1 - The China syndrome: language, logical form, translation

Summary

The only generalisation to make about language and science is to make no generalisation.

Yuen Ren Chao

Die Sprache verkleidet den Gedanken. Und zwar so, daß man nach der äußeren Form des Kleides, nicht auf die Form des bekleideten Gedankens schließen kann; weil die äußere Form des Kleides nach ganz anderen Zwecken gebildet ist, als danach, die Form des Körpers erkennen zu lassen.

Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.002

Introduction

My intention in this first chapter is to address a methodological presumption which, for better or worse, influences a great portion of the work done on Chinese philosophy, both in the West and in the East. I refer to the presumption that there is something distinctively Chinese about Chinese philosophy taken more or less in its entirety; that this feature (or these features) set(s) the path of its development; and that it (or they) must be invoked to account for whatever large and deep contrasts are perceived between it and that other strange monolith, Western philosophy.

The suggestion that we should pay attention to what is Chinese (in some very broad sense) in Chinese thought will sound rather bizarre to anyone not wedded to a radically abstract conception of argument – and will do so precisely because it is so resoundingly truistic.