Concerning ancient Chinese philosophy there is a prevailing perspective that Confucianism is the orthodox. This stand is not merely held by many schools even though there same difference amongst them, but also advocated by ancient and current political authority. For the defensive claim for Confucianism, other schools in ancient Chinese philosophy like Daoism, Mohism, legalism and so forth are excluded out of the mainstream of intellectual sphere. Even mentioned, they are just interpreted from the point of view of Confucianism. This scenario is absolutely unfair for those streams and also in great cost of intelligence. Chad Hansen realized the problem clearly and genuinely developed a new perspective of interpreting pre-Qin philosophy against the prevailing perspective.
His theory is based on a specific philosophy of language. In traditional view, western scholars generally accept the judgement that analytic aspect in ancient Chinese philosophy but conversely Hansen holds that there is a clear analytic structure in ancient Chinese language. And further, he adopts the pragmatic theory to interpret ancient Chinese philosophical texts. He admits that ancient Chinese philosophy does not have the dimension of pursuing truth of reality but only has moral dimension of debating the proper way of using language to guid behavior. Therefore, Hansen asserts the ancient chinese philosophy was carried about under a basic scheme of language philosophy. In fact the basic idea is from western theory of pragmatics. But I incline to admit it is reasonable to interpret ancient Chinese philosophy in term of pragmatics. According Hansen, philosophers in pre-Qin period are talking what is the proper way to use language to direct people's behavior. The point is the use of language.
No comments:
Post a Comment