Organizer and Chair: Chung-Ying Cheng, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
Discussants: Robert J. Neville, Boston University; Roger T. Ames, University of Hawai'i,
Manoa
This panel constitutes a broad and yet a deep inquiry and survey of current research and study on the philosophy of the human person in the Confucian/Neo-Confucian tradition. This current interest in the concept and theory of xing is particularly shared across many disciplines in Chinese studies. There is a good reason for this current interest: both Western and Eastern scholars want to find a common base for making assessments of the image and understanding of the human person for interhuman and intersocial communication and ordering between the Western tradition and the Chinese tradition. This inquiry is also important for both Asian and Western historians because it provides a basic framework for understanding human motives in the development and explanation of history and historical self-criticism.
Anne Birdwhistell, Stockton College of New Jersey
The aim of this paper is to examine how the concept of xing, often translated as human nature, was incorporated into the philosophical thinking of Lu Jiuyuan (1139-1193), an important neo-Confucian of the Southern Song. My approach is to analyze, through description, the theoretical system in which this concept and its related concepts functioned. Xin (heart/mind), li (principle/pattern), and dao (way) are the most important of these related, and frequently interchangeable, concepts.
I begin with a brief consideration of previous interpretations of Lu's thought, especially the claim that he was an Idealist. My discussion shows why this claim is problematic and should be discarded, if we want philosophical labels to be useful in cross-cultural analysis.
Examination of how Lu used the complex of concepts that included xin, li, dao, and xing suggests that Lu was, above all, interested in the nature of order and that he employed a social (rather than an epistemological or ontological) perspective. Moreover, he emphasized the social level of reality, as opposed to that of the individual person in a physiological or psychological sense.
The modern relevancy of Lu's position becomes apparent both through Lu's focus on the social level and his use of a political (order/disorder), rather than a biological, metaphor for defining ontology, or the nature of being.
Chung-Ying Cheng, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
The purpose of this article is to analyze the implication and presupposition of the two philosophical theses "xing ji li" (nature is truth) and "xin ji li" (heart/mind is truth) in Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism in a larger context of the Confucian-Neo-Confucian understanding of "xing". Although "xing" has been translated as "nature" or "human nature" since Wing tsit Chan published his A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, "Xing" has both narrower and broader significance than the English term "nature" suggests, for in the case of human beings, "xing" is given a moral content and a manifold of meanings to be discussed in this article since the time of Mencius and the Doctrine of the Mean. "Xing" has a narrower significance because it is more moral nature than nature and does not necessarily include all the common instincts and desires as this term has been used in all later major Confucian discourses after Mencius. "Xing" also has a broader significance because anything which pertains to human development and human achievement can be said to be a matter of xing or based on xing. In this way, xing thus becomes a theory-laden or philosophy-laden concept like the term dao (the way), the term ren (benevolence) and the term li (principle) which warrant to be given a more suggestive and more explicative rendering.
In this article I will use the term "naturality" for xing, in both correlation and contrast with the term "rationality" for li (principle). The reason for this rendering is that "naturality" suggests the sense of being natural and spontaneous, which is related to the process of origination, generation (sheng), development and fulfillment, which defines the process-entity called "the human person" (ren). By the same token, I render li as "rationality" in order to stress the systematic, holistic order-constituting and order-presenting functions of the onto-cosmological background understanding of the primordial reality in which man is rooted. I plan to contrast "xing" as "naturality" which is historical and temporal and developmental with "li" as rationality which is atemporal, ahistorical and accomplished. In fact, "naturality" is even better understood as "xingli" in order to stress the process of rationalization of the natural in explicit moral rationality of thinking and practice. Similarly, "rationality" is better to be understood as "lixing" in order to underline the necessity of the incorporation of the li in the natural constitution of a human person, namely the realization and embodiment of the ultimate truth of the dao or tian in the physical existence of a person. I shall argue that the point of "xing ji li" is to assert the explanation of naturality in terms of rationality. The stress is on rationality. In contrast we could likewise see that the point of "xin ji li" is to explain rationality (li) in terms of naturality as based on hsin. The stress is on the activity of mind. The two propositions together form a hermeneutical circle of chain relationship among li, xing, and xin which enriches our understanding of the human person as a creative process and a dynamical system. Here I render the two propositions in common non-technical terms like "nature" and "truth" in order to be further explained and explicated. This context is determined in terms of correlative or polaristic paradigms involving "xing" which have evolved from the time of Mencius, the Zhong Yong and the Commentaries of the Yi Jing (Yi Zhuan) which provide the ontological and epistemological meanings of the xing.
Would you like to return to the China & Inner Asia Table of Contents? Choose another area?