dao

1. Which of the following is most and least likely to be true?
Confucius learned from Laozi.
Laozi wrote the Daode Jing.
Laozi went west and met "keeper of the pass" who requested him to write his dao.
Explain why in each case. Bonus: Is any item in A-C verifiable enough for someone to claim to "know" it?

Firstly I incline to hold that the second item is most likely to be true but only partly true. I admit the authorship of Laozi to Daode Jing but do not believe that Laozi is the single author of the book. From the textual differences among the new discovered Guodian version, Mawangdui version and the traditional Wangbi version, it is clear that the text of Daode Jing has been changing along the line of time. Some new verses or chapters are added in later versions. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that the text of Daode Jing was probably compiled by a group of contributors. But this view does not suggest that as some scholar suspected Laozi is not an real figure in history but a metaphor of the authorship by accouting the term Laozi as an old master. In contrast, I hold that Laozi is most likely to be the initiative author of the book. Suppose the book was edited many times by different editors who are likely to be contributors of some messages in the book. In addition to the fact that in ancient China many pieces of a book are often added anonymously, it is reasonable to believe that any one of these editors has no confidence to claim himself as the author. The more possible way he follows is to authorize the Daode Jing by the name of initiator of this book. Above all, I conclude that Laozi is the initial author of Daode Jing who wrote some verses or chapters that shape the basic spirit of the book.

The story of item 1 is popular among people but most likely to be untrue. The earliest material recording the meeting between Confucius and Laozi is in Zhuangzi. There are also records about the story in Shi Ji and Li Ji which nevertheless are much later than Zhuangzi. Besides the metephorical style of Zhuangzi, another barrier preventing us from believing records in it as historical fact is that no any information indicates that Mencius who is known to live before Zhuangzi knows about Laozi. Mencius dedicated all his life to defending Confucianism by criticizing all rival opponents but singularly ignored the important opposition between Laozi and Confucius. This seems no coincidence. There is also no information regarding Laozi in Mozi who lived between Confucius and Mencius. In short, my conclusion is that Laozi is a person who lived after Mencius and therefore it is impossible that Mencius learned from Laozi.

I suspect the truth of the story in item 3 but have no evidence to demonstrate that it is untrue. Therefore, I put it between item 3 and 1. 

Because of various uncertainties of the philosophical texts in Pre-Qin period, there are always other alternatives to interpret these texts and their relationship. So, no one of the three item is verifiable enough for one to claim he firmly knows it.

2. Explain how belief and knowledge are expressed in Classical Chinese. Why would that be important in understanding the meaning of Wu-wei / Lack-deem:do?

Western language functions as a descriptive system representing the outer world. A proposition is right when it represents the reality accurately, and vice versa. The meanings of terms are private mental states, namely, ideas. Different from western linguistic theory, classic Chinese is a prescriptive system generating guiding discourses for social behavior. In this system, convention plays a crucial role in forming prevailing knowledges and beliefs. Their contents are normative discourses delivered by language. Learning language is learning these normtive guides that shape people’s social behavior. Language sets the boudaries between rightness and wrongness of actions. So, the conventional ways of using names or distinctions are the ways that people should follow to react in various social situations. So, what ancient philosophers would concern most is not truth of reality but the Dao guiding behavior and the proper names that help achieve the goal of that Dao.

