In response to allegations that China is a "shame culture," scholars of Confucian ethics have made use of new studies in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy that present shame in a more favorable light. These studies contend that shame involves internalization of social moral codes. By adapting these new internal models of shame, Confucian ethicists have attempted to rehabilitate the emphasis on shame in early Confucianism, but in doing so they have inadvertently highlighted the striking absence in early Confucian texts of such prominent shame metaphors as being seen, particularly with genitals exposed. This essay analyzes these visual metaphors for shame, in contrast to contact metaphors, and considers the implications for Confucian ethics that they might be two different types of shame.
For understanding early Chinese "theories of language" and views about the relation of speech to a nonalphabetic script, a thorough analysis of early Chinese metalinguistic terminology is necessary. This article analyzes the function of ming 名 (name) in early Chinese texts as a first step in that direction. It argues against the regular treatment of this term in early Chinese texts as the equivalent of "word." It examines ming in light of early Chinese ideas about sense perception, the mythology about the origin or music and writing, and changes occurring in the writing system in the third century b.c.e. This lays the groundwork for a more informed response to Derrida's speculation about Chinese logocentrism. It is explained that, in early Chinese texts, certain concepts associated with logocentrism (e.g., reality/appearance, presence/absence) function in a way that is neither the same as, nor exactly the reverse of, the Western philosophical episteme. Thus, attempts to reconstruct attitudes toward "language" in early China should note the importance of sound in interpreting ming . Moreover, interpretations of apparent denigrations of writing in early Chinese texts should, before diagnosing logocentrism, consider the context of the reliability of the visual.
A. C. Graham's Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Sciences (1978) is the only Western-language translation of the obscure and textually corrupt chapters of the Mozi that purportedly constitute the foundations of ancient Chinese logic. Graham's presentation and interpretation of this difficult material has been largely accepted by scholars. This article questions the soundness of Graham's reconstruction of these chapters (the so-called "Neo-Mohist Canons"). Upon close examination, problems are revealed in both the structure and the content of the framework Graham uses to interpret the Canons. Without a more reliable framework for interpreting the text, it seems best to remain skeptical about claims that the Canons represent evidence for the study of logic in early China. THE NEO-MOHIST CANONS ARE COMMONLY thought to be the closest thing to logic in ancient China. A. C. Graham's reconstruction of this almost unintelligible text has been hailed as "the single most important study on Chinese logic ever published."' Graham suggests that the Canons also contain the germs of Chinese science, destined to be undeveloped due to poor preservation of this text. Sinologists have used Graham's reconstruction not only to understand Neo-Mohist logic and science, but also to elucidate methods of argumentation and technical terminology throughout ancient China. This article questions whether we can in fact rely on Graham's reconstruction. According to Graham, an "organizing principle must be identified if the items [in the Canons] are to be read in context."2 But the organizing principle Graham selects for reconstructing the text is questionable. The organizing principle determines the order and the themes that provide the context for interpretation. If it is called into question, we lack the necessary context for interpreting the Canons. Given the countless questions about line-breaks and emendations of characters in the Canons, it is by no means easy to determine, on a case-by-case basis for each Canon, whether it is possible to reject Graham's organizing principle for the Canons as a whole but still to retain his translation (or even, in many cases, his deci-1 In the biographical note on Graham in Epistemological Issues in Classical Chinese Philosophy, ed. Hans Lenk and
In early Chinese texts, straightness often indicates correctness, hence many things are said to be zheng l.E. 1 But among them, only zhengmfng l.E::S emerged as a rhetorical slogan promising the production of order and elimination of human confusion and fakeness. 2 In scholarship on Chinese ethics, the slogan is usually understood as working toward these goals by making behavior accord with names or by making "names" (norms or social roles) accord with behavior. By contrast, on the assumption that uses of the term "m(ng" (name/title/fame) involved what something is called or what is heard about it, the chapter focuses on interpreting zhengm(ng in light of ideas about speech, music, tones, and sound in general-items that are distinct from, but related to, m(ng ;6. 3 The chapter considers zhengmfng as part of a textual tradition wherein recurring poetic "sound-effects" appear in a variety of genres. In light of this context, it argues that the power of the sovereign's zhengm(ng stems from participating in such effects.
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