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The Configuration of Chinese Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Liou Kia-hway

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This study is divided into two distinct sections, introduction and elaboration.

The reader will undoubtedly notice a disproportion in this article because the introduction is as long as the section intended to prove the hypothesis which it develops. This is due to the fact that we Chinese have no very clear awareness of our logical processes and hence of our so-called reasoning. We must therefore track down those arguments that are entirely free from verbal misrepresentation and try to make clear their structure. Our comparative research enables us to state the following: in contrast to Western reasoning, which is always very explicit in form and whose logical sequences are closely knit, Chinese thought is but a series of independent experiments that add up to no well-defined order and have no internal interrelationship. From this lack of logical sequence all Chinese philosophers derive their initial inspiration; they then enlarge their understanding by analytical thought. This basis, which is common to all Chinese thinkers, no matter how divergent or antithetical their tendencies, is nothing more than the concrete and indivisible whole, which we will investigate, in our own fashion, in the introduction. We mention this merely to caution the reader who is unaccustomed to the confusing complexity of Chinese thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 13 , Issue 49 , March 1965 , pp. 66 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Séraphin Couvreur, Les quatre livres: Entretiens de Confucius et de ses disciples, p. 139, 8. Ed. Société d'édition des belles lettres, Paris, 1950.

2 The following is a translation of the text in Confucius' Conversations from which we have taken this example:

Tseu-tchang (an enthusiastic disciple of Confucius) asks if it is possible to foretell anything about the ten dynasties of the future.

The Master answers: " The Yin dynasty adopted the regime of the Hia dynasty. The documents tell us what it added and what it omitted. The Tcheou dynasty adopted the regime of the Yin and the documents tell us what it added and omitted. In this way it is possible to know about the dynasties that will follow that of Tcheou, even if there should be a hundred." Entretiens cit., p. 82-23.

Important observation. Confucius' answer means that each dynasty tounds its own regime, after due reflection about the virtues and defects of the preceding dynasty. In this way a broader knowledge of a past period prefigures the period that immediately follows it. Is this not a means of reasoning by analogy, using the past to draw conclusions about the future, using the known to draw con clusions about the unknown? Thus Confucius, in his answer to Tseu-tchang, multiplies examples of such reasoning by analogy. If one has complete knowledge about the dynasty of one's own regime, it becomes possible to have knowledge about the regime of the succeeding dynasty and in this way to know about all the successive dynasties. It would seem that this use of logic in regard to history comprises the same structure that Confucius uses when he teaches geo metry and shows that knowledge of one angle of a square yields knowledge about the other three angles.

3 We cite here two texts from Confucius that deal with the problem of the whole:

  1. (a)

    (a) The Master says: "Chen (Tseng-tseu), my doctrine consists in connecting (the whole) by one …" Confucius' Entretiens cit., pp. 104.15.

  2. (b)

    (b) The Master says: "Sseu (Tseu-kong), do you think of me as a man who has learned a great deal and remembered It? "

    " Yes, is that not true? " the disciple answers.

    " It is not true," says Confucius, " I connect (the whole) with the one." Entretiens cit., p. 238.2.

4 All of Confucius' reasoning, two samples of which have been analyzed here, implies the Confucian intuition of a connecting entity. But none of his reasoning, sometimes implicit and always brief, proves the existence of a unit connecting the multiple. Our hypothesis that the jen includes all of Confucius' special virtues is merely a research principle which does not exist in the mind of this first Chinese philosopher.

5 Souen Yi-yang, Mo-tseu Kien-kou, ch. 46, pp. 2-62-63. Ed. Tchou-tseu Tsi-tch'eng, Shanghai, 1954.

6 Cf. our translation of the first of the three dissertations on universal love. Liou Kia-hway: L'esprit synthétique de la Chine, pp. 197-198, Presses univer sitaires de France, Paris, 1961.

7 Cf. our translation of the imitation of the Model: Liou Kia-hway, op. cit., pp. 202-203.

8 Liou Kia-hway, op. cit., pp. 172-74.

9 We must caution the reader that this paragraph merely describes our per sonal experience, inspired by Chinese painters, poets, and philosophers; it does not represent in any way the norm of Chinese logic. But since there really is no such norm we offer this personal experience to enable a reader unfamiliar with the Chinese mentality to assess the nature of Chinese philosophy, something of which the Chinese philosopher himself is largely unaware. This warning signifies that no Chinese thinker conforms to our living experience and that therefore it is impossible to discover any rule that is common to all Chinese thought because it is not a deliberate activity but something undergone. There is no trace in ancient China of the Western ideal of a logic prescribing its own laws and norm.