However, what is the standard for making guiding distinction? This is the central disbute between ancient Chinese philosophical schools. Confucius advocates strictly following the conventional way by rectifying names while Mozi reversely advocates reforming conventional rituals according to his utilitarian principles. Different both of them, Laozi puts forth an extreme strategy to deal with this question, that is, to deny the whole artificial behavior-guiding system. One central concept of his theory is wu-wei which is opposite to the whole socializing system. Laozi’s philosophical reflection actually exausted the limit of Chinese language which is a normative system. Therefore, many of his statement are in paradoxical style. Wu-wei is opposite to wei. In eyes of Laozi, to wei is to act as common people under the guide of artificial discourses or to make distinctions of social behaviors according to principles like what Confucius and Mozi did. So, wei here does not mean free, rational or conscious action as we understand today. Reversely, Laozi treats it as actions induced by behavior forms socially imposed to individuals. Laozi treats this kind of way people act as unnatural and advocates a natural way of life, the dao of water: wu-wei. Wu-wei presents its meaning in challenging the commonly accepted way of “wei”. It advises to avoid any action induced by artificial guiding forms. It is notable that Laozi’s wu-wei is not attacking the ego underlying individuality, desire and purpose as we understand. On the contrary, Wu-wei is to get us free from the artificial guiding system. It tries to abandon the whole system of names and distinctions that shaping our behavior in order to lead us to have a nutural life. However, here Laozi also gives prescriptive by distinguising natural from artificial way of life.

3. Should we distinguish clearly between textual theory and interpretive theory? Why or why not? Give an example of how they might be confused.

We should clearly distinguish between textual theory and interpretive theory. Firstly, the theoretical interests in textual theory and interpretive theory are siganificantly different. Textual theory pays more attention to archeological aspect of a text while interpretive theory focuses more on conceptual scheme of a text. Therefore, a new version discovered always interests textual theorists and will have significant influence on the current textual theories even if the new discovered text in fact is a bad version from the point of view of interpretive theory. In contrast, although a new discovered text will attract interpretive interest and even have some influence on their interpretation on the traditional text, theorists focusing on interpretation are more interested in the debates he involved in.

Secondly, even if the new discovered version is qualified to be closer to the original, this does not guarantee that interpretation on it will be more productive than that on the traditional one. The point is that the intellectual value of an interpretation is not based on which text it works on but the interaction between interpretors involved in the same philosophical debate based on the same text. Of course one interpretor can try to interpret the new discovered version but this may have no busniess with the debate based on the traditional one.

Thirdly, the specific intellectual interest of an interpretor may lead him to a particular version. As Hansen said, he is dedicated to the philosophical interpretation of the Daode Jing while comparing with the traditional version, Mawangdui version pays more attention on political aspect in its edition and therefore has less philosophical value for him. So, the traditional version of Daode Jing is much more preferable to him than the Mawangdui version.

Example: when one claims that the Mawangdui version of Daode Jing is a better version as the target of interpretion for the reason that the version is much closer to the original than the trodional version. Interpretive theory has its own specific reasons to work on particular version of text but the reason at least must not be the one offered by textual theory. (see item 8 for more details about the example)

4. Is holism important to interpretation? Why or why not? Does this mean that we can never find a "correct" translation/interpretation? Explain.

Yes, holism is important to interpretation. Firstly, different from dictionary-like traditional approach which treats translation prior to interpretive theory of language and therefore results in fragmented interpretation, we assert that interpretive theory proceeds translation in order to generate a systematical interpretation of a certain text. Beginning with this, a holistic nature of meaning is presupposed when we adopt principles of charity and humanity.  “We attribute beliefs and meanings in the same theory”(p11). Since the principle of humanity purports to find out the internal connection between beliefs, it requires us to understand how a text could be understandable within the context where the author wrote it and fore us to have a presupposition of a whole conceptual system in each case.

Secondly, to hold on holism is to reject the traditional distortion of the philosophical development and the nature of ancient Chinese philosphical discourses. The Neo-confucian theory as the ruling theory simply presupposes two assumptions in order to protect itself from rival criticisms. The first is the fragmented-schools view according to which different schools internally developped up without critical interactions with other schools. In contrast, we admit that all schools involved with the debates upon topics that they concern in their time and benefited from these debates. This gives us a holistical context to understand their discourses in an inter-related manner. The second is the meaning-change hypothesis which sugguests what these schools talked about are fundamentally different things that can be understandable only within in one particular school. This means that critiques from other schools always miss point and therefore do not matter to Confucianism. Reversely, we assume that different schools share some common philosophical interests and endorse some basic consensus on meaning which is the basis for their interactive communication.

