Literary Forms of Argument in Early China

363 Pages·2015·2.61 MB·English

by  Joachim Gentz

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Literary Forms of Argument in Early China
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004299702_001
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Sinica Leidensia
Edited by
Barend J. ter Haar
Maghiel van Crevel
In co-operation with
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VOLUME 123
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sinl
iii
Literary Forms of Argument
in Early China
Edited by
Joachim Gentz and Dirk Meyer
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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This volume received support from the “New Perspectives in Chinese Culture and Society” program,
which is made possible by a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly
Exchange to the American Council of Learned Societies.
Cover illustration: Wang Jie 王玠 (fl. 1331–1380), “Explanations and Commentary with Diagrams to the
Wondrous Canon of the Eternal Purity and Tranquility as taught by the Supreme Venerable Sovereign”
(Taishang Laojun shuo chang qingjing miaojing zuantu jiezhu 太上老君說常清靜妙經纂圖解註), in
Zhengtong Daozang 正統道藏 (Taipei: Xin wenfeng chuban gongsi, 1985–1988, vol. 28., p. 839), dongshen
bu, yujue lei, shizi hao 洞神部．玉訣類．是字號, (DZ 760, fasc. 533, following the numbering in
Kristopher Schipper and Franciscus Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the
Daozang [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004], vol. 2, 730).
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ContentCsontents v
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction: Literary Forms of Argument in Early China 1
Joachim Gentz and Dirk Meyer
1 A Building Block of Chinese Argumentation: Initial Fu 夫 as a Phrase
Status Marker 37
Rudolf G. Wagner
2 Beyond Parallelism: A Rethinking of Patterns of Coordination and
Subordination in Chinese Expository Prose 67
Andrew H. Plaks
3 On the Range and Performance of Laozi-Style Tetrasyllables 87
David Schaberg
4 Defining Boundaries and Relations of Textual Units: Examples from the
Literary Tool-Kit of Early Chinese Argumentation 112
Joachim Gentz
5 The Philosophy of the Analytic Aperçu 158
Christoph Harbsmeier
6 Speaking of Poetry: Pattern and Argument in the “Kongzi Shilun” 175
Martin Kern
7 Structure and Anti-Structure, Convention and Counter-Convention:
Clues to the Exemplary Figure’s (Fayan) Construction of Yang Xiong as
Classical Master 201
Michael Nylan
8 A Ragbag of Odds and Ends? Argument Structure and Philosophical
Coherence in Zhuangzi 26 243
Wim De Reu
vi Contents
9 Truth Claim with no Claim to Truth: Text and Performance of the
“Qiushui” Chapter of the Zhuangzi 297
Dirk Meyer
Index 341
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List of CLoisntt roifb uCtoonrtsributors vii
List of Contributors
Joachim Gentz
Chair of Chinese Philosophy and Religion, University of Edinburgh. Joachim
Gentz studied Sinology, Religious Studies and Philosophy in Berlin, Nanjing
and Heidelberg. He was Assistant Professor at Heidelberg (1999–2002), Junior-
professor in Religious Studies at Göttingen (2002–2006), Visiting Professor in
Tokyo (2000) and Bayreuth (2008), and has worked at the Asian Studies De-
partment in Edinburgh since 2006. His main research focus is on Chinese his-
tory of thought. His work crosses the disciplinary boundaries of Sinology,
Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies. His recent publications in-
clude Keywords Re-Oriented (2009), Understanding Chinese Religions (2012),
and Religious Diversity in Chinese Thought (2013), ed. with P. Schmidt-Leukel.
Christoph Harbsmeier
Professor of Chinese, University of Oslo. Born in 1946, Christoph Harbsmeier
read Chinese at Merton College, Oxford, and was awarded a PhD from Copen-
hagen in 1981. He is a student of classical Chinese philosophy, grammar and
rhetoric with a special interest in modern Chinese illustrated literature. His
books include Wilhelm von Humboldt und die philosophische Grammatik des
Altchinesischen (1978), Aspects of Classical Chinese Syntax (1981), Socialist Real-
ism with a Buddhist Face: The Cartoonist Feng Zikai (1984), Language and Logic
(Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 7.1) 1998. Long-term engagements in-
clude: lecturer in Humanities, Princeton, visiting professor at University of
Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, University of Michigan, Chinese
University Hong Kong, Peking University, EHESS Paris, National University of
Singapore, Heidelberg, Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, Collegium Budapest, Swed-
ish Collegium for Advanced Study, and the International Collegium Erlangen.
Martin Kern