Important Observation. It must be emphasized that there is a relationship between the concrete and indivisible whole, which is the basis of Chinese thought, and the abstract and very fluid whole, which constitutes Chinese thought properly speaking. Every Chinese philosopher believes that he is in immediate contact with the very depths. But upon reflection he realizes quickly that his thought has not reached the depths it aimed at. It is then that his thought necessarily becomes an abstract and very fluid whole. Thus, all Chinese thought is both concrete and abstract. It represents a concrete and indivisible whole when it is connected with the depths and loses awareness of its own existence; as soon as it becomes detached from the depths and is viewed solely in its necessarily limited form, it immediately becomes an abstract and very fluid whole.

10 Sie Hi-chen, Kong-souen Long-tsen, ch. II, pp. 3b-5b. Ed. Mo-hai Kin-hou.

11 The following two passages demonstrate Kong-souen Long's conviction that the hard and the white are endowed with an existence in themselves, inde pendent of the empirical universe:

—not partaking of the stone, the hard is incarnated universally, in all beings. Not partaking of all the beings of the world, the hard is, of necessity, hard for its own sake; the hard imparts hardness neither to the stone nor to the beings of the world; it is hard for its own sake. Such a hardness does not exist in the world; thus it hides itself.

—if the white cannot whiten itself, can it impart whiteness to the stone and the beings? If the white is, of necessity, white for its own sake, then it can be white without imparting whiteness to beings … Cf. Liou Kiu-hway, L'esprit synthétique de la Chine, p. 146.

12 These three Chinese sentences operate according to the Chinese logic of departing from a single affirmation and investigating it in increasing profundity: thus the first sentence is denied by the second, which probes more profoundly into the first affirmation; in the same way, the second sentence is denied by the third, which probes more profoundly into the affirmation contained in the second sentence.

13 In our opinion, the 4th Chinese sentence should encompass the first and second, for we feel that the finite being in the first sentence and the infinite being in the second can be assimilated to the thesis of being in the 4th sentence.

14 These four Chinese sentences involve the same logic which operates by a progressively deeper examination: thus the fourth sentence is denied by the fifth, which represents a deeper examination of the affirmation contained in the fourth; similarly the fifth is denied by the sixth, which probes deeper into the affirmation contained in the fifth; the sixth by the seventh, which probes deeper into the affirmation contained in the sixth.

15 The reader will remark a manifest contradiction in our description of Chinese thought, for we have maintained above that the Chinese thinker does not seek the causality nor the finality of an object or an occurrence pertaining to the empirical world. Why, then, does Tchouang-tseu seem to do just this? Our answer would be that Tchouang-tseu views causal and final interrogations simply as a pedagogical process which aids the neophyte in identifyng himself with the world in its indivisible totality. He who arrives at an adequate under standing of the world, whose concrete unity is absolutely indivisible, no longer admits the separate existence of causes and ends. These causes and ends are always provisory and serve simply as guiding-marks for empirical man. Thus Tchouang-tseu's causal and final interrogation leads him to deny the Western conception of causality and finality which threatens to replace concrete and indivisible reality with a bundle of abstract and exclusive concepts.

16 The following objection could be made: you have maintained above that a Chinese thinker does not speculate on the first cause of the world (prime mover), that is, the generating essence of concrete existence. Why, then, as your exposé shows, does Tchouang-tseu ask who created and maintains the empirical universe? We do not deny that Tchouang-tseu, like Western metaphysicians, wishes to provide the contingent universe with a solid foundation. But despite this similarity in the two points of departure, we must emphasize that the relationship between the Tao and the contingent universe is not one of necessary determination nor of reciprocal attraction. Strictly speaking, it is not a rela tionship at all, for a relationship can exist only between two distinct terms. Tchouang-tseu, on the contrary, conceives of the empirical universe as an inde finite series of inherently inadequate symbols of the Tao, while the Tao itself lies utterly out of the reach of human experience. Since the Tao and the empirical universe are one and the same thing, it is impossible to think in terms of a real relationship between them.