Thirdly, we sharpen the point of holism in translation or interpretation so that any separate word must be understood holistically with the whole text where it emerges, the interpretation of the text must be coherent with the whole philosophical background where the debate occurs, and further more the debate between different schools must be understandable in relation with the whole philosophical development in ancient China. For example, the way ancient Chinese philosophers understand language is different from westerners. They see language as a prescriptive system guiding people’s social behavior rather than a descriptive system representing the objective world. So, when we interpret any text in ancient China, the interpretation must be consistent with the way how they understand language instead of imposing western conceptual norms upon classic Chinese.

Attaching to holism, we will always be prepared to revise our current interpretation in light of more information and adjust our tranlation manuals to make it more coherent. Therefore, we can never have a final say about which is the correct one, but holism principle and humanity principle can help us decide which is a better one than other alternatives and constantly keep us open to a potential better one. In other words, the question of “correct translation or interpretatin” is problematic. It simply holds a realistic account of translation and interpretation by assuming a ‘correct’ meaning to find out. According to Quine’s radical translation theory, we may have several “correct” interpretations of the same target text that nevertheless are not compatible with each other. So, in case of evaluating different interpretations, “correct” should be replaced by “plausible”, “reasonable”, “coherent” and the like.

5. Which principle should we apply in selecting a radical translation "translation manual" for ancient Chinese? Why?

The principle of charity and that of humanity should be applied in selecting a radical translation “translation manual” for ancient Chinese.

According to Quine’s theory of radical translation, for one foreign text we may have several translation manuals that all make sense of the same text but may be incompatible with each other. A bad translation manual is to simply appeal to a dictionary which is actually a rough interpretive theory as well but may merely result in a fragmented interpretation of a text.

To avoid such traditional approach, we should turn to principle of charity and principle of humanity in selecting a “translation manual” in terms of radical translation. The principle of charity advocates the maximization of truth in one language. It assumes that we as human beings share same reason and capacities to know the world around us no matter how different our languages are. However, the worry with this principle is that it may impose two many contents of our own beliefs and ideas upon the target text in another language. This may work out a systematical interpretation of the text in ancient Chinese but probably make no sense for ancient Chinese whose ideas are just what we intend to obtain by the interpretation.

Hence, we should step further to take up the principle of humanity which aims at maximizing the reasonableness of a language rather than the truth of it. This principle implies that when we try to produce a radical translation “translation manual” we should not simply rule out an idea or belief that is not compatible with our knowledge but take them up as a plausible background for understanding the target text as long as it is humanly understandable in the context it emerges. Following the principle of humanity could to the highest extent enable us to get rid of the constraints of our own conventional ideas which may be just conceptual biases from the point of target language and capture as initial understanding of these texts as the ancient philosophers hold. Notably, the principle of charity and humanity always work holistically even though some conflicts might occur in some cases. To make the principle of charity most charitable, I incline to sumordinate it under principle of humanity, that is, when we evaluate a translation manual in accord with the principle of charity we should always assume that there may be knowledge of truth that can only be understandable in the context described according to the principle of humanity.

6. Western interpreters often assume that everyone accepts their "folk theory" of language(the theory that the meanings of terms are private ideas). Is there any danger in making that assumption in interpreting ancient Chinese philosophy? Explain.

Simply generalizing the western “folk theory” of language, these interpreters disguised the essential differences between western languages and classic Chinese. Given the assumption that theory of language and theory of mind are internally related with each other, the ancient Chinese philosophy will be significantly distorted the interpretation based on western “folk theory” of language.

