EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science
Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E The Language Crisis in the Warring States Period Notes taken on May 30, 2019 by Edward Tanguay |
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Warring States literature
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Early Warring States
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Analects
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Tao Te Ching
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the core part of Mohism (Mozi)
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Late Warring States
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concerned with language and how it relates to what we can know
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two innovations that separate the early and late warring states literature
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the language crisis
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people are getting concerned about how words relate to reality
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philosophical vocabulary
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debate
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you are not philosophically sophisticated unless you know this vocabulary
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a good marker
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the physiological turn
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influenced by medicine
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once these terms are created, they are used universally and hence a good marker
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the language crisis
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the Mohists
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221 BCE, no evidence that Mohism survived
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the Mozi only comes down as a received text of the Daoist canon
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why did the Mohist school not survive
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1. people regarded them as un-Chinese
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impartial caring
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not favoring your father
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yet what was Chinese really hadn't been decided yet in the Warring States period
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2. activists
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defending cities
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highly organized
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the first emperor of Qin [chin] didn't like the idea of these armed bands running around, and systematically stamped them out
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they were seen as a threat
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The Mohist canons
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came down to us in a fragmentary form
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late 19th century, Chinese scholars began to reconstruct them
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1978, A.C. Graham, "Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science"
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presents a reconstruction of the Mohist canon
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plausible and made these text accessible
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essay "Names and Objects"
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bian
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disputation
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people debating about which statements of reality are the proper one
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establishing the truth of propositional statements
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the one who fits the facts is the winner
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making arguments about reality in a competitive way
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mingshi [MING-shur]
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matching up objects with reality
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goal: to make sure that we are consistent
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get clear with how language hooks up with reality
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to have consistent, reliable and accurate teachings
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yi
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a sense of rightness that you have when you are a cultivated gentleman
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yet for the Mohists, rightness is about objective doctrine
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Mohists had instead a concern with language
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Names and Objects: 17
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"He cares for people" requires him to care for all people without exception, only then is he deemed to care for people.
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caring for people means doing it without distinctions
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caring for all people
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defining terms avoids moral confusion
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Names and Objects: 15
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"Although robbers are people, loving robbers is not loving people, not loving robbers is not loving people, killing robbers is not killing people."
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killing refers to executing
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how can we execute robbers if they are people
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what was meant is that once someone has robbed, they are now in a different category
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you have to get your definitions right, otherwise you won't know how to guide your behavior
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lei
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category or kind
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like Aristotle
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there are conditions for putting something in a box
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robbers are not in the people box
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they are in a separate box
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mingjia, later Mohists
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The School of Names
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logic and argumentation
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impartial caring
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group of people involved in logical distinctions, how sentences work
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against offensive warfare
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in later literature they are made fun of
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known as silly, logical hair splitters
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mingjia was sometimes translated as sophists
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used words to confuse people
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Gongsun Long
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"the white horse is not a horse"
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the noun horse modified by the adjective white makes a new kind of horse
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the story is that he got his white horse through customs with this argument so that he didn't have to pay taxes
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this saying was used to label people who would use language to confuse people
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we don't have enough of his teaching to understand what he was trying to say
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Hui Shi [way shur]
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"heaven and earth count as one unit"
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"let your care spread to all the myriad things"
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because we are all one
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all of the teachings we have of the mingjia are conveyed by their enemies and so they tend to get portrayed in this caricatured way