糖心TV

Speaker: (Oxford)

 Talk: The Dialectics Rule: Chinese Philosophy As Seen From *M矛ng x霉n

 Abstract: This paper looks at the way a philosophical argument is developed in a recently obtained, fourth century manuscript text from the Tsinghua collection of Ch菙 Warring States texts, titled *M矛ng x霉n. The text has a close counterpart in the received tradition (Y矛 Zh艒ush奴), which classes it as an utterance in the tradition of Sh奴 (Documents), one of the core classics. I analyse the strategies with which meaning is produced in *M矛ng x霉n and suggest that the text is articulated in a dialectic manner in which the philosophical premise seeks to test itself continuously to avoid becoming doctrine, and thus philosophically void. My choice of a Sh奴 text as an example of philosophically relevant meaning construction in early China challenges current methodology, which anachronistically considers 锄菒-type literature (the Masters) as a disciplinary equivalent to Philosophy in ancient Greece. I argue that since philosophically relevant activities are a non-disciplinary praxis in early China, the articulations of this praxis are also not genre specific but found across the foundational literary texts of China.