The central focus of western fold theory of language is about how language relates to reality. A kind of language is a representive system of the reality. This theory treats mental ideas as meanings of words. These mental ideas are individual’s iner, private pictographses that are identical to the corresponding outer, objective objects in the real world. However, in ancient China there is no thought of mind-body dichotomy and therefore there is no tendency to recognize the relationship between private mental contents and outer material objects. In contrast, traditional Chinese theorists treat pictographs as productions of the historical, causal relation to the world. The meanings of terms come from conventional discourses delivered by generations. Meanings of terms does not originate from individual experence about the reality but from the communal experience in history of the society. Language in ancient China is a prescriptive system guilding social behavior rather than a descriptive system representing the reality. The pattern of language use has normative force because it also illustrates a shared bahavior form in society. Therefore, Chinese philosophy does not use defination as the form of expressing truth about the reality but concerns what Dao to guid social progress and how to rectify names to direct the operation of the Dao. For this reason, moral debates in ancient China would not encounter the puzzle that how the descriptive language could function as precriptive statements. The problem they face is the conflict between relativity of names and the pursuit of constant Dao.

If we simply impose western folk theory of language in interpreting Chinese philosophy, these fundamental differences will be camouflaged and as a result the interpretation will be misled to the wrong direction.

7. Explain how assigning different meanings to a word can affect the doctrine we attribute to an author. What about the reverse? Can the conviction that he/she must believe some doctrine affect what meaning we assign to a term? Explain.

According to Hansen, “meaning cannot be determined independently from belief”(p8). When we assign a meaning to a term, or an English equivalent to a Chinese word, we actually have already taken our conventional concetpual assumption into account. Here the meaning is given to the particular Chinese word or character nevertheless the meaning is in fact understood in English context which is the whole conceptual system including beliefs, ideas, theories and the forth.

The crucial problem is that not only one equivalent exists in English but many equivalent are used to interpret the same Chinese word by different translators and even by the same translator. This implies that when they assigning different meanings to a word they actually attributing different doctrines to the author. The deeper problem we face is that these doctrines may be incompatible with each other even though they all make sense of the same text. If this happens to a single translation, this must be a bad translation for the lack of coherence. If this happens to different versions of translation, then we need principles to help us evaluate which one of these alternatives is the best one for us to adopt.

To work out a coherent and competative translation, we appeal to principle of charity and principle of humanity. This indicates that it is not sufficient to make sense of islated sentence in an interpretation. We must also work out a coherent understanding of the conceptual pattern that the ancient Chinese philosophers may have. The pattern must have its own soundness in conformity with the author’s beliefs rather than a mixed bag of terms attributing to our conventional doctrines. Then “we can say that a philosopher has a certain concept only if we can give a reason for him to adopt the theory asscociated with the concept”(p9). So, according to Hansen, an intelligible interpretive theory should preceed translation. Only through this way could we have an unified interpretation of a text in ancient Chinese. For the meaning is not independent from belief, the meaning that we assign to a term is always affected by the doctrines that attribute to the author. The two elements are mutually connected but for the purpose of a systematic intpretation, the doctrines that we convict authors have should enjoy priority to the meaning assigned to terms.

8. "The most important thing for any new translation is to start with the original form of the Daodejing. Given recent archeological discoveries, we know that is not the traditional(Wang Bi)version. The Mawangdui version certainly better for getting the original intent of the author, Laozi." Discuss this theory of the text. Correct any errors you find.

Firstly, the theory of the text confused textual theory and interpretive theory. The important thing for a new translation is not what version of the Daode Jing it works on but what approach it adopts in the translation, such as the principles for make translation manual. Whatever version of Daode Jing a translator works on, the translation would be successful as long as the translation satisfies the standards of translation(depending on what standards we set). 

Secondly, the principle assumped here is: the older, the better. This may be true for archeology or textual theory but must not be true for interpretive theory or translation. It is possible that the Mawangdui version may be the worst one for translation in terms of interpretive theory.

Thirdly, the Mawangdui version is older than traditional version but there is no reason to believe the way it is edited in this version is identical to the original one. As indicated by Guodian version, Mawangdui was significantly reedited. This means that the intent of the author has been distorted. Given the assumption that Daode Jing is a philosophical text, the traditional version may be more valuable for us to get the intent of the author because of the fact that Wangbi himself is a brilliant philosopher. (see items 3 for more clarification about distinction between textual and interpretive theory)