Greg (‘84) and Joanna (P13) Zeluck Professor in Asian Studies; Chair, Department
of East Asian Studies, Princeton University. Martin Kern is the author of The
Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang, the editor of Text and Ritual in Early Chi-
na, and, with Benjamin A. Elman, the co-editor of Statecraft and Classical
Learning: The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History. He also is the co-editor of
T’oung Pao. His work cuts across the fields of literature, philology, history, reli-
gion, and art in ancient and early medieval China, with a primary focus on
poetry. He currently studies the formation of the early (Zhou through Han)
viii List Of Contributors
Chinese textual tradition, exploring questions of authorship, textual composi-
tion, and canonisation.
Dirk Meyer
Associate Professor in Chinese Philosophy and Fellow of The Queen’s College, Uni-
versity of Oxford. Dirk Meyer (PhD, Leiden) read Chinese at National Taiwan
University, Heidelberg, and Leiden. He took up his position at Oxford in 2007.
Meyer works on the history of thought, the interplay of material conditions
and ideas, orality and literacy in early Chinese philosophical discourse, argu-
mentative strategies in early Chinese philosophy, as well as text and manu-
script cultures in early China. He is the author of Philosophy on Bamboo: Text
and the Production of Meaning in Early China. Meyer has been a visiting scholar
at Princeton, National Taiwan University and Renmin University Beijing, as
well as Bernhard Karlgren Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced
Study.
Michael Nylan
Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley. Books by Michael
Nylan cover early Chinese urban history, pleasures in reading and classical
learning, and reception of the Classics, and include two translations, with a
third, the Shangshu or Documents, in progress. Her essays discuss empire, eco-
nomics, forgeries and reproductions, the legalities of sex, historiography and
rhetoric, and feminism.
Andrew H. Plaks
Professor of Asian Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Professor emeritus,
Princeton University. Andrew Plaks received his PhD. from the Department of
East Asian Studies, Princeton University in 1973, and taught in that department
until 2007, when he transferred to emeritus status. Concomitantly, he has
taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for about twenty-five years,
where he is currently Professor of Asian Studies. The main focus of his aca-
demic work in the early years of his career was in the area of the “classic” fic-
tion and drama of the Ming and Qing periods, but for the past two decades he
has concentrated primarily on issues and texts in Early Chinese thought.
Wim De Reu
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University. Wim
De Reu studied Chinese Studies and Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven and National Taiwan University. He currently teaches early Chinese
philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University. His
List of Contributors ix
interests include early Chinese views on language, the theory and practice of
argumentation, and cognitive linguistics. He has published articles on early
Chinese paradoxes and on the role of metaphors in the construction of early
Chinese philosophy (Philosophy East and West, Asian Philosophy). He currently
runs a project that focuses on argumentation in the later chapters of the
Zhuangzi.
David Schaberg
Dean of Humanities, UCLA. David Schaberg is professor of Chinese thought and
literature and Dean of Humanities at UCLA. He is author of A Patterned Past:
Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography, which was awarded the
2003 Levenson Prize for Books in Chinese Studies (Pre-1900 Category). His
more recent work addresses the history of oratory and ritual speech genres in
early China.
Rudolf G. Wagner
Senior Professor, Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University, Cluster “Asia and Eu-
rope”; Associate, John K. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University.
Rudolf G. Wagner is Senior Professor in Chinese Studies at the Cluster Asia and
Europe, Heidelberg University. A recipient of the Leibniz Award, he is an intel-
lectual historian with strong interests in the political implications of philo-
sophical and literary works; in enhancing the precision of understanding
classical Chinese texts; and in the transcultural interaction between China and
the world. His recent research focus is on the transcultural framework of the
Chinese press and publishing industry in the late 19th century. His relevant
publications include a three-volume edition and study of Wang Bi’s (226–249)
Commentary on the Laozi.
x List Of Contributors