not hearing, the eyes not seeing, totally unconcerned with events. It is collecting the mind of the person, strictly and purely and without any kind of laxness: this is reverence.” Consult Qian Mu (Ch’ien Mu), Zhuzi Xin Xuean (5 vols.) (Taiwan: San min Bookstore, 1971), 2:299. 7. For a translation and discussion of this material, see James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics (5 vols.) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1970), 1:22–26, 365–66. For a study of Zhu Xi’s interpretation of this crucial Neo-Confucian text, see Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986). 8. As found in Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 89, note 24. 9. The details of what Zhu Xi does with the text of the Daxue is discussed in detail by Chao Tse-hou, Daxue Yanjiu (A Study of the Daxue) (Taipei: Zhonghua Bookstore, 1972), 84–88, where Chao provides a helpful chart to sort out Zhu Xi’s rearrangement of the text. 10. This is my own translation, in which I seek to highlight the hermeneutic character of the text. For alternative translations, see Legge, Chinese Classics, 1:365–66; Chan, Source Book, 89; and D. C. Lao, “A Note on Ke Wu,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 30 (1967): 354. 11. There is an analogue for this in Whitehead’s Process and Reality. It is hard to split facts and values when this kind of hermeneutical axiology is so central to the philosophic enterprise. See Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, corrected edition by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 81–82, 162–63. 12. The late Hsu Fu-kuan (Xu Fuguan) attempted to define Chinese culture in the Zhou as a “concern culture” in opposition to the “awe culture” of Israel and the “wonder culture” of Greece. This kind of formulation stresses the relational and vector character of the mind; someone is concerned about something or someone, and yet the act of concern is not uninfluenced by the object of this concern. Given the vectoring thrust of concern consciousness, this needs to be understood as a relation of mutuality. As a consequence, the problems of epistemology slide over into ethical considerations. This always seems a bit odd, if not naïve, within modern Western discourse, which often holds (at least in theory) to a division of facts and values. zhu xi and the hermeneutic art 157 13. For an alternative reading of the mind’s relation to the world by Zhu Xi’s great rival, Wang Yangming, see Julia Ching, To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). For an interpretation of the Huayan Buddhist tradition focusing on Gaifeng Zongmi, see Alfonso Verdu, Dialectical Aspects in Buddhist Thought: Studies in Sino-Japanese Mahayana Idealism (Lawrence, KS: Center for East Asian Studies, 1974), 3–74. For the kind of statement which probably led Zhu Xi to argue that the Buddhists had a defective understanding of the mind and its powers, see Yoshito S. Hakeda, trans., The Awakening of Faith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 31. Hakeda argues, The revelation of the true meaning [of the principle of Mahayana can be achieved] by [unfolding the doctrine] that the principle of One Mind has two aspects. One is the aspect of Mind in terms of the Absolute (tathata, suchness), and the other is the aspect of Mind in terms of phenomena (samsara: brith and death). Each of these two aspects embraces all states of existence. Why? Because these two aspects are mutually embracing. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. Of course, it is not at all clear that the Awakening of Faith means the same thing as Zhu Xi thought when he referred to its doctrine of One Mind. For a summary of this process, see Zhao Shunsun (fl. 1242), Sishu Zuan Shu (Collected Annotations on the Four Books) (Kao Hsiung: n.p., 1973), 28. Zhao Shunsun, Sishu Zuan Shu, 28. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 33. Ibid. Ibid. Zhu Xi’s use of qiongli is obviously taken from one of the Yijing’s commentaries entitled the Shuo gua (“Explaining the Hexagrams”). The passage in question reads, “To appropriate principle and complete nature in order to arrive at the Decree.” For the Chinese text, see A Concordance of the Yi Ching (Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, Ltd., 1966), 49. Consult Chao Tse-hou, Daxue Yanjiu, 208–33, where there is an extensive discussion of Zhu Xi’s views on gewu. Even Chao, who disagrees with Zhu’s interpretation of the text, recognizes the ethical import of Zhu’s interpretation (p. 220). Chao believes that Zhu had three distinct explanations of gewu which are not always consistent with each other. See Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:613. Quoted from Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book, 107. See a relevant statement in Daniel Gardner, trans., Learning to Be a Sage, 151, “Students today have two kinds of flaws: one is that they let themselves be ruled by personal prejudices; the other is that they embrace received theories.” Qian Mu certainly is on solid ground here. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:613. See Daniel Gardner, trans., Learning to Be a Sage, 44–45. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:615. Quoted from Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi) and Lü Tsu-ch’ien (Lü Zuqian), eds., Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucain Anthology, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 123. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:615. Ibid., 3:616. Compare Gadamer, Truth and Method, 238–40. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:617. Quoted from Chu His and Lü Tsu-ch’ien, Reflections on Things at Hand, 94. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:619. Ibid., 3:643. Ibid., 3:621. Liang Qixiong, Xunzi Jianshi (Brief Commentaries to the Xunzi) (Taipei: n.p., 1974), 294. Li Jingde, ed., Zhuzi Yulei Daquan, 1:481. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:622. Ibid. 158 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. john h. berthrong Ibid., 3:622–24. Li Jingde, ed., Zhuzi Yulei Daquan, 1:465. Ibid., 1:467. Ibid., 1:471. Ibid., 1:467. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:630. Quoted from Li Jingde, ed., Zhuzi Yulei Daquan, 1:467. Quoted from Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:634. Ibid., 3:643. Ibid. Ibid., 3:651. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 3:672. Ibid., 3:677. Ibid., 4:234. Ibid. Ibid. Quoted from Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 4:236. Ibid., 238. Ibid. Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 4:265. Zhu Xi, Zhuzi Yishu (Posthumously Remaining Works of Master Zhu). 12 vols. (Taipei: Yiwen Bookstore, 1969), fascicle 12. Wing-tsit Chan has devoted a chapter to Zhu Xi’s positive interpretations of the Laozi and the Zhuangzi in Chu Hsi: New Essays, 486–508. Quoted from Qian Mu, Zhuzi Xin Xuean, 4:262. Quoted from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, xxi. Ibid., 264. Ibid., 274. Chinese Glossary Chao Tse-hou jiejing Chen Chun jing chengyi Jinsi Lu Cheng Yi juan Ch’ien Mu jue Dao Kao Hsiung Daxue Laozi Daxue Yanjiu Li Jingde dushu Liang Qixiong gewu Lü Zuqian gewu qiongli Mengzi Guifeng Zongmi San min Han Shangshu Hsu Fu-kuan shi Huayan Shijing huo wen Shuo gua zhu xi and the hermeneutic art si Zhao Shunsun Sishu Zuan Shu zhizhi Song Zhonghua Taipei Zhongyong Taiwan Zhou Wang Yangming Zhou Dunyi xue Zhuangzi Xunzi Zhu Xi Xunzi Jianshi Zhuzi Xin Xuean xu xin ping qi yi bu ke yi du Zhuzi Yishu Yijing Zhuzi Yulei Daquan yin-yang Zengzi 159