Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Dates
- 1 Chinese Philosophy
- 2 Confucius and the Confucian Concepts Ren and Li
- 3 The Cultivation of Humanity in Confucian Philosophy: Mencius and Xunzi
- 4 Early Mohist Philosophy
- 5 Early Daoist Philosophy: The Dao De Jing as a Metaphysical Treatise
- 6 Early Daoist Philosophy: Dao, Language and Society
- 7 The Mingjia and the Later Mohists
- 8 Zhuangzi's Philosophy
- 9 Legalist Philosophy
- 10 The Yijing and its Place in Chinese Philosophy
- 11 Chinese Buddhism
- Postscript
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Mingjia and the Later Mohists
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Dates
- 1 Chinese Philosophy
- 2 Confucius and the Confucian Concepts Ren and Li
- 3 The Cultivation of Humanity in Confucian Philosophy: Mencius and Xunzi
- 4 Early Mohist Philosophy
- 5 Early Daoist Philosophy: The Dao De Jing as a Metaphysical Treatise
- 6 Early Daoist Philosophy: Dao, Language and Society
- 7 The Mingjia and the Later Mohists
- 8 Zhuangzi's Philosophy
- 9 Legalist Philosophy
- 10 The Yijing and its Place in Chinese Philosophy
- 11 Chinese Buddhism
- Postscript
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
During the fourth century B.C. it began to occur to the Chinese that words move in a world of their own, a region connected only in the most casual and precarious way with the world of reality…Now there were particular reasons, connected with the history and character not only of the Chinese language, but also of the script, which made this rift between language and actuality not merely a subject of detached philosophic enquiry…but a burning question of the day.
(Waley 1958: 59–60)Waley calls this phenomenon ‘The Language Crisis’. His description suggests it was as though a wave of consciousness had spread among the thinkers in China. They began to question the nature of language and its connection with reality. As Waley rightly points out, there is a peculiarity about the Chinese language that further complicates issues of language-reality correspondence. Each Chinese character (or name: ming) has a particular meaning, and how the characters are combined, for instance, to form a compound name or a proposition, is an important matter. It was also critical to understand how these ‘names’ might accurately reflect reality. Both the Confucian discussion of correcting names (zhengming) and the Mohist preoccupation with standards (fa) attempt to deal with these issues by determining the correct application of names in order to regulate society.
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- Information
- An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy , pp. 111 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008